In this issue an excerpt from Scott Kiloby's new book, Love's Quiet Revolution: The End of the Spiritual Search. Scott lives near Evansville, Indiana, U.S.A. On his website, http://www.kiloby.com, you can read more from his book, access his other writings, watch videos, find out about retreats, addiction recovery, and internet satsang using Skype. Scott offers a solid nonduality, as I think you'll see.
Love's Quiet Revolution: The End of the Spiritual Search
Excerpts from Chapter 24: The Liberation of Not Knowing
Beliefs or thoughts such as, “It’s all One,” or “there is no self,” will not lead to enlightenment. They are merely forms arising in ‘This.’ They can actually keep thought locked into the dream of self. Belief cannot see ‘This’ because belief is identification with thought, which is self. Belief is too busy maintaining an identity or holding onto a position to see the truth beyond all identities and positions. ‘This’ just is. It is free, loving, and open. It has no preference for the characterizations we place on it, the positions we take on it, or the identities we make out of it. Thought is temporary, self-involved, and largely involuntary. To believe that thought can truly tell you who you are or what ‘This’ or God is, is the dream. . . . . . . . . . . .
So what is ‘This?’ What is enlightenment? It is not the words ‘This,’ One, enlightenment or God. ‘This’ is realized through seeing what it is not. Liberation is beyond belief and thought, and yet it includes it. In other words, it plays with preferences and concepts, but it is not attached to them. It is not seeking a sense of self from them.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
If you listen to non-duality teachers or read books on it, the mind may start to believe this stuff. It gets lost again in the conceptual. Then, it believes that all is One. But belief will never see ‘This.’ ‘This’ is nothing the intellect can grasp. It is vast, and includes it all. ‘This’ does not get stuck on the level of the mind in any way, including notions that we should use only certain words or that words can even express it. In other words, ‘This’ does not get stuck on self. ‘This’ is that within which expressions of ‘This’ arise.
To say that the spirit should be expressed a certain way, or is a certain thing, comes from a point of reference, which is identification with thought. It is self. If I use the word “God” or “Allah” here and you are a Christian or a Muslim, something in your brain will register that word as being the truth. On the other hand, if you read a lot of non-duality books, the word “One” or “presence” may trigger a familiar mental response. The brain is simply stuck in words and beliefs. It is chasing after its own ideas. This stuckness is obscuring the truth of ‘This.’
. . . . . . . . . . . .
You will know liberation when it strikes. You will close this book and never open it again. I wrote this book knowing that if you see what it is pointing to, you will stop reading it. When liberation strikes, you will see your favorite guru as no different than your neighbor or a frog beside the road. You will stop being concerned with making the point that your guru, your neighbor, and the frog are not separate. You will know in your heart that they are not separate, but you will see that the mental insistence energy behind your point just creates the illusory separate self known as you. You will stop making points about God, as if you have any idea who or what that is. Or you will continue making points, without any notion that your points have anything to do with that to which the word God points.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Every moment is teaching us. But it is not teaching us an accumulation of ideas, which we can carry with us over time. We are not becoming spiritual egos who know something. Life is teaching us that we are not separate from it and that love means not knowing, not resisting, and not trying to control. Accumulation, by its very nature, creates a rigid, separate dream self which is trying to know, resist, and control life. This self is at war with life.
Insight is fresh, new, innocent, and clear. It cannot be carried over into the next moment. True spiritual learning has nothing to do with memory. It is the moment by moment awareness of what is arising and falling. It is holding onto nothing. It is the wisdom that sees that life begins and ends in this moment. It is constantly waking you up out of your points of reference, out of your false sense of mental certainty, and out of the dream of separation—all of which is the past in you.
Love's Quiet Revolution: The End of the Spiritual Search
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3274, Saturday, August 30, 2008
the sun sees no shadows
_()_ yosy
The Inner Sun
The rainbow comes and goes With a charming body. The outer sun comes and goes With a vast body. The inner sun stays and stays With its boundless And deathless Love-light.
- Sri Chinmoy
Gathering the Mind Before our body existed, One energy was already there. Like jade, more lustrous as it's polished, Like gold, brighter as it's refined. Sweep clear the ocean of birth and death, Stay firm by the door of total mastery. A particle at the point of open awareness, The gentle firing is warm.
- Sun Buen (1119 - 1182)
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, humans will discover fire.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, posted to The_Now2
The School of Love
We are all students in the school of love, although it may take us a long time and much suffering to admit this fact. Something obstinately refuses to see the obvious. Its amazing how stubborn and slow we are, and how often we still forget. We forget whenever we think ourselves more important than others, whenever we see our own desires and goals as more important than the feelings and well-being of those we love. We forget whenever we blame others for what we ourselves have been guilty of. We forget whenever we lose sight of the fact that in this school of love it is love that we all are trying to learn.
Yunus Emre, the first and greatest Turkish Sufi poet, says, "Let us master this science and read this book of love. God instructs; Love is His school."
- Kabir Helminski, excerpt from "Love's Universe;" more here:
Oh my God, our intoxicated eyes Have blurred our vision Our burdens have been made heavy, Forgive us.
You are hidden and yet From east to west you have filled the world with Your radiance Your Light is more magnificent Than sunrise or sunset And you are the inmost ground of consciousness Revealing the secrets we hold.
You are an explosive force causing our dammed up rivers to burst forth.
You whose essence is hidden While Your gifts are manifest You are like water and we are like millstones You are like wind and we are like dust; The wind is hidden while the dust is plainly seen. You are the invisible spring and we are your lush garden You are the spirit of life, And we are like hand and foot; Spirit causes the hand to close and open.
You are intelligence, And we are your voice Your intelligence causes this tongue to speak. You are joy and we are laughter, For we are the result of the blessing of Your joy All our movement is really A continual profession of faith Bearing witness to Your eternal power Just as the powerful turning of the millstone professes faith in the rivers existence.
Dust settles upon my head and upon my metaphors For You are beyond anything we could ever think or say And yet this servant cannot stop trying to express Your beauty in every moment, let my soul be Your carpet.
- Rumi, Mathnawi V:3307-3319, translated by Kabir and Camille Helminski
Come along with me Down into the world of seeing Come and you'll be free Take the time to find the feeling See everything on it's own And you'll find you know the way And you'll know the things you're shown Owe everything to the day
See the carpet of the sun The green grass soft and sweet Sands upon the shores of time Of oceans mountains deep Part of the world that you live in You are the part that you're giving
Come into the day Feel the sunshine warmth around you Sounds from far away Music of the love that found you The seed that you plant today Tomorrow will be a tree And living goes on this way It's all part of you and me
See the carpet of the sun The green grass soft and sweet Sands upon the shores of time Of oceans mountains deep Part of the world that you live in You are the part that you're giving
See the carpet of the sun The green grass soft and sweet Sands upon the shores of time Of oceans mountains deep Part of the world that you live in You are the part that you're giving
See the carpet of the sun See the carpet of the sun See the carpet of the sun See the carpet of the sun
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3275, Sunday, August 31, 2008
The intrusion of the mind
Knowing that the intrusion of the mind is a natural process, that it has to happen; that understanding itself will return one to the witnessing.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar, posted to Distillation
Unless you know yourself well, how can you know another? And when you know yourself--you are the others.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become the mind.
- Ramana Maharshi, posted to The_Now2
You and I are the same. What I have done is surely possible for all. You are the Self now and can never be anything else. Throw your worries to the wind, turn within and find Peace.
- Ramana Maharshi, posted to The_Now2
What does it mean to learn the knowledge of God's Unity? To consume yourself in the presence of the One. If you wish to shine like day, burn up the night of self-existence. Dissolve in the Being who is everything. You grabbed hold of "I" and "we," and this dualism is your ruin.
- Rumi, Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski, from Rumi: Daylight, posted to AlongTheWay
My Burning Heart
My heart is burning with love All can see this flame My heart is pulsing with passion like waves on an ocean
my friends have become strangers and I'm surrounded by enemies But I'm free as the wind no longer hurt by those who reproach me
I'm at home wherever I am And in the room of lovers I can see with closed eyes the beauty that dances
Behind the veils intoxicated with love I too dance the rhythm of this moving world
I have lost my senses in my world of lovers
Rumi, from: Love Poems of Rumi - Deepak Chopra, translated by: Fereydoun Kia
O Love
O Love, O pure deep Love, be here, be now, Be all - worlds dissolve into your stainless endless radiance, Frail living leaves burn with you brighter than cold stares - Make me your servant, your breath, your core.
- Rumi, from: Perfume of the Desert, edited by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut
"IT is not permanent, since it does not exist at all; It is not nothingness, since it is vividly clear and awake; It is not oneness, since many things are known. It is not plurality, since the many things known are inseparable in one taste. It is not somewhere else; it is your own awareness itself.
The face of this Primordial Protector, dwelling in your heart, Can be directly perceived in this very instant. Never be separated from it, children of my heart!"
~Shakbar
From the book,"The Flight of the Garuda," published by Rangjung Yeshe Publications, recommended to be only shown to those who have received a direct mind transmission from a master. You all have, right? ,^))
posted to Daily Dharma by Amrita
"The root of delusion comes from the mind
And he who knows the inwardness of the mind
Sees that the clear light within neither comes nor goes.
And when the mind that is deceived by the appearance of outward things
Has discerned the nature of appearance,
It knows that there is no distinction between appearance and the void.
Again when the mind discerns the nature of meditation
It also discerns what is not meditation,
And that there is no distinction between the two.
For distinctive thought is the root of delusion
And such thought has never been of the ultimate truth."
- Milarepa
A really charming and deep talk by Robert Adams (author of Silence of the Heart)
Peter Fenner's Nondual Teacher Training is introduced. Fenner writes that the training is intended for
• People who have a solid grounding in a nondual spiritual approach such as Dzogchen, Zen or Advaita and feel they are ready to share their wisdom with others.
• Therapists and mental health professionals who want to explore the contribution of nonduality in individual therapy and group work.
• Meditation teachers who wish to introduce a nondual dimension into their practical guidance and dharma discussions.
• People who give satsang who wish to enhance their capacity to share nondual awareness and expand the reach of their transmission.
• Graduates of the 9 month Radiant Mind course who wish to facilitate practice groups based on Radiant Mind resources.
Pray to whomever you kneel down to: Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross, his suffering face bent to kiss you, Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat, Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary that she may lay her palm on our brows, to Shekinah, Queen of Heaven and Earth, to Inanna in her stripped descent.
Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, Record Keeper of time before, time now, time ahead, pray. Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats. Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.
Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work, pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus and for everyone riding buses all over the world. If you haven’t been on a bus in a long time, climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.
Waiting in line for the movies, for the atm, for your latte and croissant, offer your plea. Make your eating and drinking a supplication. Make your slicing of carrots a holy act, each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.
Make the brushing of your hair a prayer, every strand its own voice singing in the choir on your head. As you wash your face, the water slipping through your fingers, a prayer: water, softest thing on earth, gentleness that wears away rock.
Making love, of course, is already a prayer. Skin and open mouths worshiping that skin, the fragile case we are poured into, each caress a season of peace.
If you’re hungry, pray. If you’re tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day. Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth. Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.
When you walk to your car, to the mailbox, to the video store, let each step be a prayer that we all keep our legs, that we do not blow off anyone else’s legs. Or crush their skulls. And if you are riding on a bicycle or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.
And as you work, typing with a new manicure, a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail, or delivering soda, or drawing good blood into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.
With each breath in, take in the faith of those who have believed when belief seemed foolish, who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.
Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace, feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed that spills onto the earth another second of peace. Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.
Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk. Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child around your Visa card. Gnaw your crust of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter. Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling your prayer through the streets.
This film is an authentic portrait of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one of Tibet's great contemporary teachers, considered to be a "Master of Masters" among the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
Renowned as a great meditator, guru, poet, scholar and as one of the main teachers of the Dalai Lama, the Nyingma Lama Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche died in 1991. Ten years in the making, this film began in 1989 when translator Matthieu Riacrd and Vivian Kurz began taping extensive footage of their teacher. Shot in rarely filmed Kham, Eastern Tibet, as well as Nepal, Bhutan, India and France, the film shows the rich and intricate tapestry Of Tibetan Buddhism and is a witness to the strength, wisdom and depth of Tibetan culture.
Narration by Richard Gere with music by Philip Glass.
In this issue three selections. An entry from Don Montano's blog in which is he says, "Nonduality may be a very important term for our times."
More information on Peter Fenner's Nondual Training Course.
Notice of two new DVDs from Non-duality Press, one featuring Jeff Foster and the other Dr. Jean Klein. There's a 9 minute sample of the Jean Klein video on YouTube (link below). In the video interview he speaks about his life, beginning from childhood. This video parts ways with the strict neo-advaita angle taken by Non-duality Press (and Jeff Foster), since Klein reveals that his teacher used the Upanishads and led him to seeing what he is not. That is a more traditional approach and Klein seems aligned with it, however that's only my impression from the video sample. I don't have the full view.
“Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought…The sense-experiences are the given subject-matter. But the theory that shall interpret them is manmande…hypothetical, never completely final, subject to question and doubt.” - Albert Einstein.
“The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level at which we created them” - Albert Einstein
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” - Einstein
Nonduality may be a very important term for our time. Since most of our logic systems and most of our knowledge are based on either/or binary thinking one way to move towards a balance may be to recognize the phenomena of nonduality in our systems.
“The term nondual is a literal translation of the Sanskrit term advaita, (meaning not two). That is, things remain distinct while not being separate.”…”Nondualism may be viewed as the belief that dualism or dichotomy are illusory phenomena.” (from Wikipedia)
The nonduality of matter and energy. Matter = energy = matter
Einstein was well-versed in philosophy and I can’t help but to wonder if he was aware of this term. I am inclined to believe that he used nondual thinking in his theory of matter and energy. When Einstein came up with E=mc2 he basically explained that matter is energy in another state. Or more specifically, how matter reverts back to energy when you place it at the speed of light.
In pedestrian terms, matter and energy are just two states of energy- just like water, has the states of liquid, solid and a gas. This may be hard to understand when you’re trained to think of everything through either/or thinking. Through either/or thinking you usually get stuck in arguments like: “Well, is it matter or is it energy?”
Multiple states and process
The belief that conceptual duality, nonduality, pluralism and holism are mirrors of the cycle of convergence-divergence. In other words, one process may be incomplete without the other. Together, these tendencies form a cycle. That cycle is just one of many others.
Challenging thingness
Everything is changing - but our human tendency is to attempt to trap everything into boxes, into words, into documents, into static states. Our tendency is to interpret processes as static, one or two-dimensional ‘things’. This is another form of reductionism. The same way we attempt to explain the entirety of life with a single frame of time. Or our tendency to explain the entirety of human experience with a few cells or genes.
Of course, static thinking has functional value but it also has anti-functional value and degrees of value in between. Static thinking may help us in one way but it may hinder and ‘trap’ us in other ways. We need to be aware of this changing dynamic. All elements of life are part of ever-expanding and ever-changing processes - we can deny this - but we do it with high risk.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” -Einstein
Welcome to our first Newsletter for the first 9 month North American Nondual Teacher Training Program with workshops in Boulder, Colorado. This Training is unique in bringing together highly qualified teachers and practitioners sharing and refining their skills in transmitting the timeless wisdom of nondual awareness; and empowering each other in the common endeavor of making nondual wisdom accessible and relevant to our precariously balanced planet.
In this newsletter I’d like to describe some of the most important features of the Training.
Teaching nonduality—sharing the ultimate medicine
Nondual awareness—what is also called “buddhamind,” “suchness,” “just this,” “original wisdom” and many other names—is the most precious space that a person can realize. To rest and live in this space is the ultimate medicine because here there is no sense of lack or deficiency. No matter how things are; no matter what sensations are arising in the body, no matter what is being thought, or where we are in terms of health or material resources, nothing more is needed. We live from a space that can’t be enhanced or improved because “here” no one needs anything.
Nondual awareness is the most precious resource available to every human being and for humanity at large; especially as we negotiate our way through this critical phase of human history. There’s no question that the most efficient way to demand less from our delicate environment is to discover the space of authentic self-sufficiency, and live more thoroughly from a place where we’re nourished and fulfilled by awareness itself.
Every day, some people awake in a selfless recognition of their fundamental nature — a sphere of awareness through which life moves—without this being shown to them by a teacher. There are innumerable cases of spontaneous realization throughout human history. But in the majority of cases people come to this recognition through a connection with an Advaita master, Zen practice, the instructions of a Dzogchen lama, working with Western non-aligned teachers, nondual therapists, or timeless texts that directly point to awareness itself.
But don’t I need to be realized before sharing nondual awareness?
