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Nondual Highlights Issue #2053 Wednesday, February 9, 2004 Editor: Mark
If
at this moment one wishes to achieve liberation from the cycle of
existence, one must recognize ordinary mind for it is the root of
all things. That which is designated as 'ordinary mind' is one's
own awareness. Left in its natural state, this awareness remains
unstained by any [nonordinary] perceptive forms, unmuddled by any
levels of existential consciousness, and unclouded by dullness,
depression or thought. If one has discovered the identity of that
mind one has discovered the self-cognizing awareness. If one
fails to gain such an understanding, this ordinary mind remains
with the coemergence of ignorance. However, the understanding of
that mind is called awareness, the essence, the coemergent
self-knowing, ordinary mind, unmodulated simplicity,
nondiscrimination, and luminous clarity."
- Gampopa, from the book, Mahamudra, the
Quintessence of Mind and Meditation, by
Namgyal, published by Shambhala.
Blessings to all. May peace and peace and peace be everywhere.
- posted to DailyDharma
Questioner: Gangaji, I have a question.
Gangaji: (Laughter) You also have the answer. (Laughter) So, why
don't you give the answer first, and the question second?
Q: Yes.
G: (Laughter) Or, you can give the answer and then we could guess
the question.
Q: The answer is, yes.
G: Oh, excellent.
Q: The question is, is there ever a time when awareness is no
longer overshadowed by emotion?
G: Actually all the time. All the time. What happens is that
individual awareness, which is a ray of universal awareness, gets
fixated on a loop of emotional drama. But if at any point in that
loop, the individual mind stops and investigates - all the way,
then whatever the emotion, there is instant clarity. So then,
every emotion is a vehicle. Every moment of every emotion is a
vehicle. Awareness is not overshadowed by anything. Ever.
Q: Yes.
G: Ever. We speak of awareness, but often what we are talking
about, is a state of awareness. It gets called mindfulness, or
equanimity, or samadhi, or clarity. Those are states of
awareness. And then we also have what we call the negative
states: confusion, anxiety, lack of equanimity, negativity. Those
are also states of awareness. But you cannot have any of those
states without awareness. This is not illogical. This is very
logical. You can also have awareness without any state. You do
not need any state for awareness, as some people here have
discovered. There can be a moment when nothing is happening, when
there is just awareness: as you just said, "no trees, no
me". There is just awareness and then the trees reappear.
Does awareness disappear? Well how did you know there were trees,
if awareness disappeared? How did you know there were no trees if
awareness disappeared when there were no trees?
So what happens as a result of spiritual conditioning, is that we
learn to equate the elevated state with the truth of awareness,
rather than recognizing that awareness is present in all states.
Awareness is omnipresent. Awareness is God. It is always here,
omniscient. Awareness knows everything, is aware of everything.
That does not mean that it is some powerful "thing"
that knows what you are thinking, and that you blinked or you
didn't blink. It means that everything that occurs or does not
occur occurs in the presence of awareness. The shift that can
occur in individual awareness happens when you recognize that you
are here, regardless of emotion or state. Emotions are like
weather. So the winds came up this morning and there were white
caps on the lake, and then rain came. But here you are. You did
not change. Life did not change. Individual awareness drops
deeper and deeper into its source. I am not saying that you have
to "stay in the source" because you can not be separate
from the source. If you are trying to "stay in the
source", then there is still some latent belief that
"if I do not stay here, then I will not be aware." This
is fluid, effortless being.
Identification with particular states of awareness is perhaps
part of the organism or part of the evolution, but it is a source
of suffering because there is identification as a sufferer. The
sufferer is an image that appears in awareness, and gets
identified as "me" and is associated with the physical
body. But always there is awareness, aware of the suffering,
aware of the sufferer, aware of identification, and yet free of
that. The mystery is how it gets overlooked. But you don't have
to solve that mystery. Just stop overlooking it. Just tell the
truth.
I would meet spiritual teachers and they would tell me they had
always been awake. And I would say, "Well that is not me. I
am not awake. I have never been awake. I want to be awake."
I had in my mind some idea of what "awake" was. But
then to awaken in an instant, and have my teacher point to me and
challenge me, to discover: "Oh that? Oh, that has always
been here. It has always been here." But because it had
always been here, and because I associated "me" with
suffering, I figured that must be worthless. "That could not
be it. Not that. Give me that." And so I searched for that,
and found that in my teacher, and he threw me back into that. And
it is the same that.
