With the Help of All of the Goodness

In one of the talks Phillip Moffitt gave at the recent retreat on the Four Noble Truths, he said something I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say before, at least not in those words. He talked about how we are taking responsibility for our own spiritual development and he used the phrase: “…with the help of all of the goodness that exists in the world — in the Universe…”

Which really touched a place of deep joy in me.

Here’s what he said:

“We are cultivating our own fields of understanding, our own fields of growth. We are not waiting for something to happen to us by some sort of divine means. We are responsible for our own cultivation…with the help of Sangha, with the help of all of the goodness that exists in the world — in the Universe — with the help of this mysterious nature that we are. This awareness. This mysterious awareness that allows knowing without contracting, knowing without involvement. This base of empty awareness that is responsive, but without moving towards objects.

“Very interesting — as we get deeper and deeper into seeing the nature of our own mind…maybe, say, it’s our Buddha nature…(what we mean by mind and all that can get rather complex)..but something about our nature: that not everything moves towards objects. That there is a kind of knowing that, where in a couple of places in the suttas, it is described as ‘the Unborn, the Uncreated, the Unmanifest.’ This ‘Intuitive Awareness’ as the Venerable Sumedho describes it.”

When Phillip said that we are helped by all of the goodness that exists in the world, in the Universe, something in me — something mysterious — knew that that’s true.

And that I’ve always known it.

I just didn’t know that I knew it, until I heard him said it. But now I do!

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Photo by Artemis Faul on Unsplash