The Agony of the Search - Benjamin Smythe

The search is over. You can see it in his eyes.

http://benjamintsmythe.com

Nothing To Be Gained From Enlightenment

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words?
He is the one I would like to talk to.

~ Chuang Tzu

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Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.

~ Ramana Maharshi

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"Popularity among the soundly asleep may not be the best criterion by which to judge a method for waking up."

~ Jed McKenna

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"Speaking of Self-realization is a delusion. It is only because people have been under the delusion that the non-Self is the Self and the unreal the Real that they have to be weaned out of it by the other delusion called Self-realization; because actually the Self always is the Self and there is no such thing as realizing it."

~ Ramana Maharshi

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Nothing is Gained with Enlightenment

I once lived in an apartment so small I had to step outside into the adjacent hallway to open my oven door. There was room only for a bed, a radio, and a cardboard carton of books. I kept my clothes in a closet down the hall. Even in this confined space, there was housework to be done. Indeed, the demands of maintenance follow us wherever we find ourselves, from palaces to prison cells.

The Italian poet Cesare Pavese wrote in his journal that we never remember days, we remember only moments. And Zen teachers tell us that this moment is the only one we’ll ever have. Perhaps this is a better way of looking at enlightenment. It’s not achieving or gathering something. Nor is it losing or overcoming something else. It’s simply stepping outside of the room you’re in and allowing the oven door to open. It’s checking the ceiling overhead and cleaning up the spills beneath your feet.

~ Gary Thorp, "The Dust Beyond the Cushion"

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"In Kisagata,
The flowering cherry trees
Vanish under waves ---
Until an old fisherman
Rows out across blossoms.

Whatever it is,
I cannot understand it,
Although gratitude
Stubbornly overcomes me
Until I'm reduced to tears.

My final desire ---
That I be allowed to die
Under flowering cherries,
On the fifteenth evening
Of the second month."

~ Saigyo, "The Poetry of Zen"

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So really what it comes down to, it's God. Wherever you look, it's God appearing as this, that, and what you really love and appreciate in each form is the divine formless out of which each form comes. But to be able to sense that you have to sense it in yourself first. And that is seeing the beauty in everything, that's really what it means.

~ Eckhart Tolle

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A Message from Space

Everything that happens is the message:
you read an event and be one and wait,
like breasting a wave, all the while knowing
by living, though not knowing how to live.

Or workers built an antenna -- a dish
aimed at stars -- and they themselves are its message,
crawling in and out, being worlds that loom,
dot-dash, and sirens, and sustaining beams.

And sometimes no one is calling but we turn up
eye and ear -- suddenly we fall into
sound before it begins, the breathing
so still it waits there under the breath --

And then the green of leaves calls out, hills
where they wait or turn, clouds in their frenzied
stillness unfolding their careful words:
"Everything counts. The message is the world."

~ William Stafford

The Nature of Silence

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

~Wendell Berry

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There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.

~Rumi

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The beauty of the heart
is the lasting beauty:
its lips give to drink
of the water of life.
Truly it is the water,
that which pours,
and the one who drinks.
All three become one when
your talisman is shattered.
That oneness you can't know
by reasoning.

~Rumi

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"Deep in my looking, the last words vanished.
Joyous and silent, the waking that met me there."

~Lalla (India, 14th Century)

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Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. I fold them in prayer, and they draw from the heavens light.

~St. Francis of Assisi

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If I spent enough time with the tiniest of creatures, even a caterpillar, I would never have to prepare a sermon, so full of God is every creature.

~Meister Eckhart

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Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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"If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark."

~St. John of the Cross

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The Sowing of Meanings

See the high birds! Is their’s the song
That dies among the wood-light
Wounding the listener with such bright arrows?
Or do they play in wheeling silences
Defining in the perfect sky
The bounds of (here below) our solitude,

Where spring has generated lights of green
To glow in clouds upon the somber branches?
Ponds full of sky and stillnesses
What heavy summer songs still sleep
Under the tawny rushes at your brim?

More than a season will be born here, nature,
In your world of gravid mirrors!
The quiet air awaits one note,
One light, one ray and it will be the angels’ spring:
One flash, one glance upon the shiny pond, and then
Asperges me! sweet wilderness, and lo! we are redeemed!

For, like a grain of fire
Smoldering in the heart of every living essence
God plants His undivided power –
Buries His thought too vast for worlds
In seed and root and blade and flower,

Until, in the amazing light of April,
Surcharging the religious silence of the spring,
Creation finds the pressure of His everlasting secret
Too terrible to bear.

Then every way we look, lo! rocks and trees
Pastures and hills and streams and birds and firmament
And our own souls within us flash, and shower us with light,
While the wild countryside, unknown, unvisited of men,
Bears sheaves of clean, transforming fire.

And then, oh then the written image, schooled in sacrifice,
The deep united threeness printed in our being,
Shot by the brilliant syllable of such an intuition, turns within,
And plants that light far down into the heart of darkness and
oblivion,
Dives after, and discovers flame.

~ Thomas Merton

BODIES SEPARATE, MINDS OVERLAPPING, AND SOULS ARE ONE

THIS MIND THAT YOU ARE CARRYING IN YOUR HEAD HAS ARISEN OVER CENTURIES, MILLENNIA. Your small mind carries the whole experience of humanity -- and not only of humanity: of animals, of birds, of plants, of rocks. You have passed through all those experiences. All that has happened up to now has happened in you also. In a very small nutshell, you carry the whole experience of existence. THAT'S WHAT YOUR MIND IS. In fact, to say it is yours is not right: it is collective; it belongs to us all.

Modern psychology has been approaching it, particularly Jungian analysis has been approaching it, and they have started feeling something like a collective unconscious. YOUR MIND IS NOT YOURS -- IT BELONGS TO US ALL.

Our bodies are very separate; our minds are not so separate. Our bodies are clear-cutly separate; our minds overlap -- and our souls are one.

BODIES SEPARATE, MINDS OVERLAPPING, AND SOULS ARE ONE. I don't have a different soul and you don't have a different soul. At the very center of existence we meet and are one. That's what God is: the meeting-point of all. Between the God and the world -- 'the world' means the bodies -- is mind. Mind is a bridge: a bridge between the body and the soul, between the world and God.

~ OSHO - A Sudden Clash of Thunder

Two Different Dream Worlds - Robert Adams

Look at the world like bubbles on the ocean, bubbles and waves on the ocean. Look at people that way too. They keep disappearing. They keep coming back. The bubbles, the eddies, the waves come and go continuously, constantly. Yet the ocean understands that the bubbles, the eddies, the waves, are part of the ocean. They’re not separate from the ocean. Yet the bubbles come and go. The waves come and go. So it is with us. Bodies come and go continuously, constantly. You make such a fuss out of life, out of a body that's so important. They come and go like bubbles in the ocean. New bodies appear every day, old ones fade away, yet the source, beyond everything, is consciousness. The substratum of all existence is consciousness. Consciousness is like the ocean, and all the forms on this earth, in the universe, are superimpositions on consciousness. In other words, all the forms are like bubbles and waves on the ocean.

When you discover who you are, you’re no longer a bubble or a wave. You no longer come and go. You become the ocean. The average person as well believes they are a bubble or a wave. They identify only with their little self. They’re always thinking about themselves. "I need, I want, I hurt, I this, I that, I everything." It's. Always I, I, I. This is how the bubble thinks, that it’s separate from the ocean. But the ocean knows it’s not separate.

