Just sitting when I should be doing?

Wisdom Quarterly (EDITORIAL)

Budai the Happy Bodhisattva sits joyfully (Muffett68 flickr.com)

  

"Don't just do something; sit there!" it is said.

How could sitting -- intentional action that's mental -- trump physical and verbal action?

I want to protest, I want to cry out, I want change the world!

Budai (Shutterhound Photography/flickr)

Can I  even change that world? That remains to be seen. We keep trying. But while we fret and fuss, the one sure person we could be changing goes unchanged.

Who can save another? Help another, yes, of course. But who can save, who can do it for another -- "it" being cultivate absorption as the basis of successfully liberating-insight (i.e., walk the Path of Purification)?

No one saves us but ourselves.

No one can and no one may.

We ourselves must walk the Path;

Buddhas only point the Way.

Why are we searching when the Path is known? What are we waiting for? Step 1, Step 1, what is Step 1?

Giant Buddha, Leshan (tenlivingcities.org)

One way to understand the very packed (densely encoded) message of the Noble Eightfold Path is to follow it as a threefold teaching: 1) right view (wisdom), 2) virtue, and 3) meditation (concentration, that is, the effortless composure of mind, which like the hang gliding after all the effort of launching).

This is not a step-by-step path: Its factors or folds are cultivated simultaneously. So as we increase in virtue, our ease, joy, and concentration improves. This gives rise to wisdom as the mind/heart settles and we are able to see things more clearly just as they are.

The Truth is just as it is. We need not contort ourselves to "believe" it. We need only watch and withhold biases (distortions), evaluations (views), and opinions. The Truth sets one free. We need do nothing more than find that truth by rectifying ourselves rather than the world. "Don't just do something; sit there."

Not the Buddha, but Fat Happy Budai the Bodhisattva (Spectergeneral/flickr.com)