I read buddhist books ravenously when I first begun my practice, some sixteen years ago. I swallowed the concepts, the ideas and the teachings until my head was full to bursting.
They were all swirling in my mind,the concepts and ideas, one day as I sat on a bus thinking of the truth, the Buddha and the enlightenment. Tranced by the dancing thoughts I felt myself so wise, so present, so enlightened … and I stopped there.
“Those are only ideas,” I realized, “ideas, thoughts, words.” My mind was full of words and I moved those words around thinking them my own. But they were not my own, and they were nothing but talking. They were not what I felt, not what I was present to, not what I experienced.
That was when I decided to stop reading buddhist books. That was when I decided that I will find my own words in myself, in my own being, in my own body, through my own practice.
This is when I decided to look inside to find myself.