And so the infinite lies waiting in sweet repose for you to understand who you are. In other words, the ocean, consciousness, is not going to do anything to make you understand who you are, for consciousness is already your self. But somehow you've been hypnotized, mesmerized, deluded, into believing that you are a separate entity, a separate body, and you have to fetch for yourself, care for yourself. While the bubble persists, it is well taken care of by the ocean. While the wave persists, the ocean looks after it. That's why waves become big sometimes, they become tidal waves. They're still part of the ocean.

As you persist in believing that you're human, believing that you are a body, that you are separate, you are still looked after and protected. You may still suffer and go through experiences, because you think you're the body or the mind, but nevertheless you are always protected and looked after.

In any case you don't have to worry. In any case you don't have to fear. Why? Because you live in eternity. You live in bliss. You live in total joy and happiness. You are immersed in consciousness, like space. Space is immersed in consciousness. And all the forms, like planets, galaxies, universes, are superimpositions in space. And what holds space together? Consciousness.

You do not have to do anything to understand this. You simply have to recognize it. You do not have to pray, or meditate, or do mantras or japa. There is nothing you have to do to recognize your reality, to the ocean, to consciousness. You simply have to see it, and recognize it, and awaken. That's all you have to do.

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The True Master

The world is full of half-enlightened masters. Overly clever, too “sensitive” to live in the real world, they surround themselves with selfish pleasures and bestow their grandiose teachings upon the unwary. Prematurely publicizing themselves, intent upon reaching some spiritual climax, they constantly sacrifice the truth and deviate from the Tao. What they really offer the world is their own confusion. The true master understands that enlightenment is not the end, but the means. Realizing that virtue is her goal, she accepts the long and often arduous cultivation that is necessary to attain it. She doesn’t scheme to become a leader, but quietly shoulders whatever responsibilities fall to her. Unattached to her accomplishments, taking credit for nothing at all, she guides the whole world by guiding the individuals who come to her. She shares her divine energy with her students, encouraging them, creating trials to strengthen them, scolding them to awaken them, directing the streams of their lives toward the infinite ocean of the Tao.

L a o – T z u

Quotes from Adyashanti

Ego is basically the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping and away from objects in the form of aversion.

This fundamentally is all the ego is.

This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate "me," and in turn the sense of "me" strengthens itself this way.

It is this continuous loop of causation that tricks consciousness into a trance of identification.

Identification with what?

Identification with the continuous loop of suffering.

After all, who is suffering?

The "me" is suffering.

And "who" is this me?

It is nothing more than a sense of self caused by identification with grasping and aversion.

You see, it's all a creation of the mind, an endless movie, a terrible dream.

Don't try to change the dream -- trying to change it is just another movement in the dream.

Look at the dream. Be aware of the dream.

That awareness is It.

Become more interested in the awareness of the dream than in the dream itself.

What is that awareness? Who is that awareness?

Don't go spouting out an answer, just be the answer.

Be It.

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One of the most beautiful inquiries is, “What does my life serve?” This is a big question. It’s not asking, “What form is my service taking?” It doesn’t particularly matter what form our service takes when we are serving the silence of the heart. The only thing that’s important is, “What is my life really serving?

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"If you are a true seeker of liberation you've got to be willing to stand alone. At the moment of Liberation everything falls away...everything. Suddenly the ground beneath your feet is gone, and you are alone. You are alone because you have directly realized that there is no other, there is no separation. There is only you, only Self, only limitless emptiness, pure consciousness.

To the mind, the ego, this appears terrifying. When the mind looks at limitlessness and infinity, it projects meaninglessness and despair. To the ego Absolute Freedom can look terrifying. But when the mind is let go of, the view changes from meaningless despair and fear to the unending joy and wonder of Liberation.

In Liberation, you stand alone. You stand alone because you need no supports of any kind. You need no supports because you have realized that the very notion of a separate you no longer exists; that there is nothing to support; that the whole ego experience was a flimsy illusion. So you stand alone but never, never lonely because everywhere you look, all you see is That, and You are That."

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This innocence waking up, realizing that everything is itself, even all the confusion and all the ignorance and everything....this is the dissolving of confusion, of ignorance, of karma.

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Enlightenment is perceiving not through the lens of ego. It is not an unending satori experience, unending awakening experience. This misunderstanding will create
more tail chasing than it is dreamed possible.

It is not the quality of "aha" that will sustain because it will not sustain itself. Next week you may be going to have another "aha" that is bigger.

True practices or useful spiritual disciplines, if there is any, is a way not fueling the egoic consciousness.

The liberating truth is not static; it is alive. It cannot be put into concepts and be understood by the mind. The truth lies beyond all forms of conceptual fundamentalism. What you are is the beyond—awake and present, here and now already.

To be here, all you have to do is let go of who you think you are. That’s all! And then you realize, "I’m here." Here is where thoughts aren’t believed. Every time you
come here, you are nothing. Radiantly nothing. Absolutely and eternally zero. Emptiness that is awake. Emptiness that is full. Emptiness that is everything.

http://www.adyashanti.org

Generosity

"You are the sky. Everything else, it's just the weather."

~ Pema Chodron

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"You can measure the depth of a person's awakening by how they serve others"

~ Kobo Daishi (774-835 CE)

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The end and the sum total of all mysticism, philosophy, and meditation, of everything one learns and develops, is to be a better servant to humanity. Everything from the beginning to the end in the spiritual path is a training to be able to serve mankind better, and if one does not do it with that intention, one will find in the end that one has accomplished nothing.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

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"Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to
either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live."

~ Pema Chodron

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Gratitude, the simple and profound feeling of being thankful, is the foundation of all generosity. I am generous when I believe that right now, right here, in this form and this place, I am myself being given what I
need. Generosity requires that we relinquish something, and this is impossible if we are not glad for what we have. Otherwise the giving hand closes into a fist and won't let go.

~ Sallie Jiko Tisdale, "As If There is Nothing to Lose"

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When you are practicing generosity, you should feel a little pinch when you give something away. That pinch is your stinginess protesting. If you give away your old, worn-out coat that you wouldn't be caught dead wearing, that is not generosity. There is no pinch. You are doing nothing to overcome your stinginess; you're just cleaning out your closet and calling it something else. Giving away your coat might keep someone warm, but it does not address the problem we face as spiritual practitioners: to free ourselves from self-cherishing and self-grasping.

~ Gelek Rinpoche

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"Generosity is revolutionary, counter-instinctual . Our survival instinct is to care only for ourselves and our loved ones. But we can transform our relationship to that survival instinct by constantly asking ourselves, "How can I use my life's energy to benefit all living beings?"

~ Noah Levine

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"Wherever you are is the entry point"

~ Kabir

The Simplicity of What IS - Joan Tollifson

Liberation is not about having the answers or having an experience. It has nothing to do with belief, but is rather the absence (or transparency, or seeing through) of belief. Waking up does not happen in the past or the future, only Now. Liberation or enlightenment is not something you find or acquire like a new car. It is not some dazzling or exotic experience like being permanently high on ecstasy or LSD. Liberation is seeing through the ubiquitous fabrications and mirages of conceptual thought, including the whole idea of liberation and the one who supposedly needs to be liberated.

