Journal entry: Living an Inspired Life

Just now I decided to read my personal journal from the very beginning, which I have never done. The following is my first entry. I hope that reading it will make you as happy as it made me.

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7/31/12

I’ve expressed the idea lately that I would like to write more, so tonight I took this book’s status as a “bargain-priced” item at Barnes & Noble as a sign that I should buy it to encourage, and hopefully facilitate, my efforts.

Recently I’ve decided that I want to live an inspired life. People often use that phrase without any follow-up descriptions. They make it as sort of a stand-alone statement. But who or what do they want their life to be inspired by? What do they mean?

I would like my life to be inspired by a few things. Namely, love, a thirst for wisdom, adventure, and understanding (they all go hand-in-hand); and the willingness to do and go.

My recent trip to Poland sparked this inspiration within me. i don’t think it was really the culture, the people, or the beauty of the country that did this to me. Rather, it was the recognition that I was able to enjoy such a great and amazing experience simply as a result of my own volition and desire to do so.

And if I am able to travel nearly halfway around the world on my own at the age of 19, using my own money–simply because I want to, where do my limits stop? Do I really have any limits?

A wise man or woman would answer that question with a resounding “no.” The human being has no limits. We are all spiritual beings having a human experience, to quote various great thinkers. We should not feel restricted by physical or mental constraints because, most of the time, they are self-imposed.

This is something I have come to understand in theory. Now it’s time for me to realize it through experience, and to help others do the same.

On Emptiness

Lately I’ve been on (yet another) Buddhism kick. I’ve been reading, watching, and absorbing everything about the most essential beliefs of Zen Buddhism specifically, and I’ve been practicing zazen whenever I feel inspired enough to do so.

One idea that has always stuck with me since I began researching Buddhism a few years ago is that life is essentially empty. Emptiness, I feel, is a recurring theme in Buddhist thought. One of the main goals of refined zazen and shikan-taza meditation is to empty the mind of all deluding thoughts in order to fully realize our “true nature.” And, apparently, through realizing this inherent nature of ours, we come to also realize that we are one with the universe and everything that it contains. We are everything we see and do not see. There are no inherent divisions between us, them, and it; our delusional thoughts and beliefs have tricked us into creating these imaginary divisions in our minds.  I’m pretty much paraphrasing, but this is what I’ve come to understand so far.

This brings, for me, an almost inescapable thought of emptiness. Everything we see, do, and think is empty–literally and figuratively (nearly 99 percent of an atom is empty space). My ego, my history, my identity, and everything I link to this concept of “me” is really just that: a concept. There is no “me” here in time and space. The only thing that actually exists here and now is life.. it’s existence, it’s consciousness. But even these things can be boiled down to emptiness and linked to the perpetuation of the ego. Even this post is a perpetuation of the ego.

The idea that life is essentially emptiness is a welcome thought. It seems almost perfect, in theory. But when it comes to applying this belief to my everyday life, that is where the problem sets in. Everywhere I look, I perceive color, shapes, and forms. I hear sounds and I feel sensations. Attaching to the information that our senses bring us is where a lot of suffering comes into play, as I have learned from Buddhist literature. But letting go of my ego and fully realizing the truth in all of the things I have absorbed will be the true challenge, and one that will require much more than the halfhearted effort I have been putting into it.