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Nondual Highlights Issue #2572, Saturday, September 2, 2006, Editor: Mark
Ascetics wander shrine to shrine,
looking for what can only come
from visiting the soul.
Study the mystery you embody.
When you look up from that,
the dub grass looks fresher
a little ways off, and even more
green farther on. Stay here.
- Lalla, from Naked Song, translation by Coleman Barks
It's a strange phenomenon how difficult people find it to love
themselves. One would think it is the easiest thing in the world,
because we're constantly concerned with ourselves. We're always
interested in how much we can get, how well we can perform, how
comfortable we can be. The Buddha mentioned in a discourse that
'oneself is dearest to oneself.' So with all that, why is it so
difficult to actually love oneself?
Loving oneself certainly doesn't mean indulging oneself. Really
loving is an attitude towards oneself that most people don't
have, because they know quite a few things about themselves which
are not desirable. Everybody has innumerable attitudes,
reactions, likes and dislikes which they'd be better off without.
Judgment is made and while one likes one's positive attitudes,
one dislikes the others. With that comes suppression of those
aspects of oneself that one is not pleased with. One doesn't want
to know about them and doesn't acknowledge them. That's one way
of dealing with oneself, which is detrimental to growth."
Another unskillful way is to dislike that part of oneself which
appears negative and every time it arises one blames oneself,
which makes matters twice as bad as they were before. With that
comes fear and very often aggression. If one wants to deal with
oneself in a balanced way, it's not useful to pretend that the
unpleasant part doesn't exist, those aggressive, irritable,
sensual, conceited tendencies. If we pretend we are far from
reality and put a split into ourselves. Even though such a person
may be totally sane, the appearance given is that of not being
quite real. We've all come across people like that, who are too
sweet to be true, as a result of pretense and suppression.
Blaming oneself doesn't work either. In both instances one
transfers one's own reactions to other people. One blames others
for their deficiencies, real or imagined, or one doesn't see them
as ordinary human beings. Everyone lives in an unreal world,
because it's ego-deluded, but this one is particularly unreal,
because everything is considered either as perfectly wonderful or
absolutely terrible.
Apparently we're all very different. That too is an illusion.
We're all having the same problems and also the same faculties to
deal with them. The only difference is the length of training
that one has had. Training which may have been going on for a
number of lifetimes has brought about a little more clarity,
that's all.
Clarity of thinking comes from purification of one's emotions,
which is a difficult job that needs to be done. But it can only
be done successfully when it isn't an emotional upheaval, but
clearcut, straightforward work that one does on oneself. When it
is considered to be just that, it takes the sting out of it. The
charge of "I'm so wonderful" or "I'm so
terrible" is defused. We are neither wonderful nor terrible.
Everyone is a human being with all the potential and all the
obstructions. If one can love that human being, the one that is
"me" with all its faculties and tendencies, then one
can love others realistically, usefully and helpfully. But if one
makes a break in the middle and loves the part which is nice and
dislikes the part which isn't nice enough, one's never going to
come to grips with reality. One day we'll have to see it, for
what it is. It's a "working ground," a kammatthana.
It's a straightforward and interesting affair of one's own heart.
If we look at ourselves in that manner, we will learn to love
ourselves in a wholesome way. "Just as a mother at the risk
of life, loves and protects her child..." Become your own
mother! If we want to have a relationship with ourselves that is
realistic and conducive to growth, then we need to become our own
mother. A sensible mother can distinguish between that which is
useful for her child and that which is detrimental. But she
doesn't stop loving the child when it misbehaves. This may be the
most important aspect to look at in ourselves. Everyone, at one
time or another, misbehaves in thought or speech or action. Most
frequently in thought, fairly frequently in speech and not so
often in action. So what do we do with that? What does a mother
do? She tells the child not to do it again, loves the child as
much as she's always loved it and just gets on with the job of
bringing up her child. Maybe we can start to bring up ourselves.
- Anna Khema, posted to BodhisattvaTS
The World for most People is what they see.
Their Reality is created by their Senses.
However... what they see
are their Thoughts posing as their Reality.
Most People do not know
that their Circumstances on this Earth
are the Result of their Thoughts.
That's why they suffer.
Most People are lost in their own Creation.
They have to learn how and what to think.
- posted to CosmicCookies
You Are the World
Yesterday we went into the difference between concepts and
reality. In the course of that, we discovered that there is no
such "thing" as Texas. Today, we are going to expose
the simple fact that there is no such thing as you either,
whoever you are.
You and I are not different from Texas. When you investigate
carefully, to see if you can locate your "self," all
you find is a flow of thoughts and images and ideas and opinions
and roles and scenarios and names and identities, all of it made
up entirely of memory, and fantasy derived from memory,
accompanied by a flow of bodily sensations -- again, muscular
contractions and other feelings -- giving you concrete referents
(physical anchors), but no solid, separate, stable
"you" to be found anywhere.
Furthermore, in discovering that you are nobody, you also
discover that you are everything. That is to say, you can, in any
given moment,distinguish between your hand and your foot and your
head and your house and your car and the earth and the sky and so
on, but close investigation reveals that those are all a part of
you. In other words, there is no part of you that is separate
from any other part, any more than you can separate your head
from your body or your heart or your blood stream. They are all
parts of the same thing. Different parts, yes, but not separate.
In reality, every living cell in your body is made up entirely of
things you normally think of as "outside of yourself,"
that is, continuous interactions between water (clouds, rain,
streams, rivers, ground water, etc.), plants, animals, minerals
from the soil, sunshine, an ovum from your mother, a sperm from
your father, genetic structures from both of them as well as
their parents and so on and on. In other words, everything is
related to and constantly interacting with everything else.
Physics tells us this. Biology and ecological sciences tell us
this. Psychology also tells us this. But far and away, much more
important, is that direct observation will reveal, beyond any
shadow of a doubt, that nothing is, or can be, separate from
anything else. And that includes everything we think of as us.
The beauty of this very radical realization is that, once you
actually see it, feel it, discover it for yourself, you can stop
pretending you are somehow this isolated, lonely, fragile little
ego, suspended as if in solitary confinement, with its own
private life and its own problems and longings and fears and
regrets and disappointments and resentments and frustrations and
worries and so on. In other words, there is no private you, and
there is no private life. (It only seems that way, because when
we are thinking about whatever we, at the time, imagine to be
ourselves, nobody's watching.)
Please don't make the tragic mistake of reducing this to a
philosophy -- something you agree with, or perhaps have a problem
with, and so on. Find out directly, beyond any question! You have
an opportunity to put a stop, once and for all, to this shallow,
silly, neurotic misunderstanding.
You are the world. You are the universe. You are the Infinite
Consciousness into which all worlds and all experiences arise and
disappear. Are you big enough and bold enough to embrace all that
you are, to embrace your own Pure, Infinite Being?
- Scott Morrison, posted to SufiMystic
What I Said
To The Wanting Creature
What is this river
you want to cross?
There are no travelers
on the river-road -
and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about
on that bank - or resting?
There is no 'river' at all
and no boat - and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either
and no one to pull it.
There is no ground - no sky - no time
no bank - no ford!
Do you believe there is some 'place'
that will make the Soul less thirsty?
In that great absence
you will find nothing.
Be strong then
and enter into your own body.
There you have a solid place
for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!
Kabir says this:
just throw away all thoughts
of imaginary things,
And stand firm in 'that'
which you 'are' ...
- Kabir, from The Soul is Here For Its Own Joy, edited by
Robert Bly, posted to Mystic_Spirit