Nondual
Highlights Issue #1770 Saturday, April
17, 2004 Editor: Mark
Liberation, enlightenment, is completed when there is no more
identification with body, thinking or feeling: when someone has
understood that 'the world' is nothing else than a way of
thinking, and that thoughts are nothing but Consciousness, than
the Essence, Knowingness. When someone has really understood that
thoughts cannot understand anything because a thought is nothing
more than an object, and when someone has come to experience that
there is no such thing as personality, then the deep silence in
which all thoughts dissolve, and thus also the world, breaks
through.
Whoever has come so far with the directions of a competent
instructor needs to do nothing else. In the beginning the silence
might be colored by the absence of thoughts: it is like when a
painting that has been hanging somewhere on a wall for many years
is removed; one day the person who lives there takes the painting
down and you come in. What do you see? At first you don't see the
wall, you see the absence of the painting.
That is what it's like with this state of silence; at first you
were hindered by thoughts: by the feeling that's gradually
becoming vaguer that you were a thinker, then thoughts and
feelings disappear, and now you notice their absence. The accent
is not on the silence yet, but on the absence of the other
things. But now you only have to wait, you only have to make your
self open to the Unknown.
Gradually the symptoms of the great harmony arrive. A deep
feeling of peace, of warmth, a feeling that everything is good,
arises from the heart. This feeling that comes and goes, is not
the absolute, not the Unknown, but it is a manifestation, it is
like the first rays of dawn coming over the horizon.
Then you have to find the right attitude; vague feelings of
I-ness, of personality, that still exist have to be allowed to
dissolve in these soft feelings. You need not so much surrender
(that still sounds too active), but you have to allow it to fill
you; you have to allow – desire without desire - that this
soft feeling takes the place of whatever little trace of
personality that is still there.
Above all, you must not allow the personality, the automatic
habits, to be in a hurry, to desire that it has to happen now. As
long as there is any notion of 'now' you are still caught in time
– therefore in the mental - and the realization can never
take place in the mental – you have to be constantly aware
of that. So, you need only allow that warm, soft feeling to wash
away the last traces of the personality, blown away like a light
feather in an almost imperceptible sigh on a still evening.
Then the complete emptiness breaks through. Much has been said
and written about this emptiness in all the great and living
spiritual traditions, sometimes in a poetic way, sometimes in an
almost clinical-philosophical manner, but again and again the
theme returns.
'The use of a bowl depends on its emptiness' says Lao Tzu. A full
bowl can no longer be used for something else. And so it is when
thinking and feeling are filled with other things, that they
cannot be filled by the Unknown, by the Essence. Therefore one
must take care to be always 'empty'.
In the beginning this can only happen for short intervals, (even
though no time exists in this situation and one cannot speak of
long or short), but slowly but surely the emptiness installs
itself in us even when we are busy with our daily tasks. We don't
tackle problems any more with all kinds of notions, we no longer
trust in our knowledge, our memory or experiences, but we
approach them empty and naked. Everything else happens by itself:
initially to our great surprise it appears that the world takes
care of itself; the right idea comes at the right moment, we
don't know from where, but we have no worries about that anymore.
Actions happen virtually effortlessly because there is no one any
more who is carrying them out; the Zen Buddhists say that the
work does itself.
- excerpt from "absent" by Wolter Keers in Amigo,
No. 0, September, 2001.
How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?
Don't try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don't wash a wound with blood!
No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it's in front!
Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.
I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there's no fixing that.
You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.
When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout
on you, be quieter than a dove.
Don't open your mouth for even a cooooooo.
When a frog slips into the water, the snake
cannot get it. Then the frog climbs back out
and croaks, and the snake moves toward him again.
Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake
would hear through the hiss the information
he needed, the frog voice underneath.
But if the frog could be completely silent,
then the snake would go back to sleeping,
and the frog could reach the barley.
The soul lives there in the silent breath.
And that grain of barley is such that,
when you put it in the ground,
it grows.
Are these enough words,
or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?
- Ghazal (Ode) 2155 from Rumi's Diwan-e Shams, translated by
Coleman Barks and posted on Sunlight
What Was Told, That
What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.
What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was
whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever
was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them
so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is
being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that's happening here.
The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,
in love with the one to whom every that belongs!
- Rumi "What Was Told, That
from The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of
Ecstatic Poems, translated by Coleman Barks
and published by Harper Collins
Do you think that you can clear your mind by sitting constantly
in silent meditation? This makes your mind narrow, not clear.
