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#3697 -
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
With Gloria on vacation, we may miss the occasional day, but you should be receiving five or six issues a week.
I spent the weekend at the Science and Nonduality Conference in San Rafael, California. The conference had a lively, vibrant spirit. It was not all about the speakers. There were experiential opportunities, movies, a party, a set time to meet everyone and chat, and of course the spacious lobby and other comfortable sitting spots and niches.
There was much opportunity to meet all kinds of people. I thoroughly enjoyed the conference and everyone I met, from the big names and the movers and shakers to the many who are trying to break into the nonduality scene. I spoke to college youth dedicated to breaking the taboo against nonduality in traditional universities; and I spoke to older people with their own plan for spreading a teaching of nonduality.
Nonduality is becoming more and more popular, both the word and the teaching. There is much further to go, but at this point nonduality has a life of its own. Still, it needs minds that are ever open, and critical voices, and they are present.
There will be another conference next year, so think about attending. I'll be keeping you updated in the Highlights.
-Jerry Katz
Jody Radzik (guruphiliac) on the Twitter backchannel, waiting to speak at the Science and Nonduality Conference 2009, after his talk, and quoting the other speakers in his session. Jody delivered a striking talk on folk myths of enlightenment. He burst every bubble out there. I'll be posting excerpts in coming weeks. The CD of his session sold out and I had to order my copy. James Corrigan was scheduled to be part of this session but had to cancel for reasons of family health. Hope to see James in the future.
guruphiliac I'm on next. Got a few jitters, but I've been rehearsing in my head for like 15 years.
guruphiliac Summing up Greg Goode: the container metaphor, Cartesianism, occludes personal nondual truth.
guruphiliac Whew! Mission accomplished. No visible anger directed at me.
guruphiliac Tomas Sander now on talking about joyful irony, based on dzogchen.
guruphiliac "Refute the sense of inherent existence" ~Tomas Sander
guruphiliac "There is no ultimate truth, so now you can relax..." Tomas Sander
guruphiliac James Swartz totally rules! A non-traditional traditional Vedantist.
guruphiliac James Swartz is cracking us up.
guruphiliac "Mind must be prepared to assimilate the teaching of Vedanta." ~James Swartz
guruphiliac I LOVE hearing James Swartz make fun of big-time gurus. g
uruphiliac James Swartz = my new hero.
James Swartz
http://www.shiningworld.com/Home%20Page%20Links/You%20are%20a%20Ghost.html
Existence is a vast unstructured ocean. For human beings… who have free will…there are no directions, nothing to hold on to. Better be a buffalo and just run off the vasanas…no questions asked.
You think you are solid and real but you
are actually a ghost, nothing more than a name and a form imposed
on the luminous substrate. And although you don’t
consciously know you are nothing, on some level you sense
it. You try to get things in this life and when you get
them they seem strangely empty. Nonetheless you hang onto
them but they always seem to run away. You take a healthy
bite of life and it dissolves in your mouth like cotton candy.
You have to love tripping to get enlightened. You have to
love that feeling of no control, just going where the drug of
life wants to take you because try as you might the gunas are
controlling, regulating and governing you. They have to
take care of everything and you are just one little cell in the
great cosmic body and you are useful to the total and it will
make of you what it will. It does not care what you
believe, what you think, what you want out of your false sense of
emptiness. And no matter how solidly you are able to
construct your little life here it is built on the shifting sands
of time. No matter how tight you structure your time to
keep from thinking about who you are, it is never tight
enough. The questions bubble up from the depths.
You don’t want to think about it but death is here every minute just waiting to obliterate you. And you don’t want this so you cling more and more desperately to the visible, to your mindless routines, your endless fantasies. In Tibet they have a lovely symbol of enlightenment; a dancing happy skeleton. You are already nothing…as a separate limited being you are dead as a doornail. You were dead the moment you were born. What to do but be happy! All the worry, all the attempts to be something, to achieve something, to hold onto something are simply pointless. At some point you accept it and start dancing…you are the grateful dead.
Enlightenment is the big picture. You are looking at life from eternity. Aeons pass before your eye and you find it all amusing. You see the billions of little beings scurrying around on the face of an insignificant planet rushing headlong into the jaws of death…read Gita chapter 11…and unlike Arjuna you know it has nothing to do with you. It is an entertaining movie playing on the screen of Consciousness…nothing more.
Enlightenment is too much for most people. So the dream of Maya…that you can lay up treasures on earth…appeals. Sure, it takes a healthy dose of denial…’moth and dust doth corrupt’ doesn’t fit your fantasy…but denial is hardwired. So you keep trying. You let the vasanas take you for a ride. And since you have an intellect you find very good reasons why you are doing what you are doing…to make yourself feel as if you were somebody or something. It’s a lost cause but that’s the way it is.