Oneness and Duality

 

Oneness

Expressed
It loses its expression 

Defined
It loses its definition 

In its emptiness
It is the cradle of all existence 

In its fullness
It is creator of all things 

Ever empty
It surrenders into the mystery 

Ever full
It creates into the unknown 

Of one source, they differ in name
Yet both arise from the one 

Oneness beyond one
Herein lies the key to all mysteries

---

Duality

Beauty is seen only because of ugliness
Greatness is known only for its lack 

Emptiness and fullness are born of each other
Difficulty and ease create one another

Long and short grow out of each other
High and low reflect one another 

Sound and listening complement each other
Front and back follow one another 

And on it goes… 

Thus the wise pay no heed
Their acts without words showing the way 

So do all things flow without thought 

Creating without possessing 
Acting without attachment
Achieving without claiming achievement 
Existing without laying claim to existence 

Thus moves all life unto eternity

---

Tao Te Ching

The Way of the Wise

Chapters One and Two

Oneness and Duality

Taken from Lesson 20 of the Transformation Course,                            available at this link

The True Lover

 

Reflection 163

Welcome!

The wonderfully strange and happy fact is that this Self-seeing (which is perfect anyway) self-forgetting: with the result that (for example) the once painfully-self-occupied public speaker, now wholly occupied with the audience, talks fluently and spontaneously and unanxiously; and the once painfully-self-occupied lover, now wholly occupied with the beloved, loves similarly well. In falsely self-conscious loving, which begins by being inefficient and ends by being impossible, each is using the other for personal satisfaction; each is attempting to enjoy his or her own body instead of the other's - so the enjoyment dwindles. In truly Self-conscious loving, on the contrary, each is the disembodied enjoyer of the other's body; each consciously makes way for and is occupied by the other, feels the other, knows (in the biblical sense) the other - and the by-product or bonus is that physical enjoyment flourishes, perhaps as never before. 

(Douglas Harding. Quoted in Seeing Who You Really Are by Richard Lang)

 
Please send your comments to Richard

The Handling of Chaos: Motion Through Stillness

 

Commentary by TLB Staff Author: Lucille Femine

The planet being in terrible turmoil and confusion, what do most people do – myself included, though I strive to overcome it? We accept it while we insist: We will not accept it!

In other words, we resist and that is the road to the acceptance of misery, confusion and unhappiness. How can that be if we resist it? Well, our all too frequent reaction is really emotion of various kinds – anger, fear, hopelessness, grief, etc, exactly what the chaos is designed to create.

What happens then? We feed the chaos with all these emotions and it grows – like raising a child with hate and they become hateful. And the perpetrators of the chaos smile and think they have won. They think they have overcome their own deep-seated and shallow fear and hate has been overcome by holding the “enemy” at bay or destroyed. Now THAT’S a miserable life. Much worse than yours.

We engage in all kinds of activity to beat these evil forces – from reading and commenting with protests, opinions, letters to political leaders, writing articles as I do, etc. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these things and much needed.

But where should these activities come from? That is my gist and I will try to explain it to myself as I write to you. You see, that is part of the plan. The less we think, the more we know, even when putting and trying to put cohesive words on paper and cyberspace. It appears to be very analytical. But truly I had no idea what words and concepts I would write until I began to write them. And I refrain as much as possible from “thinking them up” before I type. 

This practice of reducing thoughts to a bare minimum (needed to wash dishes, go shopping and all that) should never be considered a “blank mind” in the traditional sense of the word – like stupid. That label has been administered by schools and families who stress that we need to accumulate “facts” as the estimation and growth of intelligence and ability to function.

Surely data is needed to get along in our day to day lives. But what comes first? Silence and stillness. In other words, lose your mind with all its pictures, words, worries, pains, conflicts, all from the past. What remains? The powerful essence of you in the present moment. We call it many things – God, the Supreme Being, the spirit, etc. All it is, really, is you in the moment, this moment as you read this.

What do we do in this state of mind – or no mind? We simply know and experience not only our true self but our environment, our world.

What does this mean in terms of the chaos and danger around us? We simply stay in the present moment as we read, study and experience this chaos and not allow ourselves to “be” the chaos, to succumb to it as though it is real or even inevitable. By agreeing to it all, we recreate in our minds and then in our lives and then in our environment and it becomes real.

(CLICK HERE to continue reading)

Wei Wu Wei - Bits and Pieces

From 'Fingers Pointing Towards The Moon':

It is less what one is that should matter, than what one is not.

* * *

The qualities we possess should never be a matter for satisfaction, but the qualities we have discarded.

* * *

It is not for us to search but to remain still, to achieve Immobility not Action.

* * *

There is no becoming. ALL IS.

* * *

The Saint is a man who disciplines his ego. The Sage is a man who rids himself of his ego.

* * *

It is only the artificial ego that suffers. The man who has transcended his false 'me' no longer identifies with his suffering.

* * *

We ourselves are not an illusory part of Reality; rather are we Reality itself illusorily conceived.

* * *

Are we not wasps who spend all day in a fruitless attempt to traverse a window-pane - while the other half of the window is wide open?

* * *

Detachment is a state, it is not a totalisation of achieved indifferences.

* * *

The notion that human life has greater value than any other form of life is both unjustifiable and arrogant.

* * *

Wise men don't judge: they seek to understand.

* * *

How many of the ways (disciplines, exercises, practices) recommended as helpful, or even necessary, for the attainment of Satori are not in fact consequences of that state erroneously suggested as means?

* * *

There seem to two kinds of searchers: those who seek to make their ego something other than it is, i.e. holy, happy, unselfish (as though you could make a fish unfish), and those who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation and play-acting, that there is only one thing that can be done, which is to disidentify themselves with the ego, by realising its unreality, and by becoming aware of their eternal identity with pure being.

* * * * *

From 'Why Lazarus Laughed':

Living should be perpetual and universal benediction.

* * *

Doctrines, scriptures, sutras, essays, are not to be regarded as systems to be followed. They merely contribute to understanding. They should be for us a source of stimulation, and nothing more... Adopted, rather than used as a stimulus, they are a hindrance.

* * *

Of the many earnest, and how earnest, people we may observe reading, attending lectures, studying and practising disciplines, devoting their energies to the attainment of a liberation which is by definition unattainable, how many are not striving via the ego-concept which is itself the only barrier between what they think they are and that which they wish to become but always have been and always will be?

* * *

Play your part in the comedy, but don't identify yourself with your role!

* * *

On the phenomenal plane we seek pleasure and the avoidance of pain. On the noumenal plane we know the absence of both - which is Bliss.

* * *

When you give a shilling to a beggar
- do you realise that you are giving it to yourself?

When you help a lame dog over a stile
- do you realise that you yourself are being helped?

When you kick a man when he is down
- do you realise that you are kicking yourself?

Give him another kick - if you deserve it!

* * *

Reality alone exists - and that we are. All the rest is only a dream, a dream of the One Mind, which is our mind without the 'our'. Is it so hard to accept? Is it so difficult to assimilate and to live?

* * *

Even the intellectual understanding of the inexistence of our 'selves' is a rare and bitter attainment which few even attempt. And that is only the elimination round which qualifies us for access to Reality... Intellectual understanding should be not indispensable to a 'simple' mind, but, with our conditioning, it would seem to be an almost inevitable preliminary.

* * *

Past and Future are a duality of which Present is the reality. The now-moment alone is eternal and real.

* * *

Spontaneity is being present in the present.

Spontaneity by-passes the processes of the conceptual (aspect of) mind.

Reintegration with Nature, which we are, is the recovery of spontaneity.

* * *

What we know as 'life'
is the analytical realisation
in the seriality of time
of our eternal reality.

* * *

We have only to eliminate the ego-notion by succeeding in the difficult task of understanding that it does not exist except as a notion.

http://www.weiwuwei.8k.com/bits.html

CLARITY

By Nathan Gill

"...That was it! Suddenly it was absolutely clear to me that these experiences - I call them transcendental events or experiences - actually have nothing to do with clarity. A transcendental experience can last a few seconds or ten years or maybe even the rest of your life, but a transcendental experience is just that. An experience. Many people have had these experiences and then the experience is gone and often the person is left with a desire for more of it. They think they have been given a taste of 'enlightenment' , when all that has happened is that they have had a transcendental experience. Walking down the street is an experience, but it's an ordinary one so you don't go looking for more of it.

The confusion was gone. I knew what I am without any doubt and it was obvious that I already had been that all my life. I no longer required any transcendental experience to prove it to me.

The whole of my 'spiritual' search had been added on to what I already am and I also understood why people are confused around this whole issue. Why they confuse 'spirituality' with clarity. This recognition of my true nature was not associated with any transcendental event or experience. It was clear that a transcendental experience of any kind is easily confusing if it occurs before you recognize with clarity your nature as Consciousness.

It is obvious that the transcendental event that was experienced had nothing to do with clarity of recognition. The occurrence of the event brought my confusion to a head and allowed me to see clearly how I had been subtly waiting for an event as permission to be what I already am.

I see now that no transcendental event has any significance in the light of the plain, ordinary, everyday clarity of what you really are."

Read the entire book HERE.

Trees are Happy for No Reason

My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.

~ Eudora Welty

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Fear is the cheapest room in the house.

I would like to see you living

In better conditions.

~ Hafiz

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Don't flail about like a man wearing a blindfold.

Believe me, He's in here.

Come in and see for yourself.

You'll stop hunting for Him all over.

~ Lalla (14th Century)

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Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.

~ Joseph Campbell

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In meditating, meditate on your own divinity. The goal of life is to be a vehicle for something higher. Keep your eyes up there between the world of opposites watching your 'play' in the world. Let the world be as it is and learn to rock with the waves.

~ Joseph Campbell

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Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

~ Osho

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This silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside

you, brings what you need.

There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in

myself did I come into this beauty.

Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, 'Be more

silent.'

Die and be quiet.

Quietness is the surest sign that you've died.

Your old life was a frantic running from silence.

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.

~ Rumi

Freedom "To" vs. Freedom "From"

...And this myth that I can rest in some assuredness. That I will  never again feel insecure or feel fear, or feel doubt, or feel those emotions we don’t want to feel. If I'm truly enlightened I will never feel those emotions.
Forget it. That’s not it. That's the pipe dream. That is the opium that is sold to the masses. And they eat it up and they never get there and they end up disillusioned.

Freedom is never freedom "from." If it's freedom "from" anything, it's not freedom at all. It's freedom "to." Are you free enough to be afraid? Are you free enough to feel insecure? Are you free enough not to know? Are you free enough to know that you can't know? Are you free enough to be totally comfortable, to know that you can't know what's around the next corner? How you will feel about it? How you will respond to it? That you literally can't know? Are you free enough to be totally at ease and comfort with the way things actually are? That's freedom.
 

~ Adyashanti

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You are not "in the now"; you are the now. That is your essential identity--the only thing that never changes. Life is always now. Now is consciousness. And consciousness is who you are. That's the equation.
 

~ Eckhart Tolle

If this were your only spiritual practice, it would be enough: to withdraw identification from opinions, positions, thoughts.

~ Eckhart Tolle

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Not to know is profound; to know is shallow. Not to know is internal; to know is external. 

~ Chuang-tzu

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To one who knows naught it is clearly revealed. 

~Meister Eckhart

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Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment; Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition. 

~Rumi

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Rejoicing in nothing and knowing nothing are the true rejoicing and the true knowledge. 

~ Lao-tzu

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All I know is that I know nothing. 

~ Socrates

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When you’re blind to your own nature, the Buddha is an ordinary being. When you’re aware of your own nature, an ordinary being is the Buddha.
 

~ Hui Neng

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Enlightenment is not about becoming divine. Instead it's about becoming more fully human. . . . It is the end of ignorance. 

~Lama Surya Das

SIT SILENTLY AND DO NOTHING

ZEN WILL BE YOUR PATH. Dhyana, meditation, will be your path... and Rinzai was one of the greatest meditators. His meditation is the simplest -- JUST SITTING AND DOING NOTHING.

IT IS THE SIMPLEST AND YET THE HARDEST -- because if people are told to do something, they can; even if it is difficult, they can manage to do. But when they are told not to do anything and just to sit, it becomes almost impossible. NOBODY KNOWS HOW TO DO NOTHING, nobody knows how not to do. People know how to do things; it is easier. Once the knack of it comes to your consciousness, you will laugh that it was so simple: one can simply sit.

So, start at least one hour sitting, mm? I will give you other groups that you can do, but make it a point that whenever you have time, to just sit silently under any tree. GO TO THE RIVER OR ANYWHERE AND JUST SIT. There is nothing else to do, just go on sitting for one hour. Thoughts will come -- let them come and go.

Rinzai's famous saying is: SITTING SILENTLY, DOING NOTHING, AND THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF. There is no need to do anything -- the grass is growing by itself. And so grows the soul... so grows the inner being!

~ OSHO

*********** *** *********** *** ***********

THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING AT HOME has to be spread slowly, so that for twenty-four hours you are at home -- waking, sleeping. But this is possible only if you learn THE GREATEST ART OF BEING SILENT. Then you are settled in yourself. Then your whole energy is turned into a silent pool, without any ripples.

AND IF YOU CAN ATTAIN THIS STATE... existence does not want you to fulfill any other condition -- this is enough. You will be accepted, welcomed... by all the mysteries and all the splendor of existence. Right now, it is a small taste. But I have made it clear to you why it is happening.

YOU HAVE TO TRY IT ON YOUR OWN. Just go into the forest and sit silently, or by the side of the river, JUST SIT SILENTLY. Or just here in the ashram, anywhere, sit silently -- just being alert of whatever is happening all around, not thinking about it... what this bird is saying. They are not saying anything; they are just feeling so joyous in the early morning with the new life that the sun has brought again -- one day more to dance, to sing, to enjoy the whole expanse of the sky.

Just listen to them, the way you listen to me, and you will feel at home. And slowly, slowly you have to learn that it is not a question of listening, IT IS A QUESTION OF THE INNER CHATTER STOPPING. Then whenever you find the inner chattering is starting, simply say, "Shut up!" ...and you will suddenly be at home.

ONCE THE MIND UNDERSTANDS that you have found something greater, something better, something higher... slowly it recedes into the darkness. Its function is fulfilled; it is no more needed; it is an unwelcome guest.

~ OSHO

Effortless Freedom

Enlightenment absorbs this universe of qualities.
When that merging occurs, there is nothing
but God. This is the only doctrine.

There is no word for it, no mind
to understand it with, no categories
of transcendence or non-transcendence,
no vow of silence, no mystical attitude.

There is no Shiva and no Shakti
in enlightenment, and if there is something
that remains, that whatever-it- is
is the only teaching.

~ Lalla

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"If you want God and you chase God, God will be out of your reach. If you stop and drop every concept of God, you are enfolded in the Living Presence of God."

~ Gangaji

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seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

~ ee cummings

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Acceptance is your inherent state, non-acceptance is artificial, fabricated.

~ Jean Klein

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There is no island of bliss to which we finally arrive post-awakening. The experience of Silence is always available, of course, and it is the background of all experience, but it does not REPLACE or NEGATE experience. It remains the birthplace of personal experience, which goes on just like before but without the personal attachment that used to make it so joyful or painful. We must keep our eyes open and move forward into whatever life presents from moment to moment, even as we rest as that Creative Silence. Such radical courage is what reveals that we are also Life Itself.

~ Richard Young

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There is another, sweeter power available to us all, regardless of how many words we know. It starts in the heart and is effortlessly spoken through the eyes. Sometimes, just for perspective, take a break and hear the music.

~ Gangaji

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Listen to your life.
See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.
In the boredom and pain of it
no less than in the excitement and gladness:
touch, taste, smell your way
into the holy and hidden heart of it,
because in the last analysis
all moments are key moments,
and life itself is grace.

~ Frederick Buechner

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The Treasure Chest of the Body

Everything we have ever fled from, as separated consciousness, is here, right here in our body, in our nervous system. We don't have to travel far to know ourselves, to meet ourselves.

This fleeing the body is what keeps us bound. And now we have an even more sophisticated form of leaving ourselves - the use of spiritual concepts. How frequently the mind tries to chew on these , in one more valiant, exhausting effort to get away from the 'ouch' of life, from what we are actually feeling, from the discomfort, the waves of angst that rise in the body.

Discomfort arising is a gift. It is the body's way of defrosting itself, of integrating the massive amount of old shock, separation energy that is stored there.

Don't deny your experience, even if you know at some level it's not real. Imagine telling an upset baby it doesn't exist. Where and how could that land. Let your experience become truly unreal by giving it the reality
and attention it first needs. It is through this body of ours that we come to realize we are not the body.

Presence and sensation with no ownership of any of it. Our sanctuary, our favorite resting place, our true resting ground.

~ Mags Deane

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in time of daffodils

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

~ ee cummings

Your Own Heart Is Waiting For You

There are still many gifts unopened from your birthday.

~ Hafiz

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Late Ripeness

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget -- I kept saying --
that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef -- they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

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"Immobility and silence are not inactive. The flower fills the space with perfume, the candle -- with light. They do nothing yet they change everything by their mere presence."

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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"This pure mind... shines forever with the radiance of its own perfection. But most people are not aware of it, and think that mind is just the faculty that sees, hears, feels, and knows. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing, they don't perceive the radiance of the source. If they could eliminate all conceptual thinking, this source would appear, like the sun rising..."

~ Huang-po

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Whatever you've been doing, you're using your mind to do it. And your mind will always fool you. It will make you believe you're getting somewhere. You're becoming something great. But it's really the ego. It is the ego that is controlling the mind.

~ Robert Adams

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The entire conversation around awakening, awareness, satsang, advaita, enlightenment, nonduality, etc. was a huge distraction from Love. It is only when I saw, very recently, the pride of "wanting to be special" that I realized how lost I was. I cannot be special. I can only be kind, loving, generous, honest, loyal, humble and diligent in my effort to distinguish the difference between Love and fear.

~ Benjamin Smythe

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Your own Heart is waiting for you when you're sick and tired and done scouring the landscape of illusion for the substance and love it can never give you.

~Mags Deane

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Oh lovers, where are you going?
Who are you looking for?
Your beloved is right here.

She lives in your own neighborhood.
Her face is veiled.
She hides behind screens calling for you,
While you search and lose yourself
In the wilderness and the desert.

Cease looking for flowers,
There blooms a garden in your own home.
While you go looking for trinkets,
Your treasure house awaits you
In your own being

There is no need for suffering, God is here!

~ Rumi

Listen to Your Life

If someone says, “To be enlightened you must fast and pray all night,”
Have dinner and go to bed.

If you see a sign, “This way to salvation,”
run the other way.

