a very practical lesson

hi! I guess I haven't blogged that much lately, but I wanted to share something very interesting that happened this week, and also the lesson I learned.

A couple of weeks ago I just got a couple of good books about Zen, one of poems and stories and the other the story of the Zen masters... so I learned the first master they mention whose name is Bodhidharma, the thing I liked the most is the 4 principles to reach the illumination, well I am not looking for that now but I still found interesting his teachings, the principles are: self patience, clear vision, equanimity and decision.

with self patience you help to keep away your anger, if you ask me it makes sense to me, and I think most of my frustrations are because I want things fast, and maybe I am not the only one, the most funny thing is that I am allways the slow one, that always made felt frustrated, but if I think under this perspective maybe I could practice patience on myself, and once I learned that with myself then I could start being patient with others, and that is something that has helped me the last month I have been in a period of changes, very hard changes, and sometimes I felt so frustrated that I wanted to run away and become a Zen monk and live in a monastery or a place far away, since I read this I wanted to give it a try, and it worked, I did realized that other people is patient with me and I have noticed that, I am the one that is not patient with myself :P

About equanimity means that we should try to see people as the same, no matter the looks or anything, this is very interesting principle, it helps to avoid judgment and pride, and at least for me makes sense, sometimes I see someone and it makes me feels uncomfortable, and this is the hardest one for me besides decision, even I been trying hard to practice this principle I has been hard for me but I am trying hard to practice, let's just say this is my weakest point.

when it comes to decision, he used to say that it helps to avoid depression and stop seeing yourself like someone useless, let's just say that the past monday I was feeling like that and then I remembered the decision and I wanted to give it a try, so I took a task, I was wondering if It was a good idea but I remembered "shoshaku jushaku" (mistake after mistake), so I decided to take the task, the good news is that it worked for me, because I felt productive (besides the fact that I was asking how to do things like a complete idiot), of course this task took me almost a week but I was learning, and made my mistakes, but I learned a lot, and I am happy with that :P.

clear vision, well he said that clear vision starts with learning and reading and then you think about it, and try to practice that, once you practice then the vision gets clear, it's like having a more down to earth perspective.

well I wanted to share this with you guys, my idea is to share something that is actually working with me, but I just started to read the book so if I learn something new then I will blog it here ;).