Integral awareness is fluid and adaptable, present in all places
and at all times. That is true meditation... The Tao is clear and
simple, and it doesn't avoid the world.
- excerpt from The Hua Hu Ching
Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent
Of everything you think,
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself -
And there isn't one.
-Wei Wu Wei, from Ask the Awakened
GROW
"Things just happen to be as they are, but we want to build
them into a pattern, laid down by the structure of our language.
" Nisargadatta, p. 376
Once one needed a thorn
to removed a thorn buried in skin.
Now one needs a doctor,
an assistant, an office, a needle,
a bandage, a bill, payment,
debt, divorce from the land
where the thorns still grow,
but will be annihilated in
the course of "development," leaving
the once admired crimson roses
to decay unnoticed to soil.
Desire, roses, suffering, fear gone.
- Grow, a
poem by Jan Haag, inspired by Maharaj Nisargadatta.
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What brings you here to me is that you want to 'reach reality'.
Who is this 'I' that wants to reach reality? Is it this body
complex, this psychosomatic apparatus? And are you sure that
reality will accept you? And how will you reach it, is it by
taking a high jump or perhaps by a rocket or through a mental
leap? And where exactly out there is this reality, and what will
it do for you, that you are so anxious to reach it? Don't you
realize how funny all this is? The truth is that this entity
which you think you are, based on this body complex and
consciousness is totally false. When you see the false as false,
then what remains is true. That which was prior to this body and
consciousness, that which is everpresent... that is your true
identity... that is reality. It is here and now. It is what you
really are... the relative absence, the absolute presence. Where
is the question of reaching it? You are the reality. Be it.
The desire for freedom, which arises in the heart of the seeker
in the initial stages gradually disappears when he realizes that
he himself is what he has been seeking. But if this desire
continues to persist then it implies two blocks. It assumes the
presence and continuance of an entity wanting 'freedom', whereas
for a phenomenal object there can be no question of freedom
because it has no independent existence, and so can never be
separated from the total functioning of the manifestation. And it
also assumes that reality can somehow be captured at the
mindlevel, trying to capture the unknown and unknowable within
the parameters of the known. But that is impossible.
When the impersonal consciousness personalized itself by
identification with the sentient object, thinking of it as 'I',
the effect was to transform the 'I', which was essentially the
subject, into an object. It is this objectivizing of pure
subjectivity, this false identifying of the unlimited with the
limited, which can be called bondage. It is from this
entityfication that freedom is sought. Liberation, therefore, can
be nothing other than the immediate understanding that
self-identification is false. The situation can be likened to a
five year old girl who has been decked out in fine clothes and
lovely ornaments. The same child three years earlier would have
either ignored the fine clothes or would have accepted them as a
nuisance forced on her by the doting parents. But now, after the
conditioning that she has received, the child cannot wait until
she can go out and gloat over the envy of her little friends who
don't possess such fineries. What has happened between infancy
and childhood is exactly that which is the obstacle to your
seeing your true nature. The infant, unlike the child, still
retains its subjective personality and identity. Before the
conditioning, it refers to itself by its name, not as 'me',
functions naturally as part of the total functioning without
seeing itself as a separate personal entity, an object posing as
a subject? Personal entity and enlightenment cannot go together;
indeed there is neither entity nor enlightenment...
understanding this deeply is itself enlightenment. Freedom is
the unshakeable knowledge of your real nature; it is the total
negation of entityness.
Once it is understood that an entity is merely a conceptual
notion, then what follows is a reintegration into universality.
Then you just watch life 'being lived', realizing that relatively
speaking, you as manifestation are but a puppet being manipulated
in a dreamworld. When you apperceive this intuitively,
spontaneously, thoughtlessly, then this itself will be the
awakening from this Maya-dream. Having understood that there can
never be any individual entity with independent choice of action,
then how could 'you' entertain any intentions? And in the absence
of intentions how could there be any involvement with Karma?
Then, you become perfectly aligned with whatever happens,
accepting events without any feeling either of achievement or
frustration. Such living would then be non-volitional living, an
absence of doing and deliberate non-doing, going through your
allotted span of life wanting nothing and avoiding nothing, free
of conceptualizing and objectivizing. Then, when this phenomenal
life disappears in due course it leaves you in absolute presence.
- excerpt from The Non-Dualistic Teachings of
Sri Nisargadatta, compiled by Al Drucker,
Prashanti Nilayam, June '87
