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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4118, Wednesday, December 29, 2010
How can the divine Oneness be seen?
In beautiful forms, breathtaking wonders,
awe-inspiring miracles?
The Tao is not obliged to present itself
in this way.
If you are willing to be lived by it,
you will see it everywhere,
even in the most ordinary things.
-Lao Tsu, posted to The_Now2
Know that perception involved with the duality of perceiver and
perceived is consciousness.
Know that awareness itself, liberated from perceiver and
perceived, is primordial awareness: the dharmadhatu.
- Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, posted to DailyDharma
Discover all you are not. Body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, time,
space, being and not-being, this or that - nothing concrete or
abstract you can point out to is you. A mere verbal statement
will not do - you may repeat a formula endlessly without any
result whatsoever. You must watch yourself continuously -
particularly your mind - moment by moment, missing nothing. This
witnessing is essential for the separation of the self from the
not-self.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
The real search isn't a search into tomorrow, or to anywhere
other than now. It's starting to look into the very nature of
this moment. In order to do that, you have to "stand in your
own two shoes," as my teacher used to say. What she meant by
"standing in your own two shoes" is you have to look
clearly into your own experience. Stop trying to have someone
else's experience. Stop chasing freedom or happiness, or even
spiritual enlightenment. Stand in your own shoes, and examine
closely: What's happening right here and right now? Is it
possible to let go of trying to make anything happen? Even in
this moment, there may be some suffering, there may be some
unhappiness, but even if there is, is it possible to no longer
push against it, to try to get rid of it, to try to get somewhere
else?
I understand that our instinct is to move away from what's not
comfortable, to try to get somewhere better, but as my teacher
used to say, "You need to take the backward step, not the
forward step." The forward step is always moving ahead,
always trying to attain what you want, whether it's a material
possession or inner peace. The forward step is very familiar:
seeking and more seeking, striving and more striving, always
looking for peace, always looking for happiness, looking for
love. To take the backward step means to just turn around,
reverse the whole process of looking for satisfaction on the
outside, and look at precisely the place where you are standing.
See if what you are looking for isn't already present in your
experience.
So, again, to lay the groundwork for awakening, we must first let
go of struggling. You let go by acknowledging that the end of
struggle is actually present in your experience now. The end of
struggle is peace. Even if your ego is struggling, even if you're
trying to figure this out and "do it right," if you
really look, you might just see that struggle is happening within
a greater context of peace, within an inner stillness. But if you
try to make stillness happen, you'll miss it. If you try to make
peace happen, you'll miss it. This is more like a process of
recognition, giving recognition to a stillness that is naturally
present.
We're not bringing struggle to an end. We're not trying to not
struggle anymore. We're just noticing that there is a whole other
dimension to consciousness that, in this very moment, isn't
struggling, isn't resentful, isn't trying to get somewhere. You
can literally feel it in your body. You can't think your way to
not struggling. There isn't a three-point plan of how not to
struggle. It's really a one-point plan: Notice that the peace,
this end of struggling, is actually already present.
The process is therefore one of recognition. We recognize that
there is peace now, even if your mind is confused. You may see
that even when you touch upon peace now, the mind is so
conditioned to move away from it that it will try to argue with
the basic fact of peace's existence within you: "I can't be
at peace yet because I have to do this, or that, or this question
hasn't been answered, or that question hasn't been answered, or
so-and-so hasn't apologized to me." There are all sorts of
ways that the egoic mind can insist that something needs to
happen, something needs to change, in order for you to be at
peace. But this is part of the dream of the mind. We're all
taught that something needs to change for us to experience true
peace and freedom.
Just imagine for a moment that this isn't true. Even though you
may believe that it's true, just imagine for a moment: What would
it be like if you didn't need to struggle, if you didn't need to
make an effort to find peace and happiness? What would that feel
like now? And just take a moment to be quiet and see if peace or
stillness is with you in this moment.
- Adyashanti, from Falling Into Grace: Insights on the End of
Suffering
When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure
witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and
stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the
two. The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining
oneself to be something: `I am this, I am that', continues, but
only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with
the witness snaps.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels