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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3444, Sunday, February 15, 2009, Editor: Mark
You are the Self, here and now. Leave the mind alone, stand aware
and unconcerned and you will realize that to stand alert but
detached, watching events come and go, is an aspect of your real
nature.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
The Novel of Life
When you read a novel, and you read about various characters, you
may like some and not like others. Or when you watch a movie,
think about your relationship with the characters. You might like
them; you might not like them—but you're not finding your
sense of self in them. You're not referencing your self-worth by
the characters in a novel or when you turn on the TV. You just
have your thoughts about them.
But imagine if you turned on your TV or you read a novel and you
actually completely derived your sense of being and your sense of
self from one of the characters. Immediately your perspective is
very different, isn't it? Now your perspective has gone from
something that's very vast to something that's very limited, seen
only through the eyes of the character. Sadly, that's how most
human beings spend their lives. They have this little character
in their mind called "me," and they're actually viewing
that "me" as personal when it's not.
The "me" is very impersonal, not meaning cold or
distant, but just meaning without inherent self nature, in the
same way that when you read a book, the characters are without
self nature. They actually don't exist outside of your
imagination. They don't even exist in the book, because the book
is just words. And without someone reading the words and bringing
it all alive within imagination, nothing even exists on the
printed page. It's all within the reader, all the life.
When the Buddha talked about the realization of no-self, he was
talking about the self that's an image in the mind being
completely seen through. And when there is no image of self,
experience has nothing to bounce off of. Everything just is as it
is, because there's no secondary interpretation. The one that's
interpreting is the one that's in pain. And that's the one who
suffers. That's the one who causes others to suffer.
The false self, the self that's an image in the mind, uses every
experience to measure itself: "How am I in relationship to
what's happening? Am I wise? Am I stupid? Am I clumsy? Am I
courageous? Am I enlightened about this?" That's the
movement of consciousness reflecting on an image of itself that
doesn't actually exist. It's always measuring each and every
experience, and then believing in the interpretation of the
experience rather than seeing "Everything just is."
Everything actually just is. From the perspective of
consciousness, even resistance just is. And if you resist
resistance, that's just what is. You can't get away from it. You
start to see that the only thing that goes into resistance, a
story, or an interpretation of what is - whatever it is - is this
mind-created persona. It's like a character in a novel. When you
read a novel, every character has a point of view. It has
beliefs. It has opinions. There's something that makes it
distinct from other characters. Our persona is literally this
mind-created character that's always making itself distinct. So
it always needs to evaluate everything against its preconceived
idea.
There's another vantage point. The other vantage point is not
only outside the character, it's also inside the character. It's
the ultimate vantage point that's outside, and it's also playing
all the parts from the inside.
That's basically what it means to really wake up: we're waking up
from the character. You don't have to destroy the character
called "me" to wake up from it. In fact, trying to
destroy the character makes it very hard to wake up. Because
what's trying to destroy the character? The character. What's
judging the character? The character.
So you leave the character alone. The character called you, just
leave it alone. Then it's much easier for the awakening out of
that perspective to happen.
You don't lose the character; you just gain the whole novel of
life. It's not like you lose anything. You just gain the whole
book. You gain the whole universe. As Buddha would say,
"Lose yourself, gain the universe." It's not a bad
deal. Or Dogen: "To know yourself is to forget yourself, and
to forget yourself is to be enlightened by the 10,000
things," which means to see yourself everywhere. Wake up
from your character, and then you see your self nature in all
characters - not just one, but all of them.
So we don't lose anything. We gain all characters. We just lose
the fixation, that's all.
- Adyashanti
I have stilled my restless mind and my heart is radiant,
for in Thatness I have seen beyond Thatness,
in company I have seen the Comrade Himself,
Living in bondage, I have set myself free,
I have broken away from the clutch of all narrowness,
I have attained the unattainable,
and my heart is colored with the color of love.
- Kabir, posted to DailyDharma