A Shift in Space

When you are on the ground, friction allows you to push an object away from you.  You can move big objects, but it takes a lot of force and effort. 

When you are suspended in space, you need to use creative forces to move objects (don't skip that link with all of its cool tools).  If you can learn to take your stance in space, then with very little effort you can send massive objects propelling in the opposite direction. 

So how do we hit a home run.  It doesn't matter how fast the baseball is traveling, how much inertia is has, if it is suspended in space thats all it takes is one good swing to knock it out of the park.  We just need to find our stance.

The question becomes, how do we eliminate the ground?  Or for starters, what is the ground that we are trying to remove?

Usually that ground is our own self-cherishing mind.  The layer upon layer of fixation, our cognitive and emotional obscurations, our habits and karma.  We can use logic and reason to demonstrate the falseness of this self-grasping- the confusion it creates, the problems it causes, the inherent limitations that it imposes.  But so what?  That doesn't actually remove the ground, we just know that it doesn't work and that it shouldn't be trusted.  Yet we end up using it anyways because that's all we've got.

What we need to do is get beyond mind.  Beyond all the concepts and justification.  We need to get into space and we need to figure out how to stand there.

That is not an easy proposition.

That space is unpredictable.  It is always changing and we can't use a reference point to justify ourselves for even a moment or we are stuck back on the ground.  We can't even give you the answers ahead of time because we don't know what is going to be coming up.

You have to be able to recognize that space as it unfolds.  It is not a mere nothingness.  Something is always going to be coming up.  Your options are either to recognize it or be caught up again in the cycle of ignorance.  If you can take a strong seat in that spacious expanse, then you can witness whole worlds of opportunity unfold and collapse right before your eyes.

There is a potential to act.  That is why your stance is important.

If there is a trace of self-cherishing and remnants of the ground not yet cleared, then the cycle of confusion repeats itself and you encounter lots of friction.  If there is no fixation whatsoever to be found and you are motivated by bodhicitta, seeking out the welfare of beings, then there is the arising of grace.  That grace manifests itself as generosity, love and kindness.

Its effortlessness can move worlds.