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Saturday, October 6

GARY MERRILL

If there is any strategy, such as 'dropping the
notion of self', if there is trust in any thing,
which is tantamount to a solution, is this 'trust'?

Trust in anything is not trust.
Trust in nothing is trust

Trust can't be practised it seems
Relief then, is the end of this movement of self
End of trust in self.

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TONY AND GLORIA

TONY:
I don't disagree with that only with diversions to
indulge the senses and by extension the ego, so
perpetuating the attachment.

There is no last thought unless there is a last
life. The last thought of this life continues on
into your next, whether you die in your sleep or
not.

I think of the king who became a deer for a short
time for he loved the deer so.

We have to deny the human experience for it is the
whole purpose of being here, not to be here. It can
only be observed from a place of non attachment.

What is beauty but in the eye of the individual
ego, and thereby hangs the tail the ego. The
illusion that we are experiencing and enjoying.

Poetry, well I was a poet and so it is just a
diversion, but the ego is there.

Who am I, who enjoys? who isn't
enjoying?........ONS...Tony.


GLORIA:
.... Tony, you are the one who is introducing ego
into this by the assumption that it is only the ego
who can enjoy. No doubt, ANY activity or
experience, including the supposedly most
spiritual, MAY be co-opted by the ego, but t'aint
necessarily so. There have simply been too many
accounts of the opposite, like the Zen archer who
himself disappears into the shooting of the bow.
The athlete at peak performance can be an egoless
experience, conscious thought would just be in the
way, an obstruction. The artist painting becomes
simply painting happening. When you become the
music, where is ego? No individual ego is required
for any experience, neither is the assumption of
attachment to senses always valid, simply because
senses are involved in the awareness.

Perhaps you might reconsider how much you associate
the senses with ego? Just look at any young child
who has no sense of self to separate him from his
oneness with all that is. He is not *observing*,
there is as yet no thought of there being any
subject who can just observe, no one is there to
merge with objects of experience. A child simply is
in spontaneous unison, all experience pours through
him unmediated by any self-conscious thoughts; so
what he is - is only a state of natural wonder.
This is what can be recaptured and re-known anew;
to do so is the reason humans dance and sing and
make music. Really seeing a sunset, really seeing
anything, really feeling the rain, whatever brings
back the wonder, the oneness. And this is what
mystics like Hafiz are writing about in poetry. Art
is at its best when there is no ego present, either
in the making of it or the enjoying of it.

For once, just let it be...

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MATTHEW AND DAN

DAN: The one who isn't going to go for pie-in-the
sky talk about ending world hunger by shifting out
of making distinctions.

MATTHEW: .......oh, that dan, (dan berkhow phd?)i
should have known. Well, all talk is pie-in-the-sky
isn't it? Communicating ideas is usually done
through talk/writing.

DAN: "That which is unsplit" and "distinctions" are
one and the same.

MATTHEW: ........yes i agree. and distinctions are
still made by mind.

DAN: There is no mind making distinctions,

MATTHEW: ..........oh, look again my boy.
Everything we do is based in a distinction-making
mind. Ah, "show me this mind" you say. It can't be
shown any more than "that which is unsplit" can be
shown. But when you look at your actions, your
manifestations, you see the results of such a mind.

DAN: and that itself is the false distinction going
on in such talk about a mind that could end world
hunger. :-)

MATTHEW: ......... Believing there is no mind
making distinctions is about as pie-in-the-sky as
it gets and also there was nothing said about a
mind that could end world hunger. A mind could do
nothing of the sort.

DAN: When hungry, there is "hungry", there just
isn't a mind that knows that it has hunger.

MATTHEW: ........a mind has hunger? hmm. A body has
hunger, and the mind will make all sorts of
interpretations /distinctions about that ( I'm
goona make a ham sandwich with swiss,or theres
nothing good to eat in the fridge).

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