Monday, December 12, 2011

Tao of Creation

by Jampa Mackenzie Stewart

Despite the achievements of health, wealth and love, the only certainty in life is that it will end in death. Maintaining health and wealth is of limited value if one's life lacks meaning. I believe that while the aforementioned benefits of the Taoist arts are both real and good, the ultimate goal of Taoism is immortality. Immortality is synonymous with enlightenment, conscious union with the universal mind, and with the attainment of a spiritually transformed body that will last forever like heaven and earth.

Therefore the purpose of this article is to examine the various Taoist arts from the perspective of the Taoist yogi on the path to becoming an immortal, to see how all of these branches relate to the trunk of Taoist beliefs and goals.

THE BASIC VIEW OF TAOISM
Although there are many diverse arts flowing from the wellspring of Taoism, all of these different arts are grounded in the same set of principles, what Taoists see as the fundamental laws of Nature applying to all things, high and low. These principles form the core of Taoist "general systems theory." By developing a working knowledge of
these natural principles, you will have the master key to open the mysterious portals of the Tao.

Wu Ji
In the beginning, nothing existed. In Chinese this is called Wu Ji (meaning
absolute nothingness). Wu Ji is synonymous with the Buddhist word sunyata, meaning emptiness, the void, pure openness, no boundary. Wu Ji is also sometimes referred to as the mystery, the nameless, the great mother, the source. Thus Lao Tzu says, "That which can be named is not the eternal name." Words cannot describe Wu Ji; it is beyond any thought, idea or concept, yet it can be directly experienced. Conscious realization of Wu Ji is called "Returning to the Source."

Qi
The first principle to manifest out of Wu Ji is primordial energy. The Chinese call this energy Qi. Qi (pronounced "chee") means breath, air, wind, or energy, and is similar in meaning to the Sanskrit word prana, the Hebrew word Ruach (breath of God), and to the Tibetan word rLung.
Qi is the force of all movement, from the movements of waves and sub-atomic particles to the movement of stars and planets. Qi is the force moving world systems into creation, existence and destruction; everything manifests out of Qi, exists as a form
of Qi, and returns to Qi. In living creatures it becomes the life force and source of all metabolism. Qi is even the root of the movement of consciousness, of thought, sensory
awareness and emotions. The activity of Qi is what holds things together: atoms, molecules, our bodies, the earth, the solar system. 

As soon as Qi appeared, it moved as Yin and Yang. The Chinese character for Yin depicts the shady side of a mountain, while the character for Yang depicts the sunny side. Thus some characteristics of Yin are earth, receptiveness, darkness, cold, moisture, heaviness, descension, contractiveness, stillness. Yang, by relative contrast, is heaven, creativity, brightness, warmth, dryness, lightness, ascension, expansion, activity. Everything in the relative world of existence can be viewed in terms of Yin and Yang. However, Yin and Yang are not separate; they are like the two poles of the same magnet.

 Thus, nothing is entirely Yin nor entirely Yang; each contains the other. The interdependent existence of Yin and Yang is known as Tai Ji (the Most High). Tai Ji and Wu Ji are seen as inseparable. Yin and Yang create each other; as soon as you have a front, you must also have a back. Yin and Yang check and balance each other; if something is too hot, you balance it by adding cold. Yin and Yang also transform into one another; activity naturally transforms into rest, night transforms into day. Life is peaceful when Yin and Yang are in harmony and balance, when the transitions from Yin to Yang and Yang to Yin are gradual and even. When either Yin or Yang becomes too extreme or when the transitions from Yin to Yang are unusually sudden and abrupt, harmony and balance are lost. These imbalances may appear as health problems, relationship difficulties, trade deficits, or unseasonal weather; all the changes in the universe can be analysed by understanding Yin and Yang.

Wu Hsing - The Five Phases: Yin and Yang are further subdivided into Wu Hsing. Wu means five Wu means five, while hsing means form. Thus Wu Hsing is translated as the Five Forms, Five Phases (of Qi transformation) or most commonly as the Five Elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water.....

 Thus all existence unfolds from the emptiness of Wu Ji into Tai Ji, the dance of Yin and Yang. From Yin and Yang things are further differentiated into the Five Phases and the Eight Trigrams. From these all of the myriad forms of existence come into being. Dazzled by the various appearances, we forget who we are and where we come from. Taoist spiritual practices seek to reverse this process. All phenomenal forms can be summed up in the eight trigrams, the eight trigrams can be simplified to the Five Phases; the Five Phases can be reduced to Yin and Yang, and when Yin and Yang come into equipoise, one can perceive Wu Ji.

(Foundations of Taoist practice pp.2-6)

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Be Here Now

To Be means to let go and turn onto being/feeling fully alive and awake. Being Here means *filling the space* with your total presence and giving full attention to all matters closest to home. Mindfulness or sensitivity/awareness is key. Being Here Now means openness to thr momentum and flow of light/energy, tapping into *pure creative potential*... "What can I potentially do and accomplish with my free time today?".

True contentment is recognizing that the greatest opportunity for life, love and happiness is right here, right now, rooted in the depths of your being, embodied in/as the immediate present moment...

JDZ 

Saturday, November 19, 2011

In Death Is Immortality

Surely, in ending there is renewal, is there not? It's only in death that a new thing comes into being. I am not giving you comfort. This is not something to be believed or thought about or intellectually examined and accepted, for then you will make it into another comfort, as you now believe in reincarnation or continuity in the hereafter, and so on. But the actual fact is that that which continues has no rebirth, no renewal. Therefore, in dying every day there is renewal, there is a rebirth. That is immortality.

In death there is immortality, not the death of which you are afraid, but the death of previous conclusions, memories, experiences, with which you are identified as the 'me'. In the dying of the 'me' every minute there is eternity, there is immortality, there is a thing to be experienced -not to be speculated upon or lectured about, as you do about reincarnation and all that kind of stuff. When you are no longer afraid, because every minute there is an ending and therefore a renewal, then you are open to the unknown. Reality is the unknown. Death is also the unknown. But to call death beautiful, to say how marvelous it is because we shall continue in the hereafter and all that nonsense, has no reality.

What has reality is seeing death as it is, an ending; an ending in which there is renewal, a rebirth, not a continuity. For that which continues decays; and that which has the power to renew itself is eternal.

- J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Life in Freedom

The desire for freedom, the desire to escape from all things, or rather to transcend all things, is necessary for the attainment of perfection. You can only free yourself if your mind and heart have determined their purpose in life and are continually struggling towards it, never yielding to those things which create barriers between yourself and your goal.

To attain perfection, to walk towards the goal of Truth which is eternal happiness for all, at whatever stage of evolution you may be, it is necessary to be rid of the binding narrow traditions that are born out of blind belief and have no touch with life.

As, when the rains come, only those who have prepared their fields and removed the weeds will have the full produce of their labor, the full benefit of the rain, so, if you would have the Beloved always with you, you must remove from your mind and heart the complicated ideas, traditions, and narrow points of view, which are as weeds that kill true understanding. For without understanding there can be no cooperation with life.

UNDERSTANDING

FOR the well-being of the mind and heart, understanding is as essential as a warm fire on a cold night.

People imagine that they can attain by some miraculous process, that they can find Truth by the mere outward form of worship, that they can discover their goal by the continual repetition of prayers and chants, or by the performance of yoga, puja and other rites. You can only discover that which you desire, that for which your heart longs, and for which your mind craves, by yourself, through the purification of the heart and mind.

If you would understand Truth you must remove from your heart those stones and weeds which strangle its full growth.

Where there is narrowness of mind and limitation of heart, Truth cannot enter. If you would climb to that height where there are eternal snows, you must leave behind you the accumulation of your possessions, you must be hardened and well trained; and your heart must be filled with the desire of attainment.

