Seeing Light Through Days of Grimy Drudgery: Living in the Present, Where the Present Is Already the Other Shore

Seeing the Light in Days of Grimy, Weary Endurance: Living in the Present, the Present Is the Other Shore

Someone online wrote that their diary still held conversations from when they had just started working, exchanges of encouragement and comfort with a colleague who has now been a close friend for eleven years.

Those were among the few moments of real light in the days when I struggled to get through each day, despairing and numb yet young and hopeful, worn down and attacking myself for feeling mediocre.

Of course, I knew then that this comfort mattered, and I was deeply grateful. But I did not know that this was itself the great light, the profound connection, the other shore itself—the source and true meaning of life. Because back then, I was still seeking outside myself, seeking somewhere far away.

Two sincere hearts: one shines amid the grime and weariness of life, caring for, nourishing, and bringing itself to fruition. The other connects with it through light.

Two sincere hearts, each at peace in itself, yet connected to and nourishing the other.

This is our innate wholeness, the luminosity of our own nature, the unity of humanity and heaven.

Living in the present, the present itself is the other shore.

This life is by no means a pitch-black, ordinary lump of coal. It is flowing, black-and-red lava, with light and flames flickering within it, its radiance impossible to contain. The light of my own nature always lights my way forward and nourishes me. Life is often painful and hard to bear, and karmic obstructions are often deep, yet I can still care for myself and often find tranquility. Doesn’t this itself reveal the strength of my essential self?

To feel grateful for the beautiful connections of the present is to see the light of the present.

I used to search for light, only to discover that I am that very light. The mind itself is Buddha; I myself am light.