Some people feel that it’s impossible to learn how to cultivate and transmit nondual awareness. They hold that it arises without any causes. At one level this is true. Nothing can bring “this” into being, because “nothing” is being created. “This” is always, already here. Still, the wisdom of the “pristine self-sufficient purity of this moment” has also been consciously transmitted, at least from the time when the Buddha held up a flower and the great Kashyapa received a direct transmission of a contentless wisdom revealing the nature of consciousness itself.
Nondual awareness has been consciously revealed in the minds of hundreds of thousands of people through self inquiry, koans, clear seeing or vipashyana, and pointing out events.These methods first entered the West 50 years or so ago. Today, half a century later, a significant number of Westerners are maturing as authentic agents for nondual transmission.
While the mind-to-mind transmission of pure awareness goes beyond all agency and contrivance, it’s possible to see how transmission happens, and use a broad palette of tools and sensitivities to awaken this in others. If someone has a clear recognition of the centerless space of nondual awareness and are naturally gifted to share at this level, it’s definitely possible to refine the capacity for nondual transmission and extend the reach of the field in which this happens.
Many forms of nondual inquiry
There are many forms of nondual inquiry. Indian Mahayana, Zen, Advaita and Dzogchen all have their preferred methods. Some approaches are confrontational, others are gentle. Some are incremental, others are sudden. Some methods lend themselves to group entrainment, others are more suited to a one-on-one, dokusan-type of exchange. Some approaches build on a foundation of contemplative serenity, others cut through intellectualization in swift, robust dialogues.
Bringing your first-hand experience to the Training
This Training brings together a community of new and seasoned teachers, who have a breadth and wealth of experience in nondual transmission and psychospiritual expertise that is unparalleled. Together we will share and explore the ins and outs of nondual inquiry and transmission. As a group we will draw on more than 500 years of first-hand practical experience and accumulated wisdom derived from a very wide range of nondual lineages.
I know that some teachers strongly caution against stepping outside of a particular lineage of transmission, fearing that sharing the path with practitioners from other traditions, can dilute the integrity and authenticity of their teaching. My experience is quite the opposite. People who are clear and confident in presencing nondual awareness know that nothing can threaten this space because there’s nothing here: no beliefs, practices or values that can be distorted or destroyed.
In this case exposure to a variety of ways of sharing nonduality only serves to enrich, empower and bring clarity to our own unique way of embodying and sharing the nondual.
Demystifying transmission
The process of sharing our skills and expertise will reveal the structures of effective transmission. We will demystify events such as pointing-out instructions and Zen dokusan. The framework of the Training will introduce a language and set of subtle distinctions through which participants share and understand the function and relevance of different ways for delivering the same contentless wisdom. These distinctions will continue to be enriched as the Training unfolds. A set of core distinctions will be offered in a Manual that’s been specially written for the Training.
The structure of the Training
Workshops
The Training is built around three, four day workshops. The workshops are a laboratory for sharing, demonstrating, testing, expanding and refining your capacity to presence and share nondual awareness. In the workshops everyone will be given opportunities to facilitate groups with a view to develop the calibration of their transmission and increase the means through which they can activate this awareness in others.
In the workshops I will also introduce and demonstrate a style of transmission that draws on the most powerful elements of traditions such as Advaita, Dzogchen, Zen and Mahayana, and brings them together in a coherent and organic way. This framework puts us on the same page. It equally acknowledges all lineages and traditions and gives us a common language for understanding the power and uniqueness of different approaches to the nondual .
In-situ application
In between workshops you will be bringing your learning back to your communities.
For some participants this will consist of actively experimenting with: new forms of space creation; methods of inquiry; processes; new levels of “doing nothing;” offering different types of feedback and questions to contemplate. You may also explore different formats for the delivery of your work: longer workshops, retreats, teleconferencing, etc.
For others, it will be the discovery of subtle changes in how you present meditation; work with clients; engage in dialogues with students; allow more natural silence; and rest more comfortably not knowing. Your practice may consist of noting these changes and letting them evolve without forethought or intention.
If you aren’t yet offering sessions to the general public or participating in peer-level groups, you will be coached in how to put these in place.
Teleconferences
Teleconferences will be offered every two or three weeks throughout the Training with a one month break in the middle. You will be assigned to a particular group for these calls as an “active participant.” Everyone can audit all calls. The function of the teleconferences is to open up new opportunities and explore how you are implementing your learning, though group discussion. I will join these calls.
All teleconferences will be recorded and disseminated as downloadable audio files.
Individual calls
You will have an individual call with Peter every two or three weeks for the duration of the Training. These calls will focus on your specific concerns, interests and challenges in nondual transmission.
What this Training offers you
If you’re well grounded in nondual work or are already teaching nondualism, this Training will expand the reach and effectiveness of your transmission. If your work isn’t already effortless, it will become so. You will be able to work with more people as the same time, and create more bridges from identification with conditioned experience through to pure awareness. You will gain the flexibility to offer transmission within and outside of traditional forms and structures.
If you’re a therapist or mental health professional who has some exposure to a nondual tradition such as Mahayana or Advaita, this Training will show you how to introduce a nondual dimension to your work with clients. You will be able to take clients into the space of selfless awareness where they are complete in the here and now. This becomes a reference point showing them their potential for being free and fulfilled without needing to change their minds or process the past or future.
If you teach meditation this Training will show you how to introduce nondual inquiry into practice; and how to dissolve the need to be “doing something.” In this way you will lead people into the state of “natural meditation”—the space where meditation comes to full fruition, free of any notion of a meditator or act of meditation.
If you teach dharma this Training will further experientialize your transmission. You’ll discover how to directly reveal open awareness rather than talk about it. You’ll learn how to dismantle fixations and beliefs on the spot and bring people to the space that lies at the end of all searching—the place where there’s nowhere further to go, a no one being nowhere.
Our invitation
If the description of the Training in this Newsletter and on the website (http://www.nondualtraining.com) touches you in any way, we invite you to complete an Application Form with can be found on the website. You can complete this online or download it and email or fax it to us. We will review your Application and arrange a time to speak with you by phone. Together we will explore how this Training can build on your interests and expertise in nondual transmission.
A new DVD of a recent meeting with Jeff Foster in Aptos, California. Jeff opens with a 40 minute introductory talk followed by questions and answers.
Menu:
1. All Happens Effortlessly 2. Oneness is meeting Itself 3. A Plunge into the Unknown 4. Question 1. Mind Plays a Role? 5. Question 2. Is Suffering Optional? 6. Question 3. Is Depression Physiological? 7. Question 4. Remove the Sense of Me? 8. Question 5. Child Must Have Ego
Jeff's clear, open and humorous approach, cuts through the confusion of seeking as he points to that ever-present reality that is the seeker and the sought.
Jeff's recent meetings in the US were full and lively; a customer who bought the DVD has commented: "It is the next best thing to being there in person . . . This is a DVD I will treasure and watch often."
We are very pleased to be able to re-issue an original film of an interview with Jean Klein.
Jean Klein was a pioneer in bringing non-duality to the attention of western seekers in the second half of the twentieth century. His direct intuitive awareness of reality comes from the heart; his breadth and depth of culture go beyond knowledge to that joy without a cause which we think is something separate from ourselves.
Yoga teacher Lilias Folan interviews Jean Klein with basic and practical questions about the search for truth and the direct path as well as questions about Jean's own background.
This DVD is a welcome introduction for those who know little of Jean and a warm, joyful reminder for people already familiar with his approach.
Originally released in 1989. 60 mins
Note: Excellent audio quality. Chapter breaks after each set of questions. There is a slight blurring at the very bottom of the frame which was present in the master copy that we used.
Notice of the passing of Swami Chidanand Saraswati, President of the Divine Life Society: http://www.dlshq.org/
The Divine Life Society is social, traditional, visceral, a distinct contrast to today's instant advaita that is dissolved in water, not even milk.
From their website:
The Divine Life Society carries out its object of a world-wide revival of spirituality through publication of books, pamphlets and magazines dealing scientifically with all the aspects of Yoga and Vedanta, universal religion and philosophy, and ancient medicine; holding and arranging cultural and spiritual conferences and discourses; establishing training centres for the practice of Yoga and the revival of true culture; and taking such other steps from time to time as may be necessary for bringing about a quick moral and spiritual regeneration in the world.
This institution serves as a place of preservation of the ancient traditions and cultural practices that has come down as a time-honoured heritage. It has been built up to serve as a model of many-sided, altruistic activity, an ideal to copy, intended to bring about a complete unfoldment of the human personality, and to reveal the essential blending together of all sides of human nature. The Society also functions as an ideal place of spiritual retreat for the educated citizens of the world, wherein he can renew himself and recreate and refresh his being, physically, mentally, morally and spiritually.
AHMEDABAD: Various religious heads from Ahmedabad and nearby temples paid homage to Swami Chidanandji Saraswati, head of Divine Life Society, Hrishikesh, who expired on August 29 in Hrishikesh.
Chidanandji had worked extensively in Gujarat and has helped many disciples achieve spiritual heights through service to the society. Swami Ishwarcharandasji, convener of BAPS said Chidanandji was a living example of humility, simplicity and divinity.
Shrimad Rajchandra Kendra's Swami Atmanand said that Chidanandji taught the world the principle of serving humans and world brotherhood. Bhagwatrishi of Sola Bhagwat Vidyapeeth paid his homage to the saint and said that he was a saint who understood the essence of spiritualism, thus he could become guru to the world.
The Divine Life Society members also read out the message sent by Gujarat governor Naval Kishore Sharma to the assembly.
HIS HOLINESS SRI SWAMI CHIDANANDA SARASWATI MAHARAJ
Photo: Swami Chidananda Saraswati
Sridhar Rao, as Swami Chidananda was known before taking Sannyasa (embracing a life of renunciation), was born to Srinivasa Rao and Sarojini, on the 24th September, 1916, the second of five children and the eldest son. Sri Srinivasa Rao was a prosperous Zamindar (a rich landlord) owning several villages, extensive lands and palatial buildings in South India. Sarojini was an ideal Indian mother, noted for her saintliness.
At the age of eight, Sridhar Rao's life was influenced by one Sri Anantayya, a friend of his grandfather, who used to relate to him stories from the epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. Doing Tapas (austerities), becoming a Rishi (sage), and having a vision of the Lord became ideals which he cherished.
His uncle, Krishna Rao, shielded him against the evil influences of the materialistic world around him, and sowed in him the seeds of the Nivritti life (life of renunciation) which he joyously nurtured until, as latter events proved, it blossomed into sainthood.
His elementary education began at Mangalore. In 1932, he joined the Muthiah Chetty School in Madras where he distinguished himself as a brilliant student. His cheerful personality, exemplary conduct and extraordinary traits earned for him a distinct place in the hearts of all teachers and students with whom he came into contact.
In 1936, he was admitted to Loyola College, whose portals admit only the most brilliant of students. In 1938, he emerged with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. This period of studentship at a predominantly Christian College was significant. The glorious ideals of Lord Jesus, the Apostles and the other Christian saints had found in his heart a synthesis of all that is best and noble in the Hindu culture. To him, study of the Bible was no mere routine; it was the living word of God, just as living and real as the words of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita. His innate breadth of vision enabled him to see Jesus in Krishna, not Jesus instead of Krishna. He was as much an adorer of Jesus Christ as he was of Lord Vishnu.
The family was noted for its high code of conduct and this was infused into his life. Charity and service were the glorious ingrained virtues of the members of the family. These virtues found an embodiment in Sridhar Rao. He discovered ways and means of manifesting them. None who sought his help was sent away without it. He gave freely to the needy.
Service to lepers became his ideal. He would build them huts on the vast lawns of his home and look after them as though they were deities. Later, after he joined the Ashram (hermitage), this early trait found in him complete and free expression where even the best among men would seldom venture into this great realm of divine love, based upon the supreme wisdom that all are one in God. Patients from the neighbourhood, suffering from the worst kind of diseases came to him. To Sridhar Rao the patient was none other than Lord Narayana Himself. He served him with tender love and compassion. The very movement of his hands portrayed him as worshipping the living Lord Narayana. Nothing would keep him from bringing comfort to the suffering inmates of the Ashram, no matter what the urgency of other engagements at the time.
Service, especially of the sick, often brought out the fact that he had no idea of his own separate existence as an individual. It seemed as if his body clung loosely to his soul.
Nor was all this service confined to human beings. Birds and animals claimed his attention as much as, if not more than, human beings. He understood their language of suffering. His service of a sick dog evoked the admiration of Gurudev. He would raise his finger in grim admonition when he saw anyone practicing cruelty to dumb animals in his presence.
His deep and abiding interest in the welfare of lepers had earned for him the confidence and admiration of the Government authorities when he was elected to the Leper Welfare Association, constituted by the state - at first as Vice-Chairman and later as Chairman of The Muni-ki-reti Notified Area Committee.
Quite early in life, although born in a wealthy family, he shunned the pleasures of the world to devote himself to seclusion and contemplation. In the matter of study it was the spiritual books which had the most appeal to him, more than college books. Even while he was at college, text-books had to take second place to spiritual books. The works of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Gurudev took precedence over all others. He shared his knowledge with others, so much so that he virtually became the Guru of the household and the neighbourhood, to whom he would talk of honesty, love, purity, service and devotion to God. He would exhort them to perform Japa of Rama-Nama. While still in his twenties he began initiating youngsters into this great Rama Taraka Mantra. He was an ardent admirer of Sri Ramakrishna Math at Madras and regularly participated in the Satsangs (association with the wise) there. The call of Swami Vivekananda to renounce resounded within his pure heart. He ever thirsted for the Darshan (vision) of saints and Sadhus (renunciates) visiting the metropolis.
In June 1936, he disappeared from home. After a vigorous search by his parents, he was found in the secluded Ashram of a holy sage some miles from the sacred mountain shrine Tirupati. He returned home after some persuasion. This temporary separation was but a preparation for the final parting from the world of attachments to family and friends. While at home his heart dwelt in the silent forests of spiritual thoughts, beating in tune with eternal Pranava-Nada (mystic sound of the Eternal) of the Jnana Ganga (river of Knowledge) within himself. The seven years at home following his return from Tirupati were marked by seclusion, service, intense study of spiritual literature, self-restraint, control of the senses, simplicity in food and dress, abandonment of all comforts and practice of austerities which augmented his inner spiritual power.
The final decision came in 1943. He was already in correspondence with Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj of Rishikesh. He obtained Swamiji's permission to join the Ashram.
On arriving at the Ashram, he naturally took charge of the dispensary. He became the man with the healing hand. The growing reputation of his divine healing hand attracted a rush of patients to the Sivananda Charitable Dispensary.
Very soon after joining the Ashram, he gave ample evidence of the brilliance of his intellect. He delivered lectures, wrote articles for magazines and gave spiritual instructions to the visitors. When the Yoga-Vedanta Forest University (now known as the Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy) was established in 1948, Sri Gurudev paid him a fitting tribute by appointing him Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Raja Yoga. During his first year he inspired the students with his brilliant exposition of Maharishi Patanjali's Yoga-Sutras.
It was also in the first year of his stay at the Ashram that he wrote his magnum opus 'Light Fountain', an immortal biography of Sri Gurudev. Sri Gurudev himself once remarked: "Sivananda will pass away, but 'Light Fountain' will live".
In spite of his multifarious activities and intense Sadhana, he founded, under the guidance of Gurudev, the Yoga Museum in 1947, in which the entire philosophy of Vedanta and all the processes of Yoga Sadhana are depicted in the form of pictures and illustrations.
Towards the end of 1948, Gurudev nominated him as the General Secretary of The Divine Life Society. The great responsibility of the organization fell on his shoulders. From that very moment he spiritualized all his activities by his presence, counsel and wise leadership. He exhorted all to raise their consciousness to the level of the Divine.
On Guru Purnima day, the 10th of July, 1949, he was initiated into the holy order of Sannyasa by Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. He now became known as Swami Chidananda, a name which connotes : "one who is in the highest consciousness and bliss".
In November 1959 Swami Chidanandaji embarked on an extensive tour of America, being sent by Gurudev as his personal representative to broadcast the message of Divine Life. He returned in March 1962.
In August 1963, after the Mahasamadhi of the Master, he was elected as President of the Divine Life Society. After election, he strove to hold aloft the banner of renunciation, dedicated service, love and spiritual idealism, not only within the set-up of the widespread organization of the Society, but in the hearts of countless seekers throughout the world, who were all too eager to seek his advice, help and guidance.
Sri Swami Chidanandaji has toured the length and breadth of India, Malaysia and South Africa to serve the devotees of the Society.
Again in 1968, Sri Swami Chidanandaji undertook the Global Tour at the kind request of numerous disciples and devotees of holy Master Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj and visited all countries of the world. Wherever he went devotees received him cordially and listened to him with rapt attention.
