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Nondual Highlights: Issue #2891, Saturday, August 4, 2007
The individual self can exist only as a process of becoming,
whereas THAT WHICH IS is the perennial state of BEING. Therefore,
its realization is the annihilation of the individual.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, the materials
are what does not exist.
Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.
Be a spot of ground where is nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
- Rumi, from Mathnawi V: 1960-64, version by Coleman
Barks, The Essential Rumi, posted to Sunlight
Stephan Bodian in conversation/intervies with Adyashanti:
Stephen:
What's the relationship, do you suppose, between all those years
of sitting zazen and this kensho experience? Did they prime the
pump of awakening? Were they steps leading to awakening? You now
seem to be dismissing the concept of "stages of the
path," yet there appears to be some causal relationship
between your Zen meditation practice and your awakening.
Adya:
I'm deeply grateful for my Zen practice. It ultimately led me to
fail well. I failed at being a Buddhist, I failed at being a
perfect exemplar of the ten precepts, and certainly I failed at
meditation, failed at all my efforts to bust down the
"gateless gate" to awakening that Zen speaks of. And
the fact that I actually got to the point where I failed - and I
failed completely - was useful. Zen provided a place for me to
fail, and I needed that. In fact, I'd say my process wasn't so
much a letting go as an utter failure. Zen did a good job of
letting me fall on my face.
Stephan: What would have been a success - awakening?
Adya: Well, failure was the success - awakening happened through
failure. In that sense I have a great respect for the lineage.
What was transmitted was bigger than all the carriers, it was
even bigger than the lineage, much bigger than Zen, much bigger
than Buddhism.
Stephen: What was that?
Adya: I'd say a certain spark, an aliveness.
Stephen: How has your own enlightenment changed the way you
function in the world: your relationships, your family life, your
everyday behavior? Does being enlightened mean that you never get
angry or reactive or make big mistakes?
Adya: There's no such thing as never getting angry. Enlightenment
can and does use all the available emotions. Otherwise, we would
have to discount Jesus for getting pissed off in the temple and
kicking over the table. The idea that enlightenment means sitting
around with a beatific smile on our faces is just an illusion. At
a human level, enlightenment means that you are no longer divided
within yourself, and that you no longer experience a division
between yourself and others. Without any inner division, you stop
experiencing most of the usual forms of reactivity.
Stephen: Could you say a little more what you mean by no
"inner division"?
Adya: Most human beings spend their lives battling with opposing
inner forces: what they think they should do versus what they are
doing; how they feel about themselves versus how they are;
whether they think they're right and worthy or wrong and
unworthy. The separate self is just the conglomeration of these
opposing forces. When the self drops away, inner division drops
away with it. Now, I can't say that I never make a mistake,
because in this human world being enlightened doesn't mean we
become experts at everything. What does happen, though, is that
personal motivations disappear. Only when enlightenment occurs do
we realize that virtually everything we did, from getting out of
bed to going to work to being in a relationship to pursuing our
pleasures and interests, was motivated by personal concern. In
the absence of a separate self, there's no personal motivation to
do anything. Life just moves us. When personal motivation no
longer drives us, then what's left is our true nature, which
naturally expresses itself on the human dimension as love or
compassion. Not a compassion that we cultivate or practice
because we're supposed to, but a compassion that arises
spontaneously from our undivided state. If we undertake being a
good, compassionate person as a personal identity, it just gets
in the way of awakening.
Stephen: In traditional Buddhism, at least as I practiced it,
there's a taboo against talking openly about enlightenment, as
we're doing now. It seems to be based on the fear that the ego
will co-opt the experience and become inflated. In your dharma
talks you speak in great detail about awakening, including your
own, and in your public dialogues you encourage others to do the
same. Why is that?
Adya: When I was sitting with my teacher, Arvis, we'd all go into
the kitchen after the meditation and dharma talk and have some
fruit and tea, and we'd talk openly about our lives. For the most
part we didn't focus on our spiritual experiences, but they were
a part of the mix. Then these same people would do retreats at
the Zen Center of Los Angeles and have big awakenings, and the
folks in L.A. began to wonder what was happening in this little
old lady's living room up north. Arvis's view was simple: The
only thing I'm doing that they're not, she said, is that we sit
around casually and talk, and what's happening on the inside for
people isn't kept secret or hidden. This way, people get beyond
the sense that they're the only ones who are having this or that
experience. They come out of their shell, which actually makes
them more available to a deeper spiritual process. The tradition
of talking about certain experiences only in private with your
teacher keeps enlightenment a secret activity reserved for
special people. I can understand the drawbacks of being more
open, of course. Some people may blab on about how enlightened
they are, and become more egotistical. But when everything
remains open to inquiry, then even the ego's tendency to claim
enlightenment for itself becomes obvious in the penetrating light
of public discourse. In the long run, both ways have their
strengths and weaknesses, but I've found that having students ask
their questions in public breaks down the isolation that many
spiritual people feel - the sense that nobody else could possibly
understand what they're going through, or that they're so rotten
at their practice, or that nobody could be struggling like they
are. And when people have breakthroughs and talk about them in
public, awakening loses its mystique. Everyone else can see that
it's not just special people who have deep awakenings, it's their
neighbor or their best friend.
Stephen: Would you claim that you are enlightened?
Adya: Well, no, not with a straight face. I would say
enlightenment is enlightened and awakeness is awake. It's not an
experience; it's a fact.
- posted to The_Now2
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
...
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the
others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and
showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail
had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he
had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and
swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and
he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into
anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful,
and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced
like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they
were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came
to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz
inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse.
"It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you
for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves
you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always
truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being
hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he
asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse.
"You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't
happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or
who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are
Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop
out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these
things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't
be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he
wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be
sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
- posted to The_Now2
Gently, but with undeniable strength
divesting myself of the holds that would hold me
I inhale great drafts of space
The North and the South are mine
And the East and the West are mine
I am larger, better than I thought
I did not know I held so much goodness
All seems beautiful to me
Henceforth I ask not for good fortune.
I am my own good fortune.
- from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, posted to
adyashantigroup