May you come to know that suffering has a cure…

There is a parable that the Buddha gave to his students more than two thousand years ago that resonates with me, in such a profound way that I feel the need to pass it on to you.

He was describing the need for, and will to, movement… psychological, emotional, spiritual and perhaps even actual. There are a good many scientists and philosophers who describe “movement” as the basis of Life itself… without vibration, say the scientists, energy is withdrawn and death occurs. Without “movement” of understanding, say the philosophers, spirit withdraws… and takes with it the soul and the heart.

The trick is to increase the activity of inner movement without expectation. To have no goal in mind, while also increasing one’s vibration, is the highest form of living possible for a human being.

Higher vibration when it moves thru our thinking creates clarity and understanding, when it moves thru our heart we enjoy peace and tranquility, when it moves thru our spirit we discover the rarefied air of true freedom. Not freedom from responsibility, (a deeply childish wish), but the freedom to discipline ourselves more completely and thereby to increase our value and worthiness, not just to ourselves, but to the whole of the Cosmos.

None of us; not you, not me, not the rich, famous, or great, among us are going anywhere…the reason is simple, there is nowhere to “go”, and there is nothing to “get” either. All of our living, every last drop of it, exists in the mind as vibration…as the Buddha’s “movement”.

To turn our attention to the inner life rather than continue the fixation on the outer manifestations or forms of life, is the first great movement of Being that we are required to make, if we are to be of any use what-so-ever. To pursue the outer, (form) to the exclusion of the primary-or most important-or most vital-or most real… Inner (formlessness)…is to build your “house upon sand” as the Bible says, or tragically, to end up “gaining the whole world while losing your own soul”.

So I hope I have made a case for movement as the primary activity of Spirit….and now to the Buddha’s allegory.

He described for his students the four types of horses, the Excellent Horse will move before the Master has finished grasping the whip…and already the horse has taken up the greater movement his Master desires from him.

The Good Horse moves into the canter or the trot the precise moment he feels the lightest touch of the whip upon his back, and his Master’s request for greater commitment.

The Bad Horse will not bend to his Master’s will until he feels pain in the whips command.

And here at the very bottom of the selection… we find The Worst Horse… he will not take direction and guidance from his Master, until he feels the pain in the “very marrow of his bone.”

The Buddha was trying to help his students to understand why the first noble truth is that Life is Suffering. All human beings, conditioned as we are, by the mind that separates itself from the vast interconnectedness of the Universe; by building a small, leaky, and unreliable dinghy of a personality, with which to navigate the Mighty and the Unknowable, requires “pain to the marrow of our bone” to incite us to movement, and the activity of Spirit... the increase in vibration... which will eliminate the pain we suffer so greatly from.

Our life condensed and contracted around what we don’t want, and continually striving for what we do want, is the source of all suffering. It is that contraction and constriction of the movement of mind, that causes the necessity of “pain in the marrow of our bone”, before we will seek the sheltering and healing activity of Spirit.

Paradoxically the first movement must always be toward what we don’t want. My Teacher said many times, in many different ways, “unlimited personal power is to be found in learning to like what we don’t like”.

I have come to see the deep wisdom in his lesson.

All the days of my life, until mercy made possible my escape, I wanted…no needed – and desperately so…the approval of others, because I was blessed/cursed with a strong intellect and an equally capable will, I fashioned a personality from the detritus and debris of my childhood, and went out into the world to “make people like me”. I got good enough at it to fill large rooms with admiring audiences, and with that capacity to excel at seeking approval, came a thirst to horrible to describe.

Soon the Universe in its mercy and kindness put me completely alone on a ladder, painting murals. And movement began in my heart and mind, as a tiny trickle to small to see…so small as to be almost invisible. Then the Universe brought me back to my Teacher and movement began in earnest, but still the thirst for approval and the desire for affirmation, created suffering and discord in my life and my Being.

Then the Universe placed me alone in my home, without work or distractions of any kind, requiring that I turn my efforts inward to work in my heart and mind, and movement became a flood…lifting, clarifying, deepening, and freeing me.

I began my journey as the “Worst Horse”…in truth; there should be a category under worst horse to describe the place I began. Maybe Horse About to Jump Off Cliff rather than move which would more accurately describe my level of unwillingness, in the beginning, to turn toward what I didn’t like/was afraid of…

But now in the bosom of Silence, I have moved up the ladder of Being, to the place where the Master needs only touch me with the whip to cause my attention to turn, and my will to bend. I do not possess the facile, tender, capable and compelling nature of my Teacher…a man whose Master need only think about reaching for the whip to cause him to move, this is an elegance that may not be possible in this lifetime for me, but to move beyond the necessity for pain is more than I could have hope for, or even imagined, in the depths out of which I have journeyed.

I have moved to the place where clarity and the right use of mind allows me to know that the Buddha’s promise is real…there is indeed a cure for suffering.

That cure can only be found in the Inner realms of existence, nothing you can win, achieve, acquire, own, nor even develop in the conceptual mind, can fund the freedom from suffering. Only the renunciation of desire and its many minions will make that freedom attainable….the wisest choice…begin with releasing the desire for your present moment to be anything other than what it is right now.

Too hot…good, too cold…good, too lonely…good, too unloved…good, too weak…good, too burdened…good, too poor…good, too fat...good, all of these and every other complaint you can muster, is merely the Master’s touch that YOU require to produce the movement toward the Invisible Light, that will release you from the Hell of the conditioned mind.

Here is the evidence and proof of a loving and compassionate Ground of Being, that the circumstances that you personally require, the ones that you find most distasteful, most disturbing, most painful, most unnerving, and even most terrifying are the very ones that hold the seeds of your personal freedom. The creativity and immense clarity that is required to orchestrate that very personal set of circumstances, is what compels me to believe in the existence of a Supreme Being.

C. G. Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imaging figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” The conditioned mind, the only hell there is, would have us believe that striving for the “good” or Jung’s “figures of light” is how we become Spiritually awakened, active and alive. But this is just one of the many ways in which the clever mind lies so effectively to us, and for us. We become “enlightened” by making the darkness conscious, or as my Teacher would say…”unlimited personal power (enlightenment), comes from learning to like, (making the darkness conscious), what we don’t like.”

If we do not bend our will to this Masterful Wisdom… this Ageless Wisdom Tradition… known the world over, and thru all of recorded time, then we face the consequences of our “sin” or missing the mark, and we pay the price as described again by Jung…”When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”

What counts in your life is not what happens to you externally but rather the upward movement of Being, expressed most clearly by the exhilarating and Life affirming journey of transformation that occurs, when one moves from being “Worst” Horse to becoming Most Wonderful and Wondrous, “Excellent” Horse.

Try to remember when you lose your way and start looking to the outer in your life for fulfillment, satisfaction, and purpose…that you are the “Horse” upon which the entire known and unknown Universe rides. Without you, you personally, the Universe would have no movement, (consciousness), and therefore no Life.

The only question…

Can you take the reins from your personality… your small self… your separate self…and instead, turn them over in complete trust and faith to the Mystery That Created All?

This is the only question worth your time. The only movement worth your energy. The only outcome your Heart will accept.

May God, the Buddha, the Christ, the Breath of Being lead you out of suffering and into obedience. May you come to know that suffering has a cure…

Adayre R. Miller

8/22/10