other. We could start to open our eyes and our hearts
to that deep way of perceiving, like moving into a
whole new dimension of experience: becoming a
child of illusion.
Maybe you’ve heard that the Buddha is not out
there;the Buddha is within. The Buddha within is
bad and good coexisting, evil and purity coexisting;
the Buddha within is not just all the nice stuff. The
Buddha within is messy as well as clean. The Buddha
within is really sordid as well as wholesome—yucky,
smelly, repulsive as well as the opposite: they coexist.
This view is not easy to grasp, but it’s helpful to
hear. At the everyday kitchen-sink level, it simply
means that as you see things in yourself that you
think are terrible and not worthy, maybe you could
reflect that that’s Buddha. You’re proud of yourself
because you just had a good meditation or because
you’re having such saintly thoughts. That’s Buddha
too. When we get into tonglen practice, you’ll see just
how interesting this logic is. Tonglen as well as basic
shamatha-vipashyana practice leads us toward realiz-
ing that opposites coexist. They aren’t at war with
each other.
In meditation practice we struggle a lot with trying
to get rid of certain things, while other things come
to the front. In order for the world to speak for itself,
we first have to see how hard we struggle, and then
we could begin to open our hearts and minds to that
fact. The view and the meditation—both shamatha-
Let the World Speak for Itself 31