Sri Swami Chidanandaji, right from the beginning is working and serving the Divine Cause of Sri Gurudev's Mission tirelessly and spreading his Divine Life Message far and wide not only in Bharatavarsha (India) but also in countries outside.
On 24th September, 1976 the Headquarters of The Divine Life Society Shivanandanagar (Rishikesh) as well as all Branches of the Society celebrated his 60th Birthday Anniversary (Shashtyabdapurti).
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3281, Saturday, September 6, 2008
All you really wanted Was enough.
Which is to say You only wanted more.
Ram Tzu knows this...
What you now have Is all you'll ever have.
- Ram Tzu, posted to AlongTheWay
Whenever you are able, have a "look" inside yourself to see whether you are unconsciously creating conflict between the inner and the outer, between your external circumstances at that moment - where you are, who you are with, or what you are doing - and your thoughts and feelings. Can you feel how painful it is to internally stand in opposition to what is?
When you recognize this, you also realize that you are now free to give up this futile conflict, this inner state of war.
- Eckhart Tolle, from Stillness Speaks, posted to The_Now2
The whole process of meditation is one of creating that good ground, that cradle of loving-kindness where we actually are nurtured. What's being nurtured is our confidence in our own wisdom, our own health, and our own courage, our own goodheartedness. We develop some sense that the way we are-the kind of personality that we have and the way we express life-is good, and that by being who we are completely and by totally accepting that and having respect for ourselves, we are standing on the ground of warriorship.
I've always thought that the phrase "to take refuge" is very curious because it sounds theistic, dualistic, and dependent "to take refuge" in something. I remember very clearly, at a time of enormous stress in my life, reading Alice in Wonderland. Alice became a heroine for me because she fell into this hole and she just free-fell. She didn't grab for the edges, she wasn't terrified, trying to stop her fall; she just fell and she looked at things as she went down. Then, when she landed, she was in a new place. She didn't take refuge in anything. I used to aspire to be like that because I saw myself getting near the hole and just screaming, holding back, not wanting to go anywhere where there was no hand to hold.
In every human life (whether there are puberty rites or not) you are born, and you are born alone. You go through that birth canal alone, and then you pop out alone, and then a whole process begins. And when you die, you die alone. No one goes with you. The journey that you make, no matter what your belief about that journey is, is made alone. The fundamental idea of taking refuge is that between birth and death we are alone. Therefore, taking refuge in the buddha, the dharma, and the sangha does not mean finding consolation in them, as a child might find consolation in Mommy and Daddy. Rather, it's a basic expression of your aspiration to leap out of the nest, whether you feel ready for it or not, to go through your puberty rites and be an adult with no hand to hold. It expresses your realization that the only way to begin the real journey of life is to feel the ground of loving-kindness and respect for yourself and then to leap. In some sense, however, we never get to the point where we feel one hundred percent sure: "I have had my nurturing cradle. It's finished. Now I can leap." We are always continuing to develop maitri and continuing to leap. The other day I was talking about meeting our edge and our desire to grab on to something when we reach our limits. Then we see that there's more loving-kindness, more respect for ourselves, more confidence that needs to be nurtured. We work on that and we just keep leaping.
So for us, taking refuge means that we feel that the way to live is to cut the ties, to cut the umbilical cord and alone start the journey of being fully human, without confirmation from others. Taking refuge is the way that we begin cultivating the openness and the goodheartedness that allow us to be less and less dependent. We might say, "We shouldn't be dependent anymore, we should be open," but that isn't the point. The point is that you begin where you are, you see what a child you are, and you don't criticize that. You begin to explore, with a lot of humor and generosity toward yourself, all the places where you cling, and every time you cling, you realize, "Ah! This is where, through my mindfulness and my tonglen and everything that I do, my whole life is a process of learning how to make friends with myself." On the other hand, this need to cling,this need to hold the hand, this cry for Mom, also shows you that that's the edge of the nest. Stepping through right there-making a leap-becomes the motivation for cultivating maitri. You realize that if you can step through that doorway, you're going forward, you're becoming more of an adult, more of a complete person, more whole.
In other words, the only real obstacle is ignorance. When you say "Mom!" or when you need a hand to hold, if you refuse to look at the whole situation, you aren't able to see it as a teaching, an inspiration to realize that this is the place where you could go further, where you could love yourself more. If you can't say to yourself at that point, "I'm going to look into this, because that's all I need to do to continue this journey of going forward and opening more," then you're committed to the obstacle of ignorance.
Working with obstacles is life's journey. The warrior is always coming up against dragons. Of course the warrior gets scared, particularly before the battle. It's frightening. But with a shaky, tender heart the warrior realizes that he or she is just about to step into the unknown, and then goes forth to meet the dragon. The warrior realizes that the dragon is nothing but unfinished business presenting itself, and that it's fear that really needs to be worked with. The dragon is just a motion picture that appears there, and it appears in many forms: as the lover who jilted us, as the parent who never loved us enough, as someone who abused us. Basically what we work with is our fear and our holding back, which are not necessarily obstacles. The only obstacle is ignorance, this refusal to look at our unfinished business. If every time the warrior goes out and meets the dragon, he or she says, "Hah! It's a dragon again. No way am I going to face this," and just splits, then life becomes a recurring story of getting up in the morning, going out, meeting the dragon, saying, "No way," and splitting. In that case you become more and more timid and more and more afraid and more of a baby. No one's nurturing you, but you're still in that cradle, and you never go through your puberty rites.
So we say we take refuge in the buddha, we take refuge in the dharma, we take refuge in the sangha. In the oryoki meal chant we say, "The buddha's virtues are inconceivable, the dharma's virtues are inconceivable, the sangha's virtues are inconceivable," and "I prostrate to the buddha, I prostrate to the dharma, I prostrate to the sangha, I prostrate respectfully and always to these three.--Well, we aren't talking about finding comfort in the buddha, dharma, and sangha. We aren't talking about prostrating in order to be safe. The buddha, we say traditionally, is the example of what we also can be. The buddha is the awakened one, and we too are the buddha. It's simple. We are the buddha. It's not just a way of speaking.
We are the awakened one, meaning one who continually leaps, one who continually opens, one who continually goes forward.
- Pema Chodron, from The Wisdom of No Escape, posted to allspirit
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth -- not going all the way, and not starting.
- Buddha, posted to Disillation
Every decision you make - every decision - is not a decision about what to do. It's a decision about Who You Are. When you see this, when you understand it, everything changes. You begin to see life in a new way. All events, occurrences, and situations turn into opportunities to do what you came here to do.
- Neale Donald Walsch, posted to Distillation
Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that is is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still.
"I am the awareness that is aware that there is attachment." That's the beginning of the transformation of consciousness.
- Eckhart Tolle, posted to The_Now2
Fear
One day Fear will take you where you do not want to go,
go anyway...
you can't imagine what's behind it.
- Anna Ruiz, posted to NondualitySalon
When you realize yourself as less than a point in space and time, something too small to be cut and too short-lived to be killed, then, and then only, all fear goes. When you are smaller than the point of a needle, then the needle cannot pierce you--you pierce the needle.
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3282, Sunday, September 14, 2008
To have an ambition seems to be a natural phenomenon in the human make-up. Some people want to be rich, powerful or famous. Some want to be very knowledgeable, to get degrees. Some just want to find a little niche for themselves where they can look out of the window and see the same scenery every day. Some want to find a perfect partner, or as near perfect as possible.
Even when we are not living in the world, but in a nunnery, we have ambitions: to become excellent meditators, to be perfectly peaceful, that this life-style should yield results. There's always something to hope for. Why is that? Because it's in the future, never in the present.
Instead of being attentive to what is now, we are hoping for something better to come, maybe tomorrow. Then, when tomorrow arrives, it has to be the next day again, because it still wasn't perfect enough. If we were to change this pattern in our thinking habits and rather become attentive to what is, then we would find something to satisfy us. But when we are looking at that which doesn't exist yet, more perfect, more wonderful, more satisfying, then we can't find anything at all, because we are looking for that which isn't there.
The Buddha spoke about two kinds of people, the ordinary worldling (puthujjana) and the noble person (ariya). Obviously it is a worthwhile ambition to become a noble person, but if we keep looking for it at some future time, then it will escape us. The difference between a noble one and a worldling is the experience of "path and fruit" (magga-phala). The first moment of this supermundane consciousness is termed Stream-entry (sotapatti) and the person who experiences it is a Stream-winner (sotapanna).
If we put that into our mind as a goal in the future, it will not come about, because we are not using all our energy and strength to recognize each moment. Only in the recognition of each moment can a path moment occur.
The distinguishing factor between a worldling and a noble one is the elimination of the first three fetters binding us to continuous existence. These three, obstructing the worldling, are: wrong view of self, sceptical doubt and belief in rites and rituals, (sakkayaditthi, vicikiccha and silabbatta-paramasa). Anyone who is not a Stream-winner is chained to these three wrong beliefs and reactions that lead away from freedom into bondage.
Let's take a look at sceptical doubt first. It's that niggling thought in the back of the mind: "There must be an easier way," or "I'm sure I can find happiness somewhere in this wide world." As long as there's doubt that the path of liberation leads out of the world, and the belief is there that satisfaction can be found within the world, there is no chance of noble attainment, because one is looking in the wrong direction. Within this world with its people and things, animals and possessions, scenery and sense contacts, there is nothing to be found other than that which we already know. If there were more, why isn't it easily discernible, why haven't we found it? It should be quite plain to see. What are we looking for then?
Obviously we are looking for happiness and peace, just like everyone else is doing. Sceptical doubt, that alarmist, says: "I'm sure if I just handled it a little cleverer than I did last time I'll be happy. There are a few things I haven't tried yet." Maybe we haven't flown our own plane yet, or lived in a cave in the Himalayas or sailed around the world, or written that best-selling novel. All of these are splendid things to do in the world except they are a waste of time and energy.
Sceptical doubt makes itself felt when one isn't quite sure what one's next move should be. "Where am I going, what am I to do?" One hasn't found a direction yet. Sceptical doubt is the fetter in the mind when the clarity which comes from a path moment is absent. The consciousness arising at that time removes all doubt, because one has experienced the proof oneself. When we bite into the mango, we know its taste.
The wrong view of self is the most damaging fetter that besets the ordinary person. It contains the deeply imbedded "this is me" notion. Maybe it's not even "my" body, but there is "someone" who is meditating. This "someone" wants to get enlightened, wants to become a Stream-winner, wants to be happy. This wrong view of self is the cause of all problems that could possibly arise.
As long as there's "somebody" there, that person can have problems. When there's nobody there, who could have difficulties? Wrong view of self is the root which generates all subsequent pain, grief and lamentation. With it also come the fears and worries: "Am I going to be alright, happy, peaceful, find what I am looking for, get what I want, be healthy, wealthy and wise?" These worries and fears are well substantiated from one's own past. One hasn't always been healthy, wealthy and wise, nor gotten what one wanted, nor felt wonderful. So there's very good reason to be worried and fearful as long as wrong view of self prevails.
Rites and rituals in themselves are not harmful, only believing them to be part of the path to Nibbana is detrimental. They need not even be religious, although we usually think of them like that. Such as offering flowers and incense on a shrine, prostrating or celebrating certain festivals and believing that this will accumulate enough merit to go to the Deva realms. It's devotion, respect and gratitude to the Triple Gem,[1] which count. But this belief is not only confined to religious activities. Everybody lives with rites and rituals, even though we may not be aware of them. In human relationships there are certain prescribed ways of acting in respect to one's parents, one's children, one's partners. How one relates in one's job, to friends and strangers, how one wants to be confirmed by others, all is connected to preconceived ideas of what is right and proper in a certain culture and tradition. None of it has any basic truth in it, all is mind-made. The more ideas one has, the less one can see reality. The more one believes in them the harder it is to abandon them. As one imagines oneself to be a certain kind of person, one relates in that way in all situations. It doesn't have to be how we put flowers on a shrine, it can also be how we greet people, if we do it according to a certain stereotyped ritual and not the way an open heart and mind may dictate.
These three obstructions fall away when a path and fruit moment has been experienced. There's a marked change in such a person, which is -- of course -- not externally visible. It would be nice to wear a halo and look blissful. But the inner change is firstly that the experience leaves absolutely no doubt what has to be done in this life. The event is totally different from anything previously known, so much so, that it makes one's former life, up to that point, immaterial. Nothing can be found in the past which has fundamental importance. The only significance lies in going ahead with the practice so that this minimal experience of the first path moment can be fortified, resurrected and firmly established in oneself.
The path and fruit moments recur for the Once-returner (sakadagami), the Non-returner (anagami) and the Enlightened One (Arahant). Each time they are not only deepened, but can be lengthened. One could compare this to having examinations at the university. If one is going through four years of university study to get a certain degree, one has to pass examinations at the end of each year. One has to answer questions each time, based on one's previously absorbed knowledge. But the questions become deeper, more profound and more difficult with each subsequent examination. While they are always concerned with the same subject, they require more depth and profundity of understanding each time. Until one finally graduates and doesn't have to return to university. It's the same with our spiritual development. Each path moment is based on the previous one and is concerned with the same subject, yet it goes deeper and further. Until one passes one's final test and need not return again.
The path moment doesn't have any thinking or feeling in it. It is not comparable to the meditative absorptions (jhana). Although it is based upon them because only the concentrated mind can enter into a path moment, it does not have the same qualities. the meditative absorptions have -- in their initial stages -- the ingredients of rapture, happiness and peacefulness. Later on, the mind experiences expansion, nothingness and a change of perception. The path moment does not contain any of these states of mind.
It has a quality of non-being. This is such a relief and changes one's world view so totally that it is quite understandable that the Buddha made such a distinction between a worldling and a Noble One. While the meditative absorptions bring with them a feeling of oneness, of unity, the path moment does not even contain that. The moment of fruition, subsequent to the path moment, is the understood experience and results in a turned-around vision of existence.
The new understanding recognizes every thought, every feeling as stress (dukkha). The most elevated thought, the most sublime feeling still has this quality. Only when there is nothing, is there no stress. There is nothing internal or external that contains the quality of total satisfactoriness. Because of such an inner vision, the passion for wanting anything is discarded. All has been seen for what it really is and nothing can give the happiness that arises through the practice of the path and its results.
The Nibbanic element cannot be truly described as bliss, because bliss has a connotation of exhilaration. We use the word "bliss" for the meditative absorption, where it includes a sense of excitement. The Nibbanic element does not recognize bliss because all that arises is seen as stress. "The bliss of Nibbana" may give one the impression that one may find perfect happiness, but the opposite is true. One finds that there is nothing and therefore no more unhappiness, only peace.
To look for path and fruit will not bring them about, because only moment to moment awareness can do so. This awareness will eventually culminate in real concentration where one can let go of thinking and be totally absorbed. We can drop the meditation subject at that time. We need not push it aside, it falls away of its own accord, and absorption in awareness occurs. If there has to be an ambition in one's life, this is the only worthwhile one. All others will not bring fulfillment.
One doesn't have to force oneself to give up sceptical doubt. What is there to doubt when one has experienced the truth? If one hits oneself with a hammer, one feels pain and cannot doubt it. One knows from one's own experience.
Rites and rituals are brought to an interesting end because the person who has experienced a path moment will under no circumstance indulge in any role-playing. All roles are the ingredients of unreality. One may continue religious rites, because they contain aspects of respect, gratitude and devotion. But there will not be any rituals in how to relate to people or to situations or how to invent stories about oneself because the response is with a spontaneous open heart.
Letting go of the wrong view of self is -- of course -- the most profound change, causing all other changes. For the Stream-winner the wrong view of self can never intellectually arise again, but feeling-wise it can, because the path moment has been so fleeting. It hasn't made the complete impact yet. If it had done so, it would have resulted in Enlightenment. This is possible and is mentioned in the Buddha's discourses as having happened during his lifetime. All four stages of holiness were realized while listening to the Dhamma.
The initial fruit moment needs to be re-lived, one has to resurrect it over and over again, until the second path moment can arise. It's like repeating what one knows and not forgetting so that one can build upon it.
It is very useful to remind oneself in all waking moments that body, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness are all impermanent and have no core substance, changing from moment to moment. Whether one has had a direct vision of non-self (anatta) or just an understanding of it, either way one has to bring it back into one's mind and re-live it as often as possible. As we continue to do this, ordinary problems arise less and less. If we remain aware of the impermanence of all that exists, our difficulties seem far less important and the view of self subtly changes.
The view we have of ourselves is our worst enemy. Everyone has made up a persona, a mask that one wears and we don't want to see what's behind it. We don't allow anyone else to look either. After having had a path moment, that is no longer possible. But the mask, fear and rejection come to the fore. The best antidote is to remember again and again, that there's really nobody there, only phenomena, nothing more. Even though the inner vision may not be concrete enough to substantiate such a claim, the affirmation helps to loosen the grasping and clinging and to hang on a little less tightly.