Ultimate Reality is hidden right in front of our eyes in plain view. It is showing up as breakfast dishes, laundry, sunlight on leaves, the barking of a dog, sound of traffic or rain, the humming of the computer, the taste of tea, the shapes of these words, and the awareness being and beholding it all. And only when we describe all of this in words does it seem as if "awareness" is one thing and "the taste of tea" is something else. The non-conceptual actuality of this breathing-hearing-seeing-being is undivided, without center or periphery. No inside, no outside. No subject, no object. Simply this, just as it is.

And then perhaps a thought: "There must be more to life than this," or "What is the meaning of it all?" or "What about final enlightenment?" or "Isn't this all just the phenomenal manifestation, and isn't that an illusion?" Thought creates imaginary problems and tries to solve them. The complex human brain has an astonishing ability to conceptualize, imagine, remember, project, and think about things that have no actual reality. Yet even these thoughts are nothing but a momentary dream-like shape or expression of the One, undivided, boundless Whole.

Thought labels, categorizes, evaluates, and reifies the ever-changing perceptions that appear. Conceptual thought creates the hypnotic, mirage-like illusion of solid, persisting, independent things (including "me" and "you") -- the illusion of duality and separation. Thought imagines "me" as a separate character on a journey through time. It conjures up goals and stories of success and failure. It even creates the image of "me" as a serious spiritual person dedicated to getting rid of the "me." But without thinking, where is the "me"? What am I, really?

***

Is it possible that the peace and well-being we seek (that longing at the root of all our more superficial desires), cannot be found or satisfied by answers or attainments or experiences of any kind? Is it possible that the very search for it "out there" is precisely what prevents us from noticing that what we are seeking is the very essence of Here and Now?

And what is that?

It is nothing you can take hold of conceptually, and it's not any particular experience (as opposed to any other experience). It is the beingness, the groundlessness, the IS-ness of this moment -- this that is undeniably present beyond all doubt, requiring no proof or belief, impossible to deny -- before and after and even during all the grasping and searching and experience-seeking. The words (beingness, groundlessness, IS-ness) are only pointers. What they point to is nothing you can get hold of as an object. In fact, there really are no solid objects because everything is thorough-going flux. This no-thing-ness (or emptiness) is all there really is.

And this no-thing-ness is vibrantly alive, aware, conscious, awake, present. The grasping, searching and thinking may seem to destroy the wholeness of being or the spaciousness of presence-awareness, but can anything really destroy awareness, or the present moment, or beingness? Doesn't everything appear Here and Now, in awareness? And doesn't everything appear altogether at once as one diverse but seamless whole?

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THE POWER OF EMPTINESS

This excerpt from Elijah Crow's Silence of the Mind is just a taste of a tome so absolutely clear.....well....you'll just have to read the whole thing yourself. Beautiful....

The book can be downloaded and read here:

http://www.scribd. com/doc/34607176 /Elijah-Crow- The-Silence- of-the-Mind

Enjoy!

The Power of Emptiness

The "void" or " psychological emptiness" is a strange phenomenon,
It appears spontaneously, in the pause between two thoughts,
As the old thought ends its course and disappears,
Its end is the gate, natural silence ensues.

Insist in being with it, as much as you can,
The mind is completely silent, we are attentive – a clear consciousness,
All meanings, boundaries disappear – us and the Infinite are "One";
Practically, we have a new mind – always fresh.

Being in the pause – I become infinite!
It separates two worlds. I leave the limited world
And enter Boundlessness, through total melting;
The whole being is calm – a constant sparkle.

There is no time, no space – just everlasting Eternity;
I move in direct contact with life, in a permanent present.
I am Pure Energy, without motivations,
The simplicity of existence integrates us completely.

We really encounter Life only through this "now",
Free from the old, we are able to embrace the new.
All this beauty vanishes, when another thought appears,
It comes from the knowing mind – an old recording.

Let it play its game, do not oppose any resistance,
Encounter it as it is, without any purpose,
It will certainly disappear, and "emptiness" ensues again,
Another opportunity to encounter it practically.

We find the real meaning of Life through this "void",
It is a boundary line between the two worlds:
On the one side the limited, where the "ego" is the master.
On the other, the Infinite, where Love is the master.

Emptiness also separates Light from the darkness,
The permanent chaos through struggle, contradictions and conflicts,
From the harmonious being, equilibrium and joy;
The whole egocentrism perishes, by encountering the void.

Peace, divine order becomes our nature
It changes our way of being, without effort or will,
Only through this psychological void, we become honest and humane,
The Purity of the Energy – makes titans out of pigmies .

Let this "psychological emptiness" be your guide,
In everything you encounter on your spiritual path.
If it is not the starting point, we easily get deceived,
Only through emptiness – we become Love!

ALONE IN ENLIGHTENMENT

"I'm nobody.

Who are you?"

Are you nobody too?

-Emily Dickinson


Realization is a very misunderstood. ..I was going to write achievement, but it's not an achievement, just a happening. It is like making a long, steep, tough climb up a mountain, only to get to the top and go, "mmmm, nice view." Then you walk back down. That's it, nothing special, but it revolutionizes everything. Enlightenment is the shocking realization that there is only one. Not one thing, or all is connected, just one. It sounds like a simple re-ordering of words, but the meaning of that word order is profound.

Everyone has the constricting belief that enlightenment or God is over "there" somewhere and their job in life is to "find" it. The problem is that we are "here" and will always be "here"- but if enlightenment is over "there", how can it be found? Actually enlightenment/ God is also here, always was here, but what it is, is actually not what 99% of seekers really want. Seekers want the enlightenment they have been sold: being happy, important, full of love, no more problems. Like a continuous orgasmic or drug high. That is the reason they are seeking in the first place, the wished for blissful finish line. If anyone really understood what awakening was, no one would want it. Enlightenment is about "alone."

A true encounter with the Absolute/God reveals that no one is doing the experiencing, only the absolute revealing itself to the absolute. Nothing exists, yet there i s the appearance of existence. Realization is alone (all-one). But everyone fears alone, so they run to spiritual practice, patterns, lovers, food, booze, any distraction to avoid the only true fear. The fear of no self (often called emptiness) the fear that "I" do not exist. Fear of no self is not the fear of death, but the fear that you as a human being do not exist at all. That is where all the "spiritual groups" get caught, they are looking for what's in it for "them" or "us". Realization is one and alone for there is no other. Everything that tells you that you are separate from anything else falls away. Thus you are alone, with the appearance of others. The initial glimpse of this is so terrifying to ego it responds with the emotions of meaninglessness and despair. But as soon as the mind falls away, those emotions go too and all that is left is What Is, and the marvelous curiosity about the dream and what is going to happen next.


"The great path has no gates,

thousands of roads enter it.

When you pass through the gateless gate,

you walk the universe alone."

- Mumon -


Suffering is the belief in the story of me. The question is, who are you without your story? Too frightening is this thought, so everyone keeps struggling because ego wants to keep the story of "me" going. Seeking becomes the strategy to overcome this fear, for as long as there is seeking, there is a seeker. Asleep people have experiences to confirm their existence. I am good, I am bad, I am in love, I am working hard, I am eating ice cream, I am suffering. All are defined with I, but if there were no more I, then who are you? This is the question that takes us to see there is no True Self. Only false self and no self. You don't try to improve self, you kill it to break free of the illusion of the dreamstate. You kill it by finding out it was never there to be killed. The trick to this is to die while alive and then see what is left. Form will still be here, but now you will no longer be a person, just look like one, but who can you tell this to? and that can make this process a lonely one at times.

