Nonduality Salon Highlights, #2741

Q: How much "ego" do I need?
A: Just enough so that you don't step in front of a bus.

--Shunryu Suzuki
posted to Advaita To Zen

Nowadays it's easy to see that we are this formless
intelligence inside. Yet so many of us, in our innocence,
still think that thought is thought, and that it's an object,
and that it's going to be there for eternity, yacking away
about nothing, bothering us.

Now, if we are not who we are, how come everything else
is who they are? Wouldn't it make more sense to say,
"Well, if I'm not my role, maybe nothing else is its role."

And rather than wondering what that role is, just ask it
directly, "Who are you?" It's so much faster than trying
to figure it out.

One of thought's functions is to project onto you,
because you have no form. It has to come up with
projection after projection, and just in case you relax
out of your role it has to create an diversion, quickly.

So ask it, "Who are you?"
Curiosity is the way wisdom gets revealed inside. It is the
forerunner of wisdom. Curiosity arises and, if you sit with
it, connected right underneath is the wisdom. They are
not two.

Each one of these servants inside, from the most
irritating of emotions, can reveal an incredible amount of
wisdom when you interview it. First of all they show you
their functions, and if you have ever had curiosity about
how creation was created, or how bodies function, or
what the nature of emotion is, or the nature of thought,
or the nature of wisdom, all of it is there. These are
amazing biocomputers, and you can ask and they will
reveal anything you want to know.

Be really tender with thought. The pressure we put on it
is extraordinary. It's only because thought is also the
great mystery that it is able to function with all that
pressure of disapproval and dislike and aversion and "I
wish you would be quiet" - and all our rude projections:
that you are not spiritual and you are the only thing
keeping me from my freedom, and would you please just
shut up!

That is why in all the great spiritual traditions, at their
heart is tenderness - just to be kind inside, and then
everything rights itself. Fear rests. Confusion rests.
Everything that was perturbing the system rests. Because
they know that when you are tender inside you no longer
need their services, because you have returned to your
true nature."

The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the
fish are caught, the trap is forgotten.

The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When
the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas
are grasped, the words are forgotten.

In our souls everything
moves guided by a mysterious hand.
We know nothing of our own souls
that are ununderstandable and say nothing.
The deepest words
of the wise man teach us
the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows
or the sound of the water when it is flowing.

Nearing Hao-pa

By Yuan Mei
(1716 - 1798)

English version by J. P. Seaton

(I saw in the mist a little village of a few tiled roofs and joyfully admired it.)

There's a stream, and there's bamboo,
there's mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hid, clouded hamlet,
a mild, tranquil place.
Just a few tilled acres.
Just a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I
have to live, to get
that simple.

-- from A Drifting Boat: Chinese Zen Poetry, Edited by J. P. Seaton / Edited by Dennis Maloney

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