Although I was unaware of it for the almost three decades prior to
the final weekend of August
1978,
in one form or another my life has always moved
inexorably
from birth toward transformation. When I got it then for the first time
I knew immediately why I had not gotten it sooner.
Whatever I was looking for, whatever I thought it would
look like, for all those years I had been looking in the wrong places.
Or, spoken with
rigor,
I had been looking from the wrong place.
I had been looking for the revelation of a complex secret, for the
answer to the mystery, for the end of the difficulty (called
suffering by
Buddha).
But not for one moment in all those years was I looking for or
expecting something simple.
Transformation is simple. You know that when you get it. It's
so simple ...
In fact in a world which ascribes value to complexity and to mystery
and to difficulty for their own sakes, in its purest form
transformation is arguably too simple to be immediately
obvious. With hindsight it couldn't be any other way.
Complexity, mystery, and difficulty fuel conversations which keep Self
at bay. Actually it's more than that. We focus on complexity, on
mystery, and on difficulty in our conversations to avoid confronting
the
what's so-ness
of Self entirely. After complexity, after mystery, after difficulty is
Self. Indeed, before complexity, before mystery, and
before difficulty was Self.
That doesn't mean some things aren't complex or mysterious or
difficult. It means that without transformation, without Self, it's
all complex, it's all mysterious, it's all difficult. In
that context all that's available is to suffer and to struggle and to
find ways to survive.
When complexity, mystery, and difficulty are simply held as nothing
more than complexity, mystery, and difficulty, then they are what they
are whatever they are and that's all they are. When its OK that things
are what they are and aren't what they aren't, a climate for
transformation sets in. It's that simple.