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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3982, Saturday, August 14, 2010, Editor: Mark
All thoughts and emotions are not real. They are like the waves
that dance on the surface of the ocean for a few seconds or
minutes and then they return to where they have arisen from. Then
they are no more wave, but they are ocean. How long can a wave
keep its form as a separate personality?
- Papaji, posted to Distillation
Q: Reincarnation is probably my biggest issue with the Buddhist
teachings.
A: Buddha, number one, the Buddha, as a matter of fact a big part
of his teaching was refuting reincarnation.
Q: I didn't know that.
A: Yeah most don't. In fact alot of Buddhists don't even know
that. That was the hallmark of his whole teaching. That is what
distinguished him from the religion of the day. He said there is
nothing to reincarnate.
Q: How did that message get...
A: Because the Buddha was a really smart guy and the Buddha
didn't just get lost in dualism. So dualism is "there
is" or "there isn't." That's dualism, right? And
what he talked about was rebirth. Now everyone goes rebirth and
reincarnation are the same thing. By the way I don't really care
what the Buddha said. I only care about the truth. If what he
said happened to be true, great. If not, well then. Just cause he
says it doesn't lend it in my mind lend it instant credibility.
We all have to prove everything true of false for itself. Rebirth
is totally different than reincarnation. Rebirth is what you do
when you go to sleep at night and you have a dream and boom there
you are. And then you sleep for an hour and then boom you have
another one. And often time there are what we call karmic links.
Right? Chains of conditioning. Your dreams are in many senses
manifestations of your conditioning, or the stuff you got to work
out or whatever. Every once and awhile they come from a deeper
source. That's what's being reincarnated or rebirthed. Right? Not
an entity that is being transferred from one dream to the next to
the next to the next. It's not the 'me' that's being reborn, if
anything its the karmic tendency with no separate self anywhere
to be found. And as we all know in our life what has the most
potential to keep being reborn? Not even in a spiritual sense.
What tends to be reborn? We all know it...drama. Illusion. I love
you. I hate you. You did me wrong, da da da da. All this illusory
conditioning. This is what we call karma. This keeps being
reborn. You think its dead and all of a sudden, it's like those
birthday candles you just can't blow out. And so our own
ignorance has a tendency to keep rebirthing itself. But that's
very different then there is an entity that travels from one to
the other.
By the way none of this is important in terms of awakening,
enlightenment or any of that stuff. But its important to you so
that's why I'm talking about it.
Q: And its a mystery. It's one of the questions all religions
talk about. Where we go when this form...
A: Nowhere.
Q: ...expires
A: Nowhere.
Q: Explain to me what you're saying.
A: We go nowhere just like when we are alive, when we're here. We
are the light of consciousness. Pure spirit. Right? It's not
going anywhere. So the body drops, right, there it is (meaning
only consciousness is left)! It is where is was all along. And
then it's like if a body comes, okay, a body comes, wonder if the
illusion thing is going to happen again. But either way...
Q: So don't get stuck in the illusion.
A: Right. The mind kind of goes 'like where am I going to go?'
Subtle forms of mind can keep dreaming and create all sorts of
new worlds that don't really exist, to go to. Fundamentally this
light of consciousness it's here. The rest is sort of chugging
along. It appears, disappears, appears, disappears within the
light of consciousness, within spirit.
The more we come to realize that in our hearts, in our very
being. The nice thing is it's not that we have a simple
transcendent experience of Pure Beingness. That's nice, that's
beautiful. We realize we are the deathless. But also it frees up
this very fragile human incarnation, it frees it of fear,
contradiction. It frees it to actually be able to really
experience this miracle of this apparent world.
Q: Just let it be.
A: Let it be. And that's love. What flows out of us when we're
just letting things be? That's love, isn't it? The deepest
letting be. And you know who's the hardest person you ever let
be?
Q: Yourself.
A: That's it. Once you discovered the letting be for there...
Q: That's freedom.
A: The whole world.
Q: Thank you.
A: Thank you very much.
- Adyashanti, from Big Sword Swinging, disc 2, posted to
adyashantigroup
The psychologist says, "Own your own feelings."
The Guru says, "Be the very space in which your feelings are
arising."
Consciousness says, "Exactly who is the one who is doing all
of this feeling, anyway?"
- Chuck Hillig, from Seeds for the Soul, posted to
AlongTheWay
All spiritual teachings are only meant to make us retrace our
steps to our Original Source We need not acquire anything new,
only give up false ideas and useless accretions. Instead of doing
this, we try to grasp something strange and mysterious because we
believe happiness lies elsewhere. This is a mistake.
- Ramana Maharshi, from The Essential Teachings of Ramana
Maharshi, posted to AlongTheWay
Man's great illusion of happiness and suffering will never stop
except by the mind's learning to cease to act upon itself.
- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
When you don't require anything from the world and nothing from
God, when you don't desire anything, when you don't strive for
anything, don't expect anything, the divine will enter you,
unasked and unexpected.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
The Water You Want
Someone may be clairvoyant, able to see
the future, and yet have very little wisdom.
Like the man who saw water in his dream,
and began leading everyone toward the mirage.
"I am the one with heart-vision.
I've torn open the veil."
So they set out with him inside the dream,
while he is actually sleeping beside a river
of pure water. Any search moves away from
the spot where the object of the quest is.
Sleep deeply wherever you are on the way.
Maybe some traveler will wake you.
Give up subtle thinking,
the twofold, threefold
multiplication of mistakes.
Listen to the sound of waves
within you.
There you are,
dreaming your thirst,
when the water you want
is inside the big vein on your neck.
- Rumi, Mathnavi IV: 3226-3241, version by Coleman Barks,
from Say I Am You, posted to Sunlight