If someone says, "This book is the truth, you can buy it from me,"
Take your money and buy grapes and roses.

If someone says, "He’s talking tonight, thousands will be saved,"
Go for a walk… listen to the birds and watch the clouds, and leave your backpack, your Bible and your Buddha under a tree and hope they will be gone when you return.

Where we are going you can't carry anything, not even your name.

~ John Squadra

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Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way into the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

~ Frederick Buechner

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Mysteriously they entered, those few minutes.
Mysteriously, they left.
As if the great dog of confusion guarding my heart,
who is always sleepless, suddenly slept.
It was not any awakening of the large, not so much as that,
only a stepping back from the petty.
I gazed at the range of blue mountains,
I drank from the stream. Tossed in a small stone from the bank.
Whatever direction the fates of my life might travel, I trusted.
Even the greedy direction, even the grieving, trusted.
There was nothing left to be saved from, bliss nor danger.
The dog's tail wagged a little in his dream.

~ Jane Hirshfield

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Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.

~ Henry Miller

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As soon as the non-dual language becomes a strategy to manipulate, to try and get away from something, it has become something else. It is no longer on behalf of Truth. Content is nothing. The words are nothing without the Love they spring from. Love has no formulas. It can say anything or nothing, a little smile. It is not about the words.

~ Ramana Spencer

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You made me without name or trace, like the heart and soul.
And You made me hand-clapping without hands, like joy.
I said, "Where am I going, since my soul is in no place?"
You made me without "place" and moving like the spirit.

~ Rumi

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We are, what are we?
We know not, what we are!
For a moment we are blessed
For a moment we are accursed
Some moment we pray and fast
Some moment we are free spirits
Now we declare, 'Only we exist'
Now we declare, 'We don't exist'
For a bit, our heart is calm
In a bit, we weep rivers
Now we say, 'We are self-realized'
Now we ask, 'Who are we?'
'Sachal' we are only That eternally
What other contracts can we make here?

~ Sachal Sarmast

No Agenda Needed

The Self is not attained by doing anything, but remaining still and being as we are.

~ Ramana Maharshi

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Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save: they just stand there, shining.

~ Anne Lamott

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I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in the silence, and the truth comes to me.

~ Albert Einstein

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Strenuously seeking truth
by investigation and concentration,
one will never appreciate
the unthinkable simplicity and bliss
that abide at the core.

To uncover this fertile ground,
cut through the roots of complexity
with the sharp gaze of naked awareness,
remaining entirely at peace,
transparent and content.

You need not expend great effort
nor store up extensive spiritual power.
Remain in the flow of sheer awareness.

~ Tilopa

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Listening, non-directed attention, is the natural, the inbuilt functioning of the brain.

~ Jean Klein

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The Truth is the only thing you’ll ever run into that has no agenda. Everything else will have an agenda. Everything. That is why the Truth is so powerful. Give up your agendas and continue to expose yourself, and harmonization will naturally occur.

~ Adyashanti

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Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.

~ Chogyam Trungpa

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When there is a wound deep inside a person, he will try to share that with other people. What else can he do? You just recognize: "Oh, he needs compassion." Compassion is the only medicine. Unconditional love is the only treatment.

~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

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Your purpose is to be at peace, to love all beings, and to know who you are. This is the purpose of life. Slowly you will know this and get through.

~ Papaji

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Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner -- what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Jean Klein: The Seeker IS the Sought

Student: And during this stay there was a moment of enlightenment?

Jean Klein: Yes, it was a total switch-over from the residual conditioned state to the unconditioned state. Awareness expanded completely and I felt myself in globality.

Student: Had this ever happened before?

Jean Klein: No. There had been glimpses, but this was more than a glimpse. There was no going back. I had found my real ground.

Student: Did you know in the moment that it would be permanent or did you discover this in the days that followed?

Jean Klein: Because of the quality of the switch-over there was no doubt that I could be taken again by duality, and this was confirmed in the days and weeks that followed. I felt a rectification in my body and in my brain, as if all the parts had found their right place, their most comfortable position. I saw all events spontaneously appearing in the non-state, in my total Absence, real Presence.

Student: Could you say what were the exact conditions, physical and mental, before this moment?

Jean Klein: There had been, for two years, a retreat of all the energy commonly used in becoming, so that when some birds crossed my horizon, instead of becoming lost in them, they were lost in me and I found myself in awareness free from all objects. This time, what I admired, the birds, dissolved in my admiring, in Presence. And admiring dissolved in the Admired. Before the birds appeared, I had been in a profound and prolonged state of being open to openness. Now I found myself AS the openness, identical with the openness. Openness was my being. There was no more duality.

Student: Was there any other difference between this time and other times when you had looked at birds?

Jean Klein: Before, there was a looker looking at something. This was a moment when there was simply looking without a looker. Previously, it had been my nature to live in pure perception with objects, not living in the divided mind. I had for a long time ignored the arising of all qualifications.

Student: Ignored?

Jean Klein: It belongs to the traditional approach, and so that of my teacher, never to refuse or indulge in the coming up of qualifications, but simply to ignore, and eventually forget about them. neither to look for freedom nor avoid non-freedom. The mind simply ceased to play a role except in a purely functional way.

Student: How is life different now?

Jean Klein: There is no more identification with time and space, body, senses, and mind. All events simply happen in awareness.

Student: Did your relationships change?

Jean Klein: There was no more relationship. As there's no longer an "I", there is not another.

Student: Can this non-dual state be described at all?

Jean Klein: It is love where the mind is dissolved in love. The seeker IS the sought, and is always so very, very near.

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True detachment comes when things leave us of themselves. And they leave us as soon as we have really understood that they never keep their promises.

~ Jean Klein

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The natural state of the relaxed brain is multidimensional attention. It does not need viewpoints, data, opinions, memory to be alert. When all the directions cease, an organic, non-directed watchfulness remain.
This is the threshold of "I am."

~ Jean Klein

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"Taking oneself to be a person is a habit just like any other. It is the desire to be distinct from one's surroundings, different from others. The person exists when it is formulated as a thought, so we can see that it is nothing but a memory. Repetition gives it a hold, a locality in which to situate itself."

~ Jean Klein

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"Where there's an ego there is purpose. And when there is no sense of "I" there is no purpose. Life is purposeless. There's only beauty in living in the eternal. If you believe you are the individual "I" you are isolated from your surroundings, and this isolation brings feelings of insecurity, fear and anxiety. Then you look for goals. You worry and anticipate. Life doesn't need a reason to be. That is it's beauty."

