"Are You Enlightened?"
The ocean asks the fish, "Have you been to the well, and tasted water? I have not."
And the fish can only reply: "What is water?"
Replies the ocean, "Water is enlightenment. I am parched dry."
Sez the fish, "I know of no such thing. There is no such thing as water -- you have imagined it."
And so the ocean goes on wondering about the fish -- has it tasted water, and if so where to get some of this precious stuff?
Finally, the ocean could not rest. Great waves appeared upon its surface, waves large enough to capsize a small boat, as it contemplated the joy and bliss of finding water. The fish just swam deeper, wondering what the ocean meant by "water," and what all the fuss was about.
By and by, a bucket came bobbing along the surface of the ocean, over half full by now.
Says the ocean: "Sri Bucket-datta, you are a great sage. Clearly there's something in you I'm looking for. Could there be a direct transmission?"
Says the bucket: "Just BE, without being this or that."
Ocean: "But I'm an ocean! As an ocean, I am coral reefs, fishes, islands, seaweed! I want to find water... how and why just be?"
Says the bucket: "Trust me -- just BE. Forget being anything in particular and just BE."
So in puzzlement, the ocean just BEEZ as the great Guru sezz... so subsideth the waves, so sank the bucket, so did the ocean cease searching for water, having no further use for it... so did the fish go on pouting its lips prettily.
From here, a helpful 'pointer' (as helpful as pointers get anyway), was the Buddhist statement "Samsara is Nirvana." Supposedly uttered joyously by a Buddhist monk (I forgot who), upon awakening.
This statement looked very puzzling -- Samsara is Nirvana? What does it mean, Samsara is Nirvana? How could Samsara be Nirvana?
At some point, it dawned that the statement means exactly what it says -- Samsara is Nirvana.
The implications are 'staggering'. If Samsara is Nirvana, then was I attempting to get to Nirvana? If so, it was really an attempt to escape Nirvana.
What the hell was I doing? If Samsara is Nirvana, then I am in Nirvana, I am Nirvana. The other shore is this shore -- as it is. There is nowhere to go, nothing to escape from and no reason to try getting from here to there -- there's nowhere else and nothing else.
The nature of the "me"
"When the supremacy of the illusory entity 'me' is challenged, the reaction is invariably hostile. The 'me', fearing its own demise, is both unable and unwilling to trust anything or anybody. It is ceaselessly in rebellion; against 'itself', against 'others', against 'life' and against 'death'.
The nature of the 'me' is inherently 'anti-life' and 'anti-love'. It can do nothing but react to perceived threat. It is a pocket of unlife, a static, dead and nonexistent 'entity' bracketed by illusory ideas of past and future, consisting only of fear. Its only interest is to continue at all costs."
I am "my True Nature."
It is impossible to "see my True Nature," or "know my True Nature," because that would require something or 'someone' able to "stand apart from" what I Am and observe what I Am.
Can you see the futility of this? The stupidity of it?
What prevents "Being what I Am?" Nothing, of course. I am whatever I am, timelessly.
What is "The dream?" The idea that something or someone (often referred to as "me") can "stand apart from," or "separate itself from" WHAT IS, in order to "observe" WHAT IS, or in order to know WHAT IS -- even "in order to be what is" (HAH!).
Imagine a tree. It does not see that it is a tree, nor does it know that it is a tree. It is a tree.
Now imagine a tree engaged in this dreaming foolishness. Somehow 'unsatisfied' with being a tree, it has to know that it is "a tree." It has to see that it is a tree.
So, an image (or shadow) of the tree appears that "steps away from" the tree, and imagines that it observes a tree. It imagines that it "knows itself as a tree."
But the image being an impossibility itself... what does it see? What does it know?
It sees a dream, an impossibility. It knows a dream, an impossibility. The image (imagining itself) standing apart from WHAT IS, it sees only images, knows only images. In order to do this, it generates a sense of time and a sense of space. ALL THIS APPARENT ACTIVITY IS THE DREAM.
There is nothing separate or apart from "what is" to observe, see or know "what is."
Let this idea sink in deep. When these "efforts" of some imagined entity (usually called "I" or "me") to step apart from WHAT IS in order to observe, perceive, apperceive, know, see or be WHAT IS cease, then:
The dream dissolves. The "observer or perceiver" dissolves. It was never real.
What is, is. Which was all that ever was, anyway.
Let the dream end.
"On Surrender"
It is impossible to surrender to God, because where God is, we are not... and vice-versa. The presence of "the person doing the surrendering" is the absence of "God."