We can be in a room full of people and still feel alone. The deepest truth is that everything is a dream or a movie, nothing exists, not even you. Connecting and relationships are the way fictional dream characters hide the fact that nothing exists, and if anyone pulls away, the other characters (your friends and family) will do everything to pull you back into the dream to confirm with them that everything exists and has meaning. Waking up is willingly drifting into that fear to see what will happen, doing it because we can no longer stand the alternative of not doing it.


"The end of illusion,

is the end of you."

- U.G. Krishnamurti -


The road to all of this is a most solitary thing. Even if a few people walk together for a while, each one knows that they are alone and that they can not expect anything from the others, nor can depend on anybody. The only thing he can do is to share his path with those who accompany him, and know that accompaniment could end at any moment. So it is normal to look for silence in the mountains or forest or the desert. These periods are like a lover's retreat, to be with his own inner silence. Silence becomes their lover.

The world for the awake is a rather solitary place, and learning to be comfortable in this state takes some work because our conditioning to be social is still in strong effect for the body/mind. Once one learns to enjoy themselves just as much with a group of friends as totally alone, that is when they have reached a new plateau in their state. Most people are simply social because they are so alone and want to do anything to avoid that feeling, while those awakened realized that loneliness was just the core of what they are, went into it - and now they are like with a lover whether there are people around or not. They know there is no longer an other, so they need no other to feel "connected." Hard to explain in words.

Loneliness can also affect the newly awake because it is very draining energetically to spend a lot of time around the asleep and their make believe dramas and hopes. It gets hard to play that game, and you wish simply for more time alone. There is still the appearance of other forms, so we still interact with things like we used to - just it gets very hard for the dream to trick us anymore into thinking "something" is happening with some "other person." But still, you have to act like things are real. It may not be a real rainstorm, but you go inside if "you" don't want to get wet.


"The absolute is a very lonely place.

You are the only one there.

Of course everyone is the only one there."

- Richard Rose -


http://www.howdietalks.com/alone.htm

The Lost Satsang - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Watch the Trailer: http://netinetifilm s.com/films- satsang.shtml


Excerpts from Nisargadatta' s Lost Satsang:


The whole manifestation of this world is an expression of the same Consciousness that you are.

You should not love anything other than your true nature, Consciousness. Deep desires, deep expectations: How can that be love?

Your body identity is attracted to objects. It creates desires and you treat them as high priorities. Understanding yourself should be your only priority.

Your body desires will lead you nowhere.

~ ~ ~

If you don't understand the "I Am" how can you understand the rest?

~ ~ ~

To abide in consciousness is the true religion. The human brain creates religions.

~ ~ ~

Consciousness has to appear in this form, so this form can recognize Consciousness.

~ ~ ~

How can words explain that from which words originate?

~ ~ ~

Everything depends upon your form, but you are formless.

~ ~ ~

Don't ask me practical questions. I cannot relate to them. I never talk to the body identity level. Stay in the "I am". That's all there is to do.

~ ~ ~

Without food there is death and the idea "I am" vanishes. Consciousness is beyond any idea.

You can only watch events happen. You can't use Consciousness to do or undo anything.

~ ~ ~

Your body identity is like a very tight screw. Your idea of being an individual, is a screw. You must loosen it up. Let go of your personal identity and the screw will open as much as needed.

You are full of concepts. Just do as I say.

~ ~ ~

If you wish to use your intellect dwell on your nine months in the womb. What is in the womb is not different from what is happening now.

~ ~ ~

Anything that can show you what you are is actually pointing out what you are not.

~ ~ ~

Questions only exist as long as you think you are the body and the individual.

~ ~ ~

What I am saying is very simple.

You listen to me or you can go.

~ ~ ~

Grasp the knowingness principle and move ahead in life. Like a swimmer caught in a vortex has to dive to the bottom of the river, then has to swim to the surface, outside of the vortex, and only then he is free.

~ ~ ~

We live like worms in hot sand, always needing help, but I am not a worm. I am the manifested and the unmanifested.

~ ~ ~

Before death comes it is necessary to follow a Sage or a Guru.

~ ~ ~

My Guru's Guru clapped while his vital breath was leaving his body. Will you?

OSHO - On Meditation

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

My whole life I have been talking about meditation. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation; I have gone through all those methods—and not intellectually. It took me years to go through
each method and to find out its very essence, and after going through one hundred and twelve methods I was amazed that the essence is witnessing. The methods' non-essentials are different, but the center of each method is witnessing. Hence I can say to you, there is only one meditation in the whole world and that is the art of witnessing. It will do everything—the whole transformation of your being.

Whatever I am doing, my meditation continues. It is not something that I have to do it separately; it is just an art of witnessing. Speaking to you, I'm also witnessing myself speaking to you. So here are three persons: you are listening, one person is speaking, and there is one behind who is watching and that is my real me. And to keep constant contact with it is meditation.

So whatever you do does not matter, you just keep contact with your witness. I have reduced religion to its very fundamental essence. Now everything else is just ritual. This much is enough. And this does not need you to become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or anybody, and this can be done by an atheist, by a communist, by anybody, because it needs no kind of theology, no kind of belief system. It is simply a scientific method of slowly moving inwards. A point comes when you reach to your innermost core, the very center of the cyclone.

The basic element running through all the methods of meditation is witnessing. You ask me: What is witnessing? Whatever you are doing. For example, right now you are writing. You can write in two ways. The ordinary way that you always write. You can try another method: you can write it and you can also inside witness that you are writing it. And you ask: Does that mean some kind of detachment? A detachment. You are a little distant, away, watching yourself writing. So any act, just moving my whatever you are doing, just remain a witness. If you have any ego, it will destroy it, because this watching is very much poisonous to the ego. It is not ego that watches. The ego is absolutely blind. It cannot watch anything. You can watch your ego. For example, somebody insults you and you feel hurt, and your ego feels hurt. You can watch it. You can watch that you are feeling hurt, your ego is feeling hurt, that you are angry. And you can still remain aloof, detached, just a watcher on the hills. Whatever goes on in the valley you can see.

So all the methods are basically different ways of witnessing. I have condensed them in a very simple way: First, watch your actions of the body. Second, watch your actions of the mind: thoughts, imaginations. And if you can succeed in watching all these three, and as your witnessing grows deeper and deeper, a moment comes that there is only witnessing but nothing to witness. The mind is empty, the heart is empty, the body is relaxed. In that moment happens something like a quantum leap. Your whole witnessing jumps upon itself. It witnesses itself, because there is nothing else to witness. And this is the revolution which I call enlightenment, self-realization. Or you can give it any name, but this is the ultimate experience of bliss. You cannot go beyond it.

This is the simplest. And because it can be done without in any way interfering with your everyday life, because it is something that you can go on doing the whole day. Any other method you have to take some time apart for it. And any method that needs one hour or half an hour to sit and do it is not going to help much, because twenty-three hours you will be doing just the opposite. And whatever you have gained in one hour will be washed away in twenty-three hours. This is the only method that you can continue around the clock. While falling asleep you can go on witnessing, witnessing, that the sleep is coming, coming, coming, that it is getting darker and the body is relaxing. And a moment comes when you can watch that you are asleep. And still there is a corner, a space in you which is awake.

When you can watch yourself twenty-four hours, you have arrived. Now there is nothing to be done. Then witnessing has become natural to you. You don't have to do it. It will be simply like breathing, happening to you.

