Time melting ... being quiet now... 'desires fulfilled breed more desires'

From "I Am That", Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj ~ Chapter 53

Click Here to listen to the following being read while you read along with it: http://charliehayes 36.tripod. com/iamthat54. mp3

Questioner: I must confess I came today in a rebellious mood. I got a raw deal at the airlines office. When faced with such situations everything seems doubtful, everything seems useless.

Maharaj: This is a very useful mood. Doubting all, refusing all, unwilling to learn through another. It is the fruit of your long sadhana. After all one does not study for ever.

Q: Enough of it. It took me nowhere.

M: Don't say 'nowhere'. It took you where you are -- now.

Q: It is again the child and its tantrums. I have not moved an inch from where I was.

M: You began as a child and you will end as a child. Whatever you have acquired in the meantime you must lose and start at the beginning.

Q: But the child kicks. When it is unhappy or denied anything it kicks.

M: Let it kick. Just look at the kicking. And if you are too afraid of the society to kick convincingly look at that too. I know it is a painful business. But there is no remedy -- except one -- the search for remedies must cease. If you are angry or in pain, separate yourself from anger and pain and watch them. Externalisation is the first step to liberation. Step away and look. The physical events will go on happening, but by themselves they have no importance. It is the mind alone that matters. Whatever happens, you cannot kick and scream in an airline office or in a Bank. Society does not allow it. If you do not like their ways, or are not prepared to endure them, don't fly or carry money. Walk, and if you cannot walk, don't travel. If you deal with society you must accept its ways, for its ways are your ways. Your needs and demands have created them. Your desires are so complex and contradictory -- no wonder the society you create is also complex and contradictory.

Q: I do see and admit that the outer chaos is merely a reflection of my own inner disharmony. But what is the remedy?

M: Don't seek remedies.

Q: Sometimes one is in a 'state of grace' and life is happy and harmonious. But such a state does not last! The mood changes and all goes wrong.

M: If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events. It is your restlessness that causes chaos.

At least it did not slow them down, as your kicking would have surely done! You want immediate results! We do not dispense magic here. Everybody does the same mistake: refusing the means, but wanting the ends. You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in yourself. Follow my advice implicitly and you will not be disappointed. I cannot solve your problem by mere words. You have to act on what I told you and persevere. It is not the right advice that liberates, but the action based on it. Just like a doctor, after giving the patient an injection, tells him: 'Now, keep quiet. Do nothing more, just keep quiet,' I am telling you: you have got your 'injection', now keep quiet, just keep quiet. You have nothing else to do. My Guru did the same. He would tell me something and then said: 'Now keep quiet. Don't go on ruminating all the time. Stop. Be silent'.

Q: I can keep quiet for an hour in the morning. But the day is long and many things happen that throw me out of balance. It is easy to say 'be silent', but to be silent when all is screaming in me and round me -- please tell me how it is done.

M: All that needs doing can be done in peace and silence. There is no need to get upset.

Q: It is all theory which does not fit the facts. I am returning to Europe with nothing to do there. My life is completely empty.

M: If you just try to keep quiet, all will come -- the work, the strength for work, the right motive. Must you know everything beforehand? Don't be anxious about your future -- be quiet now and all will fall in place. The unexpected is bound to happen, while the anticipated may never come. Don't tell me you cannot control your nature. You need not control it. Throw it overboard. Have no nature to fight, or to submit to. No experience will hurt you, provided you don't make it into a habit. Of the entire universe you are the subtle cause. All is because you are. Grasp this point firmly and deeply and dwell on it repeatedly. To realise this as absolutely true, is liberation.

Q: If I am the seed of my universe, then a rotten seed I am! By the fruit the seed is known.

M: What is wrong with your world that you swear at it?

Q: It is full of pain.

M: Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is all intelligence and beauty. Pain and pleasure are in the mind. Change your scale of values and all will change. Pleasure and pain are mere disturbances of the senses; treat them equally and there will be only bliss. And the world is, what you make it; by all means make it happy. Only contentment can make you happy -- desires fulfilled breed more desires. Keeping away from all desires and contentment in what comes by itself is a very fruitful state -- a precondition to the state of fullness. Don't distrust its apparent sterility and emptiness. Believe me, it is the satisfaction of desires that breeds misery. Freedom from desires is bliss.

Q: There are things we need.

M: What you need will come to you, if you do not ask for what you do not need. Yet only few people reach this state of complete dispassion and detachment. It is a very high state, the very threshold of liberation.

