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Nondual Highlights Issue #2768, Saturday, March 24, 2007, Editor: Mark
When we talk about the witness in our verse,
we talk about you.
A pure heart and a noble demeanor
cannot compete with your radiant face.
They will ask you
what you have produced.
Say to them,
except for Love,
what else can a Lover produce?
- Rumi, posted to MillionPaths
Excerpts from Adya's catalogue just mailed out
The quest for enlightenment is the quest for truth or reality.
It's not a quest for ideas about truth - that's philosophy. And
it's not a quest to realize your fantasies about truth - that's
fundamentalized religion. It's a quest for truth on truth's
terms. It's a quest for the underlying principle of life, the
unifying element of existence.
In your quiet moments of honesty, you know that your are not who
you present yourself, as, or who you pretend to be. Although you
have changed identities many times, even in the course of one
day, none of them fit for long. They are all in a process of
constant decay. One moment you are a loving person, the next an
angry one. One day you're an indulgent, worldly person; the next
a pure, spiritual love of God. One moment you love your image of
yourself, and the next you loathe it. On it goes, identified with
one self-image after another, each as separate and false as the
last.
When this game of delusion gets boring or painful enough,
something within you begins to stir. Out of the
unsatisfactoriness of separation arises the intuition that there
is something more real than you are now conscious of. It is the
intuition that there is truth, although you do not know what it
is. Truth that has absolutely nothing to do with your ideas about
it.
A great Zen master said, "do not seek the truth; simple
cease cherishing illusions."
Seeking truth can be a game, complete with a new identity as a
truth-seeker fueled by new ideas and beliefs, but ceasing to
cherish illusions is no game; it's a gritty and intimate form of
deconstructing yourself down to nothing. Get rid of all your
illusions and what is left is the truth. You don't find truth as
much as you stumble upon it when you have cast away your
illusions.
But you can't stop seeking just because a master said to. Seeking
is an energy toward something. Spiritual seekers are moving
toward God, nirvana, enlightenment, whatever. To seek something,
you must have at least some vague idea or image of what it is you
are seeking. But ultimate truth is not an idea or an image or
something attained anew. So to seek truth as an objective is a
waste of time. Truth can't be found by seeking it, simply because
truth is what you are. Seeking what you are is as silly as your
shoes looking for their soles by walking in circles. What is the
path that will lead your shoes to their soles? That is why the
Zen master said, "Do not seek the truth." Instead,
cease cherishing illusions.
To cease cherishing illusions is a way of inverting the energy of
seeking. The energy of seeking will be there in one form or
another until you wake up from the dream state. You can't just
get rid of it. You need to learn how to invert it and use the
energy to deconstruct the illusions that hold your consciousness
in the dream state. This sounds relatively simple, but the
consequences can seem quite disorienting, even threatening. I'm
not talking about a technique here; I'm talking about a radically
different orientation. This is not a little thing. It is a very
big thing, and your best chance of awakening depends on it.
"Do not seek the truth; simply cease cherishing
illusions." And if you are like most spiritually oriented
people, your spirituality is your most cherished illusion.
Imagine that.
Question: It is elusive. What shall I meditate upon?
Bhagavan: Meditation requires an object to meditate upon, whereas
there is only the subject without the object in vichara.
Meditation differs from vichara in this way...
Question: Will vichara alone do in the absence of meditation?
Bhagavan: Vichara is the process and the goal also. "I
am" is the goal and the final reality. To hold on to it with
effort is vichara. When spontaneous and natural it is
realization.
To enable the sahdaka (seeker) to steer clear of possible doubt,
I tell him to take up the "thread" or the clue of
"I"-ness or "I-am"- ness and follow it up to
its source. Because, firstly, it is impossible for anybody to
entertain any doubt about his "I"-notion; secondly
whatever be the sadhana (practice) adopted, the final goal is the
realization of the source of "I-am"-ness which is the
primary datum of your experience.
If you, therefore, practise atma-vichara (self-inquiry) you will
reach the Heart, which is the Self.
"I exist" is the only permanent self-evident experience
of everyone. Nothing is so self-evident (pratyaksha) as "I
am." What people call self-evident viz., the experience they
get through the senses, is far from self-evident. The Self alone
is that. Pratyaksha is another name for the Self. So, to do
self-analysis and be "I am" is the only thing to do.
"I am" is reality. I am this or that is unreal. "I
am" is truth, another name for Self.
- Ramana Maharshi, excerpted from One - Essential Writings on
Nonduality, edited by Jerry Katz
There are no shoulds.
I can tell you what I do. I notice. I notice what happens, I
notice when I seem to be moving/acting from love, I notice when I
seem to be acting from delusion. Just noticing is enough.
Noticing when you lie. Noticing when you are cruel. Noticing when
you are generous and loving for no other reason than it is your
nature. And surrendering it all to the All, to whom it belongs.
- Jeannie Zandi, posted to adyashantigroup
Question: Than I can dispense with outside help and by mine own
effort get into the deeper truth by myself.
Bhagavan: True. But the very fact that you are possessed of the
quest of the Self is a manifestation of the divine grace. It is
effulgent in the Heart, the inner being, the real Self. It draws
you from within. You have to attempt to get in from without. Your
attempt is vichara (inquiry), the deep inner movement is grace.
That is why I say there is no real vichara without grace, nor is
there grace active for him who is without vichara. Both are
necessary.
- Ramana Maharshi, excerpted from One - Essential Writings on
Nonduality, edited by Jerry Katz
While the mind is centered in the body and
consciousness is centered in the mind,
awareness is unattached and unshaken. It
is lucid, silent, peaceful, alert and unafraid,
without desire and fear. Meditate on it as
your true being and try to be it in your daily
life, and you shall realize it in its fullness.
Mind is interested in what happens, while
awareness is interested in the mind itself.
The child is after the toy, but the mother
watches the child, not the toy.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That - Talks with Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to AlongTheWay
The world with all its wonders is nothing.
When you know this, desire melts away.
For you are awareness itself. When you
know in your heart that there is nothing,
you are still.
- Ashtavakra Gita, from The Heart of Awareness: A Translation
of the Ashtavakra Gita, by Thomas Byrom, posted to
AlongTheWay