How is the practice of following the Monastery schedule an expression and embodiment of Everything is the Buddha?
In the process of separation from Life of unconsciousness, the separation can manifest in an orientation of “ownership.” We feel we are more important than a resource and that it is ours to control what happens to it. The image of an unconscious human standing over a tap letting the water run while they are brushing their teeth expresses this orientation well. When attention is maintaining the illusion of a separate self - “how do I feel?” “I don’t want to” “I don’t feel like it” - we are in an orientation of “ownership” with Life force. It is “my” energy. And that means I get to do what I want with it, says the illusion of a separate self.
The schedule is a structure that offers us the opportunity to see how attention’s habitual checking-in with a story about “how I feel” is a plughole that Life force runs down. When we are unconscious, we are all standing over the sink letting Life force run down the plughole to egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate. The practice of following a schedule allows us to bring into conscious, compassionate awareness those places where attention is on “how I feel” (and what I need to do about it) and not with thisherenow. In other words, those places where we are in a process of separation from Life force. As we practice dropping the story about “how I feel,” we get to experience the Life force that animates us more and more intimately - its movements and its rhythms. As we practice dropping the story about “how I feel,” we get to feel how it feels to be animated by Life force, how it feels to be alive. We realize that Life force is not “ours.” It IS us. We are not separate from the Buddha nature, the suchness, that animates everything. Energy is not “mine.” Attention is not “mine.” And that creates a deep caring about what happens with them. We want wholeheartedly to practice living in the loving stewardship of Everything is the Buddha.
Anna