~ Jean Klein

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"What any desire really aims at, is a state of non-desire. This non-desire is a state in which we demand absolutely nothing. Thus it is a state of extreme abundance, fullness."

~ Jean Klein

Charisma Does Not Equal Enlightenment

Selling Water by the River

In speaking regularly with spiritual seekers, it dawned on me one day how addicted so many of them are to the power of charisma. They swap stories about how powerful this or that teacher is and compare experiences. They get a charge from it, many mistaking charisma for enlightenment. Charisma attracts at all levels: political, sexual, spiritual, etc., and it feeds the ego's desire to feel special. The ego loves getting hits of power—it's like a form of spiritual candy. The candy may be sweet but can you live on it? Does it make you free?

Freedom is not necessarily exciting; it's just free. Very peaceful and quiet, so very quiet. Of course, it is also filled with joy and wonder, but it is not what you imagine. It is much, much less. Many mistake the intoxicating power of otherworldly charisma for enlightenment. More often than not it is simply otherworldly, and not necessarily free or enlightened. In order to be truly free, you must desire to know the truth more than you want to feel good. Because if feeling good is your goal, then as soon as you feel better you will lose interest in what is true. This does not mean that feeling good or experiencing love and bliss is a bad thing. Given the choice, anyone would choose to feel bliss rather than sorrow. It simply means that if this desire to feel good is stronger than the yearning to see, know, and experience Truth, then this desire will always be distorting the perception of what is Real, while corrupting one's deepest integrity.

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Enlightenment has nothing to do with states of consciousness. Whether you are in ego consciousness or unity consciousness is not really the point. I have met many people who have easy access to advanced states of consciousness. Though for some people this may come very easily, I also notice that many of these people are no freer than anyone else. If you don't believe that the ego can exist in very advanced states of consciousness, think again. The point isn't the state of consciousness, even very advanced ones, but an awake mystery that is the source of all states of consciousness. It is even the source of presence and beingness. It is beyond all perception and all experience. I call it "awakeness." To find out that you are empty of emptiness is to die into an aware mystery, which is the source of all existence. It just so happens that that mystery is in love with all of its manifestation and non-manifestation. You find your Self by stepping back out of yourself.

~ Adyashanti

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Today I Awoke

Today I awoke, finally I see the Self has re-turned to the Self.
The Self is none other than the Self.
I am deathless. I am endless. I am free.
The birds outside sing…
The birds outside sing and there am I.
The seeing of leaves on the trees, that seeing am I.
The body breathes, breathing am I.
I am awake and I know that I am awake.
Seen from the old eyes, everything is asleep, a game, a delusion.
But now I am awake. I am the play. I am the game. I am the
delusion.
I am the enlightenment I sought, looking everywhere.
Nothing is separate, nothing is alone.
I am all that I see. All that I smell, taste, touch, feel, think
and know.
I am awake and this awakeness is the same as Shyakyamuni Buddha’s.
Today the leaf has returned to the root.
I am all name and form and beyond all name and form.
I am Spirit, no longer trapped in a body.
I am free. I am free because I am awake.
So ordinary. Who would have thought ? Who could have guessed?
I am home. I am really home. Ten thousand life times.
Ten thousand life times but today I am home.
Ten thousand life times but today I am home.
This is not an experience. This is me.
I am awake. Finally, I am awake.
Nothing has changed, but I am awake.
Before I tasted the root many times and felt, how delicious.
Today I became the root. How ordinary.

~ Adyashanti: My Secret is Silence: Poetry and Sayings of Adyashanti

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Rest and Be Taken

When there is deep abundance
there is nowhere to abide.
There is nowhere to rest
or grasp onto
and yet there is rest

The sky abides
yet it never rests.
Neither can we say that
the sky is not always at rest.
We talk about the sky
as if it were something
as if it actually exists -
and yet we cannot say that
the sky does not exist.
The sky is nothing but
coming and going.

Everything is perfectly spontaneous.
The coming and going arise mutually
instantaneously.
If the true I is asleep
you will miss the point entirely
and you will continue to dwell
in the world of opposites.

So see the two as one
and the one as empty
and be liberated
within the world of duality.

At first it seems
as if begoing follows becoming.
But look even closer
and you will see
that there are only
flashes of lightning
illuminating the empty sky.

Life and death
becoming and begoing
are only words.
In order to save your life
you must see that you die
instantaneously
moment to moment
instant to instant.

Now where are you going to abide?
And where are you not abiding already?

Indeed there is nowhere
to rest your head
and there is nothing but rest.
So let go of all ideas
about permanence and impermanence
about cause and effect
and about no cause and no effect.
All such notions are dualistic concepts.

The Truth of what you are
is completely beyond all duality
and all notions of non-duality,
and yet it includes duality
and non-duality alike.
Like an ocean
that is both waves and stillness
and yet un-definable
as waves or stillness.

The truth of being
cannot be grasped by ideas
or experiences.
Both waves and stillness
are the manifest activity
or your own self.
But self cannot be defined
by its activity
nor by its non-activity.
The truth is
all-transcendent
ungraspable, all-inclusive
and closer than your own skin.

A single thought about it
obscures its essence.
The perfume of true life
is right in your nose.
There is nothing you can do
to perceive it
and yet you must do something.
I say:
Rest and be taken.
Rest and be taken.

~ Adyashanti: My Secret is Silence: Poetry and Sayings of Adyashanti

To read more poems:
http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/A/Adyashanti /index.htm#PoemList

http://www.adyashanti.org

The Most Important Thing

Words exist for meaning,
but once you understand the meaning,
you can throw away the words.

~ Chuang Tzu

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"A strange passion is moving in my head, My heart has become a bird which searches in the sky. Every part of me goes in different directions. Is it really so that the one I love is Everywhere?"

~ Jalal-Uddin Rumi

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"The most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing."

~ Shunryu Suzuki.

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"Saints and ordinary folks are the same from the start. Inquiring about a difference is like asking to borrow string when you've got a good strong rope. Every Dharma is known in the heart."