Then what to do? Only to see with utter clarity that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING we can do, nothing to be done. All doings are utterly futile and useless. In that clarity of seeing, "we" simply drop away, having no more use or purpose... and "God" floods in to "fill the space" we once occupied.
Surrender is never TO anything... surrender is always and only of this goal-seeking, achieving "get there" mentality. And to surrender this mentality is to surrender *mentality itself*, because thought is itself seeking, desiring, etc... "mind" is nothing more than the sum-total of desire and the corresponding seek for relief.
Exhaust thought if necessary, think yourself to death... until thought sees its own utter futility, its circularity, its uselessness. Accepting its uselessness, it surrenders. This is the only "Surrender to God" possible. This is the essence of devotion.
... Omkara ...
"Is It So Hard?"
Ya know, it's not hard at all. It just takes courage, the willingness to begin living on courage, rather than in fear. And you have to admit to yourself that you've been living as the slave to fear, and change the whole gestalt.
And it takes some trust. Trust when others say "It's effortless." And "It's not dangerous, not at all." Ignore those who tell you you have to "die while still alive." This is just a manner of speaking, a way to try to describe the indescribable.
MOST OF ALL, it requires the willingness to see truth, even if "the truth" is not attractive to you. Not "your truth." The truth. Ugly or beautiful, you have to be willing to see things the way they are, not the way you want them to be.
Note the word "willingness" is sprinkled throughout the above paragraphs. That means surrender. Surrender to a new way of life. A life lived on courage. Seeing that you are a slave, and the desire to not be a slave anymore (to fear, cowardice, ignorance and apathy).
The ancient snake/rope analogy is quite apt:
You see an asp sitting there a few feet away, coiled and ready to spring. The first impulse: RUN AWAY!! Get the hell out of here!! This f*cking thing is going to kill me! Or you freeze up and wait to see if the snake will leave. It doesn't move. Just sits there, fangs exposed, coiled up, tensed, ready to sink its fangs into you.
Wait, your friends tell you. That's only a rope, coiled in a peculiar position and vibrating with the wind. It's no snake.
Your choice. Throw fear to the wind, walk up to the asp, and grab it by the throat. Examine it from all angles. Pick it up. Bring its "face" directly in line with yours (ahh, those fangs!), and take a good, long look.
*Poof*. You're holding a frayed piece of rope, disguised so carefully that it looked EXACTLY like a dangerous snake. Even its fangs turned out to be stones embedded in the end of the rope, and the tongue just a frayed end.
One last analogy -- Remember the final "Indiana Jones" movie, the search for the Holy Grail? Remember the bridge scene?
The final challenge -- to step off the cliff with complete trust. There is a bridge there to support you, but you cannot see or sense it. Step off anyway.
Courage.
"Give Up!"
Give up!
Realize the futility of holding on to anything.
The holding on itself *is* the entity that is holding on.
If you are sad, "you" are the sadness.
If you are happy, "you" are the happiness.
There is no permanent "you."
A temporary arising of phenomena,
"you" is ceaselessly dying and being reborn
as another "you."
Any speck of dust
has more substantiality
than this imaginary "me."
If you are seeking realization you can never find it,
because the "you" doing the seeking is directly in the way.
The seeking itself is not the problem, the presence of the seeker is.
Forget about yourself.
There is no such animal.
Nor are there any others.
Only surface appearances,
Froth on a mile-deep sea.
If you think you are a body,
it may help to say "I am not a body"
but it does not answer "What is this 'I'?"
Only understanding, effortless understanding helps.
Dive deep beneath the surface of life,
Things are not as they seem.
Even a scientist will tell you that.
The chair you are sitting on is not solid.
It is 99.9 percent empty space.
But the scientist does not know
The other .1% is his imagination.
When the surface of the pond is calm
The bottom is visible.
Dive in.
Let the river carry you to the pond.
Let the pond go clear,
not a ripple on the surface.
LET is the word here.
Do not blank your mind.
Rather:
See that you do not exist, and do not have a mind.
How to see? Examine: "What the f**k is 'me'?"
"Examining Body and Mind..."
"The Body" is a mental category for a stream of sensations (pain, pleasure, twinges, etc), sounds ("lub-dub"), air moving in and out), sights (an entity apparently separate from others), touch, tastes, etc. This stream of sensations is constantly changing and never the same at any instant.
"Body" is an abstraction. We do not perceive a body, but rather choose to group the totality of all the above sensations into a CONCEPT we refer to as "body." See that "the body" is nothing but an idea, the lumping together of all these various sensations described above. Go deeper ("what is heartbeat, what is breathing") and see how the conceptualization goes all the way back to when language was first learned, and even prior to that.
