Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
#2635 -
Monday, November 6, 2006 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nondual Highlights
One of the earliest
participants in nonduality forums, Sandeep Chatterjee
sent the following to a few email lists and is duplicated here:
One of the
common and wide-spread issues debated and discussed in the
spiritual circles
whether it is in physical satsanghs or in cyber based
forums........
....... is the issue
of whether practice is absolutely a must for spiritual
enlightenment .....
.......OR.......
.....there being nothing else but the Self (or Bozo)..........who
is to do what and for what purpose, to what end.
The debate goes on
and on with disciples of either schools absolutely convinced
about their own position
and the absurdity/foolishness of the other's position.
Arguments go to and
fro and supporting quotes from scriptures are hurled by both
sides
in order to clinch the debate.
The school of
practice have even coined phrases like "neo-Advaita"
and the "Advaita-shuffle"
to disparage the "All-is-Self-anyway" proponents.
The debate is very
interesting and reveals nuances in both the positions.
First of all the very
debate is ambrosia for the "me-entity".
For the
"me"........the very debate is it's existence and the
continuance of the debate............the perpetuation of it's
identity.
The debate lends the
spiritual halo, the religious glow to the "me".
For the school of
practice (whether the specific practice is of Self-Enquiry, aka
Ramana or Nisargadatta,
or meditation aka the various schools of Zen,
prayer aka Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, or charity work
to earn merits useful for salvation,
it makes no difference).....
....fundamentally the
issue is the belief that an effect, any effect needs a cause,
separate from the effect.
The "me"
having seen evidence where apparently without effort there is no
success in the material world,.....
...... this belief gets reinforced by Teachers, Gurus hollering
from the rooftops that the path of salvation,
is only through the practice of X, Y.Z,
which of course only the specific hollering teacher can show,
teach, transmit, deeksha-it.
The "me"
which is essentially the sense of insecurity....
.....having sought security in the temporal icons like
relationship, career, money, social position, acquisitions
knowledge power etc...
....realizes the hollowness, the transitory nature of these
temporal icons
and now seeks security in the eternal.
The same equation is
brought in with only a conceptualization of a new icon to be
sought.
The equation being
there is a problem, for which there exists a solution, if only
the seeking
for the solution can diverted to the right direction
and the necessary cost be paid.
And there are enough
characters who are skillful in utilizing the innate sense of
insecurity
to create "to-be-chased-solutions",
in the process augmenting Bank balances and disciple numbers
with some good old sexual romps thrown in.
Why does the
"me" not see through this charade?
It does but does not
acknowledge............because now the claim of ownership of the
meditation,
of the Pranayam, of the Self-Enquiry,
of the number of charities supported, worked for....
.......is it's identity.
It is I who is meditating, doing Pranayam/Self
enquiry 16 hours a day,......
......the sense of the "I" as the sense of the
"me" is intact.
I have saved so many
heathens by getting them to accept the Bible....
....surely I am ensured my rightful place in Dad's pad in the
hereafter.
No matter what
practice is happening in the moment............the claim of
ownership of that practice....
......lo behold the lurking sense of entitification.
The specific
technique, the specific activity.............is not all an
issue.
The same is the case
for the Guru/Teacher.
Without the practice
and the disciples swearing by that practice....
....how can I the Guru remain a Guru?
How can I be a saint,
unless there are sinners around to be saved?
If Pranayam is
happening......if zazen is happening.......if massive charity
work is getting effected through oneself....
...if there descends
moments of quietude where the heart is filled with am immensity
of gratitude..
....then that can only be a nuance of the movement of the moment.
Moment to moment to
moment.
Apperceiving
this............
.......anything and everything becomes a practice.
In the gestalt of
such an existing.......cleaning the accumulated dried shreds of
shit on the sides of a toilet......
.......is practice....
...... no less....... no more....
... than that of feeding the poor.
Thus real meditation
is not the technique per se......not the practice per
se.......but that....
..... in which there is the end of the meditator.
And thus the end of
meditation.
Meditation as
conceived to be a means to an end.
As believed to be a cause for a desired effect.
Rather than time
specific, condition specific meditation
sessions.............there is a meditative existing......
.....in which may happen........a specific series of acts labeled
as zazen .......or KapalBhati...
....followed by maybe some lusty love making next to the
altar......
.....followed by maybe some expressing of a haiku in the midst of
a noisy brothel.
In that meditative
existing........ can happen the honed activities as required in
running a global corporation.....
......existing side by side with agenda free compassion.
There is no sense of
an agenda, there is no sense of an intention and there is no
sense of an expectation.
It is no longer a
cause-effect plea bargaining.
There is a
flowing..........a synchronousness........there is just the
enacting of living.
Which is all
powerful, all creative......and .....indivisive .
In the school of
All-is-Self-hence-nothing-must-be-done....
......is also the prevailing sense of the "me".
If All is the
Self................if All-that-is-is
that-which-IS..................if this is apperceived....
.....then it is apperceived that the very biological sentient
object engaged in praying to a self-conceived symbol,
whether that is a deity, a principle or a Guru-known as
zazen ....
....such a conditioned object.....
...... AND...
....the activity happening through such a conditioned object
can only be an expression of that-which-is.
How can it be
otherwise?
And thus what is it
in phenomenality, ...........which is wrong and has to be
condemned
or is to be negated?
What appears to be
happening............could not have been otherwise....
..... in that very moment of happening.....
...for all the stars in the Andromeda galaxy.
There is nothing
which needs to be done....
.... AND....... whatever is to be done.......
.....gets done.
The very opposition
to practice, the very need to deny.......
........is the sense of the "me" at play.
For in the
opposition, in the denial.......... is the identity and
perpetuation of the identity.
Ramana was once
asked........."Since you are enlightened...why don't you
just wave your hand
and enlighten everybody else?
The dude in the
diaper replied "When you wake up from a dream,
where are the dream-people who have to be woken up?"
And yet the dude
while adjusting his diaper, used to be moved to copious tears on
hearing the narrations
of the grief-stricken seekers, visiting him.
He even suggested the
practice of Self-enquiry to those
who had no existential reality.
At other times, the
communion was in silence.
At all
times..........it remained the Duet of One.
The arising of
practice..........it's run and finally it's end or cessation,
whether temporarily or permanently......
.....are all nuances of the movement, known as the moment.
These set of squiggly
signs getting transmitted through routers and servers and modems
and satellite systems
over cyber-space and finally appearing as pixels on a
PC screen...
.....are not the doings by somebody, for somebody else to read
and apperceive.
They are like
signatures on flowing waters.
Sketched by the same
flowing waters.
And being
viewed......
...... RIGHT NOW......
.... by the same flowing waters.
Dooooo Beeee Dooooo
Beeeee Dooooooo