~ Hsu Yun

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"When we practice zazen [meditation] , all that exists is the movement of the breathing, but we are aware of this movement. You should not be absent-minded. But to be aware of the movement does not mean to be aware of your small self, but rather of your universal nature, or Buddha nature. This kind of awareness is very important, because we are usually so one-sided. Our usual understanding of life is dualistic: you and I, this and that, good and bad. But actually these discriminations are themselves the awareness of the universal existence. "You" means to be aware of the universe in the form of you, and "I" means to be aware of it in the form of I. You and I are just swinging doors.."

~ Shunryu Suzuki

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"Even when the light begins to dawn in zazen, we don't get attached to that either. If you start to see what the world is really made up of, if it comes apart in tiny glowing, luminous pieces for you, don't be attached to that either. It's important to just keep walking. It doesn't matter where you're at in the way--if you're at the beginning or far along-- the instructions are the same: Keep walking with an open heart while the wonder comes over you."

~ John Tarrant

On Being Ordinary

Don't try to understand what I'm saying. These are just pointers. I don't understand what I'm saying either. Pointers point to the state of direct realization but they're not a substitute for it.

~ Eckhart Tolle

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“The nice thing is that when you stop waiting for the mind to stop doing what it does, you start to realize it doesn’t matter how long the mind does what it does. There’s still this direct taste, this sense of being. So waiting is unnecessary. It’s just another concept.”

~ Adyashanti

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To say something meaningful,
Get in the circle of silent ones
And be silent.

~ Rumi

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I felt in need of a great pilgrimage
so I sat still for three
days

and God came
to me.

~ Kabir

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The desire to find the self will be surely fulfilled, provided you want nothing else. But you must be honest with yourself and really want nothing else. If in the meantime you want many other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges. Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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In Master Linji's time, some Buddhist terms were used so often they became meaningless. People chewed on terms like “liberation” and “enlightenment” until they lost their power. It’s no different today.

What is a True Person?

“As I see it, there isn’t so much to do. Just be ordinary—put on your robes, eat your food, and pass the time doing nothing.”

~ Master Linji

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Insight can’t be found in sutras, commentaries, verbal expression, or —isms. Liberation and awakened understanding can’t be found by devoting ourselves to the study of the Buddhist scriptures. This is like trying to find fresh water in dry bones. Returning to the present moment, using our clear mind which exists right here and now, we can be in touch with liberation and enlightenment, as well as with the Buddha and the patriarchs as living realities right in this moment. The person who has nothing to do is sovereign unto herself. She doesn’t need to put on airs or leave any trace behind.

The true person is an active participant, engaged in her environment while remaining unoppressed by it. Although all phenomena are going through the various appearances of birth, abiding, changing, and dying, the true person doesn’t become a victim of sadness, happiness, love, or hate. She lives in awareness as an ordinary person, whether standing, walking, lying down, or sitting. She doesn’t act a part, even the part of a great Zen master. This is what Master Linji means by “being sovereign wherever you are and using that place as your seat of awakening.”

We may wonder, “If a person has no direction, isn’t yearning to realize an ideal, doesn’t have an aim in life, then who will help living beings be liberated, who will rescue those who are drowning in the ocean of suffering?” A Buddha is a person who has no more business to do and isn’t looking for anything. In doing nothing, in simply stopping, we can live freely and true to ourselves and our liberation will contribute to the liberation of all beings.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Simple Enlightenment

Enlightenment is not about words and thoughts and concepts which can be doubted. Enlightenment is always Here.

By "Here" I don't mean this present space. Here is somewhere within where mind cannot reach. Presence is always Here and you are always That. This Here is not the opposite of "there." This Here is nowhere, it is your Heart. When mind is still all comes back to the Heart. All the cosmos is but a speck in your Heart.

Turn mind over into This Here and it is lost. Then only Light, Wisdom and Love remain and This you are not different or apart from.

~ Papaji

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I love Jesus, who said to us:
heaven and earth will pass away.
When heaven and earth have passed away,
my word will still remain.
What was your word, Jesus?
Love? Forgiveness? Affection?
All your words were
one word: Wakeup.

~ Antonio Machado

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Ninth Duino Elegy

Praise the world to the angel: leave the unsayable aside.
Your exalted feelings do not move him.
In the universe, where he feels feelings, you are a beginner.
Therefore show him what is ordinary, what has been
shaped from generation to generation, shaped by hand and eye.
Tell him of things. He will stand still in astonishment,
the way you stood by the ropemaker in Rome
or beside the potter on the Nile.
Show him how happy a thing can be, how innocent and ours,
how even a lament takes pure form,
serves as a thing, dies as a thing,
while the violin, blessing it, fades.

And the things, even as they pass,
understand that we praise them.
Transient, they are trusting us
to save them - us, the most transient of all.
As if they wanted in our invisible hearts
to be transformed
into - oh, endlessly - into us.

Earth, isn't this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?
Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly
there's nothing left outside us to see?
What, if not transformation,
is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,
I want that too. Believe me,
no more of your springtimes are needed
to win me over - even one flower
is more than enough. Before I was named
I belonged to you. I seek no other law
but yours, and know I can trust
the death you will bring.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

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I clean my teeth in water drawn from a cold well;
And while I brush my clothes, I purify my mind;
Then, slowly turning pages in the Tree-Leaf Book,
I recite, along the path to the eastern shelter.
...The world has forgotten the true fountain of this teaching
And people enslave themselves to miracles and fables.
Under the given words I want the essential meaning,
I look for the simplest way to sow and reap my nature.
Here in the quiet of the priest's temple courtyard,
Mosses add their climbing colour to the thick bamboo;
And now comes the sun, out of mist and fog,
And pines that seem to be new-bathed;
And everything is gone from me, speech goes, and reading,
Leaving the single unison.

Liu Zongyuan
773–819

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The Art of Seeking

"Time is ticking. Fast, hurry, seek what you are trying to find!"

That is what I said to myself when my seeking hit the roof. I had to do something in order to achieve enlightenment.

It all started when I was 18 years. I started doing meditation after listening to a new age program on the Dutch radio station. I am 33 now and I did not know anything about enlightenment or spirituality or whatever you want to name it. So there I was, meditating for 5 minutes each day. Thoughts were all over the place, scattered as if they came from a bombshell. I read about Buddhism online and I did not understand anything about what they said.

I didn't know anything about God/Brahman/ Life itself. I was never a believer in the catholic God and thought going to church was kind of ignorance.
Going to heaven after I die? Was it my fault that I was born?
So I turned on the TV one night and Osho (an Indian mystic) said the following words 'you are not the doer, you are a watcher'. This trying to figure out who the doer was started right there that night.