Therefore, "body" being an abstract and arbitrary concept, there can be no such thing in reality. Sight being our primary sense (most of us), we look in the mirror and refer to that seen as "body." Yet sight is just another sense, and we are *conditioned* to refer to that shape we see in the mirror as "my body." As infants the conditioning started. My mother pointed to something and said "you." Then she pointed to something else and said "me." Constant repetition and societal pressures reinforced that conditioning through adolescence.
What about "mind?" Rather than a stream of sensations, a stream of thoughts, given continuity by memory. We take the totality of all these disparate and constantly changing thoughts and emotions, as well as the sum total of memories, and call this "mind."
Again, a complete abstraction. There is no such thing as mind, but thoughts apparently do arise, and there does seem to be a storehouse of "experiences" we refer to as memory... constantly changing, of course.
Why lump these things together into something called "a mind?" And how to do it, when the change is constant and incessant?
How about "me?" When you can see that "body" and "mind" are concepts, there is no longer anywhere to place a "me." Most refer to "me" as either the perceived body, or the totality of mind/body. Yet, if we can see that both "body" and "mind" are totally abstract, what can we refer to as "I" any longer? Which particular sensation (heartbeat, breathing, sight) or thought/feeling will we place the "me" on? Is one sensation, sight, sound, touch, thought, feeling, emotion more desirable than another, that it can be labeled "me?"
"Examining Body and Mind, Part 2"
Now go deeper into the particular sensations and thoughts.
Let's start with heartbeat. What is a "heart?" Five letters h-e-a-r-t, symbols in shapes that are actually abstract and determined by society. To a native-born chinese, the spoken sound and written word "heart" will mean nothing (although he has his own symbols, which to you will mean nothing).
Heartbeat? The concept "heart" plus the concept "beat" (beat being an abstract concept indicating a "lub-dub" sound). Do you see how all these things have been lumped together and given meaning by memory and conditioning?
"Breathing?" Means nothing. It's a label we've pasted onto the feeling or sensation of expansion and contraction of the lungs. JUST SEE THAT. Seeing changes everything.
Work at the glue binding all these conceptualizations together (clue: the "glue" is "you"). Work diligently and fearlessly at it until it crumbles and falls to pieces, either bit by bit or all at once. What remains is what's real.
This massive web of concepts most of us live under serves to make up "maya" or the universe, the whole glob and mess of abstractions and conceptualizations. ALL of it is nothing more than conditioned concepts. What a burden, mostly unperceived because we're so used to it!
See that everything is constantly and ceaselessly changing, and that if you can perceive change, you must be something that DOES NOT CHANGE. You're on the way.
"Phenomenality vs. "Not-phenomenality"
I've heard it mentioned often about two supposed "levels," the everyday level of so-called "phenomenality" and the so-called Absolute or Ground of Being, Buddha-Nature, whatever. Often these are sharply separated by even those supposedly "in the know," resulting in a duality of "reality" and "falsehood" or "phenomenon" and "nuomenon."
No such duality is seen from here any longer, it was realized. Only an absolute blur now between so-called "maya" and whatever is not maya, so that there is neither maya nor brahman (or there is both existing as one, same thing). There is no dividing line, the "two" blend together so perfectly, as white gradually turns shades of grey into black, with no divisions, no duality. There is no such thing as either maya or brahman, because there is no separation between the two. When two things are really one, why artificially separate? More importantly, HOW???
The so-called "separation" between "maya" and "nirguna brahman," between the "wheel of karma" and "buddha-nature," is not there. Not even for purposes of discussion. Therefore, I am the Supreme Reality talking to you, or I am Tim, or I am Omkara, and there is no difference.
"An Interesting Observation"
Just a moment or two ago I was "washing my face." The sleeves of my jacket were getting in the way, my eyes were burning from the soap, and I thought "what a pain in the ass this is."
At that moment I realized I could stop resisting and *allow the body to wash its own face*. The illusion creating the resistance was that "I am washing my face," the "me" doing the washing was *interfering with the process*, not performing it. "I" was getting in the way of a natural occurrence.
Immediately upon releasing the illusion of control, the face was washed and dried without further trouble. No time seemed to pass from the moment "control" was released until the act was finished, and no burning of the eyes, no problem with the jacket sleeves, an instantaneous "act" occurred. It seems the body "knows" better how to clean itself than "I" do.
Quite an interesting experience... not the first time something like this has been observed.
The sense of "me" *always* interferes with the natural flow of life. Thinking there is a "me" with volition ("I am doing this") constantly erects barriers to natural process that would go along just fine without this "me" in the way.
"Where are the ethics (or morality) in nonduality?"
