Click here to go to the next issue.

I just love real-life get-togethers. Maybe we should all
plan to meet somewhere in a central point. Like Kansas. I
am in Texas. ;)

Phil

#~ Phil Burton #~ phi@well.com #~
http://www.well.com/~phi
_______________________________________________________________________
Mira wrote:
Dear Glo, I would like to go more indepth into this with
you, or with anyone out here, who has been living in the
nondual state for a longer period of time than I have.


Greg responded:
You are discussing some very important questions here. It
seems like you're asking what happens after, what about
suffering, what about others, what kind of helping, what
kind of speaking, activities take place?


It will be different for different people. I'll talk about
this as though there are really people and motives and
feelings and actions and ideas Out There. Everything takes
place as though these things are inherently existent. It
can't be said that any of it IS existent, but in the
everyday sense it all goes on.


In my case, there was first the turning towards intellectual
understanding to grasp what had happened. After that, quite
naturally and organically, the inclination has been growing
towards compassion, understanding it and acting and living
it.
There is no longer any reason to give more weight to Greg's
affairs over any other being's. Living for the good of all,
to relieve suffering and to enhance peace and well-being for
all. And I'm very bad at this.


Compassion is something I had never been very good at. In
my family, our manners and lovingkindness are not very kind
or other-directed. We're sort of selfish and introverted.
But against this background, I'm being pulled toward empathy
and helping others in whatever way I can, however it comes
up, and however inept and stumblingly I may do it. This
fragrance, however, is spreading to more and more of life.


I see perfection in the overall workings of compassion
(which is the workings of all that is), and which is
miraculously and gloriously working by itself. Look at any
one slice of life and I wouldn't say that this slice is
perfect, but the entire web of interrelatedness is perfect
and cannot be different from the way it is - so how can it
be less or other than perfect?


The overall web includes the pull in my mind and heart to
learn more about compassion and live it, for the good of all
beings.
At the same time that I'm doing various things to bring this
forward, I don't see it as a striving or a goal-oriented
doingness - but rather an outcome of the overall
perfection. So it feels like celebration, even as I just
barely begin to learn ways of allowing compassion to work
through me.


Others are different. Here are cases I know of in friends,
after the understanding dawned:


-Jon moved to San Diego with his girlfriend, is a house
painter with a brilliant intellect, reading Nagarjuna and
Zen. He would love to talk to someone local about this
stuff instead of burning up the phone lines talking to me.


-Jerry, also in San Diego, former student of Jean Klein,
lives a quiet content and loving life as a carpenter and
homebuilder, has raised two children in the light of this
understanding.


-Michael, is moving to Florida, working at a television
station, is a dear helpful person who volunteers at a
shelter for people with terminal diseases. He likes to talk
about this stuff to anyone at the drop of a hat.
A long time seeker, now that he no longer feels like a child
at the back of the class, he's been changing his wardrobe
and is open to finding a girlfriend.


-Doug teaches Philosophy at an Upstate NY college, and has
begun to integrate his professional teaching and writing
with this kind of understanding, which takes a Buddhist tone
for him. (he has tenure already!)


Some turn right to teaching. Some never teach, like Jerry,
they hardly ever talk about this with others.


____________________________________________________________________

Anybody know of a nice cave somewhere in the Himalayas?
The puzzles of the mind really make laugh.
And it is still trying to resolve it...:-)


Love always,

Mira

There is a cave that doesn't require traveling.
It is the coolest place to reside and the stay is free.
In the so called "cave of the Heart" one doesn't require a
thing.
The "cave of the Heart" is the place for just to "Be".


Jan

_____________________________________________________________________
We
We are proud to announce a new and important web page:
Non-dualism and Western Philosophers, introduced and edited
by Greg Goode.


Greg says:
"Many of our most stubborn and cherished dualities are the
product of Western philosophy! In using the Western
philosophical method, we are employing a medication that
comes from the same part of the world as the disease. We
don't have to swallow the doctor's entire kit bag, just the
particular pill for our problem. For example, here is how
Western philosophers can help with some of the more
intransigent Western dualities. This list is certainly not
exhaustive!"


Please click on the link below to continue with Greg's
thought:


<a href="http://www.nonduality.com/western.htm">

Thank you, Greg. We look forward to periodic additions to
your web page.