So time flew but enlightenment and Self realization did not make any sense. When I was 27 or so, I typed the question on Google "who am I?" I came to an advaita site of Ramana Maharshi. It sounded good to me. As I went to YouTube, I found other advaita/non- duality teachers talk about it. When I listened to Tony Parsons saying 'everything just happens for no one', something clicked. Surely, hearing, smelling and feeling were happening on their own accord. If ever enlightenment was that easy! I couldn't believe it. I thought I had it. I thought that it happened to someone.

Darkness, separation and no Brahman/Source/ Life to be found anywhere!

Help! I saw myself as a separate doer, doing stuff in life, not knowing that that very thought of being a doer also was just perfectly happening on its own accord. SO I believed in this whole seeking mind game and all of its diverse thoughts. One day the mind started to talk in the 'you' form. So I wondered. Are there two separate selves?

But very recently things started to change. I had glimpses. They went away as fast as they came. I should be happy knowing that I was enlightened. I had it in my hands! I finally arrived.

Reality check!

Who is it that becomes enlightened?

Who is it that wants to get rid of the doer?

Who is it that seeks?

Isn't it so that all of these divine things are also happening perfectly?

So yes, writing this post is happening on by itself. And there is something still 'knowing' that it happens that doesn't require effort and pain. It is there.

This/Life itself is a knowing which knows:

- itching sensation on my left leg
- deep inhalation
- sounds
- tapping
- legs crossed on the ground
- coldness on the nose
- a thought saying ' if there is no one, who or better say what knows that this very thought is happening'
- smile
- humming of the PC
- moistening of lips
- blinking
- another thought saying why I wasn't aware of the blinking before
- laughter
- another thought saying that there is a noticing/ knowing that knows that I wasn't aware if there is an I!

So all of these things seem to happen and the 'you' cannot figure out this doership. You cannot surrender either or let go. It happens or not. In my case seeking was an obsession, like a day-job. The pre-thought 'I am going to wiggle my toe whenever I want' was my seeking experiment for 2 years but step by step in the story of Javier (if there is a step by step), there was an understanding that subtle actions were happening too, including concentration, sending imaginary signals to the toe, closing the eyes and forcing it to move the toe. Hilarious really but just OK. So there seems to be a process here NOW of dismantling subtle layers of belief and subtle thoughts of identification. So self inquiry into the doership can be the way. Or more correctly, there is no way ... there is only 'waying' by no one.

Life is living you. You are not having a Life. Of course, don't say this to an apparent anyone who believes they are separate. 'You' might end up in a separate isolation room!

It couldn't have happened in another way. So trust what you know or don't know. It is one big paradox!

~ Javier

http://beyond- advaita.blogspot .com/2011/ 04/art-of- seeking-by- javier.html

Another Great Video from Benjamin Smythe

Authentic Inquiry

What is inquiry, really? This is a good question. And like most really good questions, it is very basic. Authentic inquiry is allowing yourself to care, to take on the weightless burden of caring. Everyone knows what it’s like to inquire out of intellectual interest—asking for the sake of asking or because you think you should. This is not caring. When you care about something, it gets inside of you. It gets inside the shell that keeps you from being affected or bothered, the shell that keeps anything really new from happening.

So in the beginning, to deeply inquire about anything, you have to care about it. You have to care enough to allow it to get inside that shell. What do you really care about? What pulls you into here and now, this minute? What is the most important thing to you? For real inquiry, it is important to be asking about something you sincerely care about. The question needs to be personal, not about a spiritual teaching or something that’s outside of your experience. It needs to be something that’s coming from the inside.

When you care, you care from the inside. Many people impose ideas from the outside upon themselves, but this isn’t inquiry. When you really care, you enter a love affair with what you care about. Sometimes it draws you into bliss, sometimes into confusion. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know where you are going. You feel a bit out of control. You’re letting this caring get under your skin. To find out that you care like this is the most important thing; otherwise you can spend your whole life caring about what someone else says you should care about.

Like many people, you may be afraid to find out how much you care because that caring could just steal you away. What is the one thing that will matter the most at the end of your life? Without it, you would say: “That’s what it was all about and I missed it.” If you had the best job, lots of money, the perfect lover, or whatever your ideal is, and suddenly your life was over, what would still be left undone? That’s what it’s all about.

When you find that kind of caring, inquiry has some power behind it. You also find your own inner integrity. You find something inside that’s stable. There’s a place inside you that is willing to be a little crazy—crazy enough to take inquiry seriously and hold nothing sacred. Holding nothing sacred means that nothing is assumed to be true and all of your assumptions are fair game. The more spiritual they are, the more they are fair game. Ultimately it is your most sacred and unquestioned assumptions about yourself, others, and life that are most important to question.

Many people find their spirituality taking them outward. They think they are going inward because they have heard the spiritual teaching, “Inquire and look within.” Meanwhile, they are out in the stars somewhere looking for someone else’s experience, looking for the right experience, or looking for the experience they believe they are supposed to have. This is spirituality going entirely in the wrong direction. Inquiry is a means of taking you back to yourself, back to your experience.

When inquiry is authentic, it brings you into the experience of here and now, bringing you to the full depth of it, pulling you into it. The question pulls you back into the mystery of your experience. “What am I?” takes you right back into the mystery. If your mind is honest, it knows it doesn’t have the answer. You ask, “What am I?” and instantly, there is silence. Your mind doesn’t know. And when it doesn’t know, there is an experience right here, right now, that is alive. You bump into nothingness inside—that no-thing, that absolute nothingness which your mind can’t know.

The answer does not come in the form of a description or phrase; it is a direct experience. And this experience, your livingness, always transcends any words or intellectual answer. In fact, the truth of your being is eternally transcending itself. As soon as it projects itself out as something, even as a profound insight, it has already transcended it. So eventually the inquiry wears itself out. You wear yourself out. You wear your ego self out. You wear your spiritual self out. You wear it all out. You’ve inquired yourself out of this whole thing, and you’re disappearing faster than you can put yourself together.

As Nisargadatta Maharaj said so brilliantly and beautifully, “The ultimate understanding is that there is no ultimate understanding.” When it’s in the head, it’s an impressive piece of understanding; when it’s in the heart, as the Buddha said, it’s extinguished. You find a living experience of being, empty of content, empty of you. This is where spiritual awakening begins. This is the living answer of authentic inquiry.