This is my basic method. But there are other methods. If people feel that this is difficult for them, they can try other methods. All are available. I have returned from a movie show. It is surprising to see how much the light and shade photos projected on the screen captivate people. Where there is really nothing, everything happens! I watched the audience there and it felt as if they had forgotten themselves, as if they were not there, but the flow of electrically projected pictures was everything. A blank screen is in front and from the back the pictures are being projected. Those who are watching it have their eyes fixed in front, and no
one is aware of what is happening behind their backs. This is how leela, the play, is born. This is what happens within and without. There is a projector at the back of the human mind. Psychology calls this back side the unconscious. The longings, the passions, the conditionings accumulated in this unconscious are being continuously projected onto the mind's screen. This flow of mental projections goes on every moment, non-stop. The consciousness is a seer, a witness, and it forgets itself in this flow of the pictures of desires. This forgetfulness is ignorance. This ignorance is the root cause of maya, illusions, and the endless cycle of birth and death. Waking up from this ignorance happens in the cessation of the mind. When the mind is devoid of thoughts, when the flow of pictures on the screen stops, only then the onlooker remembers himself and returns to his home.

Patanjali calls this cessation of the activities of the mind Yoga. If this is achieved, all is achieved. To understand the mind, there are the three points: The first thing is tremendous fearlessness in encountering the mind; the second thing is no restrictions, no conditions on the mind; the third point is no judgments about whatever thoughts and longings arise in the mind, no feelings of good or bad. Your attitude should simply be indifferent. These three points are necessary to understand the perversions of the mind. Then we will talk about what can be done to get rid of these perversions, and go further. But these three basic points have to be kept in mind.

This is my observation of thousands of people: I see them carrying such great psychological luggage, and for no reason at all. They go on gathering anything they come across. They read the newspaper and they will gather some crap from it. They will talk to people and they will gather some crap. And they go on gathering. And if they start stinking, no wonder!

I used to live with a man for a few years. His house was so full of unnecessary luggage that I had to tell him "Now, where are you going to live?" And he would go on collecting any kind of thing. Somebody would be
selling his old furniture, and he would purchase it, and he already had enough. He had no time to use that furniture, and he had no friends to call. His whole house was full of furniture: old radio sets, and all kinds
of things. And I said "But, I don't see the point why you collect all this." He said "Who knows, any time it may be useful." One day we went for a walk and on the road. By the side of the road, somebody had thrown a cycle handle. He picked it up. I said "What are you doing?" He said "But, it must be worth twenty rupees at least, and I have picked up a few other things also—sooner or later I am going to make a bicycle!" And he showed me. He had one wheel, one pedal, that he had picked up from the roads. And he said "What are you saying? Soon you will see!" This man died. The cycle remained incomplete. And when he died, everybody who came to look was puzzled by what he was doing in this house—there was no space even to move.

But this is the situation of your head. I see cycle-handles, and pedals, and strange things that you have gathered from everywhere. Such a small head, and no space to live in! And that rubbish goes on moving in your head; your head goes on spinning and weaving—it keeps you occupied. Just think what kind of thoughts go on inside your mind.

Sometimes, sitting under the stars, you feel a bliss arising within your heart. It seems not of this world. You are surprised. You cannot believe it. I have come across simple people who have known many moments in their life which are Buddha-like, which belong to Christ consciousness, but they have never talked about them to anybody because they themselves don't believe that they were possible. They have in fact suppressed them. They have been thinking that they must have imagined them: How can it happen without any effort of my own? How is it possible that suddenly one becomes blissful? You can remember them in your own life—and in such moments when you were never expecting them—just going to the office, in the daily routine, the sun is high and you are perspiring, and suddenly something strikes home, and for a moment you are not the old you. Paradise is regained. And then it is lost again. You forget about it because it is not part of your style of life. You don't even talk about it, you think 'I must have imagined it. How are these things possible? And I have not done anything so how can it happen? It must have been hallucinatory, an illusion or a dream.' You don't talk about it. As I have observed thousands of people deeply I have not come across many people who have not found such certain moments in their life. But they have never talked of them to anybody. Even if they tried to, people laughed and they thought: You are foolish, stupid. They don't believe, they repress.

Not only has humanity repressed sex, has humanity repressed death, humanity has repressed all that is beautiful in life. Man has been forced to become like an automaton, a robot. All clues, all doors, have been closed towards the unknown. It is my continual experience of thousands of people that when they come for the first time to meditate, meditation happens so easily because they don't have any idea what it is. Once it has happened, then the real problem arises—then they want it, they know what it is, they desire it. They are greedy for it; it is happening to others and it is not happening to them. Then jealousy, envy, all kinds of wrong things surround them.

The inner world is a new world where you have not even looked, where you have never taken a single step. So I have to teach you how, slowly, you can step inwards. Even when I say to people to go inwards, immediately they ask questions which show how focused on the outside things they are. I say to them, "Sit silently." And they will ask me, "Can I do gayatri mantra?" Whether you do gayatri mantra or you read the newspaper does not matter, both are outside. I am telling you, "Sit silently." They say, "That is right, but at least I can repeat omkar…" It is pitiable. I feel sad for them, that I am telling them to be silent but they are asking me to fill their silence with something. They don't want to be silent. If nothing else, then omkar will do—anything will do.

In India people go on doing all kinds of things. They concentrate, they chant mantras, they fast, they torture their bodies, and they hope that through all these masochistic practices they will realize God. As if God is a sadist! As if God loves you to torture yourself! As if he demands that the more you torture yourself, the more worthy you become. God is not a sadist; you need not be a masochist. I have come across people who think
that without long fasting there is no possibility of meditation. Now, fasting has nothing to do with meditation. Fasting will only make you obsessed with food. And there are people who think celibacy will help them into meditation. Meditation brings a kind of celibacy, but not vice versa. A celibacy without meditation is nothing but sexual repression. And your mind will become more and more sexual, so whenever you sit to meditate your mind will become full of fantasies, sexual fantasies. These two things have been the greatest problems for the so-called meditators: fasting and celibacy. They think these two things are going to help—they are the
greatest disturbances!

Eat in right proportions. Buddha calls it "the middle way": neither too much nor too little. He is against fasting, and he knows it through hard experience. For six years he fasted and could not attain to anything. So when he says, "Be in the middle," he means it. About celibacy also: don't enforce it upon yourself. It is a by-product of meditation, hence it cannot be enforced before meditation. Be in the middle there too, neither too much indulgence nor too much renunciation. Just keep a balance. A balanced person will be more healthy, at ease, at home. And when you are at home, meditation is easier.

What then is meditation? Just sitting silently doing nothing, witnessing whatsoever is happening all around; just watching it with no prejudice, no conclusion, no idea what is wrong and what is right.

~ Osho

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Return to Silence

Silence is the language of God, all else is translation

-- Rumi

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

"I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely.
I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God.
God is nearer to me than I am to myself..."

-- Meister Eckhart

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

"The silence of a quiet mind is the essence of that beauty. Because it is silent and because it is not the plaything of thought, then in that silence there comes that which is indestructible, which is sacred. In the coming of that which is sacred then life becomes sacred, your life becomes sacred, our relationship becomes sacred, everything becomes sacred."

--Krishnamurti

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You are not what happens; you are the space in which it happens. You are not your thoughts; they come and go. You are the vastness in which these thoughts appear and disappear because underneath all your thinking there is the stillness of pure being,... pure consciousness, the timeless dimension of yourself.

- Eckhart Tolle

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

"Choose silence, and love is apparent.

