Live up to your attainment with care.
– Sixth Patriarch
A few more things about this….
I can use a more yang or yin approach to live up to my attainment with care. A yang approach may be: don’t not allow yourself to fall into old patterns. (Don’t think you are absolutely right, protect a viewpoint etc.) While a yin approach may be to simply notice the symptoms of identifying with a viewpoint, and then find what is more true for me. Can I find the freedom to use one or the other, or both, depending on what seems most helpful in the situation?
Also, living up to your attainment means to live with integrity, to live from absolute and relative truths. When I live from relative truths, I live in ways that seem the most sane, mature, wise and kind, even in a conventional sense. And living from absolute truth is to remind myself of what I really am, and that there is no absolute truth inherent in any story or viewpoint. I use stories as practical guidelines for attention and action, chose the stories that seem the most helpful and appropriate in the situation, in the context of don’t know.
And finally, an awakening is reality awakening to itself, but it can easily be covered up again through identifying with habitual stories. To live up to your attainment with care is often a process of learning to trust, learning what it looks and feels like to live from it, learning how to recognize when we attach to a story or viewpoint as true, and so on. Awakening can happen in a flash, but living from it with care is an endless process. It can always be taken further. We can always do it with more clarity, skills, sanity, maturity, wisdom, heart and kindness.
Live up to your attainment with care. Taken as a question, it becomes a life koan, something to explore for the rest of our lives.
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outline….
- live up to your attainment with care
- yang: don’t allow yourself to fall into old patterns (think you are right, protect a viewpoint/role etc.)
- yin: notice when it happens, find what is more true for you
- live with integrity: absolute + relative truths (relative: what seems most sane, mature, wise, kind. absolute: no fixed identification with any viewpoint)
- awakening, then often a process of learning to trust, learning how to live from it, learning how to recognize when attach to a story/viewpoint as true, etc.