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