(17) Darkness

darkness

The times of great darkness and confusion have begun.

These are times of great lies and misdirection.

Many will step forth proclaiming various miracles
and spiritual accomplishments from a deep and empty new age well.

But all there will be is man’s rampant imagination and endless desires
for something greater than his own true nature.

These are times where the absence of reason will flood the world,
as the understanding of the miraculous principle of the Buddha-Mind
is nowhere to be found and viewed like a distant mirage.

These are times when evil takes a bold step forward
and right into the limelight before those ready to worship
its final perversion of the truth.

These are times that will try men’s hearts and minds and open
incalculable traps to heavens and hells ready to enslave and doom
your spirit for an indefinite time.

These are times when real suffering is about to show its true face
and the real dharma approaches its final cycle of cessation,
like a fading star.

But, take heart…

The awesome light of the Tathagata shines freely at all times.

It is your true nature… perfect, unborn and pure beyond the limited comprehension
of man’s humanized nature.

One cannot really say that this permanent source and body of absolute truth is
within or outside oneself. Any such reference is merely metaphoric at best.

Thus the shining ones use various tools of skillful means to remind the
dreaming ones as where to look in order to awake and escape the pains of their
own desires and errors.

What stands between your dreaming self and the awesome nature of the
Buddhadharma is a very thin vibrating wall of eight well crafted layers of
consciousness, prohibiting awakening and right knowledge.

If you ever get lost on your path, it is because you are caught up in an endless
fight with the images in every layer of this wall of ignorance, not the wall
itself.

The wall needs but a small penetration to enable right view of the Buddhadharma
shining from the other shore.

Once the first brick, is removed and the first rays of truth starts to illuminate
the face of the prisoner with its warm comforting light, the prisoner gains
courage, stronger faith and desire to expand the hole with nothing else in mind.
One could say that the prisoner’s single mindedness to freedom has become boosted in the right direction.

Soon enough, the prisoner can escape into freedom without looking back to the good or dark memories of the dreamlands left behind.

The bodhi-child becomes awake the very moment something crosses over from the darkness in the cell of ignorance and into the light of Buddhadharma.

Blinding and somewhat terrifying at first; but wholesome and healing at last.

What first believed itself to be subject to birth and death understands now, as it bathes in the nirvanic light of the unfiltered Buddhadharma, what true freedom from suffering really is.

With such awakened eyes, beyond the distress of anxiety and pain, the awakened becomes the perfect spiritual instrument and being [bodhisattva] of the Buddhadharma…

Freely and effortlessly operating in the dark; and dreaming minds of beasts, men and gods.

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