No Cage. . .
There was a man born blind, and he said: “I do not believe in the world of light and appearance. There are no colours, bright or somber. There is no sun, no moon, no stars. No one has witnessed these things.”
His friends remonstrated with him, but he clung to his opinion: “What you say that you see,” he objected, “are illusions. If colours existed I should be able to touch them. They have no substance and are not real. Everything real has weight, but I feel no weight where you see colours.”
A physician was called to see the blind man. He mixed four simples, and when he applied them to the cataract of the blind man the grey film melted, and his eyes could see. The Tathagatha (Buddha) is the physician, the cataract is the illusion . . . and the four simples are the four noble truths.
The spiritual nature of this story is self-explanatory. It talks about how we are blind to the absolute truth (soul or nirvana) and seek it outside of us. But I don’t want to go there because of that, I am still blind. This story still applies to normal people like us.
We are all blind to reality because of our preconceived notions. We have beliefs about how health, wealth and people work. What’s possible for us in those areas and what’s not. These beliefs aren’t based in reality but incorrect information from the past.
You may think making a million dollars is too hard. But if you look at it from the eyes of Warren Buffet, it’s chump change. His thoughts and belief don’t block him to that amount. But yours do. They can’t even let you set it as a life goal.
We all have areas of personal blindness. If I think I’m ugly, then people can compliment me but I will still resist the idea. Like the blind man, I’ll ask — “Where is my beauty?”, “Why can’t I see or touch it?” or “Why doesn’t everyone see it?. The cure to this personal blindness is cleansing our perception. To crack open the cage of our thoughts and doubting our surest beliefs. You have to keep questioning them, acting against them. Until one day, you see there was no cage at all.
Peace and Love, Jim
#nocage #thedailybuddha
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