SPIRITUAL GAPS (PDF-1869)

The Tibetan Buddhists make a big deal about what they call "gaps," chinks in the seemingly-seamless armor of our self, moments when we time-out from our incessant distractions and come up for air. Without gaps there would be no eventual realization or enlightenment.

Gaps are important because without them we are on an endless subway ride to nowhere – just going along in rapt ignorance of our own mind's actual nature. According to the Buddhists, we have managed to get it just backward and have frozen our gaze looking outward at a world of mostly our own projections. Somehow we have to flip this and learn to also look inward at the projector of all this, our own biases, rather than just outward. For this to happen there have to be breaks or intermissions in this incessant movie of life -- gaps.