The Boulder and the Joy
La roca y la alegría
A student expresses gratitude for the teacher's sharing, which leads to a reflection on effortlessness, service, and how the experience of growth transforms after waking up.
The Boulder and the Joy
A student expresses gratitude for the teacher's sharing, which leads to a reflection on effortlessness, service, and how the experience of growth transforms after waking up.
What an amazing universe. It's so great for you to share it, and so great for us to receive it. I love it. It's so wonderful. It's not a burden for you; on the contrary, it's a great feeling.
On the contrary, yes. It is what is most effortless to me of everything that I do, and most enjoyable.
And the effortlessness of it is what makes the difference for me. It's a beautiful thing. It's transformative. It feels really amazing.
The discovery of effortlessness
Yes, and that is very new to me. It was quite a discovery to experience how effortless it is, and how so many things started to make sense. Over the years with my teacher, I began understanding why he was doing what he was doing, and a lot of the things he said around that kind of relationship became clear. There is something so beautiful in simply sharing and being of service.
It is the most important thing, and it is becoming more and more the only thing. Not truly the only important thing, but beyond living and enjoying my own personal life, the only thing that feels meaningful is sharing this.
Growth as a never-ending process
The whole other side of that is my own learning and growth, the part I refer to as being a good person. That is something that never ends. My teacher would say waking up is something I catalyze: it is that growth, but it is not the end or the point. It does make a great deal of difference, though, because it makes the growth a joy, almost constantly, versus what it was before, which was a burden. The burden of growing up, the burden of working on things.
Sisyphus before and after
My teacher had me read the myth of Sisyphus because that was how I was feeling. I was about nineteen years old when he made me read it. The gist of the story is a man whom a god gives the task of pushing a boulder up a hill, watching it drop on the other side, then grabbing it and pushing it up again, doing that for eternity.
That, to me, is what mind is. Doing things mechanically without the inner spirit or the inner truth of it. That is what mind feels like.
Well, I am bringing it up because the experience before waking up was pushing the boulder up the hill, dropping it, pushing it up, dropping it. It was miserable. Pointless. And after waking up, the experience is pushing the boulder up the hill, dropping it, pushing it up the hill, dropping it. But it is joyful.