For those who have no fixed purpose there is renunciation and self-sacrifice; there is sorrow, grief and pain, endless struggle and violent dissatisfaction. But for those who have the fixed purpose to attain the Truth which is the unfoldment of life -though they may dwell in the valley of the shadows- there is no sacrifice, there is no struggle.

Because you have no fixed purpose all the shadows of the valley entice you, wrap you in their soft fogs, so that you lose the ecstasy of life. But if you have established your goal, which is the goal of the world -the attainment of the Kingdom of Happiness through freedom from all experience- then you can control the future, then you are the creator of that which you desire. If you can pass through the valley of the shadows with eyes eternally fixed upon the mountain-top, then you can have all experiences without creating barriers between yourself and the goal. This is the understanding of life which will bring order out of chaos and it is for that purpose that the Beloved has come. As the true artist, who by his imagination creates beauty out of the chaos around him, out of the confusion which exists in the world, so the Beloved, Truth, creates order in the mind and heart of those who understand. When you understand, you will have solved the problem of your daily life. If there is no struggle within to free yourself from the cage of sorrow and pain, from the limitations which cause confusion, then, however much I may knock at the door of your heart, there will be no response. But the moment you yourself are dissatisfied, the moment you yourself desire to escape and to attain liberation, then you yourself seek the source of Truth.

Those who seek for an understanding of life must fix their inward perception on eternal Truth which is the unfolding of life.

To those who live and have their being in the valley, the mountains are mysterious, hard, cruel, eternally aloof. The mountains never change; they are ever constant, never yielding. So it is with Truth. To those who live in the valley of shadows, of transient things, Truth seems terrible, hard and cruel.

Everywhere, among all people, there is a search for something hidden, for some realization which will give wisdom, greater knowledge, greater vision, greater understanding; this the people call Truth.

They think that Truth lies hidden in some distant place, away from life, away from joy, away from sorrow. But Truth is life, and with an understanding of life there is born an understanding of Truth. When you are fulfilling life with understanding you are the master of Truth.

Though there is at the present time a revolt against tradition and the established order of things, against morality in the narrow sense, yet the majority of people still judge and try to understand life from the prejudiced point of view of a limited and settled mind. A Hindu will only recognize Truth when it is presented to him through the medium of Hinduism, and so it is with the Christian and the Buddhist. But Truth is never contained in a particular form or medium. Truth can only be understood with an unbiased mind, capable of detachment and pure judgment.

As every human being is divine, so every individual in the world should be his own master, his own absolute ruler and guide. But if he would guide himself intelligently, he must be able to judge all things with an open mind and not reject what he does not understand because he is prejudiced.

Truth is the power within each one of you which urges you on to attainment. It is the consummation of all intelligence. It is Absolute. There is no god except the man who has purified himself and so has attained to Truth.

When you bind life to beliefs and traditions, to codes of morality, you kill life. In order to keep alive, vital, ever changing, ever growing, as the tree that is ever putting out new leaves, you must give to life the opportunities, the nourishment which will strengthen it and make it grow. When life desires to find its freedom the only way by which it can attain is through experience.

There can be no understanding of life, which is Truth, when there is not the thrill, the agony, the suffering, the continual upheaval, discouragement and encouragement of life.

In the olden days, especially in India, those who desired to find Truth imagined that they could discover the way by withdrawing from the aching world, from the transient things, from the shadow of the real, by the destruction of the physical. But now you have to face life as it is, for you can only conquer life when you have a complete and not a partial
understanding of it.

Once there was a man who kept all the windows of his house well closed except one, hoping that through that window alone the sunlight would come, but it never came. That is what those people are doing who are bound by tradition, by narrow sectarian beliefs, and who think that Truth is contained in any of those beliefs. You cannot bind life, which is the Truth, by anything, for life must be free and untrammeled. If you do not understand that the purpose of life is freedom, then you are only gilding the bars of your cage by the invention of theories, of creeds, of philosophies and religions.

The basis of all these innumerable beliefs is fear. You are afraid for your salvation, you are afraid to test your own knowledge, and hence you rely on the assertions, on the authority of another.

In order to be happy need we have religions? In order to love need we build temples? In order to fulfill the self need we worship a personal god?

You must give to the suffering world, not beliefs, creeds, dogmas, but new understanding which comes from intelligent cooperation with Nature, through observation of all the events of daily life.

Those who would understand Truth, who would give of their heart and their mind to that Truth, must first have grown in experience. Then experience will guide them, for experience gives intelligence, and intelligence is the accumulation of all experience. The web of life is spun out of common things and the common things are experience.

Learn from every event, from every activity in daily life, and assimilate the experience every moment of the day. You go to temples or to churches or to other places of worship and there you imagine that you are purified. But does that purification stand the test of daily life?

Your theories, your superficial knowledge of life, do not help you at moments of crisis. When death comes and takes away your friend, your beliefs and theories do not help you to overcome your loneliness and the sense of separation. You will only overcome it if the poison of separation has been destroyed, and you can only destroy that sense of separation by observing others in sorrow, in pain and in pleasure like yourself, and finding that in suffering as well as in pleasure there is unity.

No one can develop that power which dwells within you but yourself, for that power grows by experience. But experience alone, undirected by the goal you would attain, produces chaos, the chaos which prevails in the world at present. Without the understanding of the purpose of life there is bound to be chaos.

The first demand upon those who would seek the understanding of true happiness, is that they should have the burning longing to be free from all things, to gain that freedom which comes when you are beyond the need for further experience because you have passed through all experience.

If you would understand what I mean by the freedom of life, you must establish for yourself the goal which is liberation even from life itself.

For the understanding of life you must have revolt, dissatisfaction and great discontentment. Many people in the world imagine that they have found Truth by adopting some theory or other, and hence that they have solved the whole problem of life.

Contentment without understanding is like a pool covered with green scum, which does not reflect the bare eye of heaven. It is very easy to be ignorantly discontented, but to be discontented and to revolt intelligently is a divine gift. Revolt with intelligence, with understanding, is as a great river that is full of power.

Revolt is essential in order to escape from the narrowness of tradition, from the binding influences of belief, of theories. If you would understand the Truth, you must be in revolt so that you may escape from all these -from books, from theories, from gods, from superstitions- from everything which is not of your own.

If you would understand the meaning of my words, then throw aside all your mental conceptions of life and begin again from the very beginning. Then you will see for yourself how life works, how life which is the accumulation of all experience speaks through that voice which we call intuition, which guides you and helps you on the onward path.

I would urge you to be free -free from the very gods whom you worship, from the very beings whom you hold dear, because freedom is necessary for the growth of the soul and without freedom there is decay.

Because you do not wish to be free, you seek comfort, and comfort is like the shadow of a tree, it varies according to the sun from moment to moment, and those who seek comfort must move from one abode to another. Comfort cannot dwell with understanding.

The man who seeks comfort, who searches for the satisfaction of the moment, will never find real and lasting joy, for the momentary comfort is as transitory as the flower that is born of a morning and withers at the ending of the day.

When a pond is not touched with the breath of air, the waters become stagnant, and no animal comes to it to slake its thirst. But when the fresh winds come and breathe on its face, then animals and human beings alike can quench their thirst.

So if there is not in you the fresh wind of desire for freedom
from all things, you will not find the Truth which alone can remove the thirst of the world.

When you are free, as the bird in the skies, your life becomes simple. Life is complicated only when there is limitation. Then you need traditions and beliefs to uphold you.

But when you desire to be free from all things, then you break away from the old order and enter upon that new life which will lead you towards perfection which is liberation and happiness.

When you are able to become a flame of revolt, then the means to reach the Kingdom will be found. We have to create a miracle of order in this century of chaos and superstition. But first we have to create order in ourselves, a lasting order which is not based on fear or on authority.

I have found and established for myself that which is eternal, and it is my work to create order in your mind, so that you will no longer depend on outward authority, no longer be the slave of superstition or of those trivialities which hold life in bondage, and divide you from your goal.