The direction of the practice is certainly towards Stream-entry. However, there is nothing to get, there's everything to give up. Unless that is done, the moment cannot happen, and we will continue to live in the same way we always have. Beset by dukkha obstructed by dukkha, subject to praise and blame, loss and gain, fame and ill-fame, happiness and unhappiness. The usual problems -- all caused by "self" -- will arise again and again. The real change comes when there is a decisive alteration in the way we view ourselves, otherwise the difficulties remain the same because the same identical person is generating them.
Being mindfully aware in and out of meditation is the practice which will bring results. It means doing one thing at a time, attentive to mind and body. When listening to Dhamma, only listen. When sitting in meditation, only attending to the meditation subject. When planting a tree, only planting. No frills, no judgments. That habituates the mind to be in each moment. Only in such a way can a path moment occur. It's not in the distant future, it's possible here and now. There's no reason why an intelligent, healthy, committed person should not be able to attain it with patience and perseverance.
We have heard about disenchantment and dispassion as steps on the path to liberation and freedom. They cannot have meaning and impact unless there is a vision of a totally different reality, one which does not contain the world's manifoldness. When one sits in meditation and starts thinking, that's the temptation of diversification and expansion (papañca). The Nibbana element is one, not manifold. One could say that it's empty of all that we know. Until that is seen, the world will keep calling, but we need not believe it all. It is a difficult task. So one has to remind oneself often, otherwise one gets caught by temptation. One should not be surprised when one doesn't find happiness; manifoldness, diversification cannot create happiness, only distraction.
Certainly one can experience pleasure from the senses. If one has good karma there will be many occasions. Good food, beautiful scenery, pleasant people, good music, interesting books, a comfortable home, not too much physical discomfort. But do these bring fulfillment? Since it didn't happen in the past, why should it occur in the future? Path and fruit bring fulfillment because they are empty of phenomena. Emptiness does not change nor does it become unpleasant and it cannot lack peace, since there is nothing to disturb it.
When people hear or read about Nibbana, they are apt to say: "How can I want nothing?" When one has seen that everything one can possibly want is meant to fill an inner void and dissatisfaction, then the time has come to want nothing. This goes beyond "not wanting" because one now accepts the reality that there is nothing worthwhile to be had. Not wanting anything will make it possible to experience that there is actually nothing -- only peace and quiet.
If I am holding a cup of water and I ask you, "Is this cup empty?" you will say, "No, it is full of water." But if I pour out the water and ask you again, you may say, "Yes, it is empty." But, empty of what? . . . My cup is empty of water, but it is not empty of air. To be empty is to be empty of something. . . . When Avalokita [Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion] says that the five skandhas are equally empty, to help him be precise we must ask, "Mr. Avalokita, empty of what?"
The five skandhas, which may be translated into English as five heaps, or five aggregates, are the five elements that comprise a human being. . . . In fact, these are really five rivers flowing together in us: the river of form, which means our body, the river of feelings, the river of perceptions, the river of mental formations, and the river of consciousness. They are always flowing in us. . . .
Avalokita looked deeply into the five skandhas . . . and he discovered that none of them can be by itself alone. . . . Form is empty of a separate self, but it is full of everything in the cosmos. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding
Awake awhile.
It does not have to be Forever, Right now.
One step upon the Sky's soft skirt Would be enough.
Hafiz, Awake awhile. Just one True moment of Love Will last for days.
Rest all your elaborate plans and tactics For Knowing Him, For they are all just frozen spring buds Far, So far from Summer's Divine Gold.
Awake, my dear. Be kind to your sleeping heart. Take it out into the vast fields of Light And let it breathe.
Say, "Love, Give me back my wings. Lift me, Lift me nearer."
Say to the sun and moon, Say to our dear Friend,
"I will take You up now, Beloved, On that wonderful Dance You promised."
~ Hafiz ~
(I Heard God Laughing- Renderings of Hafiz -- Daniel Ladinsky)
"I think the key is intent. If a seeker's intent is to become the Truth at all costs, then it will happen. All the reading and practices we involve ourselves with are useful only to the extent that they build intent. If a burning desire for enlightenment is not present, no amount of meditation and practices will help. If it is present, no meditation or practices are necessary. Paradoxically, this burning desire for Truth can't be a reaction against a life we object to and are dissatisfied with. It must be in conjunction with an immense gratitude for what we have been given, with a "surrender" that asks for no divine rescue or special mercies. When a person who wants Truth more than life falls in love with what is, it happens."
This video features Stephen Wolinsky serving up his understanding of Nisargadatta Maharaj's most profound teachings. Two points of power are noted in this DVD. One is Nisargadatta Maharaj's confession of the primordial advaita. The other is 9 minutes of footage of Nisargadatta speaking to a group of people in his home.
POINT OF POWER 1 - THE PRIMORDIAL ADVAITA
In this video teacher Stephen Wolinsky says that Nisargadatta called "prior to the I Am" the primordial advaita. Stephen says, "Even the sense of beingness as well as presence, and witnessing, awaring, is part of the I Am and an illusion. Prior to the I am, in the primordial advaita, they are not."
The primordial advaita is a power point because there's nowhere else to go from there. It is "prior to." Today's teachings that are classified as neo-advaita speak from "prior to." Primordial advaita is Nisargadatta's version of neo-advaita.
"My words, if planted in you, will remove all other words and concepts," Nisargadatta said. That's all neo-advaita confessions or the confessions of "prior to," of primordial advaita, can do. And they can do it. This DVD can do it.
Primordial advaita is a power point within this production. Through Wolinsky's explanations and meditations, you are brought to where you can confess the primordial advaita yourself, if you are inclined to.
If Nisargadatta's words can become planted in you, or have become planted in you, then Wolinsky is like a growth stimulator of planted words, whether the gardener was Nisargadatta, Tony Parsons, Bob Adamson, or anyone. Any guru. We learn from Nisargadatta in his own words that, "Gurus are like milestones. It is natural to move from one to another."
Primordial advaita, or "prior to the I Am," is one thematic power point.
POWER POINT 2 - FILM OF NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ:
The other notable power point consists of nine minutes of footage of Nisargadatta Maharaj speaking to a group of men and women. This film takes the DVD out of the hands of Wolinsky and leaves you with Nisargadatta himself.
I thought the 9 minutes with Nisargadatta was very much like being with him. He was speaking to a roomful of Indian men and women. There was no translator, so the interaction seemed more direct, relaxed, and naturally paced. The natural sounds within the room, Nisargadatta's voice, the noises from busy street outside added to the reality and intimacy. The subtitles are very good. I love how Nisargadatta laughed with the people as though something common was shared about being human. I sensed that in his laughter Nisargadatta revealed all "this" as a humor-evoking magic trick.
OTHER POINTS OF POWER:
--Wolinsky addresses these comments by Nisargadatta which we see him speaking in authentic footage: "You have faith that you are. On what does it depend on? The faith that you are ... nobody investigates on these lengths. Why is there beingness? How am I? Why am I? On what does it depend on?"
--You may have sudden insights, as when Wolinsky tells you, "Even the space between two thoughts is not it. Actually, the space between two thoughts and the thoughts themselves are made of the same substance."
--I enjoyed the discourse on truthiness: "Truthiness is a satirical term coined by Stephen Colbert in reference to the quality by which a person claims to know something intuitively, instinctively, or `from the gut' without regard to evidence, logic, facts, or intellectual examination. Truthiness is used as an appeal to emotion and comfort." (Wikipedia). Wolinsky says, "What gurus say feels good but you need to differentiate between what they're saying and what you're feeling. First, is the information accurate? Faith is not enough." Later on, he says, "People fall in love with their perception of the personality. Most people don't know the teacher and the teacher doesn't know them. They don't know what's going on in the guru's life. You're missing the point by attracting to the teacher, the sadhana, the practices."
--Deconstructing Deconstruction: Wolinsky teaches, "Witnessing, beingness, awareness, and presence are all functions of the I Am; they either happen or they do not. They are not you. The are `states' which are I Am dependent, and hence illusions to be discarded."
--Meditations. There are a few meditations through which you are led by Wolinsky. Here is a fragment of one on deconstructing deconstruction:
"Without using your thoughts, your memory, your emotions, your associations, your perceptions, is there a logos, no logos or neither? Notice the knower or awarer or the witness of the logos/no logos, source/no source dichotomy, and the witness. What happens if the witness or the knower of the logos/no logos dichotomy, and the dichotomy itself happen through a biochemical reaction in the abstraction process, but there are no chemicals?" He repeats this meditation with several other dichotomies, such as path, plan, purpose, self, emptiness, void. At end he says, to "keep part of your awareness `back there' beyond knowing, beyond yes and no. When you open your eyes part of your awareness can be here."
CONCLUSION:
Stephen Wolinsky is brilliant in two ways in this DVD. First, he goes as far as any teaching can go, it seems, by deconstructing deconstruction. Second, he's not simply confessing the "state" of primordial advaita, as neo-advaitins do, or as the Avadhuta Gita does, a scripture he refers to at the end of the video; he's explaining the primordial advaita very, very carefully, repetitively, clearly, borrowing seriously from Nagarjuna's eight negations. He's leading you to the experience of primordial advaita through meditations. There is no state and no experience of primordial advaita, but those words are used.
There are four DVDs in the Nisargadatta/Wolinsky series. If you are comfortable with the teachings of the Avadhuta Gita and you don't mind hearing that the witness, the `source', the I Am are illusions to be discarded, then start with this DVD. Watch all four if you want a penetrating course in nonduality, the essence of advaita, and the teachings of Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Prior to the I Am: The End of Self Consciousness: I Am That I Am Part 3.
After you awaken from the dream of separateness and realize that you are the source, you need to discover the implications of applying this revelation to your life. When you truly realize there is no other than you, it takes your breath away. All is one and you are the One. When I first started teaching, I wanted to believe that all someone would have to do is have the awakening experience and off they would go. Now I know there is much more to it. I found that many people do have that essential, experiential awakening to who and what they are, to the absolute, and yet those who have that experience very rarely become free. So of course I started to ask myself why. To awaken into the actual lived experience that you aren't the body, mind, and personality should be freedom, and initially it is very freeing, very liberating, but most people get so carried away with the emotional byproducts of awakening that they miss the true significance of what has happened. One of the things missed is the revelation of perfect Oneness, the revelation that you are the ultimate source. You can have the experience that you are free because you no longer identify with a mind, body, and personality, but only rarely, other than having a vague sense of Oneness, does the individual have a really clear perception of the perfect unity that is actually inherent in awakening. It is much like when you have a dream at night and are identified with some character and think you are different from all the others. When you wake up from your dream in the morning, you realize that you are not the character in the dream. You are the dreamer. Everything in the dream came from you. This is a metaphor for spiritual awakening because, when you wake up spiritually, you realize you are not the body-mind. But what is usually missed is that you are the ultimate source of the entire dream. I think this is pretty easy to understand. In one sense, you see that you are not anyone, but in the other, you realize that you are the source of all. Why is this so important to realize? Because of the implication inherent within awakening, which is where you find all the value of any true spiritual revelation. You are the ultimate source, and everything is perfect unity and everything out there is actually you, equally. So inherent in this revelation of unity is the realization that there is no such thing as an "other." There is no one else because it is all ultimately one's own self. I've known people who have had this perception, and then the first thing they do is return to living life as if there was an other. They live life as if there is a personal me and a personal you, even though they have experientially glimpsed that this is not true. So, in many cases, experiential understanding is not enough. But can you imagine how it could change your life if you have the revelation that there is no other and you get very curious about the implications? What if you asked, "What does this mean for me for the rest of my life?" Most humans base their entire life on the idea of self and other, a personal me and you. But with the revelation that there is no other, there is suddenly no such thing as a personal relationship. How does one live with this implication? Fundamentally, what would it mean to actually know and live that there is no other, even when you relate as apparently self and other in the world of appearances? Most people who are interested only in personal enlightenment think, "As long as I'm free, no one can make any demands on me," or "I'll try to teach others how to be enlightened." There is nothing wrong with being personally free. But what if you take the inquiry all the way? How can you be free if there is no personal I? Who is there to be enlightened? One of the most painful experiences I've had in a long time was when I opened up this idea of relationship in satsang and sat back as person after person implied in their questions, "I'm not getting what I want in my relationship," and "I want to know how to have a better relationship." Students asked how I experience relationship. Annie, my wife, told them, "We don't need anything from each other, and we don't use our relationship to work out things because that's not what a relationship is about." This was ignored, and all those questions continued to come up. Look at the implications of the awareness that there is no other. When you wake up, you wake up out of this "me and you." If you realize what that means, it just takes your breath away. If there is no other, there is no personal relationship. The whole problem with any relationship has to do with one or both people not taking seriously that there is no other. There is no one to get anything from, no one to change, no one to need or to fulfill a need — all of that is a dream. This is how challenging it gets when you do not just seek after a spiritual experience, but endeavor to understand what is inherent in the experience. The experience of awakening is like a personal experience of the big bang. Its initial revelation was the beginning. It started out as nothing, so the physicists tell us, and then this little blip ultimately became the whole universe. At the beginning, you might have seen this blip and not realized what was inherent in it, and if you turned away from it, you missed everything. If you look into the blip called spiritual awakening, it holds as much potential as the big bang, and more. Many people ask, "How do I integrate my spirituality into everyday life?" You don't. You can't. How could you integrate it? You can't stuff the infinite into your limited life. Instead, give your life to the divine impulse. There is no integration. There's only realization, and that realization is always a perfect destroyer. It is a destroyer of all sense of separateness, a destroyer of that which is not true. Throw your life into Truth. Don't try to stuff Truth into your life. Even when you become very serious and endeavor to deepen your realization, seeing more deeply into it, the appearance of a you and an other continues. If you don't fully take your realization into your relationship, it is going to go on more or less as it always has. The pieces may get rearranged, but the relationship may remain based more or less on what you get from each other and how to work things out. When you go deeper to uncover the deepest realization that there is no other, the realization itself rearranges how this dream of appearances operates. The sense of relationship will operate differently because you have truly realized there is no such thing as a personal relationship between a you and a me. It spontaneously reorchestrates how the whole world of relationship works without you making any effort to control it. To make the relationship better, just wake up more. It may or may not change in the way you want it to, but it will change. Wake up more. Because when you are truly awake, things are simply the way they are. You don't need a teacher to explain the implications of there being no other—you need to do that for yourself.
Student: What does it mean to wake up more? Adyashanti: Many teachers have likened it to when you have a dream at night. You know how it is if you are having a pleasant dream and you kind of wake up but not entirely, and then go back to sleep because you want to dream? So after you roll over and go back to sleep, you then wake up again and realize you were dreaming, but you are groggy and do not even know if you want to be awake. Later in the day, it is more clear, and you are much more awake. Most spiritual seekers, even after a big spiritual awakening, are almost always still groggy. They go back and forth and are not sure they want to be awake because they perceive a whole different world out there. They want to wake up from the bad stuff but continue dreaming about the good stuff. They literally want to go back into sleep in their personal relationship because they know if they really wake up, things might change in unexpected ways. When you are groggy, there seems to be so much to give up, and there is so much indecision about whether or not to be truly awake. But when you are really awake, you know it is a dream, and you do not want to go back. If you want to be really free, you have to make the effort to completely wake up. You will then lose interest in untruth and only be interested in truth. The dream state of separateness in all its guises will not interest you. Who is in control of the dream when you dream at night? You are the dreamer, pulling all the strings. All the dream characters are convinced that they are making it happen. But the dreamer is orchestrating the whole thing. When you dream, you forget that. The transcendent dreamer is the one who creates the dream of the world. If you want to be able to function in the world with any grace, you can't forget that. It is a myth that you should let transcendence go in order to go back into the world. This whole idea of integration and the concept that you can't stay in the transcendent seems to make good sense until we start to examine it for ourselves and ask if it is true. When you look into your own experience and ask how spiritual realization works, you start to realize so much of what we talk about is just ridiculous—it's the blind leading the blind. This that you look at and call teacher is your own creation, it is your dream, and you are creating it at this moment. If you let yourself become aware, you will become aware that you are creating it and that the separation between the person listening and the one speaking is only appearance. If you are awakened, you have seen this clearly. But the conditioning can pull you back into the dream. This doesn't matter. You have to just keep questioning the dream itself. Sometimes we get infatuated with an unusual experience, but we miss something deeper, a realization of that which caused it. We need to ask, "Why did I have such a perception?" Question it. Curiosity and inquiry are important. The reason you have a transcendent experience is that you intuitively grasp the Truth, which is simply the way things really are. Spiritually speaking, the question, "What am I?" is the question that goes right to the heart of things. The infinite intelligence is actually what you are, but you have to be serious enough to find out for yourself what is true. In order to do this, you have to open to the possibility that all you have learned is wrong. Otherwise, how can you discover what actually is? When you become completely open, the Truth becomes the most apparent thing. Spiritual people always think the Truth is hidden from them. It is not hidden. What gets in the way is the idea of what it is going to be. Find that place of what actually is. There is only the One manifesting as everything. Ponder and meditate on this until you realize it for yourself through and through. Wake up to what you are. posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle
Sandy Jones is a fine person doing a true labor of love to keep alive the contributions of William Samuel.