Comments:
There are no ethics or morality in nonduality. Neither is there a lack of ethics or morality. Rather, things occur naturally as they do. There is no "me-entity" to control things, neither are there other "me-entities." In an unsplit, homogenous reality, there is simply nobody to control anything, so events just (seem to) occur, and who can say whether a particular event is "right or "wrong?" It may be right in one context, wrong in another.
The entire universe is a single wave crashing on the rocks of a remote, isolated beach. Solar systems are exploding, entire galaxies are self destructing, universes are expanding and contracting. These grand events take care of themselves without interference. Likewise, in nonduality, "morality" and "ethics" take care of themselves in a similar fashion. There are no volitional entities to influence the conflux of perceived events. In reality, nothing is happening. The Here and Now are the only place and time, morality and ethics relate only to the past and to "somewhere else."
When the "me-entity" (consisting of the past, based on memory) gets out of the way, peace and rightness of an order unknown to "duality" automatically pervade everything, the universe is a safe place and physical birth and death is a dream. Thus, in nonduality the question does not even arise. If in "duality" it arises, the questioner may be turned back upon himself. Until "Who am I?" is examined closely, there is no possible answer. Afterwards, no answer is either necessary or desired.
"The Tyrant"
Tyrants control only that which lies within their own "realm." Thus, they are harmless to "those" who lie outside the sphere of their influence:
The solution is not the elimination of the tyrant (patently impossible, another will simply spring up to take the place of the last), but the elimination of that which can be tyrannized and controlled by "others," that which can suffer.
The existence of "The Tyrant" implies the existence of those who need, want, choose or are willing to be tyrannized.
How to eliminate those people? (grin)...
"Most people want to suffer!"
(from a mailing list posting):
"The first article is this series features Ellie Seidel, who
is from Germany, and it is entitled I Do Not Wany To Stay On
a Plateau Called 'There Is No I'.
"Without feelings there is even a very dry enlightenment.
When I hear some of the western young lions asking 'Who has
these problems? Who is suffering?' I do not smell the
flavour, I feel something is missing."
Sure, that point of view is understood from here. But suffering is not
denied as unreal, just *unnecessary*.
Many who suffer, do so because they like it -- or are so used to it, they know nothing else, and think that to let go of the suffering entity is dryness, dullness. Suffering makes people feel alive. Many live for the flow of adrenaline.
Following in the path of the pain/pleasure cycle, "feelings" exist against a background of depression, momentarily relieved by brief happiness. Take a look at the current worldwide epidemic of depression, finally recognized by the psychiatric community.
Those who suffer in blind ignorance deserve the utmost compassion. Those who suffer knowingly deserve what they get. They get what they want, which is continuation of suffering.
The only solution to suffering is to allow the "suffering entity" to drop. Otherwise, suffering is *inherent* in the human condition. Buddha was Awake to that. Most people will rail against the end of suffering. It's all they know. To forgo suffering is to step out of the familiar prison cell into utterly unknown territory. Easier to turn on the TV set and forget for a few hours, or to be a workaholic and lose oneself in work. Everyone is trying to "lose oneself" in this or that. Most succeed.
The NOW presents us all with the opportunity, NOW and NOW and NOW, to drop the entirety of "past" and BE, HERE, NOW. Until that is a reality, there is total blindness to the absolute peace and bliss of dropping the notion of "past." If "past" drops (the clinging to memory, the addiction to memory and its accomplice, "future anticipation"), that is Freedom, that is Rebirth, that is Peace. MOST OF THE WORLD WANTS **ANYTHING BUT*** THESE THINGS!!
Those who have not intuited, speak without the slightest idea or notion of what it can be like, speaking from a position of ignorance. OF COURSE it appears dry, dull from that point of view. To a cocaine addict, freedom from active addiction also appears dry, dull, boring, and the addict wonders why the rest of the world isn't using this glorious substance. So it is too for those addicted to the pain/pleasure cycle (suffering), and to destroying the experience of Presence (Now) by alternately existing in the past/future, endlessly alternating.
If there are those who wish to bitterly suffer the affects of the Holocaust years later, then let them suffer, perhaps they even deserve their suffering because they knowingly and purposefully cling to "past." This is not dryness or cruelty, simply realism.
Those who "choose" to live in the past are in bondage of their own making, and are very obviously enjoying their suffering, the endless perpetuation of past. The Jewish saying "never to forgive, never to forget" (or however it goes) indicates that very clearly.
The human race DOES NOT WANT PEACE, does not want an end to suffering. If it did, it would end it, NOW. Rather, what is desired is the constant adrenaline flow, the addictions and the pleasures and pains. "Ignorance is bliss."
Note -- my mother's side of the family comes from a Jewish background.