© Adyashanti 2007

http://www.adyashan ti.org/index. php?file= writings_ inner&writingid= 32

"The Heart Jewel of the Fortunate" Dudjom Rimpoche's Personal Advice on Dzogchen Praxis

"The Great Master of Oddiyana once said:
Don’t investigate the root of things,
Investigate the root of Mind!
Once the mind’s root has been found,
You’ll know one thing, yet all is thereby freed.
But if the root of Mind you fail to find,
You will know everything but nothing understand."

When you start to meditate on your mind, sit up with your body straight, allowing your breath to come and go naturally. Gaze into the space in front of you with eyes neither closed nor wide open. Think to yourself that for the sake of all beings who have been your mothers, you will watch awareness, the face of Samantabhadra. Pray strongly to your root teacher, who is inseparable from Padmasambhava, the Guru from Oddiyana, and then mingle your mind with his. Settle in a balanced, meditative state.

Once you are settled, however, you will not stay long in this empty, clear state of awareness. Your mind will start to move and become agitated. It will fidget and run here, there, and everywhere, like a monkey. What you are experiencing at this point is not the nature of the mind but only thoughts. If you stick with them and follow them, you will find yourself recalling all sorts of things, thinking about all sorts of needs, planning all sorts of activities. It is precisely this kind of mental activity that has hurled you into the dark ocean of samsara in the past, and there’s no doubt it will do so in the future. It would be so much better if you could cut through the ever spreading, black delusion of your thoughts.

What if you are able to break out of your chain of thoughts? What is awareness like? It is empty, limpid stunning, light, free, joyful! It is not something bounded or demarcated by its own set of attributes. There is nothing in the whole of samsara and nirvana that it does not embrace. From time without beginning, it is within us, inborn. We have never been without it, yet it is wholly outside the range of action, effort, and imagination.

But what, you will ask, is it like to recognize awareness, the face of rigpa? Although you experience it, you simply cannot describe it – it would be like a dumb man trying to describe his dreams! It is impossible to distinguish between yourself resting in awareness and the awareness you are experiencing. When you rest quite naturally, nakedly, in the boundless state of awareness, all those speedy, pestering thoughts that would not stay quiet even for an instant – all those memories, all those plans that cause you so much trouble – lose their power. They disappear in the spacious, cloudless sky of awareness. They shatter, collapse, vanish. All their strength is lost in awareness.

You actually have this awareness within you. It is the clear, naked wisdom of dharmakaya. But who can introduce you to it? On what should you take your stand? What should you be certain of? To begin with, it is your teacher who shows you the state of your awareness. And when you recognize it for yourself, it is then that you are introduced to your own nature. All the appearances of both samsara and nirvana are but the display of your own awareness; take your stand upon awareness alone. Just like the waves that rise up out of the sea and sink back into it, all thoughts that appear sink back into awareness. Be certain of their dissolution, and as a result you will find yourself in a state utterly devoid of both meditator and something meditated upon - completely beyond the meditating mind.

"Oh, in that case," you might think, "there’s no need for meditation." Well, I can assure you that there is a need! The mere recognition of awareness will not liberate you. Throughout your lives from beginningless time, you have been enveloped in false beliefs and deluded habits. From then till now you have spent every moment as a miserable, pathetic slave of your thoughts! And when you die, it’s not at all certain where you will go. You will follow your karma, and you will have to suffer. This is the reason why you must meditate, continuously preserving the sate of awareness you have been introduced to. The omniscient Longchenpa has said, "You may recognize your own nature, but if you do not meditate and get used to it, you will be like a baby left on a battlefield: you’ll be carried off by the enemy, the hostile army of your own thoughts!" In general terms, meditation means becoming famiIiar with the state of resting in the primordial uncontrived nature, through being spontaneously, naturally, constantly mindful. It means getting used to leaving the state of awareness alone, divested of all distraction and clinging.

How do we get used to remaining in the nature of the mind? When thoughts come while you are meditating, let them come; there’s no need to regard them as your enemies. When they arise, relax in their arising. On the other hand, if they don’s arise, don’t be nervously wondering whether or not they will. Just rest in their absence. If big, well-defined thoughts suddenly appear during your meditation, it is easy to recognize them. But when slight, subtle movements occur, it is hard to realize that they are there until much later. This is what we call namtok wogyu, the undercurrent of mental wandering. This is the thief of your meditation, so it is important for you to keep a close watch. If you can be constantly mindful, both in meditation and afterward, when you are eating, sleeping, walking, or sitting, that’s it – you’ve got it right!

"The great master Guru Rinpoche has said:
A hundred things may be explained, a thousand told,
But one thing only should you grasp.
Know one thing and everything is freed-
Remain within your inner nature, your awareness!"

It is also said that if you do not meditate, you will not gain certainty: if you do, you will. But what sort of certainty? If you meditate with a strong, joyful endeavor, signs will appear showing that you have become used to staying in your nature. The fierce, tight clinging that you have to dualistically experienced phenomena will gradually loosen up, and your obsession with happiness and suffering, hopes and fears, and so on, will slowly weaken. Your devotion to the teacher and your sincere trust in his instructions will grow. After a time, your tense, dualistic attitudes will evaporate and you will get to the point where gold and pebbles, food and filth, gods and demons, virtue and nonvirtue, are all the same for you-you’ll be at a loss to choose between paradise and hell! But until you reach that point (while you are still caught in the experiences of dualistic perception), virtue and nonvirtue, buddhafields and hells, happiness and pain, actions and their results – all this is reality for you. As the Great Guru has said, "My view is higher than the sky, but my attention to actions and their results is finer than flour."

So don’t go around claiming to be some great Dzogchen meditator when in fact you are nothing but a farting lout, stinking of alcohol and rank with lust!

It is essential for you to have a stable foundation of pure devotion and samaya, together with a strong, joyful endeavor that is well balanced, neither too tense nor too loose. If you are able to meditate, completely turning aside from the activities and concerns of this life, it is certain that you will gain the extraordinary qualities of the profound path of Dzogchen. Why wait for future lives? You can capture the primordial citadel right now, in the present.

This advice is the very blood of my heart. Hold it close and never let it go!

~ Taken from Counsels from My Heart by Dudjom Rinpoche, Chapter 7
Shambhala: Boston, 2001

(Thank you, Jeannie!)