Q: I have been barren for the last two years, desolate and empty and often was I praying for death to come.

M: Well, with your coming here events have started rolling. Let things happen as they happen -- they will sort themselves out nicely in the end. You need not strain towards the future -- the future will come to you on its own. For some time longer you will remain sleep-walking, as you do now, bereft of meaning and assurance; but this period will end and you will find your work both fruitful and easy. There are always moments when one feels empty and estranged. Such moments are most desirable for it means the soul had cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places. This is detachment -- when the old is over and the new has not yet come. If you are afraid, the state may be distressing; but there is really nothing to be afraid of. Remember the instruction: whatever you come across -- go beyond.

Q: The Buddhas rule: to remember what needs to be remembered. But I find it so difficult to remember the right thing at the right moment. With me forgetting seems to be the rule!

M: It is not easy to remember when every situation brings up a storm of desires and fears. Craving born of memory is also the destroyer of memory.

Q: How am I to fight desire? There is nothing stronger.

M: The waters of life are thundering over the rocks of objects -- desirable or hateful. Remove the rocks by insight and detachment and the same waters will flow deep and silent and swift, in greater volume and with greater power. Don't be theoretical about it, give time to thought and consideration; if you desire to be free, neglect not the nearest step to freedom. It is like climbing a mountain: not a step can be missed. One step less -- and the summit is not reached.

~ ~ ~

"Stop thinking and talking and there is nothing you will not be able to know" ~ Hsin Hsin Ming

Happiness Has No Opinion

How refreshing, the whinny of a packhorse unloaded of everything!

--Zen saying

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The sound of one dog barking

Human beings understand too much. But what they understand is just somebody's opinion. Like a dog barking. American dogs say, "Woof, woof." Korean dogs say, "Mung, mung." Polish dogs say, "How, how." So which dog barking is correct? This is human beings' barking, not dog barking. If dog and you become one hundred percent one, then you know sound of barking. This is Zen teaching. Boom! Become one.

-Seung Sahn, from "Boom! An Interview with Zen Master Seung Sahn,"

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'Love' is a big word, of course. It is enough, I feel (whatever mechanisms are at play) to enter the feeling of BEING in this body, fully and completely embodied. Then, there is a tactile understanding of what is felt in THAT body, and THAT body, when the BEING in that BODY is also embodied/awakened. It also felt when THAT body is somehow blocked/restricted in its natural flow.

Some non-dual teachers make a lot out of the concept "there is nobody here" or "there is no-one here" - but if it is just an idea, just a concept, and not fully realised in the body, in the feeling, in the breathing out, then it is just playing with words.

The difficulties arise with language. I have one language, you have another, Rupert has another, and everyone else has their own vocabulary in all this. I feel this is perhaps the final frontier in non-dual meanderings ... opening up the language, and the sense of mutual trust, such that language is no longer a barrier. Instead, we look for bridges that cross the language barrier, we become less rigid in our thinking through what has been embodied, so that it is clearly and openly offered and received. In a way, the mind is not subtle enough to articulate completely in words what is felt deep down. Whatever language arises within 'you' or 'I' is bound to not totally resonate with the 'other' ... because of the way that language evolves within each of us in such a personal way.

When speaking about and refering to a traditional viewpoint/ philosophical stance, how do we bring that alive in the listener in such a way that fully conveys what we have realised through it as a vehicle of embodiment ... so that it is not just seen as a 'philosophical viewpoint'? And how can we be receptive enough to that traditional vehicle of embodiment, such that we overcome our resistance to it, and its terminology and methodology?

with warm regards
Roy

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Everything is new now for me.
My mind is new, the moon, the sun.
The whole world looks rinsed with water,
washed in the rain of I am That.

Lalla leaps and dances inside the energy
that creates and sustains the universe.

- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic

From "Naked Song", Versions by Coleman Barks
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Separateness

Where on earth would we find a boundary between us?
Would it be the air between us that we both breathe?
Would it be the skin on my body that is participating
in the exact same atmosphere as the skin on your body?

The idea of separateness is something we have to make
up, so we say everything that connects us doesn't count
because we can't see it. Of course, if the air weren't
there all of a sudden, it would become important in a
hurry. But for right now, we choose not to pay attention
to it.

Look and see how you make up separateness within yourself.
Look for your sense of "self' and "other." Notice how within
yourself, there arc many selves. Inside or outside yourself,
see if you can find a boundary.

From: 'Trying to be Human: Zen Talks from Cheri Huber'