Dependence on Mirrors

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I work

2 years ago

Topics: Life

Zen practitioners say, "Find the face you had before you were born. Find the face you will have after you die. Between birth and death, whatever you think of as your face is an insubstantial phenomenon. You saw it in the mirror, not felt it from the inside out. You saw it from the outside in. Do you know your original face? You only know the face that your mirror shows you. And all your relationships are just mirrors.

The husband says to his wife: "You are beautiful!" and she thinks she is beautiful. Someone flatters you with the phrase, "You are a very wise man, intelligent, brilliant!" and you believe him. Someone hates you and judges you, has a grudge against you. You do not recognize the rightness of his words, but they accumulate in the subconscious part of your being. This is how the person gets confused.

One calls you handsome, and the other - ugly. What to do? One mirror calls you a wise man, and the other calls you a dumbass. How do you respond?

You only depend on the mirrors that own both options. And you may not like the mirror that calls you an idiot, but it said that very phrase and did its job. You can suppress its phrase and it will never come up in your mind, but in the depth of your being you will remember that a certain mirror called you an idiot.

You trust mirrors and are thus split because of the multitude of mirrors. Each mirror makes its own contribution. One person calls you a wise man, not because you're really smart, but because he has a vested interest in you. Another person calls you a dumbass, not because you really lack brains, but because he benefits from insulting you. Different people are just showing their approval or disapproval of you, not making fair comments about you at all. Maybe they are referring to themselves and not to you, because no mirror can show your true face.

Mirrors can only show your surface, your skin. And you are not your skin, you are much deeper than your skin. You are not your body. Today your skin is young, tomorrow it will age. Today your skin is beautiful and healthy, and tomorrow it's dry and shriveled up. Today you are blazing with health, and tomorrow the vitality will leave you. But you are not your surface! You are the center.

The conditioned man lives on the surface, but the true man is always in the center. That is all!