Because you have no true purpose in life there is chaos within you; there is misery without understanding, strife without purpose, struggle in ignorance. But when you have established the goal of the Beloved in your heart and mind there is understanding in your life. There may still be struggle but it will be with understanding, and there will be greater love and greater happiness. Establish, therefore, within you that which is eternal, and the present shadows will pass away.

When you have established the Beloved in your heart, the source and the end are united and time no longer exists, for you hold eternity within you.

When you have established the Beloved in your heart, you are ready to face the open seas, where there are great storms, and the strong breezes which quicken life.

Because you have the Beloved in your heart, you must be a lighthouse on a dark shore, to guide those who are still enshrouded in their own darkness.

Of what value is your understanding, of what value are your high and noble thoughts, your pure life, if you do not help those who are in constant pain, who are in darkness, and in confusion? Of what value is the Truth you have seen if you are not able to give of that Truth to those who are hungering and thirsting after the eternal?

Because you have understood, be courageous with that understanding, and give of your life to those who are in darkness.

"If you find truth you must put aside all those things upon which you have leaned for support and look within for that everlasting spring. It cannot be brought to you through any outward channel."

"Invite doubt, for doubt is as a precious oinment: though it burns, it shall heal greatly -by inviting doubt, by putting aside those things which you have understood, by transcending your acquirements, your understanding, you will find the Truth."

-J. KRISHNAMURTI, Life in Freedom

Friday, November 11, 2011

Revelations - Awakening As One - 11-11-11



"An evolution that awaits those who are willing to humble themselves, and let go of what they know. For it is only in letting go that one may become open like a child and recieve the grace of world altering revelations".

This is the real deal, speaking the golden Truth and exposing the new age teachings as only bringing into the world more emphasis on ego, separation and dualistic notions of good and evil; thus undermining the inherent unity of All, and unconsciously invoking the opposite polarity of evil all the more by trying to be "too good"... though such teachers may all be well intentioned, often "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

More Quotations from the Video

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The Purpose of Life

AS THE SHADOWS were awakening and a scent of the morn was carried on the breeze, I saw an eagle descending from the mountain-tops. It came down without a flutter of the wings into the valley, and there disappeared among the shadows of the black mountains. At the end of the day I saw it return again to its abode among the mountain peaks, far away from the strife, the struggle and the jostle of the world.

So is the man who has seen the vision of the Truth, who has, during his strife in the world, established for himself the eternal goal. Though he may wander among the transient things, and lose himself among the shadows, yet all his life will be guided by that goal. As the eagle soars to its abode, so will he soar beyond all sorrows, beyond all fleeting pleasures and passing joys.

The establishment of that eternal goal is of primary importance for one who desires to disentangle himself from all the complications of life -not the goal of another, nor the vision of another, but the goal that is born of his own experience, his own sorrow, suffering, and understanding. Such a goal, when once it is established, will throw light on the confusion of all thought, and thereby make clear the purpose of life.

As a ship that is lost at sea without a compass, so the man without the perception of the goal which is constant and eternal is lost in this world of confusion. As the captain of a ship establishes the destination of his vessel and by the compass is able to guide his course through stormy nights and dark waters, so the man who has knowledge of his goal can guide his life by that compass of understanding.

Because the individual does not know his purpose, he is in a state of uncertainty and chaos. Because the individual has not solved his own problem, the problem of the world has not been solved. The individual problem is the world problem. If an individual is unhappy, discontented, dissatisfied, then the world around him is in sorrow, discontent and ignorance. If the individual has not found his goal, the world will not find its goal. You cannot separate the individual from the world. The world and the individual are one. If the individual problem can be solved by understanding, so can the problem of the world be solved. Before you can give understanding to others you have first to understand for yourself. When you establish the Truth in your heart and mind, there it will abide eternally.

One day in Benares I was going in a boat down the sacred Ganges, watching the people on the river banks worshiping God in search of happiness, in search of their goal and the way of its attainment. I saw one man in deep meditation, forgetting everything around him, holding but the one thought in his mind -to find and to attain the goal. I saw another performing rites required by his system of yoga. I saw another repeating chants, lost to the world and to himself. They were all seeking what you are seeking, what everyone in the world is seeking in moments of deep thought, and of great desire.

As the boat is carried down the stream by the current, so is every one carried away by his desires, by his passions and longings, because not one has found or established his purpose. Because the goal has not been established, because the path that leads to that goal has not been found, there is confusion and chaos, there is questioning and doubt in the mind. As long as there is doubt in the mind there is no peace, nor certainty and ecstasy of purpose.

This condition exists throughout the world, but everywhere there is a heart beating and a mind capable of thought. Man everywhere is unconsciously seeking a way to free himself from his narrowness, his pettiness. The end of this search is freedom and eternal happiness. He experiments along many paths, and every path leads to complications. From life to life he wanders, from shrine to shrine, from one creed to another -gathering experience, accepting, rejecting, and again accepting- thus he goes forward towards that goal which awaits him as it awaits all men.

In the process of accumulation and rejection, he does not know which way to turn for comfort, and when he seeks comfort through any particular channel he is enmeshed and entangled. Because there are many interpreters of the Truth, because there are many conflicting paths, beliefs and religions, man is lost in their complexities. As a butterfly that knocks against the windowpane, struggling to escape into the fresh air and the open sky, so do men struggle when they have not caught a glimpse of the goal -but it is not hard to establish. It is because they are in darkness that the goal seems far away. As the potter molds the clay to the delight of his imagination, so can man mold his life through the desire of his heart. As the earthen vessels are fashioned into beautiful or ugly forms, so life can be made beautiful or ugly according to the purpose which you have established for yourself. I would help you to that goal which you are seeking, which you desire to attain -the goal which awaits all the peoples of the world, whatever their experiences, thoughts or feelings. Then you will be able to guide yourself through the darkness of the world as a man guides himself of a dark night by the stars.If you once establish such a goal -which is happiness and hence freedom- life becomes simple. There is no longer confusion, and time, and the complications of time, disappear. It is because you have not established your goal that the present is as the mountain when the sun has set -the light fails and the darkness of the mountain overshadows the valley. Time is only a binder of life and the moment you are free you are beyond time.Then you can guide yourself without depending upon any authority. Then you will no longer have fear. Then for you there will be no conflict of good and evil. When you have set life free you will find happiness, which is the only goal, the only absolute Truth.

BECAUSE man has forgotten that the true purpose of his being is to cultivate happiness within himself and in those around him, there is confusion and chaos, and his actions but add to that chaos. What is it for which everyone in the world is craving and longing? To find happiness. True happiness is neither selfish, nor negative. It is intelligence, the accumulation of all experience; it is Truth which is eternal. No cloud can hide it nor can any sorrow lessen it. It is such happiness that every one desires. It is such happiness that I have always desired. I have seen people weighed down with labor, performing great works, accumulating knowledge, struggling to be spiritual and yet they had forgotten the one thing -happiness- which alone gives life to the mind and nourishment to the heart. There can be no health except in happiness. He who has not found it will never find Truth, will never bring life to its fulfillment, will never have tranquillity in this world of travail.

If you desire to establish that happiness within yourself, you must make it your goal and then your life will be as the flame which soars heavenwards.

J. Krishnamurti ~ Life in Freedom

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The Sacred Individual

At one extreme, then, we have the sacred individual—the unique personal ego, separate from both nature and God—defined as such by a society which, almost in the same breath, commands him to be free and commands him to conform. At the other extreme is the coolie, the cog in the industrial-collectivist machine, or the mere "hand" (as the factory worker is often called). If one believes that the personal ego is a natural endowment of all men, as distinct from a social convention, then the lot of the coolie is bleak indeed—for one sees him as a repressed and frustrated person, though his own society may never have defined him as such.

