Hotei Has Returned to the Market Place (Part 3)

It is in this stage that friends and family may become very concerned about you. Things that may have been of profound interest to you throughout your life may lose all significance. You are no longer trying to find yourself or any meaning and significance in the transitory dance of the phenomenal world. You may suddenly leave a long relationship that has never really worked. You may drop out of a successful career. A doctor may suddenly become a gardener. A lawyer may open a bed and breakfast. If you have been a spiritual or religious person all your life, seeking suddenly stops. You stop going to church, reading books, running off to retreats, or attending the guru of the month club.

You are losing your human form as consensus reality no longer defines you. You are no longer identified with beliefs or maps. Conceptual reality is clearly seen for what it is — a bunch of concepts with no basis in reality. Thought seems to happen less and less as there is no longer a separate “me” story to prop up with obsessive thinking. There is just present awareness, this as it is. Life lives you as it always has.

This is where “compassionate folly” may begin to happen. Be very clear that the “compassionate folly” is not something someone does or practices as an elite “enlightened one.” It is not a position one takes in life. It is something that spontaneously arises when all of one’s interest in what human beings do or believe to avoid the void falls away. There is then no longer any identification with most of the “doings” or “beliefs” of humans beings, as they are seen to be based on a false assumption. Yet at the same time, the love and compassion for humans seems to increase as there is no longer any sense of fear or separation. This means joyful participation with other humans may continue (although not always) without there being any identification or involvement in whatever they are doing or believing to avoid the void. So you may go out to play golf with your friends even though you couldn’t care less if you ever saw another golf club in your life. You may enjoy the game more than ever, but it is not because of golf, it is because you are “being” with your friends. The context of doing is being.

Friends and family may start to say things like, “Something has happened to you. You’ve changed. You are just not yourself anymore.”

No kidding.

They’re right.

You’re not yourself anymore.

HOTEI HAS RETURNED TO THE MARKETPLACE

There is the simplicity of being- this as it is.

The knot of resistance dissolves.

A deep surrender or relaxing into life happens.

A deep acceptance of and openness to all people and situations occurs.

If fear arises, fear arises. If laughter happens, laughter happens. Get up, go to work. Eat lunch. Enjoy the weather. Everything happens by itself.

The play of compassionate folly arises spontaneously.

Relative and Absolute — what? Where?

Wisdom, compassion, and skillful action arise spontaneously from the ground of being.

There is only this now.

The search has ended.

The seeker is gone.

Hotei has returned to the marketplace, laughing himself silly, pointing to the hazy moon of enlightenment.

What else could he possibly do?

Where else could he possibly be?

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