June 14, 2023 - Memories

I have been tormented by memories and painful thought forms attached to those memories. Some of them are so vivid that they seem real.

Something happened this morning in zazen with these memories. They are in the past, but I am experiencing them in the present. In the present I am safe.

It’s not that I am safe in the present, I am the present, and therefore impervious to harm. It’s not that these memories are not real. In one sense they’re no less real than the scene of the world in front of me right now, at least as far as my mind is concerned. It’s that this present boundless awareness is more real, and absent a “me” for these memories to happen to, they just pass by like flotsam on a river.

Memories are in the past, but they occur in the present. So what is the past anyway? It seems obvious but it’s changed me.