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#2665 - Friday, December 8, 2006 -
Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nondual Highlights
This issue features a selection from Ask the Awakened, by Wei Wu Wei. It is from the following website: http://www.weiwuwei.8k.com/aai.html
ASK THE AWAKENED
Book ordering information: http://www.sentientpublications.com/catalog/ask_the_awakened.php
PART 1 : THE CROSS-ROADS
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.
CHAPTER 1 : The Harlequinade
Perhaps our most serious handicap is that
we start on the wrong foot. In the end this is
likely to be fatal, and, I fear, generally is. We have a basic
conditioning, probably in
some form of Christian religion, of which little remains today
but its ethical content,
or in one of the modern psychologies, that of Freud, Adler, or
Jung, or in some
scientific discipline, all of which are fundamentally and
implacably dualist. Then the
urge manifests, and we start reading.
Every time we happen on a statement or
sentiment that fits in with our conditioned
notions we adopt it, perhaps with enthusiasm, at the same time
ignoring, as though they
did not exist, the statements or sentiments which either we did
not like or did not
understand. And every time we re-read the Masters or the sutras
we seize upon further
chosen morsels, as our own jig-saw puzzle builds up within us,
until we have a personal
patchwork that corresponds with nothing on Earth that could
matter in the least. Not in a
thousand million kalpas could such a process produce the
essential understanding that the
urge is obliging us to seek.
We are required to do exactly the opposite
of all that. We are required to 'lay down'
absolutely everything that is 'ours', and which is known as
'ignorance' - even though we
regard it as knowledge. It is like stripping off clothes that
have become personal. Then
naked, but in a nakedness that does not recognise itself as such,
we should go to the
Masters, who will clothe us in the garments of the knowledge or
understanding that we
really need. It is their jig-saw we must complete, not 'ours',
for their 'doctrine', what
they have to reveal to us, is one whole and indivisible, and the
statements and
sentiments that we do not at once understand, rather than those
that we think we do, are
the ones that matter. One by one as we re-read, and finally all
at once, their meaning
will become manifest, and we shall at last understand what the
Masters have to tell us.
Then, and only then, can we acquire their understanding, which is
the fulfilment of the
urge.
As busy little bees, gathering honey here
and there, and adding it to their stock in
their hive, we are wasting our time, and worse, for we are
building up that very persona
whose illusory existence stands between our phenomenal selves and
the truth of what we
are, and which is what the urge in us is seeking. That 'laying
down' of everything that
is 'ours' has always been insisted upon by the Masters, but we
affect to ignore it,
precisely because that very notion of 'self' which is the centre
of what we have to 'lay
down' seeks to take charge of the operation, and generally
succeeds in doing so, thereby
frustrating from the start any hope of fulfilling the urge. Is
there any wonder that we
so rarely get anywhere at all?
It is interesting to note that in the
recently discovered collection of sayings of Jesus
there is one in which he formally adjured His disciples to divest
themselves of all their
'garments'. It is understandable that such a statement should
have been omitted by those
later compilers who had no idea what such a requirement could
mean. But to us it should
be a commonplace. As far back as Chuang-tse we find the story of
the old monk who, in
despair of knowing enlightenment before he died, went to see
Lao-tse. On arrival Lao-tse
came out to meet him, welcomed him, but told him to leave his
followers and his baggage
outside the gate, for otherwise he would not be admitted. The old
man had no followers,
and no baggage, but he understood, went in and found his
fulfilment.
Book ordering information: http://www.sentientpublications.com/catalog/ask_the_awakened.php