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Nondual
Highlights: Issue #2898, Saturday, August 11, 2007
I have noticed that even when meditating I'm telling myself
stories. We're always telling ourselves a story. That's the
autobiography of Samsara. Telling ourselves a story: Where I've
been and where I'm going and what it means and what I'm getting
out of it and every variation on that theme. Even when we're
sitting, we're telling ourselves some story: "Oh, this is a
good one." Or, more often, "This is not a good
one!" They're equal, those two stories, regardless of the
content. Or, "This would be a good one if the person in
front of me would stop moving or if my knee didn't hurt." Or
whatever it is this hour. Always telling ourselves a story.
Awareness is curative. The more we are aware of it, we might get
tired of the story-telling. It can be amusing and we can enjoy
it, but we don't have to be so invested in it as if without the
story nothing would be real. Actually, it's quite the opposite:
With the story, we lose the reality that is there. The story is
obscuring it. The story is covering it up. So we're all telling
ourselves the story of who and what we are. Every moment, if we
check - and I was looking into my own mind - we are always
telling a story through concepts, which are not the reality
itself, they're just overlaid on reality, like maps that outline
the territory but are not the real territory. Telling ourselves
stories endlessly. I think it would be interesting to look into
the practice of everyday life, into what story we're telling
ourselves now. Like, "Oh, I've come a long way so I can just
indulge in this now." As if there is some real meaning in
that. If you want to indulge, just go ahead. We don't have to
make a big story out of it. That's just extra energy wasted, when
you could just be indulging straightahead!
Telling our story and then inevitably telling others' stories,
and if they don't buy into our stories having fights and ending
up with wars about them. We can really settle back, I think, and
look into what we are really getting out of telling these
stories. See if it isn't just as rewarding, or even more so, to
just tune into the actual story, which doesn't depend on us to
tell. Just tune in and listen to the real story. Buddhism always
says nothing and empty and no-self, that everything's like a
dream, unreal, and all, but the positive side is what we would
call reality. In Buddhism we don't hear so much about reality, we
emphasize unreality because it's a deconstructive approach. The
positive side is freedom, openness, loving-kindness, mastery,
impeccability, genuine living, altruism. That's the reality. And
we're missing that story because we're telling our own story
constantly and then trying to pass it to others to reinforce our
own story-telling."
- excerpt from Dancing with Life, Dharma Talks, by Lama
Surya Das, posted to The_Now2
Emptiness from a Theravada view:
Say for instance, that you're meditating, and a feeling of anger
toward your mother appears. Immediately, the mind's reaction is
to identify the anger as "my" anger, or to say that
"I'm" angry. It then elaborates on the feeling, either
working it into the story of your relationship to your mother, or
to your general views about when and where anger toward one's
mother can be justified. The problem with all this, from the
Buddha's perspective, is that these stories and views entail a
lot of suffering. The more you get involved in them, the more you
get distracted from seeing the actual cause of the suffering: the
labels of "I" and "mine" that set the whole
process in motion. As a result, you can't find the way to unravel
that cause and bring the suffering to an end.
If, however, you can adopt the emptiness mode - by not acting on
or reacting to the anger, but simply watching it as a series of
events, in and of themselves - you can see that the anger is
empty of anything worth identifying with or possessing. As you
master the emptiness mode more consistently, you see that this
truth holds not only for such gross emotions as anger, but also
for even the most subtle events in the realm of experience. This
is the sense in which all things are empty. When you see this,
you realize that labels of "I" and "mine" are
inappropriate, unnecessary, and cause nothing but stress and
pain. You can then drop them. When you drop them totally, you
discover a mode of experience that lies deeper still, one that's
totally free.
- Thanissaro Bhikkhu, posted to DailyDharma
Ramana's great question was, "Who am I?"
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.
You don't ask it, "Who am I?"
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.
- excerpt from a Pamela Wilson satsang, posted to adyashantigroup
as a buddha's head
each ego petal opens
in surrender
- Kimly West
So far as past errors are concerned, forget
them and start afresh, as if it were your first
day in this body; but so far as your present
contacts are concerned, be kind to them, as
if it were your last day in this body.
- Paul Brunton, posted to AlongTheWay
Start walking
Towards the Light
Who gets up early to discover
The moment light begins?
Who finds us here
Circling bewildered - like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
And finds the moon reflected in it? Chase a deer
And end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow
One drop - now there's a pearl
A Vagrant wanders through empty ruins
Suddenly - he's wealthy
But don't be satisfied
With poems and stories
Of how things have gone with others
Unfold your own mythos
Without complicated explanation
So everyone will understand
The passage,
We have opened you
Now - start walking...
Towards the Light
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes a moment of feeling...
The wings you've grown
Lifting you
- Rumi, posted to Mystic_Spirit