ISmile286 – Radical Honesty and the Great Matter

In this video-taped Dharma talk, Michael McAlister explains how we can lie lives rooted in deep, or radical, honesty. Once we start to do this we can find that there is no longer a compulsion to either establish or cling to an identity. Once we lose our grip on our identity, or our identity loses its grip on us, we find that we can face, as we say in Zen, the Great Matter of living and dying with deeper peace. At this point of deep peace, we see that there is the potential to live without fear. Lives lived without fear are lives that can affect enormous change. Michael’s talk offers pointers on how we can approach a life through radically honest means, and then suggests that embodying these qualities that allow for us to uncover meaning as we face our day-to-day. Chaos can, from this perspective, be welcomed, as a friend. We begin to see, from this perspective, that there is never anything lacking. Becoming truly intimate with our experiences with the “small matters” of the ego show us a path to presence that ends war within our own hearts, as well as between and among other beings.