However, there is a third possibility. The individual may be understood neither as an isolated person nor as an expendable, humanoid working-machine. He may be seen, instead, as one particular focal point at which the whole universe expresses itself—as an incarnation of the Self, of the Godhead, or whatever one may choose to call IT. This view retains and, indeed, amplifies our apprehension that the individual is in some way sacred. At the same time it dissolves the paradox of the personal ego, which is to have attained the "precious state" of being a unique person at the price of perpetual anxiety for one's survival. The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of
separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash!

Let it be clear, furthermore, that the ego-fiction is in no way essential to the individual, to the total human organism, in fulfilling and expressing his individuality. For every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree. To manifest individuality, every branch must have a sensitive connection with the tree, just as our independently moving and differentiated fingers must have a sensitive connection with the whole
body. The point, which can hardly be repeated too often, is that differentiation is not separation. The head and the feet are different, but not separate, and though man is not connected to the universe by exactly the same physical relation as branch to tree or feet to head, he is nonetheless connected—and by physical relations of fascinating complexity. The death of the individual is not disconnection but simply
withdrawal. The corpse is like a footprint or an echo—the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do.

If, then, the differentiation of individuals is of great value, on the principle that variety is the spice of life, this value is not going to be enhanced by a self-contradictory definition of individuality. Our society—that is, we ourselves, all of us—is defining the individual with a double-bind, commanding him to be free and separate from the world, which he is not, for otherwise the command would not work. Under the circumstances, it works only in the sense of implanting an illusion of separateness, just as the commands of a hypnotist can create illusions. Thus bamboozled, the individual—instead of fulfilling his unique function in the world—is exhausted and frustrated in efforts to accomplish, self-contradictory goals. Because he is now so largely defined as a separate person caught up in a mindless and alien universe, his principal task is to get one-up on the universe and to conquer nature.
This is palpably absurd, and since the task is never achieved, the individual is taught to live and work for some future in which the impossible will at last happen, if not for him, then at least for his children. We are thus breeding a type of human being incapable of living in the present—that is, of really living.

For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now. In other words, you have been hypnotized or conditioned by an educational processing-system arranged in grades or steps, supposedly leading to some ultimate Success. First nursery school or kindergarten, then the grades or forms of elementary school, preparing you for the great moment of secondary school! But then more steps, up and up to the coveted goal of the university. Here, if you are clever, you can stay on indefinitely by getting into graduate school and becoming a permanent student. Otherwise, you are headed step by step for the great Outside World of family-raising, business, and profession. Yet graduation day is a very temporary fulfillment, for with your first sales- promotion meeting you are back in the same old system, being urged to make that quota (and if you do, they'll give you a higher quota) and so progress up the ladder to sales manager, vice-president, and, at last,
president of your own show (about forty to forty-five years old). In the meantime, the insurance and investment people have been interesting you in plans for Retirement—that really ultimate goal of being able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of all your labors. But when that day comes, your anxieties and exertions will have left you with a weak heart, false teeth, prostate trouble, sexual impotence, fuzzy eyesight, and a vile digestion.

All this might have been wonderful if, at every stage, you had been able to play it as a game, finding your work as fascinating as poker, chess, or fishing. But for most of us the day is divided into work-time and play-time, the work consisting largely of tasks which others pay us to do because they are abysmally uninteresting. We therefore work, not for the work's sake, but for money—and money is supposed to get us what we really want in our hours of leisure and play. In the United States even poor people have lots of money compared with the wretched and skinny millions of India, Africa, and China, while our middle and upper classes (or should we say "income groups") are as prosperous as princes. Yet, by and large, they have but slight taste for pleasure. Money alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy.

Alan Watts ~ The Book on the Taboo against Knowing Who You Are (pp.59-62)

Friday, September 2, 2011

Ending Idealism, Restoring Sanity

When this life is perceived to be okay *as it is* then all the abstraction of discontented idealism is revealed as false and discarded. One might say that idealistic philosophies rightly pertain not to the spiritual or inner personal realms but exclusively to the desire for social change and revolution. There is conflict inherent in every moment where the real is rejected in favor of some alternative ideal. The word 'ideal' itself implies a discontentment with the actual, the here and the now. What I project as a future possibility is unreachable unless there be a corresponding experience of wealth or perfection this moment... an inwardly abundant and joyful essence that exists whether anything outwardly manifests or not.

Pleasurable escapes, everything from food binging and television to alcoholism and drug addiction or socialized entertainments, are the response of wanting to be elsewhere and away from reality as it is happening normally. It is a natural response while at the same time a tragic indication of an unenlightened modern workaday industrial age. Technology and the internet, while having their many benefits for humankind and society at large, contribute even further to the escapist tendencies of a consumer society. To seek and find temporary contentment online, at the local bar, a movie or other entertainments available, while okay in itself becomes a primary frustrating factor where contentment with self and reality is concerned.

Religious groups and organizations often have this counter-productive influence as well, however enlightening the company of believers, as this becomes another escape from experiencing directly one's own truth and all that personally stands in the way of it. To identify too much with spiritual groups and their causes is to alienate from all who are not of the same affiliation, and there's a tendency to believe and value the experiences and ideas of others over those of oneself. While many of us rightly desire peace, love, kindness and heaven on earth, the tendency to be displeased with things as they are again becomes a problem in response. The general effect is a split and thus conflict between the conventional religious believer and the rest of humanity, between the constructed artificial socio-religious ideal and actuality. Real life includes all of us universally as beings, not all of us as Buddhists, Jews or Christians... and not as mere recipients of kindness or charity from a given religious affiliation.

The urgent need is to confront the mundane on a very personal individual level, whether one is interested in society and it's manifold creations or not. The joy is in the doing itself, in the very working process that gives meaning to the life of the individual. When ordinary awareness and attention is applied to the everyday, what we call mundane reality and responsibility, it becomes less necessary to focus on the outward problems of the world whose origin is within. If you are doing all you can as an individual, this is enough struggle and the rest of one's energy and ingenuity is then focused on "outside the box" solutions, or just being.

The ground of being becomes the central focus of mindful attention, without attachment to all the externals that come and go. The affirmation: "I AM living this life to the fullest" and not "I will someday".

Keep it Real...

JDZ






Friday, August 19, 2011

I Am That

"When you know your real nature, the knowledge 'I Am' remains; but that knowledge is unlimited. It is not possible for you to acquire knowledge.. you are knowledge. You are what you are seeking. Your true being arises prior to the arising of any concept. Dive deep within yourself and you will find it simply easily. Go in the direction of 'I Am'."

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

'Long Live Impermanence'

Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh explains that nothing dies; it only changes form--whether it's clouds, corn, or even Jesus.

For someone who is dealing with a painful loss or a personal fear of death but knows nothing about Buddhism or meditative technique, what do you recommend as way to begin to let go of fear and grief?

I think there's a way of training ourselves in order not to become the victim of fear and grief -- that is to look deeply into ourselves and to see that we are made of non-self elements. And when we look around ourselves, we can recognize ourselves in the non-self elements, like a father looking at his children can see himself in his children, can see his continuation in his children. So he is not attached to the idea that his body is the only thing that is him. He's more than his body. He is inside of his body but he is also at the same [time] outside of his body in many elements. And if we have the habit of looking like that, we will not be the victim of our attachment to one form of manifestation, and we will be free. And that freedom makes happiness and peace possible.

Other than meditation, is there any specific practice that can help you come to this understanding?

Yes. The Buddha advised us to bear in mind that everything is impermanent, that nothing has an absolute entity that remains the same. And when we keep that insight in mind, we can see more deeply into the nature of reality, and we will not be locked in the notion that we are only this body, this life span is the only life span we have. In fact, because nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself. And when you look into yourself, you can see the world outside. So that is a training.

I wonder if you'd answer the question you say you like to pose to your Christian friends: "Where was Jesus before he was born?"