Keep in mind that Samuel was speaking to people of the 60s, 70s, 80s. He couldn't deliver bolts of pure nonduality to his Western audience.
At the same time he was not a mighty guru using his intelligence and psyche to create a magnet in order to attract and hold onto people. But he lives on and no is put off by him, I don't think.
WHY THE DUAL APPEARING OF IDENTITY?
by William Samuel
Why does Identity appear dual in nature? That is, why the "real" Identity and the facsimile who struggles with ego and the like? Why the Real and the one in the world that fools us so? Why the one atop Da Shan and the other on the slopes? If God is All in all and omnipotent, why not one identity to start with, pure, perfect, made in the image of God? Why the second man, made of the elements of the earth? Religion stopped trying to answer this question in the first century of Christianity.
Metaphysics has given no practical answer whatever. The body of this book will answer that ancient enigma to the satisfaction of scientist and philosopher alike.
First, understand that the Genuine Identity, the Soul of us, the Child of us, is that one atop the Mountain, unbound by time and space, residing in the heart of Godhead beyond Name and, simultaneously, everywhere on Da Shan-not unlike the simple photon which, moving at the speed of light, is virtually everywhere in space nearly simultaneously. That is the genuine (and only) Identity (Image of God-Self) as God made it.
Our time on Da Shan, perhaps many linear lifetimes-certainly nearly eleven thousand years in the present experience-is our "descent into matter" or "into hell" as it is spoken of theologically. That is, it is the time of learning via contradistinction. It is the accumulation of conscious knowledge wherein the experiences on Da Shan allow one to comprehend and fully appreciate the wonders of Ineffability and the rediscovery of the Original Identity.
This embodied, human struggler is the "second" identity, the one apparently bound to time and space, destined to measure tangibility to its limits in his quest for the Original. The second identity, arising after the mist, is man's tendency to forget his birthright, moving away from God toward selfness-into ego and multiplicity. As the Tree of Life prepares to bloom and seed, there will be a universal reversal of this tendency. We find the Child still alive and untouched within us. We begin the conscious return to the Father's house, Light beyond light.
Our difficult times on Da Shan bring our appeals to Ineffability, God, for deliverance and salvation. Who doesn't turn to God when he's starving or when his life is threatened? The Entity, the "angel" nearest us-beside the Ineffable Itself-always present, ever listening to us and knowing our condition and thoughts, is the Original Child of Us, awaiting that call, eager to answer, capable of taking us through the monstrous metaphysical mazes of our own making.
Our experiences on Da Shan are exactly what is necessary to bring us Knowledge, thence to exchange the personal sense, the climber's role, for the Child. Every step we make consciously up the mountain, we are less the climber and more the Child, until, atop Da Shan with the world under our feet, we have consciously "returned" to the Child of God, this time KNOWING our heritage.
There, which is right here where the struggler reads these words, we encompass all the world at once (subjectively) and become the NO-PLACE, NO-THING where the Ineffable flows through to tangibilty and becomes our new, subjective world; and where the world's tangible essences return to Ineffability. We become the NO-Place, NO-Thing, Way, the DOOR between Ineffability and the world. This is what Pure Life has always been, the exchange point, the midpoint between Above and Below, Outside and Inside, First and Last, Male and Female, Spirit and Matter.
It is metaphysical folly to lay claim to Identity who isn't a climber without making the paradoxical climb in linear time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By William Samuel
From "The Child Within Us Lives! A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics"
James Traverse has been practicing Yoga for over 30 years and teaches Nidra Yoga in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
James is man of clarity and quiet power who is to be taken seriously. At the same time, there is a feeling of lightness and light when in his company. One is impressed with his lack of judgment, his natural way of expressing things, his intimacy with the teachings of reality. His love, basically. His joy. His flow with you.
Traverse writes, “Although Nidra Yoga means Sleep Union, ultimately it is about being fully awake to who you truly are and living the understanding across all states of consciousness.”
“Ultimately this work is about realizing the living answer to the questions, “What is it that acts when I am in Deep Sleep?’ and ‘Who am I?’”
MODULES OF FOUR THEMES:
James structures his book using modules, each consisting of four themes. They are all related and easy to grasp as a whole. For example, the four chapters of the book are akin to inhalation, retention, exhalation, suspension of breath, which in turn reflect waking, dreaming, deep sleep, turiya.
MOTION – FLOW –IS THE META-THEME:
The meta-theme, the theme that wraps around the modules, is motion, flow, movement. Makes sense for an author who is a Yoga practitioner.
“Truth expresses itself as Being; Being expresses itself as doing. Being and doing are the same because the substance of both is motion, yet doing is not identical to being,” James writes.
Traverse speaks of “flow” frequently. There are dozens of references to flow, flowering, flowing. “Your substance is interwoven flow~motion forms of breathing.”
“The complement to Space is Flow. In addition to guiding folks in the exploration of Space, I facilitate Nisarga Yoga or Natural Yoga, as a means to attend to Flow. Together the harmonious relationship of Space and Flow is Yoga,” Traverse tells us.
He writes about the flow of food, water, air, fire. “Fire flows into your human form from our sun … and esoterically through passion – something in your life that inspires you. … You can exist for years without true fire as passion, yet you are never truly alive without passion.”
USING THE CD:
The book is intended to be used with an audio CD, which is not part of this review, and the book gives instructions on how to use the CD. The CD is the means by which the meta-theme, motion, is applied to your life and living. In the process you unfold, flower, flow. And then….
“When you no longer identify with your I-entity, a mentally created foreground object, you are not bound psychologically to a situation, you live in your wholeness, and solutions to the challenges of life unfold from this holistic seeing and understanding. Only then are you truly functional.” –James Traverse
CONCLUSION:
This book is short and tightly written. It’s not hard to understand the main points and therefore it shouldn’t be difficult to “live in your wholeness.” If you understand this review, the book provides clearly explained depth to the main points I’ve mentioned. You can see for yourself in the excerpt below.
I highly recommend this book, Nidra Yoga, and the personal teaching of James Traverse.
Deep Sleep and Now are polar extremes of the same thing. They are complimentary portals to Your Source.
Now is the foreground portal to Your Source Deep Sleep is the background portal to Your Source
“Your very nature is Nature itself – the ground of all action is Awareness.~ James Traverse
Welcome to Nidra Yoga.
There is a huge difference between Deep Sleep and Waking. The difference is You as Presence and Absence!
This book and accompanying CD is a means for you to realize all of the benefits of Deep Sleep and understand who or what you are in the process.
Who you are is experientially obvious. Like Deep Sleep and Now, who you are cannot be explained - only experienced. Yet an explanation is required before you can truly understand who you are because the identity you have been asked to assume is false. In other words first your mistaken identity must be removed, then who you are is experientially obvious.
In this light the book provides appropriate information on Deep Sleep, the CD is the means for you to experience Nidra Yoga, and instead of asking you to blindly believe what is said about who you are, there are interactive experiments that invite you to ‘Please try this’. Here’s an example:
In this material the terms foreground and background are used as key pointers. Therefore it is helpful to experientially understand what is meant by these terms.
Please try this:
Focus attention on something.
In this case awareness is localized as whatever you are focusing on and all other things form the background. This is commonly called concentration; it is the aspect of awareness that has a centre as a localized focus. The activity of focusing awareness and commanding energy to be concentrated in this way is the foreground.
Now try this:
Relax the concentrated focus.
In this case awareness is still present and there is a spaciousness that is present when concentration is absent. This spaciousness and awareness is commonly called meditation. This activity of awareness is the background.
The ground that is common to both foreground and background is awareness. In awareness there is space yet no distance; the foreground is a localized awareness; the background is non-localized awareness.
You, the foreground, die each night that you fall into Deep Sleep. In Deep Sleep it is self-evident that there is no doer as you are absent, yet there is no interruption to the continuity of your being. Nidra Yoga is a daylight form of Deep Sleep where you, the foreground, sleep and what is awake is the ever-present background of your Source. Ultimately Nidra Yoga is a means for you to understand and live your true nature.
This book and accompanying CD came out of my investigation of the profound experiences of rest and restoration associated with over 30 years of yoga practices. In particular my experiences of Deep Sleep and Savasana (Deep Relaxation) included the feeling of returning, or waking up, from somewhere very, very deep; it was unquestionably clear to me that whatever or wherever this realm of being is, its action is whole, complete, and beyond the measure of the me that woke up.
My activities flowered into the yoga approach that I now call Nidra Yoga as a result of my studies with Jean Klein who asked me to explore fundamental questions like ”Who am I?” His question paralleled others I already had like,
·Where do I go during periods of Deep Sleep?
·What is it that does the repair and recharging work that makes me feel so wonderful after Deep Sleep?
·Why do human beings die within two weeks without sleep?
·What did geniuses and Nobel Prize winners like Einstein, Neils Bohr and Da Vinci access through Deep Sleep?
The Right Understanding that is the outcome of the exploration of these fundamental questions is presented here.
The four chapters of the book are akin to the four phases of your respiration as:
1) Inhalation
2) Retention
3) Exhalation
4) Suspension
They reflect the four stages of consciousness known as:
1) Waking
2) Dreaming
3) Deep Sleep
4) Turiya (Non-State)
The chapters also represent foreground and background understanding as:
Mistaken Understanding of Foreground~Background
Chapter 1) Waking
· Awake in the Foreground
· Asleep in the Background
Chapter 2) Sleep
· Asleep in the Foreground
· Asleep in the Background
Right Understanding of the Background~Foreground
Chapter 3) Nidra Yoga
· Asleep in the Foreground
· Awake in the Background
Chapter 4) In-The-Light
· Awake in the Foreground
· Awake in the Background
And, although the stages are not explicitly marked as such, the same fourfold theme is present in the audio CD that guides you in the meditative journey of Nidra Yoga. You will find directions on ‘How to use this book and accompanying CD’ in Chapter 3 Nidra Yoga. Please read through the entire book at least once before exploring the sessions on the CD.
The other theme that is evident in both the book and audio CD is Relationships. Particularly, the relationship of foreground and background, that is akin to the inter~course of your respiration and circulation that together form the central flow~motion current of your life as breathing, and, the relationship of the extremes of awareness called Concentration (foreground) and Meditation (background).
The inspiration to structure the book and CD with these interrelated fourfold themes comes out of the model of excellence, which is your Source expressing itself as fourfold waves like your breathing, and the rhythms you see in nature like the seasons. The other reason for this is that the understanding of your true nature follows this same fourfold~wave model as:
1st)You are separate from your Source;
2nd) You are the same in essence as your Source;
3rd)You are identical to Source;
4th)Spacious Awareness (Pure Spaciousness ~ Pure Awareness).
Note that the 4th listed above is itself a wave with extremes that may be labelled Spaciousness and Awareness.
Lastly this book and CD is about union, Yoga. Ironically it uses your ability to focus and separate things as a means for you to be established in the Right Understanding of the Oneness of your true nature. Along the way you will be reminded that there is no doer, yet this does not mean that nothing gets done as you have much to do and accomplish. The process is like using a thorn to remove a thorn whereby you undo blockages, and then discard both thorns when they are no longer needed. Ultimately this work is about realizing the living answer to the questions, “What is it that acts when I am in Deep Sleep?” and “Who am I?”
Nidra Yoga, by James Traverse
Read more about this book and order (by download) at http://nidrayoga.com/. The book and CD are only $12.98 and they can be downloaded after purchase.
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3288, Saturday, September 13, 2008
Happiness is our real nature and we shall never rest until we find it. But rarely do we know where to seek it. Once you have understood that the world is but a mistaken view of reality, and it is not what it appears to be, you are free of its obsessions.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
When it comes to hurricanes and storms of the mind, all we can do is hang on to something that won't move. We get to high ground or take refuge in a hotel during a hurricane, but where do we go in the mind? Fear, doubt, confusion, anger, these are the winds of the mind and they can attack with hurricane force. Too bad we can't measure their velocity like we record wind. We can say they are pretty strong when we require medication or end up in the headlines for some bizarre behavior. Is there such a place as a refuge from a mind storm? We need to turn within to find out, you would think.
You can try this yourself right now. As you read this there is a knower that is like a background awareness that is witnessing your reading and thinking about this piece. You can't turn and see this knower like you would if you suddenly sensed someone looking over your shoulder. When you are very still you can sense there is two of you, a thinker with its story and a knower who knows you are thinking.
When a mind storm hits the coast of your self and sweeps you up in the winds of anxiety, the knower is the background or space that is prior to the storm, remains still during the storm, and is there undistsurbed after the storm leaves. Hurricanes have an eye and so does our mind. Without the eye the hurricane and the mind cannot exist. And yet the mind does not disturb the eye because the eye has no form. The eye is empty. So what is mind? Mind is form, thought form. Who is the knower of the mind? Pure consciousness, space, is the witness of the content of the mind. Without content there is no mind, but there is still the knower that says I AM.
Forms are impermanent, but the I AM is changeless. Thought is in time, but the I AM is timeless because it is prior to thought. Our I exists before thought and after thought is gone. When we die, thought goes, but not the I AM. Meditation is learning how to strengthen the I AM and weaken the storm. We should take refuge in that.
- Ed Conley, posted to The_Now2
When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always.
- Mahatma Gandhi, posted to AlongTheWay
Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may have noticed, they are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. For those who hold on to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion, and madness.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, posted to The_Now2
Through this, the Buddha's wish-granting prayer, When aggressive hatred erupts Neither inhibiting nor indulging it But relaxing and releasing the stress, May Awareness resume its natural primacy. May all the six types of beings Attain the Awareness of Radiant Clarity.
- Shakbar, from The Flight of the Garuda, translated by Keith Dowman
Hey! It is OK to feel anger! There is no difference between anger and love - they are emotions, waves on the ocean of Being; it is only when we grab onto them and strut around like they are real or something, that the suffering begins. If we just sit back, relax, release them into the depths from which they arose, watch out! Radiant Clarity knocks you outta your socks!
- dg, posted to DailyDharma
Have you ever fought with reality? Consider a day where things didn't go your way. You're running late, you open the fridge to grab something and that something spills all over your shirt. You get into the car and there's only traffic and red lights. Each apparent obstacle piling up in a heap of "this shouldn't be the way it is!" I shouldn't be late, I shouldn't be wearing a shirt with stains, there shouldn't be traffic. This is the innocent yet delusional habit of the mind to carry an idea about how things should be and then go to war with things as they are. It's as if we say to the Holy, "Your world is screwed up, it's not going my way. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with this world? It's not conforming to my idea of ease and rightness." We sit in a puffed up prideful place of "I actually know better than all that is how things should be going." What usually follows is "And I'm going to attempt to bend things to this tiny will." And as nothing bends to suit you, it's painful.
There's a move in there that's kind of like breaking one's own back, or like laying down, that says: "Alright. I have salad dressing on my blouse. Alright, I'm 10 minutes late and getting later. Alright traffic. Alright." What has to die then? The one who is neat, the one who is on time, the one who is respectable, right, in control. To return to things as they are is a great reckoning as we break down all those "It should be different" places and we fall to the ground in humility, fall to the ground of things as they are. Reality as it is, is constantly inviting us out of identification through the reminder of pain.
And we don't have control over letting go either; we cannot will surrender. It's an invitation for humility that even inside our own bodies, we can't make it go the way we want it to go. This is not a mistake; it's supposed to hurt to fight reality. Delusion hurts. And the delusion that we're actually in charge hurts. To fight the nature of things sends us right into noticing how helpless we are. And helpless is exactly the relationship between something that's convinced it's separate and the Whole. The small self IS helpless.
This great reckoning is like a great undoing, an undoing of delusion and illusion - and we fight it! It is a sanding down to the ground, a cleaning out, a purification. When it has really begun to take us over, we can spend time in a stunned place, all of our coping strategies taken from us if we're lucky. We enter a clueless place, maybe a dark place, and we're being remade. We don't yet know how to hold that beautiful instrument of our heart and actually play it, we've been focused on coping so long. And now it's handed to us in the dark.
To be prepared to sing the holy song we've come here to sing, we have to be entirely emptied out so that our flute is so clear, so empty, so offered, so filled with nothing, that the beautiful breath of God can blow through it and there's not a single distortion. Just a wide open portal that's done fighting for its own way, done fighting for how it thinks it should be, or how it learned it should be, how it read things should be or how its friends say it should be.
