Differentiation:

As many of you know I am a practicing Buddhist, - practicing is the operative word. The honorable elements that compose Buddhist thinking;
compassion for all sentient beings,
understanding the ‘other’ as a mirror of self,
wisdom to realize we are all interconnected within samsara and enlightenment, comprehension of ‘no-self’ - emptiness,
understanding impermanence and ultimate liberation,
- are concepts that are often alien to me.

Yet if someone was to ask me, “Do you know Buddha or Buddhism?”, I would reply “yes”.
The measure of knowing can not be determined by my perceived failures, successes or scholarship of Buddhist text. To know Buddhism is to know the difference it has made in me.

- Martin Buber, a wonderful Jewish philosopher, describes this level of knowing in one statement; “All real living is meeting”.

- To truly comprehend something or someone is to meet at level of communion. This is not the ability to compose a list of characteristics, actions or stories that describes who that person is or what an object does. To fully recognize another is to honor the profound change he/she/it has made in self.

- When lost and confused Buddhism sustains me even as I continue to struggle with a mind-scape composed of clouds that block out the sun, even when I know those clouds have no tangible substance.

- Heart Sutra of perfect wisdom says it best;
“There is no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no tactile object, no phenomenon ...
There is no ignorance and no exhaustion of ignorance and so forth up to no aging and death and no exhaustion of aging and death.
Likewise, there is no suffering, origin, cessation or path; no exhaled wisdom, no attainment and also no non attainment ...”


Richard Rudis

‘IT’ and Aum-base

IT is always after us - IT is the apparent cause of our unhappiness, our joy, our hindrances and our liberation's. IT is the outside and the inside, the other and the you. Each of us manifest the IT uniquely within our own special life stories yet IT is common to us all. IT was the parent who didn’t understand you, IT is the love that must be reconciled, IT was the IRS or the homeless child. IT is the feeling of being lost, confused and without meaning - IT is suffering and temporary happiness.

Buddha was asked: "Which is first, awareness or knowledge?"
He answered: "Awareness arises first and then comes knowledge. One can then say, Because of my awareness, I know this as a fact.”

The ‘fact’ that Buddha is referring to is that no-matter how deeply ignorance (IT) has penetrated our being the essential nature of the mind, our Center, will never, never, never change. We are a glass full of cloudy water that, when allowed to be still, clears naturally into luminosity.

A friend recently told me that if only our consciousness would drop eighteen inches from the head to the heart suffering would cease. Know that this Center, this Aum-base, is always within reach, always the touchstone of your reality.
‘Center’ will appear differently for each of us but it’s nature is the same. It may be a god or goddess, a sound, a place, an image or retreat. When ‘IT’ becomes real enough to make chase - turn and stand smiling at IT’s sneering, IT’s red faced frustration and anger for you are within the safety of your own awareness, your own knowledge, your own Aum-base.

- Richard Rudis