the body’s knowledge

Every morning we wake up under the same bright northern star the Buddha saw when he awoke one dawn in his early thirties. Every moment we breathe the same molecules of air that once nourished Santideva, Dogen, Thich Nhat Hanh, your parents and their parents. Perhaps practice also fulfills our responsibility to the yogi-poets and wanderers who long ago struggled with aging bodies, unreliable thoughts, and an imperfect culture.

Knowing about practice is not enough: we must drop our “knowing” and feel our way into present experience by seeing things clearly. By seeing, the old yogis are not referring to the eyes but to what the Zen tradition calls “the true dharma eye” — the eye that sees without clinging, without sculpting, without allowing what is seen to get stuck into the web of like or dislike… . Each and every one of us can wake up without needing to adopt a new ideology or belief system. When we return to present experience through the sense organs themselves — eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, and mind — we enter the freedom of this very moment, and the old paths of the yogis come alive here and now. There is no freedom in just repeating the words and rituals of the old masters — we must express freedom and interdependence through the action of our whole being and community through mind, body, and speech.

(Source: shambhalasun.com)