So maybe we can enter into the mystery of what's here. Maybe we can stop calling what-is names because it doesn't fit into the stale brainwashed menu in our heads. Things as they are, are just as they are meant to be. Every moment and every flavor of every moment, a gift straight from the Holy, the Holy's touch on your face. We can be so nothing that no matter what shows up we can say, "Thank you, sweetheart, Holiness, for another moment. Another chance to serve you, to serve the glory of this love that you are and that I am."
A lovely woman came to an event in Taos a couple weeks ago and she said she used to go to an ashram in India and it would be time to find out what her seva would be, so she would go and look at all the available tasks and pick the one she wanted to do. After a good grinding down by life, this last time she went to the ashram's seva office and simply said, "Give me any task." This is what happens in this great grinding down where we move from, what is my fulfillment, to, what else can I give to glorify You? Put another homeless man in my path so that I can give away my last $20 bill, because all I want to do with my life is say, "You are so beautiful."
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3289, Sunday, September 14, 2008
The greatest Guru is helpless as long as the disciple is not eager to learn. Eagerness and earnestness are all-important. Confidence will come with experience. Be devoted to your goal - and devotion to him who can guide you will follow. If your desire and confidence are strong, they will operate and take you to your goal, for you will not cause delay by hesitation and compromise.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to AlongTheWay
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.
Robert Pirsig, posted to Distillation
Would You Bow?
If the Friend rose inside you, would you bow? Would you wonder where that one
came from and how? If you say, "I will bow," that's important. If you answer,
"But can I be sure?" it will keep the meeting from happening, as busy people
rush there and back here murmuring, Now I know; no, I don't know now. Have you
seen a camel with its eyes covered turn and walk one way, then turn another?
Be silent and revolve with no will. Don't raise your hand to ask anything.
Holy one, sitting in the body's well like Joseph, a rope is there in front
of you. Lift your hand to that! A blind man has bought you for eighteen
counterfeit coins. Empty metal cups bang together, and the full moon slides
out of hiding. Make one sound, please! You are the precious hyacinth that the
sickle will spare, not the wheat plant Adam ate. I remind you with these poems
to dress in the flower of God's qualities, not your torn robe of self-accusation.
- Rumi, Ghazal (Ode) 2938, version by Coleman Barks, with Nevit Ergin, The Glance, posted to Sunlight.
It Is Time to Wake Up!
Hey you, parrot! speaking in riddles, Sugar wouldn't melt in your mouth!
Clear your head so your heart will be happy, And then mimic the words of the Beloved!
To everyone who walks by, you have given mixed messages; For God's sake, tell us something we don't know.
O Winebringer, throw some of Your best wine in our face, For it is time to wake up!
What chord was it last night that the Minstrel played That caused the drunk and the pious both to dance?
What drug did You put in their cups That caused them to lose both their hats and their heads?
Not even to Alexander the Great would Your lovers give the Wine of Life; He hadn't the power or the gold for that price.
Today, treason is the currency of the world, But compared with Love, even alchemy has lost its flash.
Come, and listen to our stories of pain; Even with few words, the truth is still there.
O Lord, don't tell our secrets to those who don't drink; One cannot give a picture on the wall Your enlightened touch.
To a millionaire, money is the standard of the world; Hafiz says: O beggars, I have exchanged all my money for these poems!
Hafiz, English version by Thomas Rain Crowe
It is impossible to describe the sense of magnificence that comes out of the true apperception of the nature of the individual in relation to the manifestation. The loss of personal individuality is exchanged for the gain of Totality of the cosmos.
- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
This Amazing Opportunity
Let's remember why we're here at retreat: for this amazing opportunity to really look into the core of our own existence, the core of life itself that is so easy to overlook. It's so easy not to pay attention to it, because it's not noisy and it's not clamoring for attention like all the other aspects of the human mind. Egoic consciousness is always pretending to be the most important thing that is happening.
And yet there's this thread, this sense of something other than, deeper than, more real than, more essential than this scattered and divided noise that so many human beings live in, in their minds. And right in the midst of all that, there is a presence, there is an awareness, an unconditioned awareness, an unconditioned consciousness. Right in the middle of this conditioned mind, conditioned consciousness, is this shining, unconditioned essence. Essence doesn't mean a little part hidden somewhere in us, the little teeny kernel of essence. Essence means the totality, the whole thing. Essence means the truth of you as opposed to the untruth of you.
Essence isn't a small thing, essence is an immense thing. The essence of you is everything you ever see, taste, touch, and experience. Everywhere you go, every step you take, every breath you take is actually happening by the essence, of the essence, in the essence, and to the essence. All the rest is noise and chatter.
So we come here to give our attention, our affection, our time. Our most highly prized commodity is our time. Anything or anyone you give your time to shows immediately what is most important. And I want to remind everyone that what you really are, what the person next to you is, what the children in Africa scraping up the little grains of rice are, this timeless essence, is not hidden. It's not hidden at all. It's in plain view. Everywhere you look, that's the essence. And the mind would say, "Where? Where? I don't see it. All I see is a car, a billboard, a tree, the person in front of me, the funny man on the stage. Where is this essence?"
It's easy to grasp for it, isn't it? "Where is it? What is it? I want to understand it. I want to know about it. How can it work for me? How can I utilize it?" But it doesn't come upon us through the grasping of it, through the striving for it, and through the struggling for it. There's no merit gained through wasted effort, through excess struggle. There are no merit points for the people who drove themselves the craziest along the way to self-realization. For most people it's so obscure that it seems very intuitive to grasp and to struggle instead of relaxing, not grasping, letting something come to you, letting the truth of your being reveal itself to you on its terms, in its way, letting it happen.
It will happen. It's always happening. It's always trying to show itself.
"The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that need be done."
~ ~ ~
"Your own self is your ultimate teacher. The outer teacher is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal."
from A Net of Jewels
Don't Depend on External Conditions
Have no regard for conducive or adverse conditions, strong or weak health, wealth or poverty, good or bad reputation, troubles or absence of troubles. If conducive conditions come about, train the mind right then. If conducive conditions are not present, then work on the two bodhicittas right then. In a word, don't be concerned with your situation or other factors; never let go of your practice of mind training.
"After meditation, I was always surprised that people would talk about how it felt to them, their experiences and reactions, what brought it up. To me, there was a sense that what is worth talking about was still here. It was there in meditation and it was still here. There was an aliveness here. For them, on or off the cushion, there was a separation. That was gone for me. Everything was meditation."
Vijali Hamilton creates stunning sacred art that emerges organically from the earth — environmental sculpture carved in hillsides and mountaintops. Her work hearkens back to the great works of art of pre-history, honoring our rootedness in the earth.
As Vijali travels all over the world to create her work, she interacts with indigenous cultures and traditions, often helping to establish sister projects to establish sustainable local economies and encourage peaceful political dynamics.
The world became my studio. I was a pilgrim who made offerings and gave voice and form to the spirit of the earth and the people I met along the way. I kept expanding the borders of what sculpture was, what art was, integrating it more and more into life itself – the people around me; their problems their hopes, their dreams of the future. I saw that at the root of these problems is the misunderstanding of ourselves as separate, isolated beings needing to exploit the earth and each other for our gain. This dualistic way of thinking is the direct cause of our ecological and social problems which is rapidly leading us toward global disaster.
A list of nine additional gurus by Kenton Whitman.
Hurricane Season By what hand Are these winds stirred To spinning Around their still center?
What force could give Such power as this To crush the structures Of our lives?
These winds move With violence Against our human ideas Of progress and security Sweeping away As impertinent desires Our wish to have peace On our own terms.
Have we been dreaming Of a world peace That doesn’t include storms? Can we step outside of Our ideas about the peace we want Enough to notice the peace That already rests in the center Of this wild world?
A peace that rests gently While the storm winds May strip our lives bare, Leave us homeless, and Disengaged from our settled lifestyles.
A peace right in the center of Our questionable survival In any other moment than this.
This stillness in the center Emerges with the violent winds. The two exist as one, inextricably connected, Two sides of a coin, inseparable.
Can we accept this invitation To welcome a peace that includes What we have labeled as trouble And strife, and been frightened by?
Can a wild wind Flattening our landscape Externally or internally Be a part of something Beyond our comprehension
And perfect, just as it is?
We don’t know.
But we notice In hurricane season, The power of resting openly With such unanswerable questions. And we notice, (Even while the winds of change Are blowing violently) What doesn’t spin— The peace beyond understanding In the internal Eye of the hurricane.
Groups, satsangs, gurus, disciples, gatherings with a few hundred to a thousand people – there is a different kind of mental chatter, different paths in Yoga-Hatha, Bhakti, Gnana and Karma Yoga-religious cults with competitive followings – all the noise stops at Haridwar mostly and finally at Rishikesh.
Up in the Himalayas, as one begins to travel several thousands of feet above sea level, the silence of the Pahad takes over. There is no human Guru here. The towering mountains and the flowing rivers become the teacher of the truths of existence, of the universe, of nonduality or advaita.
All the concepts and ideas dissolve and there is just plain experience that remains while seeing the mountains, feel the cold winds blowing from the snow-capped peaks, the warm sunlight that fills the slopes during day and gently retires in the evening giving all the glowing orange, silver, gold, blue and purple as its gifts to the eyes that watch, the clouds that seem so still like the mountains over which they rest.
As I sit here on the verandah of the Bharat Sevashram Sangha‘s Yatri Nivas at Ukhimath, the view of the mountains begin with the green slopes dotted with villages to my right and left right in front of me. The sun is setting and excited tourists to Badrinath, Kedarnath, Tungnath, Madmaheshwar and Kalimath are taking quiet walks up the lonely roads. For the local villagers of Garhwal, the mountains hold nothing new. It is yet another hard day of work and they are retiring into their homes.
I ask Brahmachari Sudhir who looks after the Yatri Nivas and the Swami Pranavananda Vidya Mandir School nearby “Why do people come to the Himalayas?” He speaks with the clarity of the crisp and pure mountain air – Three things. First, the ear gets rest. There are no extra noises of the city life that distract our attention and fray our nerves.
Second, the eyes can see for 3 km at a stretch, without any disturbance of hoardings or buildings that are the lot of city dwellers.
From where I sit now, I can see mountain peaks stretching to at least 15 km if not more.
The third and the most important aspect is, there is a homogenous oneness of the inner mind and the outer environment.
All these and the feeling of peace and restfulness draw the seeker to the Himalayas.
Once they go, it is a constant attraction that keeps pulling, a memory that never does slip out of the mind through one's lifetime.
One of the questions I receive most often is a request for additional resources to learn about non-dualism. I recommend different things to different people based on a variety of factors, but I thought I might set down a few of my most common recommondations so that they are available to everyone.
Below you’ll find a list of nine great resources for encountering non-dualism. I’ve added comments to outline the strengths and weaknesses of each resource, and I’ve written them in hierarchical order, with number nine being the weakest and number one being the strongest. Note that I don’t actually do a lot of reading on the subject of non-dualism, so these recommendations emerge only out of my own experience. I’ve also decided not to include blogs on this list. Here then are nine resources to aid you in your journey.
9 — Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. This well-known contemporary teacher writes a very lucid explanation that guides us toward ‘un-doing’ our concept of time. It’s a great place to start if you’re beginning to challenge your usual views of the world by breaking down one of the most basic ‘objects’ (that being our idea of time) that we usually assume to be an unassailable reality. Unfortunately, the book also creates a number of new objects for us, and doesn’t adequately challenge any of our other basic ideas about the world, such as Self, Cause/Effect, or our idea that we exist as individual entities in a world of many things.
8 — David Schiller’s The Little Zen Companion. The power of this tiny bathroom reader is that it approaches non-duality from a whole array of angles. It’s filled with little poems, insights, and quotes. It best serves as a guide, showing us that non-duality can be reached by many traditions and via many routes. In effect, it breaks down our idea that there is a ’single path’ which must be followed toward awakening. It’s not going to lead you directly to awakening, but it will open a lot of doors to exploring different authors, teachers, and Zen folks who have a lot more to offer.
7 — Sheri Huber’s That Which You Are Seeking Is Causing You To Seek. Written in a playful style, Sheri delivers a personal, fairly direct, and rather fun approach to non-dualism. This crosses the border into personal development, because she applies Buddhism to emotional issues and life problems. Although some may think it’s too ’self-helpy’, she is actually quite vital in her approach to awakening. Her broad-based approach challenges a lot of our usual mind-sets, and uses a positive approach to introduce us to Buddhism’s basics.
6 — Steve Hagen’s Buddhism Plain and Simple. Rarely can an orthodox teacher break free of dogma so effectively as Steve has. He strips Buddhism bare, and lays down the essentials in easy-to-understand language. His book does follow in the tradition of Buddhism (outlining the eight-fold path, for instance), but he manages to do it without becoming bogged down in non-essentials. Very lucid, this book should be essential reading for anyone interested in Buddhism or awakening, even if you’re not Buddhist.
5 — Alan Watts’ The Book. This book has tremendous depth. It’s not written in contemporary style, so don’t look for six-step guides for achieving emotional balance or stories of people who have ‘awakened’. This book is perhaps the ultimate tool for gaining a clear understanding of the basic model we use to view the world. And it challenges that model at every step. Your idea of Self, of Time, of Cause/Effect, and of Duality will be challenged, and if you think through what he’s written, this book has the potential to pull the rug out from under your dualistic model of the world. Alan was very sure of what he wrote, so you have to be ready to deal with his personality, but if you’re not afraid of conviction and if you can deal with a non-contemporary writing style, this book can rock your foundations.
4 — Paul Reps’ Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. This book contains a remarkable collection of Zen’s offerings. It is remarkable to read through the koans or stories, many of which will make no sense at all, and then discover that a year later they make perfect sense (though you’ll likely not be able to explain just how). There is so much in this book. It’s weakness doesn’t lie in itself so much as it lies with our contemporary approach to spirituality, where we expect our offerings to be clearly outlined and personalized (such as we find with number 9). Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a place to explore, and its forests are deep and uncharted. There is nothing missing here, but none of it is offered up easily.
3 — People Around You. This isn’t a book. I’m actually talking about the people who surround you every day. They are better teachers than any guru or writer or Zen master. Their first lessons usually are presented to you as you look at others and judge them. Most of us will do this as we begin to study non-dualism. We’ll observe others and note how miserable they make themselves, how they repeat the same patterns of suffering over and over, and how they create their own dualistic world which only serves to give them grief. These are judgments, of course, but there is nothing wrong with them. Eventually we’ll apply these observations to ourselves, and note that we, too, repeat the same cycles we observe in others. This is a bitter pill to swallow, but it begins the process of noting that we are creating our lives, for better or worse, out of the fruits of the model we’re using.
When we tire of judging, it’s time to allow people to become a different kind of teacher. This happens when we realize that we’re the only ones who aren’t awakened — that everyone else is acting perfectly ‘awake’ and ‘in the moment’. When this realization strikes us, we’re close to seeing that we, too, are perfect right now. In this way, other people serve as powerful teachers, no matter who they are or what they’re doing. This transformation, when we can see others as perfect teachers, will shift our lives forever.
2 — Nature. We’re an intimate part of nature, and spending even a little time outside can wake you up to a level of awareness you never knew you had. My own awareness sprung from an extended stay in nature, but even a few hours wandering in the woods or fields will begin to show you how much mental baggage we carry with us wherever we go.
Nature frees us of the constant stimulation that distracts us from our awareness. Without cell phones to answer, email to check, or a schedule to hold to, our mind is free to shake loose and wander about. Soon we’ll find that our mind is rampant with thoughts, flying this way and that with wild abandon. If we sit down under a tree, we can watch those thoughts, and we’ll soon discover how exhausting our usual mind-set really is.
If you commit to a longer stay in nature, say a few days or a couple of weeks, your mind will automatically spin down, and as you slow down, your awareness will kick in. It’s important not to bring a watch, radio, or cell phone along if you want to free your mind. If you’re safety-prone, you can bring the cell but keep it off, using it only for emergencies.
Nature engages us on a primal level of awareness, where we learn to engage our senses, clear our minds, and discover our innate ability to awaken without any effort.
1 –You. By far, you are the best teacher you will ever find. Your power of teaching lies in your natural awareness — an ability that is covered up by force of habit. Books and gurus come and go, but your perception is always with you. Your mind is constantly thinking and moving, and if you pay attention to those motions, you’ll begin to discover some amazing things.
Granted, watching your mind is an art, and if you don’t meditate, you’ll at least need to stop for a moment and observe your mind’s motions. The more you observe, the more your natural intelligence will begin to see patterns, to trace out the framework through which you observe the world (or, perhaps more aptly, the framework through which you create your world).