When we choose silence, we choose to give up the reasons not to love,
which are the reasons for going to war, or continuing war, or separating,
or being a victim, or being right. In a moment of silence, in a moment of
no thought, no mind, we choose to give those up.
This is what my teacher invited me to.

Just choose silence. Don't even choose love. Choose silence, and love is
apparent. If we choose love we already have an idea of what love is.

But if you choose silence, that is the end of ideas. You are willing to
have no idea, to see what is present when there is no idea, past,
present, future. No idea of love, no idea of truth, no idea of you, no
idea of me. Love is apparent."

--Ganga Ji

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

When we are empty of ego we, too, can carry on in calm acceptance of
life's varying events. When we cease making prejudicial distinctions -
gentle or harsh, beautiful or ugly, good or bad - a peaceful stillness
will permeate our mind. If there is no ego, there is no agitation.

-- Master Han Shan

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Live in your Unborn Buddha-Mind. Then there's no regression. No need for advancement. Any idea of wanting to make progress is already a regression from the place of the Unborn. A man of the Unborn has nothing to do with advancing or backsliding. He's always beyond them both.

Since the Buddha-Mind takes care of everything by means of the Unborn, it has nothing to do with Samsara or Nirvana. Seen from the place of the Unborn, both are like shadows in a dream. There can be no death for what was never born.

The marvelous brightness of the Buddha-Mind, by means of words, is able to enlighten people and deliver them from their illusions one by one. And when someone hears these words, understands and affirms them, he will know for himself that the Buddha-Mind' s wonderful brightness surpasses even the brightness of the sun and moon.

What an incalculable treasure is your Buddha-Mind!

--Writing: The Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei
Translated by Norman Waddell

Stranded on the Bridge

Sanai: BUT I AM FRIGHTENED
LEST YOUR IGNORANCE AND STUPIDITY
LEAVE YOU STRANDED ON THE BRIDGE.

Osho: But remember one thing... Each and every master has said it, because the problem is there on both the paths. The problem is, one can be stranded on the bridge. The meditator may become so addicted to meditation that he may be stranded on the bridge. The lover may become too much addicted to love, then he will be stranded on the bridge. Love is a bridge, meditation is a bridge. And you have to go beyond the bridge.

In the ultimate state, the meditator has to drop his meditation and the lover has to forget all about his love. Otherwise you will just be close to the door but you will not be able to enter into the temple. The method has to be forgotten.

Buddha said that each method is like a raft, like a boat: use it to go to the other shore, but then leave it there and forget all about it and go on your way. There is no need to carry the raft on your head. If you carry the raft on your head you are just stupid. But this is what is happening: millions of people become too addicted to their method. And the method CAN be addictive because it gives such beautiful experiences. The last barrier is the method, the last barrier is the bridge.

Just see the point -- it is very paradoxical. The bridge takes you to the other shore: certainly it is a help, and you should be grateful to it, and you should be thankful to it. But it can become a problem.

You may fall in love with the bridge and you may make your house on the bridge. And if you start living on the bridge, you are neither of this shore nor of that shore; you are in a kind of limbo. And many so-called religious practitioners live in a kind of limbo -- they are neither of this world nor of that. They have become addicted to the bridge.

And the bridge IS beautiful! Hence the fear of Sanai. Sanai says:

I AM FRIGHTENED
LEST YOUR IGNORANCE AND STUPIDITY
LEAVE YOU STRANDED ON THE BRIDGE.

ALL methods are methods, all means are means. And if you want to reach the end you will have to drop all means and all methods. That is the only way to enter into the ultimate. The lover will have to forget all about love, and the meditator will have to forget all about meditation. Yes, there comes a moment when the meditator does not meditate, because he has become meditation himself; now meditation is not a separate activity. And there comes a moment when the lover does not love, because he is love himself.

The Will to Truth

"When you went to a Zen temple and you wanted to go to a retreat or become a monk or something, they would make you sit at the temple gate, like the gate outside here. Imagine you come to a retreat at Garrison, and they say "No! We don't really want you here, you don't want to be here. You're not serious. Forget about it. Go home. Go back to your life. You don't want this." And 90% of the people would just go, "Well, screw that!' and just go home. And then there's 10% of the people who would kind of just sit at that gate and go 'I really do want to be here.' They go, 'No you don't.' So that's what they used to do. So they would come out occasionally and try to convince you to leave. But another thing, as they were convincing you to leave they would make sure you were well fed. A little breakfast, a little lunch, a little dinner. So they would take care of you, not abusing you, right? They were seeing what you were made of. Seeing if your ego was in control here. If you actually had the will to truth or you had the will to have it your way. And after about a week or so, can you imagine? a week! At the gates! Just to get in to see what's happening! Good Lord! Then they might go, 'Okay come on in. We like you anyway. We were just fooling around.' They'd let you in.

Not that I want to do it that way of course but this "will to truth" which means 'I really want to see things differently. ' I am really willing to see that the way I see things may not be the way they are. I'm willing to see that I was wrong.' That's what enlightenment showed me. Basically I was wrong about everything. But only everything. I viewed things the way they weren't. But pretty much everything. I had this will to truth. This kind of yearning and this irrational impulse as I called it earlier, to truth and that was beautiful but basically what awakening showed me is that the world is not what I thought it was. I am not what I thought I was. The views I had on almost everything have been turned upside down, inside out, washed out, hung up to dry. And that's something that alot of people don't realize, is that what we want? Do we actually want change? I mean every one would want to change, I want to become enlightened. It's not about becoming enlightened. That's not what it's about. It's not about having a greater glow or halo around your head. It's about just the truth. Is that what we want? It's no different than anything else in life, is it? You know if you're an addict, the only thing that matters is do you really want to change. You know as they say in addiction, most people have to hit bottom before they really want to change. And then they hit bottom and maybe some of them are willing to change. They are willing to. Before they wanted to but now they are willing to. They are really willing to change and when they are willing to change then they tend to start to change, don't they? All of us are like that. Most of us are addicted to our mind and ourself and our viewpoint. And of course the idea isn't to take on somebody else's viewpoint. Mine or anybody else's. It's not to take on someone else's belief structure. It's not to take on someone else's teaching. That's not the point.

The point is to discover it for yourself. That immeasurable reality. What you really are. And it's right there, what you really are. It's right there. It's right there. And something that can really start to happen when you just want what's real. Because it's never what we think it is. It's never what we think it is. It's never the image, it's never the idea. It comes from that innocence. Do you know that innocence inside you? You now that innocence. It's kind of like the innocence of the child looking into the sky and wondering, how far is that star away? That innocence, how far? It's just like that. What's real? What am I? It's that quality.

It's not, "Who am I, What am I? I want to find that out because I want to wake up, etc, etc. That's very sort of adult. Very goal oriented, ego acquiring the Great Pearl Beyond Price. But the child thing is like, 'What is that?' How far away is that star in the sky? Who am I really? Really? What's really true? See it's an innocent thing. In the innocence is a beautiful quality. And it comes from the intuition which everybody has. Some of you, of course, have the full realization, but others of you it comes from the intuition. That's what brings us to spirituality in the first place. Some intuition there's a greater truth, there's harmony, there's unity somehow, somewhere. There's something that's real amongst this insanity. There's something that's real and pure and true. Whatever it is, that's the intuition that brings you. That subtle intuition. Hopefully that's there in you, that pulls you. Hopefully it's not the ego just desiring. 'I read about it and I want that. I want truth because it'll be good for me. I want truth and I want a house and I want a million bucks'

So when you start to feel that thread in you, not so much like I want, I want, I want, please God! Not so much like that. But just that simple quiet sincerity, that will to what's real, to what's harmonious, unity...however you would think about it in your own being. That which reaches out in that direction. That thread. That's why the great teacher Nisargadatta, when someone would say, 'What's the most important ingredient to self-realization? ' And he would just say, 'Earnestness. ' And if you got to know his teachings you realize he wasn't saying, you've got to just really. really. really want it. It sounds like it but what he meant by earnestness was much more like this will to truth. You actually got to want what's real. It's the most important thing. Without that, forget it. But with that, there it is. It's that thread that probably has brought you here. That's the thread. That's the thread that brings all of us here, right?