In the Christian tradition, people speak of the living Christ, the living Jesus. It means Jesus is not affected by birth and death. So the question can be rephrased, "Where was Jesus after he was born?" Because if you look at that manifestation of his body and you think that Jesus is only that body, you are misled -- Jesus must be much more than that body, that manifestation. So if you can answer that question, you can answer the other question.

It's like when you look at a sheet of paper and look deeply, you can see that the paper is made of trees and sunshine and earth and clouds, and even before the manifestation of the sheet of paper in this present form, you can only see the sheet of paper in the non-paper elements that existed before.

So we should be able to see Jesus Christ even with that manifestation. And before that manifestation, we cannot say that Jesus did not exist because the nature of Jesus is the nature of no birth and no death. And birth and death cannot affect Jesus. If we look like that we have a much deeper understanding of the person, of the nature of the Lord.

Can you explain what you mean by that manifestation? What is being manifested?

Manifestation is showing a presence -- when conditions are sufficient, something manifests itself. And that is not a beginning, that is a continuation also. It's like a beautiful cloud in the sky -- that is a manifestation: before being a cloud, the cloud has been other things like water, vapor, heat and so on. So looking deeply, you can only recognize the presence of the cloud in the non-cloud elements that have been there before that manifestation of the cloud.

You say that without awareness or mindfulness we live like dead people. Can you talk about what you mean by the practice of resurrection?

Usually people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment. And that prevents them from getting in touch [with] what is there in the present moment. And life is available
only

in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply. That is why those who are not capable of being there in the present moment, they don't really live their life -- they live like dead people, like the French writer Camus used to say.

That is why if you know the techniques of mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful smiling, you can bring your mind back to your body and you become truly alive at every moment and that can be described as the practice of resurrection. Resurrection can be at every moment for life to be truly possible.

Is that what you're talking about when you say "When you come back to mindfulness and awareness the energy of the Holy Spirit is present in you"?

Yes, when mindfulness is there you are attentive to yourself, you are attentive to other people around you and understanding becomes possible, compassion becomes possible. And that improves the quality of your life and the lives of those around you.

You say that we should not only accept but welcome the notion of impermanence. How is it that impermanence "makes everything possible"?

If things were not impermanent, life would not be possible. Suppose you sow a seed of corn. If the seed of corn is not impermanent, it cannot sprout and become a young plant of corn and you would have no corn to eat. That is why impermanence is very important, crucial for life. That is why instead of complaining about impermanence you have to say "Long live impermanence!"

What would you say to someone, for example, whose child has just died? How should they understand what's happened?

I would say that when conditions are not sufficient, something cannot manifest itself fully. It may be waiting for a few other conditions in order to manifest. And if we keep that in mind and if we are capable of seeing that manifestation in other forms then we don't have to be the victim of despair and fear.

Suppose you are impressed with a particular cloud in the sky. When it is time for that cloud to become the rain you won't see that cloud anymore and you will cry. But if you know that the cloud has been transformed into the rain and the rain is calling you, "Darling, I am here, I'm here," if you have that kind of capacity of recognizing the continuation of that manifestation, you don't have to live in despair and grief. That is why for those who have lost someone who is close to him or to her I advise that they look deeply within and see that the one who was close is still there, somehow, and with the practice of deep looking they can recognize his or her presence very close to him or to her.

Do you ever have doubts about these truths? How do you deal with your own doubts?

Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.

If our true nature is one of no birth and no death, what are our present lives for? How can we find meaning in the actions that we take?

Our life is a manifestation, and we can very well make that manifestation beautiful and meaningful and have a good influence on other manifestations in the now and in the future. If we know how to create the energy of love, understanding, compassion, and beauty, then we can contribute a lot to the world, influencing positively other manifestations. Because if the manifestations that happen in the present moment are beautiful and good, their continuation in the future will be also good and beautiful.

You say that people of any faith can use these teachings.

Yes.

But most Christians and others profess a faith in an embodied life after death. How can your teaching of no-death/no-self be useful to them?

There is an interesting story I would like to tell you. There is a lady who believed very strongly that if she died she would go to heaven and she would meet her husband, who died at the age of 30. And she said that when she was 70, and I asked her, "When you go to heaven, how old do you expect your husband to be -- 30 or 70? If he's 30 and then you are 70, then that's no match at all!"

So because we are attached to a specific form of manifestation, that is why we suffer. If we are free from that kind of attachment, we can easily recognize ourselves in other people, in different forms of manifestation, and then we don't have to suffer.


Is there anything more you want to add?

I think concerning the question about the presence of Jesus. In the Bible there's a story telling us that there was a disciple of Jesus walking with him but not recognizing him at all -- that is after the crucifixion. And then only when Jesus begins to break the bread do they recognize that the person that had been walking with him is their teacher.

My suggestion is that Jesus is very close, if you have the kind of eyes that is free from attachment and you can recognize him at anytime and anywhere. So the same thing is true with the person who is dear to you. You may have thought that he's no longer there, she's no longer there and you are looking for him or for her elsewhere and in the future. But if you have that kind of eye that we call a "signlessness" you'll be able to recognize him or her right in the here and the now and you will no longer be a victim of fear and grief and despair.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Buddhism/2002/09/Long-Live-Impermanence.aspx

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The Ego Hallucination

The root of the matter is the way in which we feel and conceive ourselves as human
beings, our sensation of being alive, of individual existence and identity.
We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of
our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation
that "I myself" is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside
and bounded by the physical body—a center which "confronts" an
"external" world of people and things, making contact through the
senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of
speech reflect this illusion. "I came into this world." "You must face
reality." "The conquest of nature."

This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the
universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all
other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this
world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves,"
the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole
realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely,
if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be
true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of
themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.

The first result of this illusion is that our attitude to the world
"outside" us is largely hostile. We are forever "conquering" nature,
space, mountains, deserts, bacteria, and insects instead of learning to
cooperate with them in a harmonious order. In America the great
symbols of this conquest are the bulldozer and the rocket—the
instrument that batters the hills into flat tracts for little boxes made of
ticky-tacky and the great phallic projectile that blasts the sky.
(Nonetheless, we have fine architects who know how to fit houses into
hills without ruining the landscape, and astronomers who know that the
earth is already way out in space, and that our first need for exploring
other worlds is sensitive electronic instruments which, like our eyes,
will bring the most distant objects into our own brains.)(1) The hostile
attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all
things and events—that the world beyond the skin is actually an
extension of our own bodies—and will end in destroying the very
environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life
depends.

The second result of feeling that we are separate minds in an alien,
and mostly stupid, universe is that we have no common sense, no way of
making sense of the world upon which we are agreed in common. It's
just my opinion against yours, and therefore the most aggressive and
violent (and thus insensitive) propagandist makes the decisions. A
muddle of conflicting opinions united by force of propaganda is the
worst possible source of control for a powerful technology.

It might seem, then, that our need is for some genius to invent a new
religion, a philosophy of life and a view of the world, that is plausible
and generally acceptable for the late twentieth century, and through
which every individual can feel that the world as a whole and his own
life in particular have meaning. This, as history has shown repeatedly, is
not enough. Religions are divisive and quarrelsome. They are a form of
the "damned," the true believers from the heretics, the in-group from the
out-group. Even religious liberals play the game of "we're-more tolerant-
than-you." Furthermore, as systems of doctrine, symbolism, and
behavior, religions harden into institutions that must command loyalty,
be defended and kept "pure," and—because all belief is fervent hope,
and thus a cover-up for doubt and uncertainty—religions must make
converts. The more people who agree with us, the less nagging
insecurity about our position. In the end one is committed to being a
Christian or a Buddhist come what may in the form of new knowledge.
New and indigestible ideas have to be wangled into the religious
tradition, however inconsistent with its original doctrines, so that the
believer can still take his stand and assert, "I am first and foremost a
follower of Christ/Mohammed/Buddha, or whomever." Irrevocable
commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive
unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith
is, above all, open-ness—an act of trust in the unknown.

