Kaleidoscope Visions

 In the book, Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go, Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary of Master Linji, we read the following words:

...if the wave knows how to take refuge in water, if it knows to believe in the water, then the wave loses all of its fears, sadness, and jealousy. If we take refuge in our true nature then we aren't afraid anymore of gaining, of losing, of having, of not having, of living, of dying, of being, and nonbeing (p.99)

Now what does this mean? If I understand correctly, it means that we have to be very mindful of when our practices are nothing but a wave running around trying to find something that it already inevitably is. When we are feeling miserable and unhappy or not at peace with ourselves, chances are that we are chasing after and identifying with the phenomena, rather than going back to our true nature which is the mind itself. And it can be wonderful to realize that our misery is not a sign of ourselves being in the wrong in some way, but rather that we have simply missed the mark and overdid something that does not require doing at all.

The other day, I was browsing in a toy store (actually looking for headphones, to be precise), when I came across a toy I used to have as a child called the kaleidoscope. A kaleidoscope is a deceptively simply toy consisting of small pieces of rock or paper, inside a glass tube with a series of mirrors that gives the image of symmetrical transformations each time the tube is turned by the viewer. The kaleidoscope, for me, represents the illusory world of appearances. For one, it embodies the mental distortions that come from reflecting surfaces--which suggests how we misrepresent our world through concepts, habits, and conditioning. The second illusory aspect is the sense of time: colored pieces of paper have a habit of shifting over time, especially when they are continually being turned in a kaleidoscope. This, for me, represents the delusion of "permanence"--believing that something will remain when in fact we are always in a state of flux.

If we are able to behold appearances using the analogy of the kaleidoscope, we will see that all our representations fail to grasp or embody the full reality of change and emptiness. Then we can fully relax and let go of all representations of self and other, time and space, wave and ocean. If our practices don't take us to this continued realization, then they become more entrenched habits and delusions. That is why we must examine whether our practice feels like a burden, or whether it is a lightening and softening process.

Thich Nhat Hanh, (2007). Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go. Parallax Press.