If you can stand with me in the fire, everything we take ourselves to be will melt away and be dissolved into the light of the sun.
If everything we take ourselves to be should melt away, only one thing can possibly remain and be revealed, everything we are but could not believe ourselves to be.
If you can stop your mind for a brief moment, your will see yourself for the first time.
If you can watch a cat for three hours, you will be a Zen master.
If you can open yourself to the fear of rejection, you will have embraced the part of you that longs to be held by that greater darkness in the silence of your lonely nights.
If you can sit with the painful feelings that arise in you, your most faithful partner will meet you along your path.
If you can bear your sadness long enough, you will see that it is not your sadness you carry, but the sadness of the world.
If you can run away from beauty, you will find it chasing after you.
If you can drop the burden of proving yourself, you will have finally found yourself.
If you can resist the temptation of giving another peace, you will realize that you were seeking to give yourself what is already your most precious possession.
If you can see your lover like tomorrow’s sunrise, you will fall into the moon.
If you can take the backwards step, you will see that there is more present in “your” experience that you.
If you can fall into the space between two thoughts, you will have experienced the origin of the Universe, which in Zen is called nothingness.
If you can dissolve the I, only the I remains.
If you seek to dissolve your suffering, you will only perpetuate it.
If you can truly observe your suffering, it will be seen that it has already accepted it by the I at the root of your individual experience.
If you can walk with your suffering, it will wither under the influence of your love.
If you can treat the present moment as your meditation, you will realize that the peace you are seeking is already your present reality.
If you can eat a jar of cashew butter without attachment, you will understand nirvana.
If you can watch a bird flying and forget that you are watching it, you will have experienced no-self.
If you can let go of your practice, you will know that its goal has eternally been realized.
If you could thank the other for the thorns, your suffering would free all souls trapped in hell.
If you can be in silence when your mind wishes to speak, your deeper fears and pain will be revealed to you, perhaps for the very first time.
If you can kiss the sleeping beauty, she will awaken what remains half asleep within you.
If you can kiss the lips of your beloved, knowing nothing in that moment but her touch, you will understand that her love has neither beginning nor end.
M.S.
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