Alan Watts ~ "On the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are (pp.12-14)

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Bardo

In his commentary on the Bardo Thodol, the late Chogyam Trungpa explained that bardo means "gap," or interval of suspension, and that bardo is part of our psychological make-up. Bardo experiences happen to us all the time in life, not just after death. The Bardo Thodol can be read as a guide to life experiences as well as a guide to the time between death and rebirth.

Scholar and translator Francesca Fremantle said that "Originally bardo referred only to the period between one life and the next, and this is still its normal meaning when it is mentioned without any qualification." However, "By refining even further the understanding of the essence of bardo, it can then be applied to every moment of existence. The present moment, the now, is a continual bardo, always suspended between the past and the future." (Fremantle, Luminous Emptiness, 2001, p. 20)

The Bardo Thodol traditionally is read to a dying or dead person, so that he or she may be liberated from the cycle of samsara through hearing. The dead or dying person is guided through encounters in the bardo with wrathful and peaceful deities, beautiful and terrifying, which are to be understood as projections of mind.

Buddhist teachings on death and rebirth are not simple to understand. Most of the time when people speak of reincarnation, they mean a process by which a soul, or some essence of one's individual self, survives death and is reborn in a new body. But according to the Buddhist doctrine of anatman, there is no soul or "self" in the sense of a permanent, integral, autonomous being. That being so, how does rebirth function, and what is it that is reborn?

This question is answered somewhat differently by the several schools of Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism teaches of a level of mind that is always with us but so subtle that few ever become aware of it. But in death, or in a state of deep meditation, this level of mind becomes manifest and flows across lives. Metaphorically, this deep mind is compared to light, or a flowing stream, or wind.

This is only the barest of explanations; fully understanding these teachings takes years of study and practice.

There are bardos within within the bardo that correspond to the three bodies of the Trikaya. The Bardo Thodol describes these three bardos between death and rebirth:

1. The bardo of the moment of death
2. The bardo of supreme reality
3. The bardo of becoming

Taking these one at a time:

The bardo of the moment of death. The Bardo Thodol describes a dissolution of the self created by the skandhas and a falling away of external reality. The consciousness that remains experiences the true nature of mind as a dazzling light or luminosity. This is the bardo of dharmakaya, all phenomena unmanifested, free of characteristics and distinctions

The bardo of supreme reality. The Bardo Thodol describes lights of many colors and visions of wrathful and peaceful deities. Those in the bardo are challenged to not be afraid of these visions, which are projections of mind. This is the bardo of sambhogakaya, the reward of spiritual practice.

The bardo of becoming. If the second bardo is experienced with fear, confusion and nonrealization, the bardo of becoming begins. Projections of karma appear that will cause rebirth in one of the Six Realms. This is the bardo of nirmanakaya, the physical body that appears in the world.

http://buddhism.about.com/od/vajrayanabuddhism/a/bardothodol.htm

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Take a jump!

"You are that which can never change.. you appear as this body, you appear as this form, you appear as your thoughts and emotions, but you are really the back of it all... That is you, my friend, the Oneness the Source." ~ Burt Harding

Monday, May 30, 2011

This is It

Liberation is not about abandoning attachment to life, pleasures of the senses and fleeting experience, nor about being free from physicality and the limitations of this physical body. Nor is it frowning upon the necessity for pragmatism, personal ambition and living in comfort. It's about accepting quite simply that this life is all there ever is, and we are here eternally without exit. There truly is no need to transcend the wheel of endless birth, death and rebirth... Why should we?

My spin on Eastern Philosophy and beliefs about rebirth and immortality goes something like this.. There are no higher or lower realms, human consciousness is the highest (and lowest) evolutionary state, with heaven and hell (and everywhere in between) existing solely in the minds of men. There exists no real evidence of sentient life anywhere but on Planet Earth, thus we eternally return here and continue to work on getting it right, till there is peace and harmony, love and compassion, and all that is holy, sacred, ruling over the Earth.

JDZ

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Going Beyond Words

To understand each other, I think it is necessary that we should not be caught in words; because, a word like God, for example, may have a particular meaning for you, while for me it may represent a totally different formulation, or no formulation at all. So it is almost impossible to communicate with each other unless both of us have the intention of understanding and going beyond mere words.

The word freedom generally implies being free from something, does it not? It ordinarily means being free from greed, from envy, from nationalism, from anger, from this or that. Whereas, freedom may have quite another meaning, which is a sense of being free; and I think it is very important to understand this meaning. After all, the mind is made up of words, amongst other things. Now, can the mind be free of the word envy? Experiment with this and you will see that words like God, truth, hate, envy, have a profound effect on the mind. And can the mind be both neurologically and psychologically free of these words?

If it is not free of them, it is incapable of facing the fact of envy. When the mind can look directly at the fact which it calls 'envy,' then the fact itself acts much more swiftly than the mind's endeavor to do something about the fact. As long as the mind is thinking of getting rid of envy through the ideal of non-envy, and so on, it is distracted, it is not facing the fact; and the very word envy is a distraction from the fact. The process of recognition is through the word; and the moment I recognize the feeling through the word, I give continuity to that feeling.

J.Krishnamurti - The Book of Life

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Believing is Seeing

To doubt serves a spiritual purpose, scientifically to question every teaching, religious and otherwise, that one is taught, accepting nothing on blind faith. The critical analytic intelligence is applied to the philosophizing of Spirit for the primary purpose of rejecting dogmas and superstitions of religious gurus that do not ring true personally, from the heart. Beyond this necessity for negating what is false, one has to have confidence and faith, be self-affirmative and able to get beyond the limited doubting mentality.

Needing physical or outwardly apparent evidence is the way of the materialist, whether it be the atheist who needs scientific proof for the existence of God or the orthodox religious theologian brainwashed into believing the Divine is "outside of him" personally and that all that is human must be transcended or eliminated.

The dualistic view is in believing that the external world, which includes priests and organized religions, is Divine and holy while the individual human being and inner person is profane, imperfect. It is also based on the notion of an external world existing separate and apart from our personal creating of it mentally. Whether the world be the creation of an external God or of a reality that we have no personal control over. The fear of the sinner who fears punishment by God and going to Hell or that of the skeptical nihilist who believes only in matter and the material objective and empirical 'realities'.

There is a fatalistic and powerless feeling that goes with believing I am nothing more than this physical body, which will die inside of 80 or so years; and more globally, the reactionary view to all the war, death, crime and poverty we read about in the news. If one does not have Faith, seeing a big picture, a reason for everything we cannot always fathom, then gloomy pessimism and despair is the only option left. Amidst the general uncertainty and precarious nature of existence, there has to be trust and belief in a benevolent and supportive Universe or God.

It is more empowering to believe the Universe is perfect, does not make mistakes, and I came into this world as an eternal unlimited being with a reason and purpose here. That everything I experience, the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, are all of my own creation, and within my power to resolve, transform and regenerate. It really does come down to my most ingrained beliefs about life, death and the nature of reality. A valid belief system is based on what is true for you personally, and not upon any socialized religious precept or sophisticated group mind concepts of any kind. Most importantly, this core believing is independent of self-limiting beliefs adopted from outside authorities and the social environment. The Higher Self is composed of our truest core values, independent of all fears, limitation and doubt that go with the human psyche bound to physical reality.

The only solution as I see it is to do as Gandhi said and "Be the change you want to see in the world"... this requires looking within, beyond the doubting and fears that lead nowhere, to the very essence of what you believe and how you individually choose to take responsible ethically guided actions in your world. The answer is not in outward, or political activism of any kind... but change from the inside out, beginning with the individual, coming from a place of peace, love, faith and universal goodwill.

