I listened to a talk today by Gil Fronsdal who has a new book out entitled Buddha before Buddhism—it sounds interesting. It’s based on this very old text called the Book of Eights.
The Eights refers to a collection of poems with eight lines each. Gil read one of the poems and it exhorted followers to abandon obsession with the past, thoughts of the future, and basically be in the moment. Not rocket science, but not easy, as it turns out. I mean, if spiritual leaders have focused on being present for like EVER, then it must be more than a little challenging.
Anyway, the poem goes on to suggest abandoning dogma, rules, orthodoxy of any sort as it detracts from being in the moment. Thinking of life after death detracts. Thinking of righteousness detracts. Thinking of sin detracts. Thinking of those many, many ways dogma detracts.
Seriously. And then he said something funny, but also thought provoking. Imagine your neighbor is a religious person and shares all the ways this religion helps her/him through the day with this rule and that belief and this promise. And then she/he asks you what you believe in and you just sort of stand there with nothing to talk about for all that practice of being in the moment.
Nothing.
And in fact, in that nothing, the only thing you supposed to do is be with the nothing. The Nothing Moment. Lame, right? Like this whole team-jersey, book-of-rules belonging gig is completely missing and all you have to show for it is this lousy nothing-moment!
And that, the poem suggests, is the gateway to peace.
Think about it.
What it's like 