And it's not a once-and-for- all-thing. I can guarantee you that. Truth is a living thing. It's permanently impermanent. It always is and it's always on the move. It's not that thing that you realize and that you hold on to, 'I have realized.' It's a thing that is discovered fresh and anew, now and now and now. Otherwise it dies in your hands. Your great realization can become so much dust in your hands, if you grab hold of it and say 'I've got it and I'll hold on to it and I'll bring this into my life .' You may try that but sooner or later you discover truth is not that thing. Truth is a living thing. Truth is something that's living in a continuous state of openness. All the real teachings are trying to point us in that direction. Teachings are trying to point us there. Sadly we tend to grab on to the teachings. That's the tendency. Whether it's a Buddhist teaching or Hindu or Christian or Advaitic teaching. Whatever it is, the teachings are pointers. They are trying to get you to realize this truth that the truth is not the teachings. Even the teachings that I am speaking right now. This is not the truth. I will never be telling you the truth. I cannot tell you the truth. My job is simply to fail well. To fail as well as I possibly can. The truth is not something that can be communicated. Not something that can be given from one to the other. It's a living thing. It's a revelation. And it's not a onetime revelation. If it reveals itself to you and you try to hold on to it , you'll see it die in your hand. It will wither. But if all that grasping dies, then that flow, that revelation, it's always anew. It's always anew. It's the same thing but it's always anew. It's always the same but it's always anew. It's always fresh. It's always alive.

Adyashanti - Garrision Institute 2008 disk 6

ONENESS

About Oneness

Oneness is very simple: everything is included and allowed to live according to its true nature. This is the secret that is being revealed, the opportunity that is offered. How we make use of this opportunity depends upon the degree of our participation, how much we are prepared to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done, to the freedom that needs to be lived.

- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee from the book Working with Oneness

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The modern world lies under a pervasive sense of anguish, of being abandoned, or at least experiencing God as absent. Yet events that seem to turn our lives upside down and inside out are part of God's redemptive plan, not only for us, but for the world in which we live. God may be preparing a great awakening for the world, if God can find enough people to cooperate in this mysterious plan.

-Thomas Keating

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The realization that every act, every word, every thought of ours not only influences our environment but for some mysterious reason forms an integral and important part of the Universe, fits into it as if by necessity so to say, in the very moment we do, or say, or think it - is an overwhelming and even shattering experience. The tremendous responsibility of it is terrifying. If all of us only knew that the smallest act of ours, or a tiny thought, has such far-reaching effects as to set in motion forces which perhaps could shatter a galaxy.If we know it deeply and absolutely, if this realization becomes engraved permanently on our hearts, on our minds, how careful we would act and speak and think. How precious life would become in its integral oneness.

-Irina Tweedie

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All the phenomena of existence are one single thing in the ultimate dimension of the unborn.

-from the Dzogchen Semde

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are one, after all, you and I. Together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness come all the many particulars.

-Heraclitus

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the age of Holy Spirit, this is the age of the universal principle -- the open, flexible field of consciousness, the understanding of the unity of life in the multiplicity of human experience, so that we find in our culture again that hidden unity which transcends the fate of multiplicity and nemesis. As I see it this creative spirit which has entered our world is causing such disturbance that it will have to be answered by the spirit of the earth which we have denied as much as we have denied the spirits of the higher worlds. We have denied the spirit of the earth, and that spirit of the earth has to appear in woman. The meeting of the spirit of the earth and the spirit of the other world is one of the great moments that, I believe, will come in the future history of culture.

- Cecil Collins from The Vision of the Fool and Other Writings
All rights reserved, the Tate Gallery

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.

-Albert Einstein

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chandogya Upanishad

In the beginning was only Being,
One without a second.
Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos
And entered into everything in it.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the innermost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that.

As the rivers flowing east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it,
Forgetting they were ever separate streams,
So do all creatures lose their separateness
When they merge at last into pure Being.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the innermost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tao Te Ching

If the people of the world were wise enough
to plant the root of their lives
deep within the Subtle Origin
Then the worldly affairs of life
would coherently follow their natural course
and harmony would abound of its own nature.
Then the peaceful order of the universe prevails
and unity manifests again of its own accord.

-from the Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tsu, trans. Hua-Ching Ni

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See the One -- know the One and affirm that it is One
Whether at the beginning or at the end, all of this
is only one single thing
Alas the eye of man sees double.

- Attar from The Book of Secrets

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How wonderful that a single Essence should
Refract itself like light, a single source
Into a million essences and hues.

- Shâh Ne'matollâh from The Drunken Universe

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When you make the two one and
When you make the inner as the outer and the above
As below, and when
You make the male and the female into a single one
Then you shall enter the kingdom.

-The Gospel of Thomas

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The soul is all things together.. And since it is the center of all things, it has the forces of all. Hence it passes into all things. And since it is the true connection of all things, it goes to the one without leaving the others . therefore it may rightly be called the center of nature, the middle term of all things, the face of all, the bond and juncture of the universe.

-from The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, by Marsilio Ficino

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For those who are awake the cosmos is one.

-Heraclitus

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Listen, O dearly beloved!
I am the reality of the world, the center of the circumference,
I am the parts and the whole.
I am the will established between Heaven and Earth

-Ibn 'Arabî

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A hundred things
a million or more
if you look to their reality
are one

-Fakhruddin Iraqi

There is Only This

When the great Chinese Zen master Ta-mei was dying, his students asked him for a final helpful word. "When it comes, don't try to avoid it; when it goes, don't run after it," he said. Just then, a squirrel chattered on the roof. "There is only this, there is nothing else," said Ta-mei, and then he died.

Can we conceive of what this is? Can this be enough for us? Is there another reality more real or more wonderful than this? To know that there is only this is to, as Hui-neng put it, "see the original nature and not become confused."

~ Francis Dojun Cook, How to Raise an Ox

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Silently and serenely one forgets all words;

Clearly and vividly That appears

When one realizes it, it is vast and without edges;

In its Essence, one is clearly aware.

Singularly reflecting is this bright awareness,

Full of wonder is this pure reflection.

Dew and moon,

Stars and streams,

Snow on pine trees,

And clouds hovering on the mountain peaks.

In this reflection all intentional efforts vanish.

Serenity is the final word of all the teachings;

Reflection is the response to all manifestations.

~ Hung Chih of the Tsao Tung School

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Rest in Natural Great Peace

Rest in natural great peace
This exhausted mind
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace.

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

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"In the mind of natural perfection, certainly, moral discrimination and moral causality do not exist, yet what remains in nondual 'bodhichitta' , both the ground and the emanation of pure mind, which can only ever be pure vision and perfect conduct. .... there is no fall from grace, and there never has been a fall, and in the realization of that reality where the golden age lies just beneath an insubstantial, fragile surface of dualistic belief, any moral dualism becomes a problem rather than the solution.

