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Nondual Highlights: Issue #2871, Saturday, July 14, 2007, Editor: Mark
Hello dears:
i hope you all are well and happy... everything going smoothly in
your life... even if things bumpy..up and down... up and down..
what's this? I was not expecting "that"! ... how
lovely, how horrible... up and down, up and down... it's a fine
show to watch, eh? what else can we really "do"?
one of old woman's favorite quotes:
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your
table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet,
still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to
be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your
feet."
~ Franz Kafka
that's true, you know?... just relax, let the teeter-totter do
its thing... and ecstasy, fantastic bliss will roll at you,
through you, in you, be you... and you won't even want a
cigarette afterward.
- dg, posted to DailyDharma
Recognize that your imagination and your thinking
and your sense perception are reed canes
that children cut and pretend are horsies.
The Knowing of mystic Lovers is different.
The empirical, sensory, sciences
are like a donkey loaded with books,
or like the makeup woman's makeup.
It washes
off.
But if you lift the baggage rightly, it will give you joy.
Don't carry your knowledge-load for some selfish reason.
Deny your desires and willfulness,
and a real mount may appear under you.
Don't be satisfied with the name of HU,
with just words about it.
Experience that breathing.
From books and words come fantasy,
and sometimes, from fantasy
comes union.
- Rumi, Mathnawi I: 3445-3454, version by Coleman Barks, The
Essential Rumi
Everybody wants to be free. What is the one impediment between
you and freedom? Craving. Desire or expectation for something
which is perishable.
You are devoted to that craving. Thus you are devoted to this
manifestation and its construction; craving that which is
impermanent leads to suffering, old age, and death.
Everone is involved in this craving for sense pleasures, and it
has not given peace to anyone. No one, from king to middle class
to workers, is happy. They are all chasing what appears and
disappears.
Craving for what is not real takes you away from the eternal
reality. Gods have everything, but still they are not happy.
You always have a light within you, but you don't turn toward it.
Instead you see this light shining on outer objects. You chase
these objects looking for the light. But you are only seeing
reflections of the light within. You run looking for satisfaction
from the objects that have caught the reflection of your inner
light.
You are hunting outside. This is called craving.
When you decide "Enough! I must be free," then the
function of the mind stops going out and clinging to objects in
search of happiness. It becomes no mind. The mind is only mind in
the fulfillment of its desires. When you desire something, when
you crave something, when you expect something, then it takes the
function, and its name is mind.
Stop it, and it is quiet. In this quietness, you can't call it
mind. So dam the flow of the river flowing outward. Energy is not
being wasted then. When it is dammed, it stops. Then it is quiet.
In this quietness, the river will be no river. You can't call it
a river now. Now call it a reservoir.
This reservoir, without ripples, is identical to your own light.
This light is inside your mind.
Now the mind is no-mind. No mind,no craving, no expectations, no
desires, no notions, and no ideas.
It is good to stop. Then you will see that you have found the
precious stone you have been seeking. Having found this, you will
be happy. You will be satisfied. You don't expect anything more,
because this is chitdarman, the fulfillment of all desires.
Chitdarman means you just think and it happens. Chitdarman, the
precious stone which shines by its own luster.
- Papaji, from Wake Up and Roar: Satsang with H.W.L Poonja,
Vol. 2
It's complete. Already it's simply timeless wholeness. And in
that aliveness, in that being arises the idea of separation. As a
tiny child, either at birth, or very soon after birth,
separation, the sense of being separate, happens. It's energetic.
Not an idea, it's energetic, it's called self-consciousness. The
only thing in the whole of this manifestation that is
self-conscious is a human being. Nothing else is self-conscious.
There's no such thing as a self-conscious tree.
The human being experiences separation and at the moment that the
human being experiences separation, the brain simulates a me
because of protecting itself from having to deal with the world
that's arising but seeing separate, brain sees the world suddenly
as separate, and the brain simulates a me in order to protect
itself from the body, from what's seen separate. So apart from
self survival, the brain develops a system of dealing with the
world for the me. And it grows up, obviously the child, with a
lot of other me's who also have this system of negotiating a
separate world and that becomes more and more sophisticated as
the child grows up.