Left to run wild, our minds will dominate our lives. They will toss us about in a chaotic frenzy of emotion, unconnected thoughts, and unexamined preconceptions. But if we only take the time to observe the wild motions of our mind (no need to try to tame them — just observe), we’ll begin to see how very fabulous and amazing those motions are. In our observing, we’ll become aware of what’s really going on in our heads, and our own realizations will guide us more effectively than the wisdom of any teacher.
Like the list above, we often seek things out in a descending order, beginning with the hope that some teacher such as Eckhart Tolle or Kenton Whitman can weave a magical spell with their words, so that all we’ll have to do is read a book and we’ll ‘wake up’. Eventually, we’ll begin to seek things out in less obvious places, such as in the stories laid out in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. And the real liberation begins when we start to seek wisdom in the everyday world around us — in the people, things, and thoughts which make up our daily life.
The ‘answer’ lies just as clearly in a blade of grass, in another person’s angry outburst, or in the very thought moving through your brain right now, as it does in any text, on any website, or in any teacher’s words. There is nothing wrong with teachers — I recommended each of the above ‘teachers’ because they all have something to offer. But the greatest teacher of all is you. Yes, you’ll encounter self-deception, but it is only in discovering the root of our delusion, which is constantly created by our own efforts, that things will come clear. So take the journey as an adventure, with many guides to follow. Have fun!
Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
- Alan Watts
posted to AlongTheWay
If you do not see God in the next person you see, you need look no further. —Mahatma Gandhi
Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything —Joseph Campbell
If you think you understand, it isn't God. —Søren Kierkegaard
"The God Who Only Knows Four Words":
Every Child Has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does
Anything weird,
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
"Come dance with Me." Come Dance.
--Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky
God is Shining Through...
“Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through all the time.
This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true.
If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently.
God shows Himself everywhere, in everything – in people and in things and in nature and in events.
It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It’s impossible. The only thing is we don’t see it.”
Charlie Hayes puts out a very good weekly letter called Nowsletter. It is very new. I'm posting excerpts from his issue #3, the most recent one. You may register to receive the Nowsletter by visiting http://visitor.constantcontact.com/email.jsp?m=1101419473464.
Each issue is beautifully designed and formatted as well as colorful. I'm posting bare bones text rather than the full formatting, which is what we tend to do in the Highlights.
What's the "Answer"??
Q: When the question is asked, "who am I?" the answer is felt to be "the one who is listening to that question". Is that correct? It seems that logically the answer should be "the one who is asking the question".
C: Absolutely NOT. When that question is "answered" the inquiry is stopped. The deeper insight cannot come through the mind which is what answers. That is a tail-chasing loop of ignorance! THERE IS NO ANSWER. THAT IS "the answer". When THAT is seen - by no-one - the search ends, usually in gales of laughter!
"You are bringing up questions which you alone can answer." - Sri Nisargadatta
"There is no answer to life because life is its own answer. It's happening already. It's this. You never lost it. That's the amazing thing about liberation. When liberation apparently happens people say, "It's amazing because the thing I was looking for has never left me. It's the one thing that never comes and never goes - the one constant that can't be known or held onto." And the one constant is being". - Tony Parsons
~ ~ ~
What Is THAT Which IS and Prior To Words?
Pointers from John Wheeler
"The point to all this is simple. Everything simply appears and disappears in consciousness. This consciousness is sometimes called the "witness" or the "I am". But consciousness itself is impermanent. It is just another appearance. If the consciousness or "I am" itself comes and goes, then what am I in the most fundamental sense? I must be that in which consciousness appears. That is the pure awareness that knows the coming and going of consciousness. That is the unconditioned, unmanifest, uncreated, unborn, prior-to-consciousness reality from which consciousness arises and into which it sets. That is your original nature prior to birth, meaning prior to the birth of "I am". That is not a state to be reached but the ever-present space in which consciousness manifests. Within physical space there may be light or darkness, but the space is neither light nor dark. Just so, consciousness (waking, dreaming, sensing, thinking, etc.) and non-consciousness (sleep, etc.) appear in a basic space of non-conceptual awareness that contains them both. What you are in the deepest sense remains regardless of the presence or absence of consciousness".
~ ~ ~
On The Pathless Path:
All Appears IN and AS Blissful Being-Aliveness
Q: I'm in and out of the story, sometimes; simultaneously in and out, usually more in than out, but I pride myself at how good I can be at non-conceptual awareness.
C: Wow. Pride! Which definitely 'goeth before' a bigass FALL! And exactly who is going to EVER "be good at conceptual awareness"? You must see the infinite arrogance of that belief!
Q: Re: this "stay with the sense I am" [as pointed to by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj] in the interest of hastening my death. If I think "nonconceptual awareness" or "bare-naked awareness" I can instantly do that and it feels detached and sometimes blissful, but if I think, "stay with I am" I feel like I'm stuck in the ego or that it's a thought loop that's getting in the way of non-conceptual awareness.
C: Whose death? What is that which was "born"? Only A thought! "I". And can a thought actually get in the way of Awareness? NO. Thoughts APPEAR IN Awareness. Like a cloud cannot affect the empty space of sky, a thought cannot actually touch or obscure Awareness. Now look: WHO "feels" or "thinks" these stories of a "me stuck"? You complain of ego. Show that ego to me! Look for an "ego". What is found?
Does this "self center" or "discrete point of view" actually exist? What is the so-called self center or point of view made of? And who views what from such a point of view? Where is this viewing point located - exactly? Does it have any actual substance apart from a sometimes thought or sensation or perception? Is there seeing there right now? What sees? What hears? What is the space IN which all that story of a "poor me" who is seeking some resolution to a problem that does not even exist apart from imagination appears? What ARE "you"? Are you a thing apart from this Seamless Timeless Whole? If so what is it made up of? Who says and thinks "I am separated and want to become whole"? The "assumed person ' you'" - are a fictional character pretending mightily against all evidence that you are real and apart and this is pure imagination. You take a thought of I or ME on board and ASSUME you are that separate entity and that you have some power apart from the Universal Isness that is the Causeless Source of all that is and so "you" suffer. But it's all imagination; you are dreaming.
Ponder these words of Sri Nisargadatta's:
"Watch yourself closely and you will see that whatever be the content of consciousness, the witnessing of it does not depend on the content. Awareness is itself and does not change with the event. The event may be pleasant or unpleasant, minor or important, awareness is the same. Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realize that awareness is your true nature, and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own. When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness. But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness. Reflected awareness, the sense "I am aware" is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is a reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross".
Q: Also, you had a John Wheeler, so why can't I have a John Wheeler.
C: First off WHO is that "I" that wants ANYTHING other than what is right here right now? Investigate! Secondly: Look, if you want to have a John Wheeler point out what is real and what is not, why not write to John Wheeler and not Charlie Hayes? Go see him. Set up a consultation call with him!
Q: Will you be my John Wheeler?
C: NO. (You're joking, right!?) LOOK: I am happy to point out what is real and what is not. Which is precisely what John Wheeler will more than likely do if you meet or speak with him! In his own unique fashion. LOOK: Find the expression that resonates vibrantly for that "entity you assume is you" and stick with his or her pointers until there is no false assumed personal entity believed in any more, never, ever, and the search is done once and forever.
Q: I know that in non-conceptual awareness I'm already awake to some degree, but I'm definitely not dead, even though I could honestly say, "well, I'm not a seeker. I get it.
C: What is the nature of that "I" that claims "I'm already awake to some degree"? Can't you see the bullshit in that "entity claiming some attainment" and declares it has happened "to me" and "to some extent" all of which reinforces the belief in a me and time? Moreover, the assumption "I get it" very simply proves that you do NOT "get it". THERE IS NOTHING TO GET AND NO ONE TO GET NOTHING.
Q: This is all there is the one life happening only now, both dream and reality, the dream known, the reality unknown except that I am that reality and I allow that reality to run my life, beingness makes all my decisions, pretty much. Still, I'm definitely not dead. nyway, thank you for your YouTube videos.
C: These "enlightened concepts" you spout and the actual Being This are noight and : These "enlightened concepts" you spout and actually Being This are night and day different. KEEP GOING. In Sri Nisargadatta's words, "The real exists and is of the nature of witness-consciousness. Of course it is beyond the witness, but to enter it one must first realize the state of pure witnessing. The awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned. We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the transient, the conditioned. To go beyond, we must pass through total negation of everything as having independent existence. All things depend on consciousness. And consciousness depends on the witness". Awareness of Being is Timeless Bliss, Perfect Peace -- now looking within your own Consciousness, ask YOU - WHO is aware of Being?
And WHO or WHAT is this "I" you claim to be yourself that "assumes" this or that? You see, that I ITSELF is a mere assumption made in ignorance; that "I" thought has no actual substance, and zero independent power, and in Truth that "seperate I" does NOT exist. Yte EXISTENCE IS. Thie conceptual "I" POINTS to Timeless Being and when that concept is taken to be me there is much suffering. The cure os see that phantom I as a phantom! YOU as what you "know yourself as" are a nonexistent phantom, a ghost of wispy thought with no capacity to do or not do, to be ort not be, a damn thing.
Q: So I practice "Who am I? And keep thinking "maybe the next video or rewatching the last one will tell me more about how to ask this question". I know I'm everything and nothing and not a person, yet I'm completely ignorant as the experience. Who am I? I assume if I ask this question in silence something is going to pop up some day and that will be that.
C: This is NOT an "experience"! Awareness is NOT a thought or a feeling, not a perception or a sensation! As to "your doing", you will do the next thing. The immeasurable forces that comprise Being, Consciousness, Aliveness - Life Itself, Totality, will push that organism and the assumed entity to the next thing with no struggle or effort. If the assumption remains operational under the covers, like DOS code under the Windows graphical appearance, that "you" must "figure this out" and "get some attainment someday" then ask WHO believes this? WHO AM I? The question "who am I" is NOT asked to get any answer or any attainment. In Sri Ramana Maharshi´s words, "The thought 'who am I' will destroy all other thoughts and in that thought itself will also be destroyed, like a stick used to stir a fire is also burnt up in the end -- " to dissolve the false belief in being a separate entity that must manage and create and exert some will or intention and try (and ALWAYS fail) to make it's life work - and the fact is that belief in being a "me" IS the root cause of all suffering. Remove the cause (that false belief in 'me') and can the effects remain? No. that final question asked relentlessly is a simple means that many have found just flat works.
If that doesn't work keep looking. This pathless path is made in the walking which NO ONE does. Everything is One Essence appearing as nothing and everything and the whole show between.
Stay simple and be in touch is spirit so moves that happening in This Awareness that is Real. Good luck and much love!
Follow-Up:
Q: Thank you for the fantastic stuff. Here's an update: [It is seen that] awareness sees the repeated question "who am I?' rattle around in the brain, betraying the brain as a limited tool devoid of self-identity.
Any sense of needing to talk to the teacher is part of the dream, an imaginary teacher teaches an imaginary student neither are real. any sense of needing a future is false, (part of the dream), any sense of desire or fear is false. utterly full and complete present-awareness is the only reality. It is who I am, immutable, eternal, now, one without a second, infinite love, generosity and peace. What unfolds from here? More here!
C: ALL very well said. Welcome to the Home You Never Left! :-) Much Love!
Consciousness: Talks About That Which Never Changes
by Alexander Smit
This heavy and ripe volume consists of Alexander Smit's oral responses to over 500 questions constructed around the meta-themes of what the natural state is, what reality is, what or who the "I" is. These talks mostly took place in the Eighties, prior to the Internet generation.
Smit, who died in 1998, barely 50 years old, was a student of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Smit speaks from experience and requires his questioners to speak from their experience. This condition keeps the dialogue unfettered by philosophical, theoretical, intellectual distraction. It also keeps Smit free of cultishness.
He says, "Self-realisation has nothing to do with the ideas we may have about it." Same may be said for him and for you. The constant cleaning out of your concepts and your projections upon him, makes for healthy relationship, reason enough for recommending the teaching of Alexander Smit. "Young lady," he says at one point, "please do not project your own situation onto me in order to show me how I am experiencing myself."
Smit's student Philip Renard writes a useful foreword in which he lays out and talks about Smit's main themes. Renard also talks about his relationship with Smit, about whom he says, "I had learned of such expressions as, `I am Consciousness only,' or `This mind is nothing but the Buddha,' but never had I seen anybody demonstrating it."
EXAMPLES OF TOPICS DISCUSSED:
Smit addresses many different topics. I'll mention a few of them along with a brief quotation so that you get a feel for the scope of this book. However many of Smit's responses are discourses, fairly lengthy and full of solid wondrous stories.
The guru: "One condition is that the guru himself must have reached the end, and that he himself has covered the road completely. Otherwise it will be a comedy."
Boredom, loneliness, and the fear of death: "There are but few who are prepared to face these three obstacles, for it requires courage, passion, and intellligence to face your own life."
Hope, belief, and love: "He who builds his life on these ideas will experience their stifling effect."
Self-realisation: "The only problem with Self-realisation is that you insist on experiencing that state as an `I," as a `person,' as an `experiencer.'"
Men, women, and enlightenment: "As soon as a man becomes enlightened, the first thing he will do - he can't wait for five minutes - is to gather at once disciples around him and start explaining things. Whereas a woman will simply sit down and enjoy it, that's all."
CONCLUSION:
In March of 1985, Alexander Smit said, "Advaita [nonduality] will never become very popular." The reason, he explained, is that consciousness or your real nature cannot be located, experienced, or perceived, and there's nothing you can "do" with abstractions.
Advaita or nonduality is popular. What Smit did not see is that people would not be frustrated or frightened by the inability to speak the Truth, or by the non-existence of Truth as an object. People are okay with it, and they know how to prattle about the Truth, which is all Smit, Nisargadatta, or anyone can do.
On the other hand, Smit makes a good point: "You can use advaita vedanta in such a way that you actually won't have to see the truth, just as you can use any religion, any philosophy, any enlightened man as a system of thought in which you will know how to fit your own thinking - your wasted life."
Smit is as bottom line as any authentic teacher. His book is like a pantry chock full of nonduality. It's more diverse than a lot of the newer books on the topic. With shades of orange on the cover and nearly 400 pages stuffed with very readable teachings, this is an ideal book by which to define your Autumn.
I also want to congratulate Andre van den Brink for translating the text from Dutch. Andre is author of the classic book Enlightenment Blues, which tells about his years with Andrew Cohen.
SUMMARY:
I'll let Smit have the final word here: "A summing-up is to organize anew the confusion, which should be seen and transcended instead."
--review by Jerry Katz
Consciousness: Talks About That Which Never Changes
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3296, Sunday, September 21, 2008
And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far away deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of the setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the minds of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.
- William Wordsworth, from Tintern Abbey
The timeless non-state cannot be achieved because the mind cannot evolve towards it. The mind can only bring you to the threshold. Awakening comes unexpectedly when you do not wait for it, when you live in not-knowing. Only then are you available.
- Jean Klein
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion that it may sing and let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like a phoenix rise above its own ashes.
- Kahlil Gibran
Ocean of nectar, full of grace, engulfing the universe in Thy splendour! Oh Arunachala, the Supreme itself! Be Thou the sun and open the lotus of my Heart in Bliss!
Oh Arunachala! In Thee the picture of the universe is formed, has its stay, and is dissolved; this is the sublime truth. Thou art the inner Self, who dancest in the Heart as `I'. `Heart' is Thy name, Oh Lord!
He who turns inward with untroubled mind to search where the consciousness of `I' arises, realizes the Self, and rests in Thee, Oh Arunachala! like a river when it joins the ocean.
Abandoning the outer world, with mind and breath controlled, to meditate on Thee within, the yogi sees Thy light, Oh Arunachala! And finds his delight in Thee.
He who dedicates his mind to Thee and, seeing Thee, always beholds the universe as Thy figure, he who at all times glorifies Thee and loves Thee as none other than the Self, he is the master without rival, being one with Thee, Oh Arunachala, and lost in Thy bliss!
- Ramana Maharshi
Discard all you are not and go ever deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water, until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so must you discard what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown. You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to. You are not even a human being. You just are - a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself uncaused. If you ask me "Who are you?", my answer would be: "Nothing in particular. Yet, I am.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That
Do realize that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you, and you are the immutable witness. No happening affects your real being - that is the absolute truth.
Gill Eardley lost her mother to breast cancer a month ago. And Ivan Granger's father has just passed. Along with condolences to both, I would like to honor their dedication to inspiring the best in all of us. Both have spent years creating websites full of poetry and song which express the highest aspirations and deepest knowings of the human spirit. Thank you, Gill and Ivan.
From: Lover's Gifts (1918) - Rabindranath Tagore XXXIX: There Is a Looker-On
There is a looker-on who sits behind my eyes. It seems he has seen things in ages and worlds beyond memory's shore, and those forgotten sights glisten on the grass and shiver on the leaves. He has seen under new veils the face of the one beloved, in twilight hours of many a nameless star. Therefore his sky seems to ache with the pain of countless meetings and partings, and a longing pervades this spring breeze, -the longing that is full of the whisper of ages without beginning.