In Faith

Joel

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Dying to Little Things

Have you ever tried dying to a pleasure voluntarily, not forcibly? Ordinarily when you die you don't want to; death comes and takes you away; it is not a voluntary act, except in suicide. But have you ever tried dying voluntarily, easily, felt that sense of the abandonment of pleasure? Obviously not! At present your ideals, your pleasures, your ambitions are the things which give so-called significance to them. Life is living, abundance, fullness, abandonment, not a sense of the 'I' having significance. That is mere intellection. If you experiment with dying to little things, that is good enough. Just to die to little pleasures with ease, with comfort, with a smile is enough, for then you will see that your mind is capable of dying to many things, dying to all memories. Machines are taking over the functions of memory-the computers- but the human mind is something more than a merely mechanical habit of association and memory. But it cannot be that something else if it does not die to everything it knows.Now to see the truth of all this, a young mind is essential, a mind that is not merely functioning in the field of time. The young mind dies to everything. Can you see the truth of that immediately, feel the truth of it instantly? You may not see the whole extraordinary significance of it, the immense subtlety, the beauty of that dying, the richness of it, but even to listen to it sows the seed, and the significance of these words takes root, not only at the superficial, conscious level, but right through all the unconscious. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Monday, March 28, 2011

You Gotta Have Both

"Ticktock" (repeatedly) says the clock, before I remove it from the kitchen and suddenly see the significance of such seemingly very small matters. If you have a loud ticking clock then get rid of it, at the least for the evening keep it in a sound proof room. The agitation and panic that accompanies this stressed out mindset, wanting "to make every second count" and live time efficiently comes with a terrible price which is simply inner peace of mind and the faith of believing that life in essence is essentially joyful, expansive and eternal.

The peace felt after removing that clock, at least temporarily, reminded me that the inner world of Spirit, of peace, love and deep understanding, is as essential to the material and physical as is the down to earth, nitty gritty, practical, matter at hand Materialism to Spirituality.

After thinking today that my thriving creative, spiritual and higher mental life (in activity/mind rooms 3, 6 & 9 respectively) must be put on hold; as it is a luxury given only to those thriving and not struggling to survive, I see that there is always a narrative and higher meaning amidst the heat of outgoing action, and it becomes more apparent as one removes the toxicity, excess, noise and external agitating elements, as much as humanly possible, the deep peace of silence and eternal life begin to feel more real, calming the fears, the intense anxieties and deep uncertainty. This is most essential to all material endeavors, namely individual health/well being AND material/financial self sufficiency.

Yet the flip side of this is that many/most of us choose a path of self-improvement, where the need to confront and correct personal character flaws (i.e. laziness, lack of discipline, bad attitude, etc...) is key. While it is true that I (too often) tend to feel most at home and gifted in the creative/intuitive/spiritual realm, I've up till now limited my capacities in this area by not focusing enough on the nitty gritty down to earth, hard and fast practical realities.

That same discipline and attention I give to self support and basic survival tasks (like finding more/better work opportunities, and living a active/healthy life) becomes an asset in all creative ventures that give this mundane reality feeling a sense of the expansive, ecstatic and truly authentic life.

In Light

Joel

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Energy to Inquire

After all, to find out anything you must have energy, and you need a great deal of energy to inquire into something totally new. And to have that energy, you must have listened to the old pattern of life, neither condemning nor approving. You must have listened to it totally - which means you have understood it, you have understood the futility of living that way. When you have listened to the futility of it, you are already out of it. Then you have - not intellectually but deeply - felt the uselessness of living that way and have listened to it completely, totally; then you have the energy to inquire. If you have not the energy, you cannot inquire. That is, when you deny that which has brought about this misery, this conflict - which we have gone into - that denial, that very negation of it is positive action. - Talks by Krishnamurti In India 1966 (Authentic Report) Madras-Bombay-New Delhi

Thought must always be limited by the thinker who is conditioned. The thinker is always conditioned and is never free. If thought occurs, immediately idea follows. Idea in order to act is bound to create more confusion. Knowing all this, is it possible to act without idea? Yes. It is the way of love. Love is not an idea; it is not a sensation; it is not a memory; it is not a feeling of postponement, a self protective device. We can only be aware of the way of love when we understand the whole process of idea. Now, is it possible to abandon the other ways and know the way of love, which is the only redemption? No other way, political or religious, will solve the problem. This is not a theory which you will have to think over and adopt in your life; it must be actual... ...When you love, is there idea? Do not accept it; just look at it, examine it, go into it profoundly because every other way we have tried, and there is no answer to misery. Politicians may promise it. The so called religious organizations may promise future happiness, but we have not got it now and the future is relatively unimportant when I am hungry. We have tried every other way; and we can only know the way of love if we know the way of idea and abandon idea, which is to act.

- J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Be As You Are

Sri Ramana Maharshi taught that every conscious activity of the mind or body, for example ‘I think’, ‘I remember’, 'I feel' ‘I am acting’, etc., revolves around the tacit assumption that there is an individual ‘I’ who is doing something, a common factor and mental fiction termed the ‘I’-thought (a translation of Aham-Vritti, which literally means ‘mental modification of ‘I’). He equated individuality with the mind and the mind with the ‘I’-thought which is dependent on identification with an object, and said that after Self-realisation there is no thinker of thoughts, no performer of actions and no awareness of individual existence. When the thoughts arise, he said, the ‘I’-thought claims ownership of them- ‘I think’, ‘I believe’, ‘I want’, ‘I am acting’, but there really is no separate ‘I’ that exists independently of the objects that it is identifying with, only an incessant flow of misidentifications, based on an initial assumption that the ‘I’ is individual and associated with the bodily form. He considered this ‘I am the body’ idea as the primary source of all subsequent wrong identifications and its dissolution as the principal aim of self-enquiry.

Sri Ramana taught that since the individual ‘I’-thought cannot exist without an object, if attention is focused on the subjective feeling of ‘I’ or ‘I am’ with such intensity that the thoughts ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’ do not arise, then the individual ‘I’ will be unable to connect with objects. If this awareness of ‘I’ is sustained, the individual ‘I’ (the ‘I’-thought) will disappear and in its place there will be a direct experience of the Self. This constant attention to the inner awareness of ‘I’ or ‘I am’ was called self-enquiry (atma vichara) by Sri Ramana Maharshi and he constantly recommended it as the most efficient and direct way of discovering the unreality of the ‘I’-thought. He taught that the ‘I’-thought only finally disappears when the perception of all objects, both physical and mental, ceases and only Self Awareness exists. This is not brought about by being aware of an ‘I’, but only by BEING the ‘I’. This stage of experiencing the subject rather than being aware of an object is the culminating phase of self-enquiry.

This important distinction distinguishes self-enquiry from most other spiritual practices and it explains why Sri Ramana consistently maintained that most other practices were ineffective. He often pointed out that traditional meditations and yoga practices were predicated on the existence of a subject who meditates on an object and he would usually add that such a relationship sustained the ‘I’-thought instead of eliminating it. In his view such practices may effectively quieten the mind, and they may even produce blissful experiences, but they will never culminate in Self-realisation because the ‘I’-thought is not being isolated and seen to have no real existence. [1]

When one turns within and searches
Whence this `I' thought arises,
The shamed `I' vanishes
And wisdom's quest begins.
Upadesha Saram, v 19, Collected Works of Sri Ramana Maharshi
[edit] From Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi

Arranging thoughts in the order of value, the `I' thought is the all-important thought. Personality-idea or thought is also the root or the stem of all other thoughts, since each idea or thought arises only as someone's thought and is not known to exist independently of the ego. The ego therefore exhibits thought-activity. The second and the third persons do not appear except to the first person. Therefore they arise only after the first person appears, so all the three persons seem to rise and sink together. Trace, then, the ultimate cause of `I' or personality. The `I' idea arises to an embodied ego and should be related to a body or organism. Has it a location in the body or a special relation to any particular spot, as speech which has its centre in the brain or amativeness in the brain? Similarly, has `I' got any centre in the brain, blood, or viscera? Thought-life is seen to centre round the brain and the spinal-cord which in turn are fed by the blood circulating in them, carrying food and air duly mixed up which are transformed into nerve matter. Thus, vegetative life - including circulation, respiration, alimentation, etc. - or vital force, is said to be (or reside in) the core or essence of the organism. Thus the mind may be regarded as the manifestation of vital force which again may be conceived as residing in the Heart. [2]
[edit] From The Path of Sri Ramana, Part One, by Sri Sadhu Om

Sri Ramana Maharshi named Self-enquiry as ‘Who Am I?’, thus drawing our attention directly to the first person. In this question, 'Who Am I?', 'I am' denotes Self and 'who' stands for the enquiry. It does not mean enquiring into a second or third person object. Also, Self (atman) does not exist as an object to be known by us who seek to know it!