--Jerry
____________________________________________________________________
There is just no one suffering, inspite of all the twisted
ways that this mind is trying to turn it upside down, inside
out, I find no persons, no separation, only love. My
interaction with people is natural and very direct. There
is no intervention of 'should be's, they do not get time to
be considered, for the acting is too spontaneous. It is
witnessing the judgemental, categorizational activities of
this mind that leave me absolutely stunned.

Wow. What an imagination! I admire it, for this mind does
its utmost to create confusion and separation, it does
attack from all sides. But the one that admires all this is
never even the least bit affected. It is this one that
knows the king is naked.


--Mira
_____________________________________________________________________

Patanjali (comments between round brackets by Purohit Swami)
dedicates several sutras to the big trouble maker called
mind:
(11, II) The grosser afflictions disappear through
meditation.
(10,II) The finer afflictions disappear as mind disappears
in illumination. [The "movement" towards factual
nonduality. As mind revolves around "I & mine & doing",
mind is said to be nonexistent when the "I" has
disappeared.] (24,III) The mind is coloured with innumerable
desires, and as mind and desires work hand in hand, it
follows that mind works to please someone else, (Mind is an
agent working on behalf of its master.) [Wanting to "improve
the world" is as much a desire as wanting to be rich]
(25,III) He who sees clearly, refuses to identify mind with
Self. (He finds that mind is not the doer, mind is not the
knower, mind is not the enjoyer.)

(26,III) Intent on discrimination, his mind longs for
liberation. [Liberation, Being, without the shackles of the
mind, therefore it isn't a desire in the proper sense]
(27,III) Sometimes in Illumination, impressions of the
waking mind intervene. (The condition of Illumination is
the condition of unlimited joy. Sometimes the limitations
of waking mind shake the overflying joy.)[The impressions
will revolve around "otherness", like lecturing, preaching
to "enlighten the world" etc.] (28,III) They should be
destroyed as afflictions are destroyed.

Finally, don't forget (22,II): The seen is dead to him who
has attained liberation, but is alive to others, being
common to all. (If one man gets liberation, it does not
follow that the world becomes free. Every man has to
struggle for himself.
Because men have the same desires, they have the same
playing ground.)

The moral is, unless it is possible to offer help etc.
spontaneously, helping isn't possible. Don't use the mind
to "solve the problems of the world" - it won't work.

--Jan
____________________________________________________________________

The Pathway of Non-duality

by Raphael

Chapter Two: Real and Non-real (concluded)



At this point, let us examine the point of view mentioned
before which states that only Being exists and not becoming.



When examining the empiricists' view, we stated that it is
impossible to reject things altogether. However, we
concluded that what we know is not reality but
phenomenon-becoming or the mental and individual
interpretation of the said phenomenon. And if all we see
and touch is phenomenon-movement, there must be a factor
upon which such phenomenon-movement depends. It is not
possible to see phenomenon-effects that do not depend upon
causes-principles. Becoming, being abaliety, cannot depend
upon that very same becoming.



How can we know the Being that lies behind the phenomenon
and behind mental-sensory interpretation? That Being which
the empiricists would like to touch and see as if it were a
phenomenon-object?



If a phenomenal object can be seen and touched with equally
relative, phenomenal and objective tools, Being as pure
Subject can only be known through Being, through
consciousness of self as Subject-Being, in so far as Being
is not an 'object'.



When we eliminate or transcend phenomenon-becoming, Being
reveals Itself in Its absolute reality and aseity.



If one can know the relative by putting oneself upon the
plane of relativity and upon that of simple interpretation,
then one also can know the Being by putting oneself upon the
plane of identity. Western philosopy, in general, has not
solved the problem of the knowledge of Being, because it has
always put itself upon a dual plane, even when believing to
state the Oneness of reality.



Q. Can being be expressed?



A. Being can be experienced only upon a plane of identity.
Thus traditional or realizative Philosophy proposes the
knowledge of Being through the realization of Being.



Q. So, Advaita has something in common with both the
Philosophy of Being and that of becoming?



A. Yes, because it includes three levels or stages of
Reality (satya) in its vision:



paramarthika = pure or absolute reality vyavaharika =
empirical or phenomenal reality pratibhasika = illusory
existence

...



Asat, non-being in the strictest sense, is the non-existent,
the non-real, like the hare's horns.... But compared with
paramarthika Reality, one may say that even vyavaharika
truth, the empirical truth, is illusory because it is
non-permanent, non-constant.



Thus the ultimate conclusion of Advaita is that Being and
becoming are both dialectical 'moments' of the Absolute or
non-qualified supreme Reality (nirguna).

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