So stay here, you lucky people,
Let go and be happy in the natural state.
Let your complicated life and everyday confusion alone
And out of quietude, doing nothing, watch the nature of mind.
This piece of advice is from the bottom of my heart:
Fully engage in contemplation and understanding is born;
Cherish non-attachment and delusion dissolves;
And forming no agenda at all reality dawns.
Whatever occurs, whatever it may be, that itself is the key,
And without stopping it or nourishing it, in an even flow,
Freely resting, surrendering to ultimate contemplation,
In naked pristine purity we reach consummation. "

~Longchepa, translated by Keith Downman

--from "Old Man Basking in the Sun."

"You'll laugh on the day of awakening, so you might as well laugh now!"


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A Fisherman

By Ikkyu (Ikkyu Sojun)
(1394 - 1481)

Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.

-- from Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, Translated by John Stevens

Reveries on Awakening

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I had always had a sense of 'innerness', a sense of a 'center' within. Then at one point it struck me that my sense of center could be an "assumption", not a fact. I suddenly realized that that assumption created a sense of inner/outer, of a 'me' inside and of a 'world' outside. With that realization I was able to 'let go' of that assumption. With that letting go consciousness became as a point that was everywhere at once. There was no longer an 'outside'. Everything was included in that expanded sense of spaceless presence. It was as if the 'subjective geometry' of experience became radically simpler, indeed as if there were no geometry at all!

~Peter Dziuban in Consciousness is All

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The gate was opened to me ... in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at a University ... I saw it as in a great deep in the internal; for I had a thorough view of the Universe, as a complex moving fullness wherein all things are couched and wrapped up.

~Jacob Boehme

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If I were to spend years and years imagining how to invent anything so beautiful, I could not do it, and I do not even know how I should try, for, even in its whiteness and radiance alone, it exceeds all that we can imagine.

~Saint Teresa of Avila

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Our true nature is not limited ... it is like the vast ocean. ... When we touch Supreme Consciousness through meditation, then we are boundless, we are everywhere, we are eternal.

~Amma Karunamayi

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At midnight I abruptly awakened. At first my mind was foggy, then suddenly that quotation flashed into my consciousness: "I came to realize clearly that Mind is no other than mountains, rivers, and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars." And I repeated it. Then all at once I was struck as though by lightning, and the next instant heaven and earth crumbled and disappeared. Instantaneously, like surging waves, a tremendous delight welled up in me, a veritable hurricane of delight, as I laughed loudly and wildly: "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! There's no reasoning here, no reasoning at all! Ha, ha, ha!" the empty sky split in two, then opened its enormous mouth and began to laugh uproariously ... Shakyamuni and the patriarchs haven't deceived me!"

~from "The Three Pillars of Zen" by Phillip Kapleau

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Behold what wonderful rest is in the Supreme Spirit
! and he enjoys it; who makes himself meet for it.
Held by the cords of love, the swing of the Ocean of Joy
sways to and fro; and a mighty sound breaks forth in song.
See what a lotus blooms there without water !
and Kabir says"My heart's bee drinks its nectar."

What a wonderful lotus it is,
that blooms at the heart of the spinning wheel of the universe!
Only a few pure souls know of its true delight.
Music is all around it,
and there the heart partakes of the joy of the Infinite Sea.
Kabir says: " Dive thou into that Ocean of sweetness:
thus let all errors of life and of death fiee away."

~Kabir

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These spiritual windowshoppers,
who idly ask, "How much is that?" "Oh, I'm just looking."
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."

Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish, project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

~Rumi, version by Coleman Barks, from "We Are Three"

Various Pointers to Non-Duality

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There is no attainment and no cultivation
of original nature. You are Consciousness,
not a farmer! Why work for that which you
already are? Do not mentate, do not stir a
thought. Trying to get out of superimposed
bondage, which is the notion that you are
separate from Existence, you will land in
superimposed freedom.

- From "The Truth Is" by Sri H.W.L. Poonja

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"When you become more sensitive to the body you have the impression that the inhalation-exhalation is no longer localized. It is all around you. It is important to see how we live mainly in our heads. Think with your whole body, feel with your whole body.

In the whole feeling, the global sensation, you go into your room and touch your whole room. You go outside and touch the clouds, the trees, the water. You do not live in isolation.

In your radiation you are in communion with all things. In this expansion there is no place for the ego because the ego is a contraction. Love is expansion, a feeling of spaciousness. "

- Jean Klein

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This is from New Seeds of Contemplation, pg 226, in the chapter called "The Gift of Understanding"

"A door swings open in the center of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which, although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact. Where already, supernatural instinct teaches us that the function of this abyss of freedom, which has been open within our midst, is to draw us utterly out of our own selfhood and into its own immensity of liberation."

- Thomas Merton

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The Trap of Meaninglessness

There are other traps that are inherent within this process of going from the initial glimpse of awakening to real abiding awakening. There are several of them that come up and again these traps or these cul-de-sacs, these delusions aren't inherent to awakening itself but they arise with the mind's relationship with the awakened view because the awakened view is so far beyond the mind that the mind truly can't contain it but the mind's inherent nature is to try to contain everything that it sees. And so one of these very common traps that people can get into is a sense of meaninglessness.

Now this can arise because from the stand point of reality we are free from the egoic desire to find meaning. We see that the ego's desire to find meaning in its life is actually a surrogate, a substitute for having a direct connection with life, for having the perception of 'you are life itself.' But if we don't feel that, if we don't know that, we don't experience that, then we need surrogates, we need something to stand in to fill the gap as it were. And as egos, what the ego uses is meaning, 'I'm trying to find the meaning in my life, what's the meaning to my life.' Only someone who is disconnected from life itself will seek meaning. Only someone that's disconnected from life will look for purpose. I'm not saying that people shouldn't look for meaning or shouldn't look for purpose. Actually they are probably wise strategies that are used to help people cope with life. But remember that these egoic yearnings for 'what's the meaning of my life?, what's the meaning of my existence?, what's the purpose of my existence?' are ultimately derived from a state where we have no real knowledge of what we are, where we're disconnected from our true nature. I don't mean actually disconnected, I mean unconscious of.

So when there's a true realization, when we wake up from the dream state, when we wake up from the ego, what is realized, part of the realization is the search for meaning is now no longer appropriate. When one has a direct connection with life, all of a sudden to find one's meaning, to find one's purpose seems to be a rather paltry thing, to be a small thing, to be insignificant. It's no longer really a drive in our life. The drive for meaning and purpose falls out of our life because we are literally in a different perspective. In a perspective where such things don't really exist or certainly they don't exist in the old way, they don't exist from the egoic standpoint.

Now the mind will perceive this, this truth, this truth that when we wake up from the dream state we see that the dream state is a dream state. How could a dream state have meaning? How could a dream state have purpose. It's a dream. And that's very true but as I say over and over, there's still a human being and there's still a human mind. And the mind is trying to make sense of all this. The mind is even trying to make sense of awakening itself. It's trying to make sense of the view of awakening. And as I have also said, for most people there's not a total disappearance of the ego, of that which is the experience of division. And so the mind is in relationship with the insights of reality, at times. And the mind will start to say, 'Oh God, there's no meaning!' And what's left of the ego will say, "There's no meaning! I now have no purpose or meaning! It's like you've seen too much of Reality to believe in purpose or meaning.

From "The End of Your World" - Adyashanti