A Reading On "A Spiritual Disease" A famous and learned professor once went to visit a Zen master to argue about Zen. The Zen master offered tea and continued pouring into the professor's cup until it was overflowing. He continued pouring and pouring. The professor protested, thinking his host a madman and saying the teacup was too full to hold any more. "You are like this cup," the Zen master told his guest. "too full of your own opinions to receive anything else." So it was with us. We were too full of suffering and pain to receive anything else. Our disease just kept pouring it on, until one day we heard our true nature, like a Zen master; and emptied the cup of ourselves. In that moment of awe-full emptiness, we became fulfilled. Only in this state of emptiness, which is nothing other than our original nature, can we receive. Only by continually emptying the teacup of limited selfhood can we remain free of our disease and denial, and experience life as it really is. Fill the cup with yourself and your opinions and nothing else can be tasted. Empty it and all life will come begging to be poured. For us, there can he no in between, no middle way when it comes to our disease. We either pick up or put down. We do or we don't. If we become active, chances are good that we'll die. While those around us may not understand or even like our either/or behavior, it must remain the bedrock of our lives. Either full of self-destruction or empty of expectations. The choice was never really ours to make. Our diseases took away our choices. I doubt many, if any of us would have chosen to become alcoholics, addicts and compulsive people, but that's like crying over spilled tea, isn't it? We must recover as spiritual beings or never truly recover at all, for ours is primarily a spiritual disease. This disease afflicts all beings and no one is immune from it. Most don't even know they're suffering, but we, as people in recovery, have been made aware of it in life-threatening terms. Either wake up or die. We are fortunate enough to have a particular medicine for our disease and will recover if we follow instructions. Perhaps we'll even recover enough to see that althought we keep pouring the spiritual into our teacup, it will always be empty---must always be empty--- and that there's no need to attempt to fill it with anything else. ---from The Zen of Recovery by Mel Ash, page 182-183 |
