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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3982, Saturday, August 14, 2010, Editor: Mark



All thoughts and emotions are not real. They are like the waves that dance on the surface of the ocean for a few seconds or minutes and then they return to where they have arisen from. Then they are no more wave, but they are ocean. How long can a wave keep its form as a separate personality?

- Papaji, posted to Distillation




Q: Reincarnation is probably my biggest issue with the Buddhist teachings.

A: Buddha, number one, the Buddha, as a matter of fact a big part of his teaching was refuting reincarnation.

Q: I didn't know that.

A: Yeah most don't. In fact alot of Buddhists don't even know that. That was the hallmark of his whole teaching. That is what distinguished him from the religion of the day. He said there is nothing to reincarnate.

Q: How did that message get...

A: Because the Buddha was a really smart guy and the Buddha didn't just get lost in dualism. So dualism is "there is" or "there isn't." That's dualism, right? And what he talked about was rebirth. Now everyone goes rebirth and reincarnation are the same thing. By the way I don't really care what the Buddha said. I only care about the truth. If what he said happened to be true, great. If not, well then. Just cause he says it doesn't lend it in my mind lend it instant credibility. We all have to prove everything true of false for itself. Rebirth is totally different than reincarnation. Rebirth is what you do when you go to sleep at night and you have a dream and boom there you are. And then you sleep for an hour and then boom you have another one. And often time there are what we call karmic links. Right? Chains of conditioning. Your dreams are in many senses manifestations of your conditioning, or the stuff you got to work out or whatever. Every once and awhile they come from a deeper source. That's what's being reincarnated or rebirthed. Right? Not an entity that is being transferred from one dream to the next to the next to the next. It's not the 'me' that's being reborn, if anything its the karmic tendency with no separate self anywhere to be found. And as we all know in our life what has the most potential to keep being reborn? Not even in a spiritual sense. What tends to be reborn? We all know it...drama. Illusion. I love you. I hate you. You did me wrong, da da da da. All this illusory conditioning. This is what we call karma. This keeps being reborn. You think its dead and all of a sudden, it's like those birthday candles you just can't blow out. And so our own ignorance has a tendency to keep rebirthing itself. But that's very different then there is an entity that travels from one to the other.

By the way none of this is important in terms of awakening, enlightenment or any of that stuff. But its important to you so that's why I'm talking about it.

Q: And its a mystery. It's one of the questions all religions talk about. Where we go when this form...

A: Nowhere.

Q: ...expires

A: Nowhere.

Q: Explain to me what you're saying.

A: We go nowhere just like when we are alive, when we're here. We are the light of consciousness. Pure spirit. Right? It's not going anywhere. So the body drops, right, there it is (meaning only consciousness is left)! It is where is was all along. And then it's like if a body comes, okay, a body comes, wonder if the illusion thing is going to happen again. But either way...

Q: So don't get stuck in the illusion.

A: Right. The mind kind of goes 'like where am I going to go?' Subtle forms of mind can keep dreaming and create all sorts of new worlds that don't really exist, to go to. Fundamentally this light of consciousness it's here. The rest is sort of chugging along. It appears, disappears, appears, disappears within the light of consciousness, within spirit.

The more we come to realize that in our hearts, in our very being. The nice thing is it's not that we have a simple transcendent experience of Pure Beingness. That's nice, that's beautiful. We realize we are the deathless. But also it frees up this very fragile human incarnation, it frees it of fear, contradiction. It frees it to actually be able to really experience this miracle of this apparent world.

Q: Just let it be.

A: Let it be. And that's love. What flows out of us when we're just letting things be? That's love, isn't it? The deepest letting be. And you know who's the hardest person you ever let be?

Q: Yourself.

A: That's it. Once you discovered the letting be for there...

Q: That's freedom.

A: The whole world.

Q: Thank you.

A: Thank you very much.

- Adyashanti, from Big Sword Swinging, disc 2, posted to adyashantigroup




The psychologist says, "Own your own feelings."

The Guru says, "Be the very space in which your feelings are arising."

Consciousness says, "Exactly who is the one who is doing all of this feeling, anyway?"

- Chuck Hillig, from Seeds for the Soul, posted to AlongTheWay




All spiritual teachings are only meant to make us retrace our steps to our Original Source We need not acquire anything new, only give up false ideas and useless accretions. Instead of doing this, we try to grasp something strange and mysterious because we believe happiness lies elsewhere. This is a mistake.

- Ramana Maharshi, from The Essential Teachings of Ramana Maharshi, posted to AlongTheWay




Man's great illusion of happiness and suffering will never stop except by the mind's learning to cease to act upon itself.

- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels




When you don't require anything from the world and nothing from God, when you don't desire anything, when you don't strive for anything, don't expect anything, the divine will enter you, unasked and unexpected.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels




The Water You Want

Someone may be clairvoyant, able to see
the future, and yet have very little wisdom.

Like the man who saw water in his dream,
and began leading everyone toward the mirage.

"I am the one with heart-vision.
I've torn open the veil."

So they set out with him inside the dream,
while he is actually sleeping beside a river
of pure water. Any search moves away from
the spot where the object of the quest is.

Sleep deeply wherever you are on the way.
Maybe some traveler will wake you.

Give up subtle thinking,
the twofold, threefold
multiplication of mistakes.
Listen to the sound of waves
within you.

There you are,
dreaming your thirst,
when the water you want
is inside the big vein on your neck.

- Rumi, Mathnavi IV: 3226-3241, version by Coleman Barks, from Say I Am You, posted to Sunlight

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