21/05/2020
When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten.
- Zen proverb
Whenever you are healthy you are not aware of your body — the body is forgotten. When there is some illness, only then you constantly remember the body. When there is no headache nobody remembers that they have a head on their shoulder! But when there is a headache you cannot forget the head. When the shoe is pinching, it means it doesn’t fit. But when you wear a perfectly fitting shoe you don’t remember your foot at all.
This can be a clue to your fitness and health. Health is when there is no consciousness of the body. If there is any sort of consciousness of the body, then that part is not healthy.
We can apply the same understanding to the mind, “When your consciousness is healthy, there is no ego; you don’t know anything about yourself. You don’t go on reminding yourself that “I am something, or dwell on your deficiencies”, you simply relax. You are, but there is no “I.”
It is a simple “am-ness,” an “is-ness,” but there is no “I,” no crystallised ego.
A perfect man of Tao does not know himself; you only know, because you are ill. The ego is illness, substantial illness because you continually have to remember that you are somebody. This indicates that you are in a deep “dis-ease”. Dis-ease meanining you are not at ease with yourself or your environment. Like the poorly fitting shoe. Dis-ease creates the ego; ... a perfectly healthy natural being forgets himself completely.
He is like a cloud, like a breeze, like a bird.”
