“Zenfully Quool Quotes”
“The Art of Living” By Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh
Our eighth body is the deepest level of the cosmic:
the nature of reality itself,
beyond all perceptions, forms, signs, and ideas.
This is our “true nature of the cosmos” body.
When we get in touch with everything that is—
whether it is a wave, sunshine, forests, air, water, or stars—
we perceive the phenomenal world of appearances and signs.
At this level of relative truth,
everything is changing.
Everything is subject to birth and death, to being and nonbeing.
But when we touch the phenomenal world deeply enough,
we go beyond appearances and signs to touch the ultimate truth,
the true nature of the cosmos,
which cannot be described in notions, words, or signs like
“birth” and “death” or “coming” and “going.”
We are a wave appearing on the surface of the ocean.
The body of a wave does not last very long—
perhaps only ten to twenty seconds.
The wave is subject to beginning and ending,
to going up and coming down.
The wave may be caught in the idea that
“I am here now and I won’t be here later.”
And the wave may feel afraid or even angry.
But the wave also has her ocean body.
She has come from the ocean, and
she will go back to the ocean.
She has both her wave body and her ocean body.
She is not only a wave; she is also the ocean.
The wave does not need to look for a separate ocean body,
because she is in this very moment both her wave body
and her ocean body.
As soon as the wave can go back to herself and touch her true nature,
which is water,
then all fear and anxiety disappear.
The deepest level of our consciousness,
which we call “store consciousness,”
has the capacity to directly touch the ultimate—
the realm of reality itself.
Our mind consciousness may not be able to do that right now,
but our store consciousness is touching the true nature of the cosmos,
in this very moment.
As you get in touch with your cosmic body,
it’s as though you stop being a block of ice floating on the ocean
and you become the water.
With our mindful breathing and deep awareness of our body,
we are able to leave the zone of cogitating, discriminating,
and analyzing, and enter the realm of interbeing.
