Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Abhyasa & Vairagya - Affirmation vs Negation

As per the title of this blog site and the meaning behind it... Life and Death must ultimately work hand in hand, the inhalation of life affirmation and expanding life potential and the exhalation or negation which is simply a letting go of life.

Ultimately this form world is a reality of pleasure and pain while Spirit or the Quantum reality is of the nature of joy and infinite creative potential. The experiences of this world, the objects and forms of life (including those of other people and one's own body) must ultimately be let go of with the increasing awareness of impermanence. Likewise, the addiction to pleasurable happy experiences and aversion to painful ones, without the awareness that the two are inseparably one, leads to a state of of vairagya or dispassion. Where there is clearly dispassion and disenchantment in holding on to what no longer works or weighs one down psychically, it becomes effortless to let go.

This is where choosing to accept reality, no matter what the conditions, allows for an attention so focused that letting go of negative thinking and evil vibrations becomes instinctive and immediate. With positive terms like acceptance and alignment we are talking about abhyasa, the affirmation positive thinking/feeling and action steps. Where Spirit naturally and effortlessly aligns itself is Abhyasa or positive affirmation and where it confronts the karmic burdens and baggage of ordinary human reality we need vairagya.

In this light the painful confrontation with unwanted shadow truths, which most keep to themselves for fear of public ridicule or being labelled a whiner, brings an awareness so sharp that letting it go becomes instantaneous (after a period of seemingly endless pain or angst). The flip side to this is that the more we stay aligned (in abhyasa), through pleasant and painful experiences alike, the less will become our experience of having to "face reality" and more about "creating reality", the dream and ultimate possibility remaining eternally alive and at peace...

JDZ

3 comments:

  1. This is where my thesis begins... Abhyasa works spontaneously and affirmatively to either expand or increase what is wanted in life or help vairagya negate what is unwanted, like dirty dishes and dirty laundry for example.

    Where this abhyasa sometimes flows with much resistance and inner-outer conflicts, obstacles, etc there is the vairagya, the dispassionate and detached outlook of the true self or soul onto the ego and personality self... the yang and yin, sun and moon, one and two. Here we begin with addressing the grass roots of the dysfunction, that of the masculine solar and the feminine lunar selves... of INNER RESISTANCE and INNER-OUTER ATTACHMENT(S) respectively.

    The ego itself is the resistance of the Individual self who remains separate, not allowing God into his/her existence. The personality is a conglomeration of accumulated characteristics and cherished possessions, ideas, things and people which make up the sense of self, of having a personal identity.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Inaction in Action as it is said in the Gita. Meditation is the abhyasa/practice of being entirely passive and letting go (vairagya)... It is the unity of affirmation and dispassion, of being and non-being, of "beginning exactly where you are", at ground zero, no contrivances nor delusions of grandeur to cloud the the basic essential truth of one's being. "Existence precedes Essence"... to be what you are ultimately destined to be you must always, first and foremost, be who you are NOW........

    ReplyDelete
  3. SEEKING IMPLIES DUALITY

    In seeking there are several things involved: there is the seeker and the thing that he seeks after. When the seeker finds what he thinks is truth, is God, is enlightenment, he must be able to recognize it. He must recognize it, right? Recognition implies previous knowledge, otherwise you cannot recognize. I cannot recognize you if I had not met you yesterday. Therefore when I say this is truth, I have already known it and therefore it is not truth. So a man who is seeking truth lives a life of hypocrisy, because his truth is the projection of his memory, of his desire, of his intentions to find something other than what is, a formula. So seeking implies duality, the one who seeks and the thing sought after, and where there is duality there is conflict. There is wastage of energy. So you can never find it, you can never invite it. - Krishnamurti in India 1970-71, pp 157-158

    The idea of searching for truth is utter nonsense! Because to search for something implies that you are trying to find, uncover something. How can you find, with a dull and repetitive mind, something which is not to be sought after, which is something alive, moving, which is totally new? So you cannot seek it. I know it is one of the fashionable things or religious things to seek truth or God! You have to throw that word overboard; it has no meaning. But what has meaning is to find out if the brain can be extraordinarily sensitive, quiet, and free. Out of that freedom alone can one live peacefully in this world and create a new world, a new generation, a new people. - The Collected Works vol XVI, p 19

    *Here is where vairagya becomes most critical... in detaching enough from my own cherished ideas and formulas about "the truth" so that I am silent and aware, open to the Truth that IS.
    Jdz

    ReplyDelete