Self-enquiry is unnecessary for the Self, and Self-knowledge is impossible for the ego. The enquiry 'Who Am I?' taught by Sri Ramana should be taken to mean Self-attention (that is, attention merely to the first person, the feeling 'I').

While practising Self-enquiry, instead of taking any one of the five sheaths as the object of our attention, we should fix our attention only on the 'I'-consciousness, which exists and shines as oneself, as the singular, and as a witness to and aloof from these five sheaths.

Sri Ramana has advised that Self-enquiry can either be done in the form 'Who am I?' or in the form 'Whence am I?'. 'Who is this I?' may rather be called 'I-attention', 'Self-attention' or 'Self-abidance'. Enquiring 'Whence am I?' is enquiring 'Whence is the ego?', meaning ‘From what?’. When taken in this sense, instead of a place or time coming forth as a reply, Self-existence, 'we', the Thing (vastu), alone is experienced as the reply.

When sought within 'What is the place from which it rises as 'I'?, 'I' (the ego) will die! This is Self-enquiry (jnana-vichara)

– Ramana Maharshi, Upadesha Undiyar, verse 19

He who seeks 'Whence am I?' is following the ego, the form of which is 'I am so-and-so', and while doing so, the adjunct so-and-so, having no real existence, dies on the way, and thus he remains established in the Self, the surviving 'I am'.[3]

On the other hand, he who seeks 'Who am I?' drowns effortlessly in his real natural 'being' (Self), which ever shines as 'I am that I am'. Therefore, what is absolutely necessary is that Self-attention should be pursued till the very end.


Thursday, February 10, 2011

Thinking only when necessary

Thought must exist, for our lives to function. But inwardly, psychologically as thought breeds pain, sorrow and this constant drive for pleasure - bringing its own frustrations, disappointments, anger, jealousy and envy - thought has no place at all in that dimension, at that level. If one could actually do this: only exercise thought when it is absolutely necessary, and the rest of the time, observe, look. So that thought which is always old, which now prevents the actual experience of looking, could drop away and it would be possible to live totally in that moment, which is always the 'now'. - Talks with American Students

Monday, February 7, 2011

At the Root of Conflict

You are multiplying the conflict...
Please observe your own state. Now, how do you observe yourself? Do you observe as a watcher looking at something apart from himself, which means that there is a division, a contradiction between the observer and the observed? Or do you observe without the observer? Please follow this, it is important. When we are looking into the enormously complex process of our own consciousness, whose very essence is conflict, we must understand what we mean by looking, observing. I am sure most of us observe as someone from the outside looking inward. You are aware of your conflicts, and you are watching them as a censor, as a judge, as an observer apart from the observed. That is what most of us do, and that prevents us from understanding this very complex thing called conflict - the enormous weight, the content, the varieties of it. When you observe as an outsider looking in, you actually create conflict, do you not? You are not understanding conflict but only increasing it. Being aware of conflict within himself, the observer says, ''I must change that; I do not like conflict, I like pleasure.'' So the observer always has this attitude of judging, censoring, and when you so observe, you are not understanding conflict; on the contrary, you are multiplying it. Have I made myself clear on that point? - Talks by Krishnamurti in Saanen, 1963

The conflict of the opposites
Being caught in the process of becoming, of acquisition, and realizing its strife and pain, the desire to get out of it gives birth to the conflict of duality. Gain always engenders fear, and fear gives birth to the conflict of opposites - the overcoming of what is and transforming it into that which is desired. Does not an opposite contain the germ of its own opposite? Is virtue the opposite of vice? If it is, then it ceases to be virtue. If virtue is the opposite of vice, then virtue is the outcome of vice. Beauty is not the denial of the ugly. Virtue has no opposite. Greed can never become nongreed, any more than ignorance can become enlightenment. If enlightenment is the opposite of ignorance, then it is no longer enlightenment. Greed is still greed when it tries to become nongreed, for the becoming itself is greed. The conflict of the opposites is not the conflict of dissimilars, but of changing and opposing desires. Conflict exists only when what is is not understood. If we can understand what is, then there is no conflict of its opposite. What is can be understood only through choiceless awareness in which there is neither condemnation, justification, nor identification. - Eighth Talk in Madras, 1947

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Quotations of Soren Kierkegaard

“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”

“There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

"The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”

“People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”

“Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, Where is the director? I want to see him.”

“Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth -look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.”

“If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.”

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”

“Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.”

“Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion -- and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion... while truth again reverts to a new minority.”

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins”

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.”

“Pleasure disappoints, possibility never”

“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.”

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

“The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever”

“The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo, the more he can remember the more divine his life becomes.”

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Simplicity

Our problems - social, environmental, political, religious - are so complex that we can solve them only by being simple, not by becoming extraordinarily erudite and clever. Because, a simple person sees much more directly, has a more direct experience, than the complex person. And, our minds are so crowded with an infinite knowledge of facts of what others have said that we have become incapable of being simple and having direct experience ourselves. These problems demand a new approach, and they can be so approached only when we are simple, inwardly really simple. That simplicity comes only through self-knowledge, through understanding ourselves: the ways of our thinking and feeling, the movements of our thoughts, our responses, how we conform through fear to public opinion, to what others say, what the Buddha, the Christ, the great saints have said - all of which indicates our nature to conform, to be safe, to be secure. And, when one is seeking security, one is obviously in a state of fear, and therefore there is no simplicity. - Talks in Ojai, California, 1949

Saturday, January 15, 2011

A New Consciousness

One has to be a light to oneself; this light is the law. There is no other law. All the other laws are made by thought and so are fragmentary and contradictory. To be a light to oneself is not to follow the light of another, however reasonable, logical, historical, and however convincing. You cannot be a light to yourself if you are in the dark shadows of authority, of dogma, of conclusion.

A new consciousness and a totally new morality are necessary to bring about a radical change in the present culture and social structure. This is obvious, yet the Left and the Right and the revolutionary seem to disregard it. Any dogma, any formula, any ideology is part of the old consciousness; they are the fabrications of thought whose activity is fragmentation - the Left, the Right, the centre. This activity will inevitably lead to bloodshed of the Right or of the Left or to totalitarianism. This is what is going on around us. One sees the necessity of social, economic, and moral change but the response is from the old consciousness, thought being the principal actor.

The mess, the confusion, and the misery that human beings have got into are within the area of the old consciousness, and without changing that profoundly,every human activity - political, economic or religious - will only bring us to the destruction of each other and of the earth. This is so obvious to the sane.

- J. Krishnamurti "This Light in Oneself"


The Transformation of Society

Is it not, therefore, an obvious fact that what I am in my relationship to another creates society and that, without radically transforming myself, there can be no transformation of the essential function of society? When we look to a system for the transformation of society, we are merely evading the question, because a system cannot transform man; man always transforms the system, which history shows. Until I, in my relationship to you, understand myself I am the cause of chaos, misery, destruction, fear, brutality. Understanding myself is not a matter of time; I can understand myself at this very moment.

- J.K, "The First and Last Freedom" Chapter 1