The mask you wear…

“Can you see beyond your own ego…??”

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one Master after another.  He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.  Desiring to show his attainment to the Master, he said, “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist.  The true nature of phenomena is emptiness.  There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity.  There is no giving and nothing to be received.”
Master Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing…  Suddenly, he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe!!  This, of course, made the youth quite angry.  “If nothing exists,” inquired Master Zen Dokuon, “where did your anger come from..??”

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Like this, your own ego does not allow you to see how wrong you can be, how angry you can be, how stubborn you can be, and how unawakened you can be.  You are your ego, which means your ego is all what you think and feel, which means that you only see the content of your mind/of your ego.  It is easy for you, of course, to see the flaws and wrongness in another; because you are distanced from another’s ego and can see with a fresh perspective in this.

It is extremely important to distance yourself from your own ego/from your own thoughts and beliefs, empty your mind for a while, meditate on emptiness daily, to see with a fresh perspective your own faults and your own stubbornness.  In order for you to grow, in order for you to rise above your own mediocrity, you must distance yourself from your own mechanical thinking/from your own ego and reach for deeper insights beyond, to free yourself and see reality as it really is.
“I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.” ~Michel de Montaigne; French Renaissance philosopher and essayist.