In many people's mind, to do the will of God means to surrender your personal initiative and to slavishly worship an all-powerful Tyrant. Nothing can be further from the truth.
What God wills is your freedom. But this idea of freedom is too easily confused with licentiousness--a kind of do-as-you-please attitude with little or no regard for the consequences of your behavior.
To do the will of God means to learn how to act without fear and with full responsibility for your actions. It does not mean to suppress fear. It means to awaken to the fact that you are not separate from reality. When we act as part of one reality, we have no fear.
In an ancient Chinese story, there was a person who liked dragons very much. He talked about dragons, he painted dragons, and he bought various kinds of dragons.
So there was a dragon who thought, "If a real dragon like me visited him, he would be very happy."
One day the real dragon sneaked into his room, and the man didn't know what to do!
As Shunryu Suzuki points out, "we should not just be the dragon's friend or admirer; we should be the dragon itself. Then we will not be afraid of any dragon."
No comments:
Post a Comment