Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Leaving behind the focus on material pleasures allows the mind to slow down and take a break from deciding what it wants and what it doesn’t, to become a mind where there’s nothing of value. A mind where all things are equal, a mind at peace. When we value something there is always comparison, always something we don’t want. Experiment: Think of something that has value to you and start looking around. Do you value everything equally? Your phone, your favorite book, your hands, the sounds you are hearing right now, the flu, the dust under the couch? Ascribing value is essentially the source of the suffering that the most basic teaching of Buddhism offers to transcend. We ascribe a positive value to something, generally totally unconsciously, and feel attached to it, and when it is not there we suffer. We ascribe negative value to something else, feel aversion, and suffer from the object’s presence. It is possible, according to the teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha, to cease to suffer from attachment and aversion; he shows how to find a mind where there is no valuation, where all things are equal, where there is nothing of value.’  (Inside the Grass Hut)