I am not I. I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see, whom at times I manage to visit, and whom at other times I forget; the one who remains silent while I talk, the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate, the one who takes a walk when I am indoors, the one who will remain standing when I die.
The core of our being is drawn like a stone to the quiet depths
of each moment where God waits for us with eternal longing.
But to those depths the false self tries to prevent us from travelling, keeping us skimming across the surface of the water on the one dimensional fringe of life.
To sink is to vanish. To sink into the unknown depths of God's call to union with Himself
is to lose all that the false self knows and cherishes.
And now to the Abyss I pass Of that Unfathomable Grass...
1. Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath Grows large and free in air, don't call it death -- A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire His surly art of imitating life; conspire Against him. Say that my body cannot now Be improved upon; it has no fault to show To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh Has a perfect compliance with the grass Truer than any it could have striven for. You will recognize the earth in me, as before I wished to know it in myself: my earth That has been my care and faithful charge from birth, And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound, And all my hopes. Say that I have found A good solution, and am on my way To the roots. And say I have left my native clay At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so. Traveler to where? Say you don't know.
2. But do not let your ignorance Of my spirit's whereabouts dismay You, or overwhelm your thoughts. Be careful not to say
Anything too final. Whatever Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought Let imagination figure
Your hope. That will be generous To me and to yourselves. Why settle For some know-it-all's despair When the dead may dance to the fiddle
Hereafter, for all anybody knows? And remember that the Heavenly soil Need not be too rich to please One who was happy in Port Royal.
I may be already heading back, A new and better man, toward That town. The thought's unreasonable, But so is life, thank the Lord!
3. So treat me, even dead, As a man who has a place To go, and something to do. Don't muck up my face
With wax and powder and rouge As one would prettify An unalterable fact To give bitterness the lie.
Admit the native earth My body is and will be, Admit its freedom and Its changeability.
Dress me in the clothes I wore in the day's round. Lay me in a wooden box. Put the box in the ground.
4. Beneath this stone a Berry is planted In his home land, as he wanted.
He has come to the gathering of his kin, Among whom some were worthy men,
Farmers mostly, who lived by hand, But one was a cobbler from Ireland,
Another played the eternal fool By riding on a circus mule
To be remembered in grateful laughter Longer than the rest. After
Doing that they had to do They are at ease here. Let all of you
Who yet for pain find force and voice Look on their peace, and rejoice.
It hovers in dark corners before the lights are turned on, it shakes sleep from its eyes and drops from mushroom gills, it explodes in the starry heads of dandelions turned sages, it sticks to the wings of green angels that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye of the many-eyed potato, it lives in each earthworm segment surviving cruelty, it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog, it is the mouth that inflates the lungs of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift we cannot destroy in ourselves, the argument that refutes death, the genius that invents the future, all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear not to betray one another; it is in this poem, trying to speak.
You're better off if you know certain people, and, for me, Vicki's one of those people.
Vicki has the gift of showing us our heartbreak and our natural state.
Out of crushing heartbreak, most people would run from God. Vicki "ran to" God, or Self. Not as an escape, not to deny that any heartbreak ever happened, but to go deeper into the darkness.
These talks last five minutes each:
Listen to "An Important Talk."http://bobwoodyard.com/An%20Important%20Talk.mp3. Reclaiming the power of your inner world, of your inner wisdom. Honoring one's limits and losses rather than overcoming them. In that honoring we are brought to our knees and we recognize the one truth. One of the great source teachings of VW.
Listen to "Zits, Incorporated"http://bobwoodyard.com/Zits%20Incorporated.mp3. Vicki mixes silliness, the nuts of bolts of life, death, and real reality. "With zits and gas, I think it's time to start dating again."
Listen to "It's About the Music."http://bobwoodyard.com/It%27s%20About%20the%20Music.mp3. "I knew that my daughter was gone, but I knew that God was not gone. So I set on a path of inner discovery. This path is never ending. But for some of us it is music."
Here's a new writing from Vicki:
All the ego can give us is "upset." Those who say otherwise haven't looked at themselves long enough. Why is it, then, that nothing ever changes from the ego's POV? It still has hope of making it in this world. So the pain continues.
I am busily at work making five-minute MP3’s. I don’t let myself know what spirit will say. I just push “Record” and launch into the words arising from source. Sometimes they seem unimportant; in that case, maybe the energy is what you are supposed to access. Actually, that is the case at all times. Everything comes down to energy; and we all know the difference between good and bad. Between healthy and unhealthy. Between what serves us and what doesn’t serve us. The trick is to say yes to what heals and no to what doesn’t. This is a lifelong question and yields no easy answers.
I learned the importance of saying No from Vernon Howard. Every emphatic no to sleep is a vote for awakening. Society can give us nothing but trouble-all reports to the contrary. The beauty of awakening is that it returns us to Sender! We are thrown back on ourselves. This can feel like hell, but is the beginning of heaven.
The state of nonduality is a state of intense peace and perfect balance. It is so peaceful because everything is seen as it belongs--to the eternal order of cosmic evolution; hence, all is accepted, all reconciled.
— Notebooks, Paul Brunton
posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle
Keep the Three Inseparable
Your actions, your speech, and your thoughts should be inseparable from this yearning to communicate from the heart. Everything you say can further polarize the situation and convince you of how separate you are. On the other hand, everything you say and do and think can support your desire to communicate, to move closer and step out of this myth of isolation and separateness that you're caught in.
Don't impose the wrong notion of what harmony is, what compassion is, what patience is, what generosity is. Don't misinterpret what these things really are. There is compassion and there is idiot compassion; there is patience and there is idiot patience; there is generosity and there is idiot generosity. For example, trying to smooth everything out to avoid confrontation, not to rock the boat, is not what's meant by compassion or patience. It's what is meant by control. Then you are not trying to step into unknown territory, to find yourself more naked with less protection and therefore more in contact with reality. Instead, you use the idiot forms of compassion and so forth just to get ground. When you open the door and invite in all sentient beings as your guests, you have to drop your agenda. Many different people come in. Just when you think you have a little scheme that is going to work, it doesn't work. It was very beneficial to Juan, but when you tried it on Mortimer, he looked at you as if you were crazy, and when you try it on Juanita, she gets insulted.
Coming up with a formula won't work. If you invite all sentient beings as your guests while just wanting harmony, sooner or later you'll find that one of your guests is behaving badly and that just sitting there cheerfully doing your tonglen and trying to cultivate harmony doesn't work.
So you sit there and you say, "Okay, now I'm going to make friends with the fact that I am hurting and afraid, and this is really awful." But you are just trying to avoid conflict here; you just don't want to make things worse. Then all the guests are misbehaving; you work hard all day and they just sit around, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, eating your food, and then beating you up. You think you're being a warrior and a Bodhisattva by doing nothing and saying nothing, but what you're being is a coward. You're just afraid of making the situation worse. Finally they kick you out of your house and you're sitting on the sidewalk. Somebody walks by and says, "What are you doing sitting out here?" You answer, "I am practicing patience and compassion." That's missing the point.
Even though you've dropped your agenda, even though you are trying to work WITH situations instead of struggling AGAINST them, nevertheless you may have to say, "You can stay here tonight, but tomorrow you're going, and if you don't get out of here, I am calling the police." You don't really know what's going to benefit somebody, but it doesn't benefit anybody to allow someone to beat you up, eat all your food, and put you out on the street.
So "Don't misinterpret" really gets at the notion of the big squeeze. It's saying that you don't know what's going to help, but you need to speak and act with clarity and decisiveness. Clarity and decisiveness come from the willingness to slow down, to listen to and look at what's happening. They come from opening your heart and not running away. Then the action and the speech are in accord with what needs to be done, for you and for the other person.
We make a lot of mistakes. If you ask people whom you consider to be wise and courageous about their lives, you may find that they have hurt a lot of people and made a lot of mistakes, but that they used those occasions as opportunities to humble themselves and open their hearts. We don't get wise by staying in a room with all the doors and windows closed.
See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is.
This is an excerpt from Embracing the Now: Finding Peace and Happiness In What Is, by Gina Lake.
I've only started reading this book, and will write a review when I'm finished. It is startlingly clear.
On the mainstream nondual spirituality front, Gina Lake is a contender for top author/top teacher honors, along with Eckhart Tolle. Both she and this book have what it takes.
Surrender is really just acceptance: You surrender to, or accept, the way things are—the way life is showing up right now. From the standpoint of the ego, surrender and acceptance seem so difficult. That’s because the ego doesn’t want to accept life, and that will never change. You will never get the ego to accept life. Resistance to acceptance is the ego’s natural state. When you are identified with it, you feel resistance to life, but when you are not, you naturally accept life. When you get in touch with the real you, accepting life just happens.
During your day, you have many experiences of being surrendered to life as it is. You may not notice those moments because you move through them so smoothly and peacefully. The moments of resistance are the ones you notice because they make you feel like you have a problem. You are taken farther out of the now as you try to fix the problem by doing something to try to feel better, such as eating, fantasizing, shopping, watching TV, or other escapist activities.
Escapist activities are ones that cause us to become unconscious of our feelings, including our feelings of resistance to life. We cope with feelings and other aspects of life that we are resisting by avoiding the experience we are having and doing something that will distract us and hopefully give us some pleasure. We seek relief from the pain of resisting life by seeking pleasure. That’s how the ego copes with life. The irony is that the ego is what creates the resistance, and therefore the suffering—not life. The ego’s solution to its own resistance is to seek pleasure. When you are identified with the ego, you are involved in this cycle of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure.
That’s one way of being in life, but there’s another way. Surrender is the way out of this cycle. When you surrender to life as it is, you experience a simple joy and fullness that’s much more satisfying than any pleasure you could experience. The simple joy of just being is complete enough. Nothing needs to be added or subtracted. The moment just flows into the next, without the need to change or fix anything about it.
Surrender allows you to experience life as it is unfolding, instead of experiencing your resistance to it. When you are identified with the ego, you aren’t experiencing life but, rather, your resistance to it. You’re actually missing the experience of the now because you’re not in the now but in your thoughts about the now—and that is a very different experience.
Your thoughts about the now are never like being in the now, even when your thoughts are pleasant. Thoughts are just one aspect of the now, and if you ignore everything else that is coming out of the now, you’ll have a very narrow—and dry—experience of life. Life can’t be replaced by thoughts about it. The only way to really experience life is to say yes to it—to surrender to what is going on right now—all of it—not just your thoughts about it. When you say no to it, you get caught up in the mind’s story about the moment and its resistance, and you suffer.
The way out of this suffering is to notice the ego’s resistance to life and ignore it. Every time that resistance arises, you notice it and then bring yourself back to the experience you are having right here and now—how your body is feeling, what you are sensing, what you are being moved to do, and what intuitions are arising. You just stay here in the now. What you discover is that the now feels good and is rich and ever-changing. From the now, life is not experienced as a problem. The mind is the only thing that makes life into a problem.
Once you see that it’s possible to relegate the mind to the background and just enjoy the moment, you will choose to do that more and more. Surrendering to life is not hard at all. It happens simply and naturally when you stop paying attention to your mind’s version of life and start paying attention to life itself as it is coming out of the now. There’s something else to do besides think! And that is to notice—to be aware of what is happening now. Look, feel, listen, sense, and you will drop into the now.
"So I'm a number cruncher, a bean counter - that's the historical phrase they use for accountants - I count beans all day. It's a perfectly meaningless job for me. A government bean counter is precisely the job you want if you are not career orientated and you just somehow get sucked into this spiritual consciousness thing."
That's my favorite paragraph in this book, which you may find to be a peaceful, relaxing, and quick read, or which may scare the heck out of you.
Other paragraphs jump off the page:
"All the clichés are dreadfully, dreadfully true. When you say, `I am that,' it really is true, which is extraordinary because I'd mouthed that in Sanskrit and Hindi for twenty-five years and thought very seriously: `I am that. I am God. I am not different from God." Indeed I'm not - but it's not quite what I meant at the time."
HOMAGE:
Henry Smith wrote in his Works in the 19th century, "Every man must homage his heart." That doesn't sound radically nondual; however this book feels to me as homage to Tony Parsons. One of the featured people in this book says,
"When I was with Osho, he was a beautiful person, but very distant. I thought I had to become this person, a kind of holy man, and I thought that this was `enlightenment.' Tony Parsons made it so simple and down to earth, which possibly helped me to recognise the moment. And to be able to cope with it."
Almost everyone in the book says something like that. Okay, so homage to Tony. I don't know if that's more nondual than paying homage to your heart. I'll leave that up to you.
This book consists of a foreword by Jeff Foster, a brief introduction by the author, and seven stories of awakening.
THE FOREWORD:
Jeff Foster's foreword may be worth the price of admission. Jeff is a master at handling the paradox: that we speak of awakening and there is no one who has ever awakened. He handles the paradox like a magician handles a pair of doves. "And so really anything we say about awakening isn't true, because in talking about it we've already made it into a `thing' and killed it. But as Lao-Tzu knew, although the Tao cannot be told, there's no reason why you shouldn't try," says the nondual prestidigitator.
CRYING AT THE TV, AND OTHER COMMONALITIES:
These stories have certain elements in common. Most of the featured people deliver a version of the confession that there is no "me" to tell a story. All of them came to the end of their search through interaction with a living teacher, in just about every case Tony Parsons. None of them "got it" through a book, a website, or an email forum. Most of them don't like George W. Bush. Most speak of awakening or enlightenment as a kind of relaxation and meaninglessness.
Another feature in common with most of the stories is the response to crisis and tragedy, such as a horrible accident or an untimely death. "There was this sense of identification with the sad story of the moment and then it stopped. It wasn't anything that I turned on or off," one person notes.
It seems we blow as a leaf. Another person confesses, "...some feelings seem to be much deeper in a weird sort of way, they're much more poignant. I cry more often at television, which is quite embarrassing, and then the feeling's gone. I can't explain that either but it seems to be a feeling that's less tied up with all sorts of other stuff, it comes and goes, it passes like the weather."
WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT?
They all give their take on what enlightenment is. Here are a few quotes:
"I'm not sure if there are any signs of liberation really, apart from being a bit more relaxed and at ease."
"There's nothing special. It's just awareness."
"There's not the mental confusion - but all the programming carries on."
"If I had to put words to it, it is total freedom. Total freedom to let anything arise that arises."
STORIES AS NONSENSE:
There is agreement on the view of "stories:"
"Consciousness animates me every day and that is what interests me, not hearing someone else's story ... but rather how it is manifesting in me."
"When there is nothing to know, absolutely nothing to know, there is nothing. And that's the beauty of it. And our stories, our life stories that go on in psychotherapy - this story and that happened - its rubbish. It's total nonsense."
"There is no better world we will ever get. I used to think that the goal was to get everybody enlightened. Well, it isn't. There is no goal. There is no purpose."
CONCLUSION:
It's valuable and refreshing to hear ordinary people talk about "this stuff." What these people confess is your confession too, except that you have different words. Just be, see, and if anyone asks, tell in your own words. Or stay silent. Or fumble with the words. Or count beans.
THE END:
The book ... ends ... so ... quietly ... as though it had never begun.
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3302, Saturday, September 27, 2008
There is in the body a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body. Discover that current and stay with it.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Autumn at Kincraig
Yellow birch leaves fall like flakes on rooted rutted forest tracks rain splatters on plastic hoods among the woods.
Tawny oaks and bronzy bracken beech leaves thickly dark and molten as we walk in single rank along the bank.
The living river far below a dark brownish steady flow then shower of sun gently catches golden larches.
Tessa Ransford, from Not Just Moonshine: New and Selected Poems
The Freshness
When it's cold and raining, you are more beautiful.
And the snow brings me even closer to your lips.
The inner secret, that which was never born, you are that freshness, and I am with you now.
I can't explain the goings, or the comings. You enter suddenly,
and I am nowhere again. Inside the majesty.
- Rumi, version by Coleman Barks
Oceans of Bliss
Lord God of my Being this endless becoming... like rain falling into my Heart...
- Anna Ruiz, posted to NondualitySalon
Ceann Tràigh Breige
tender flesh to sit foolish & hoping
to be come mountain
the sun bides in the loch surfacing
cormorants can't look in its void eye
- Gerry Loose
TO MY OLD BROWN EARTH
To my old brown earth And to my old blue sky I'll now give these last few molecules of "I."
And you who sing, And you who stand nearby, I do charge you not to cry.
Guard well our human chain, Watch well you keep it strong, As long as sun will shine.
And this our home, Keep pure and sweet and green, For now I'm yours And you are also mine.
- Words and Music by Pete Seeger, posted to NondualitySalon
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