To Seek is to Suffer
To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.
This saying from The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma (Red Pine, 1989) is often misinterpreted to mean that we shouldn’t make any effort, but rather sit back and do nothing, which isn’t really accurate. By all means we should be active, but in the midst of that activity, we should strive to cultivate and maintain the awareness that it is our yearning for ‘things to be a certain way’ that causes most (if not all) of our mental sufferings. Just having a body is suffering enough, why make it worse with longing for something that isn’t? This is also not to say that desire is undesirable, only that we should be aware that it is that which leads to suffering. Likewise, this does not mean that we should avoid suffering, or yearn for it’s non-existence, but rather that suffering is a reality whose intensity can be lessened by simply by being vigilant to the conditional processes that lead to suffering and by NOT FEEDING THEM. So we should take action, but no be attached to the results.
“Just rest with the way things are.” - Achaan Chah
—–