And so the child or the person learns to find pleasure and avoid
pain and what we see in the world is that energy going on. This
self-conscious human being is looking for pleasure and avoiding
pain. And that becomes more and more sophisticated. Obviously
people look for lots of money, lots of lovers, maybe power,
whatever. But for many people that isn't enough, for some people
that isn't enough. And so people turn to religion because all the
time there is separation, there is a feeling of this isn't whole,
there's something missing, there's a secret that can't be found
for the separate individual. The separate individual is looking
for not being separate which is not wholeness but doesn't know
how to find that and doesn't know what that really means. So the
separate seeking is looking for something that it doesn't really
comprehend because it lives in separation and it sees everything
through a veil of separation. Everything that it looks at is
somehow separate from it. And so we religion, we have teachings
about enlightenment, we have therapy. All those things are an
attempt by the individual to find something deeper. To find this
wholeness.
The difficulty of that, the impossibility of that situation is
that actually there is only home. It's the open secret. What we
look for already is this. It's totally open. It's never gone
away. What we long for, beingness, wholeness has never left us.
But because we live in this belief in this dream of being
separate, we can't see that. So we think we have to find
something. And we search for something here and there through
meditation, through self-inquiry, through all sorts of teachings
that we learn about. We learn that we have to change ourselves in
order to find what we want and all the time that we're trying to
change our selves we're not seeing that what we long for has
never been lost. It's never left us. You go on searching and
looking all over the place. We go on and try to approach
something that doesn't need approaching. Always trying to
approach something that already is the case. Already there is
only oneness, already there is only wholeness. All the time there
is the seeker, the function of the seeker is to seek. The seeker
can't do anything else but seek.
Awakening, awakening in my terms--the way I use awakening, is
awakening from the dream of the idea that there's something to
find but nobody awakens. What happens in awakening is the seeker,
the activity of seeking suddenly ceases. The whole sense of
separation suddenly isn't there. So the artificial me, this me
that this play has created, suddenly is no more. It simply falls
away. Not through any sort of effort on the part of the seeker.
Simply, suddenly, there is no seeker. There is no separation.
Suddenly it is seen that already that which was sought is
everything. Already everything for no one. What is seen that all
there is, is what's happening, all there is, is aliveness, all
there is in this room, is aliveness. All there is in this room is
what's happening. Whatever's happening there is what you're
looking for. But what ever is happening, is happening for no one.
It's not anybody's bum sitting on the seat. It's not anybody's
breath being breathed. It's not anybody's blood being coursed
through the body. It is simply blood coursing through the body.
It is simply breathing. It is simply sitting on a seat. That's
all that's happening. All there is in this room is what's
happening. This is wholeness. (Laughter) I'm going home now. It's
totally and utterly simply this. We go on, you know the seeker
goes on thinking it's something else. It isn't something else,
it's this. But it is this for no one. That's the magic. That's
the drop. That's the end of everything. The end of everything is
the end of you. So although you may have come here tonight
thinking you've come here to get something. Actually, you've come
here to lose something. You came here to lose your life.
- Tony Parsons, posted to adyashantigroup
At some point there comes silent mind. And that can seem like It,
but it sure ain't. But eventually, like there is a tiny hole in
that silence, all the stuff still swirling in silent mind drains
out. And so eventually all that is left is what I like to call
Emptiness.
When all there is is Emptiness, then who's talking?
Because it does go on. All doesn't end just because all that's
left is Emptiness. There is still a life. But the
"person" is gone... all the contents of said person are
gone... vanished in that pinhole.
That life that still goes on takes on the appearance of a person
in so many ways. But it is not. It is something so different now.
And if I have any point, it's that there comes a point when all
that's left is the Emptiness, yet it still goes on.
And in its going on words are played forth. Speaking arises.
But the speaking is Silence speaking in Silence.
There is no substance any more.
There is no "position", no "standpoint".
Just endless reverbration of what can be never known but always
is.
- Bill Rishell, posted to NondualitySalon