So "yes," is the right answer. Awareness is always
here. Awareness is always free. Awareness is always unobstructed.
Is mind always unobstructed? No. There are moments of clarity in
mind, and there are moments of obscuration in mind. But for
either clarity or obscuration to be present, there must be
awareness aware of clarity, awareness aware of obscuration. And
it is free of both. Free of clarity, not bound by clarity.
- Satsang with Gangaji - Silver Bay, New York Retreat - September
25, 2003
Living Life as a Question
Many of the questions and concerns in satsang come in a similar
form: How do I get or keep a particular experience? How do I get
or keep a sense of awakeness or expansion or openness or freedom
or loving kindness or Presence? Or if worldly concerns are the
issue, the question is the same: How do I get or keep more
health, more wealth, more comfort, more security, more romance?
Another form these questions take is: How do I avoid falling
asleep or feeling stuck or being contracted or being sick or
losing love? They’re good questions. There’s nothing
wrong with them. They’re real for the person who’s
asking them.
Within each of these questions is the assumption that you need to
do something—you need to get or keep or avoid something.
Right there, in that assumption, is our suffering. The effort to
get or keep or avoid any experience is what makes life miserable,
difficult, dis-easeful.
In satsang, another possibility is pointed to, a way of touching
your experience without either trying to hold on to it or push it
away. It’s a way of reaching out to your experience and
really seeing what’s it’s like. In doing this, the
questions become: How open or stuck am I right now? How open or
closed is my Heart right now? How happy or sad am I right now?
And when the answer comes, the question becomes What’s that
like? What’s it like to be expanded or contracted or
whatever it is you are experiencing? What’s it like to have
an open Heart or to not be in touch with your Heart at all in a
particular moment? What’s it like to be filled with love?
What’s it like to feel a lack of love? This is reaching out
and touching the experience as it is and as it naturally changes.
It’s not a static question, but an alive one; you’re
never done with that question.
In doing this, rather than trying to change life, you’re
living life as a question. What’s this like? And what’s
it like now that I’ve noticed what this is like? And what’s
it like now? And now that it’s changed again, what’s it
like? Even your noticing something changes it, so by the time you’ve
found an answer, it’s time to ask the question again.
We’ve been so conditioned to think that the point of
questions is to get answers, that we overlook that the point of
answers is that they get us to more questions. The questions are
as valid and rich as any answer because every answer is full of
questions. You can even begin to enjoy the questions, even trust
the questions, as much as any answer that comes.
- Excerpt from Living Life as a Question
by Nirmala
Question: There are said to be six organs of different colours in
the chest, of which the Heart is said to be two finger-breaths to
the right of the middle line. But the Heart is also formless.
Should we then imagine it to have a shape and meditate on it?
Sri Ramana Maharshi: No. Only the quest `Who am I?' is necessary.
What remains all through deep sleep and waking is the same. But
in waking there is unhappiness and the effort to remove it. Asked
who wakes up from sleep you say `I'. Now you are told to hold
fast to this `I'. If it is done the eternal being will reveal
itself. Investigation of `I' is the point and not meditation on
the Heart- centre. There is nothing like within or without. Both
mean either the same thing or nothing.
Of course there is also the practice of meditation on the Heart-
centre. It is only a practice and not investigation. Only the one
who meditates on the Heart can remain aware when the mind ceases
to be active and remains still, whereas those who meditate on
other centres cannot be so aware but infer that the mind was
still only after it becomes again active.
In whatever place in the body one thinks Self to be residing, due
to the power of that thinking it will appear to the one who
thinks thus as if Self is residing in that place. However, the
beloved Heart alone is the refuge for the rising and subsiding of
that `I'. Know that though it is said that the Heart exists both
inside and outside, in absolute truth it does not exist both
inside and outside, because the body, which appears as the base
of the differences `inside' and `outside', is an imagination of
the thinking mind. Heart, the source, is the beginning, the
middle and the end of all. Heart, the supreme space, is never a
form. It is the light of truth.
- Ramana Maharshi from Be As You Are,
posted to MillionPaths
Somehow it was very simple and easy in my case. My guru, before
he died, told me: "Believe me, you are the Supreme Reality.
Don't doubt my words, don't disbelieve me. I am telling you the
truth, act on it". I could not forget his words and by not
forgetting, I have realized. Once the guru told me: "You are
the Supreme Reality", I ceased having visions and trances
and became very quiet and simple. I found myself desiring and
knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment:
"I know nothing, I want nothing."
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj