Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day How to submit material to the Highlights
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3011, Sunday, December 9, 2007, Editor: Mark
Once you see reality, once you know it, you know the whole of
it... But, at the same time, reality is like a bud that keeps
opening. The petals keep revealing themselves. It's not as if
that bud becomes something that it wasn't before. It just keeps
showing its potential.
- Adyashanti, posted to NondualitySalon
Satsang For Adya
After awhile,
the secret life of every flower
speaks of its
lotus essence,
blooming just
because he has
no choice,
her fragrance
deepens
inside
the One
who hears
every word...
as if you
were speaking,
you know no ground
that is not holy.
- Anna Ruiz, posted to NondualitySalon
Are You Ready to Lose Your World?
There is a very famous poem written by the third patriarch of
Zen, Seng-ts'an, called the Hsin-Hsin Ming, which translates as
Verses in Faith Mind. In this poem Seng-ts'an writes these lines:
"Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish
opinions." This is a reversal of the way most people go
about trying to realize absolute truth. Most people seek truth,
but Seng-ts'an is saying not to seek truth. This sounds very
strange indeed. How will you find truth if you don't seek it? How
will you find happiness if you do not seek it? How will you find
God if you do not seek God? Everyone seems to be seeking
something. In spirituality seeking is highly honored and
respected, and here comes Seng-ts'an saying not to seek.
The reason Seng-ts'an is saying not to seek is because truth, or
reality, is not something objective. Truth is not something
"out there." It is not something you will find as an
object of perception or as a temporal experience. Reality is
neither inside of you nor outside of you. Both
"outside" and "inside" are not getting to the
point. They both miss the mark because outside and inside are
conceptual constructs with no inherent reality. They are simply
abstract points of reference. Even words like "you," or
"me," or "I," are nothing more than
conceptual points of reference existing only in the mind. Such
concepts may have a practical value in daily life, but when
assumed to be true they distort perception and create a virtual
reality, or what in the East is called the world of samsara.
Seng-ts'an was a wily old Zen master. He viewed things through
the eye of enlightenment and was intimately aware of how the
conditioned mind fools itself into false pursuits and blind
alleys. He knew that seeking truth, or reality, is as silly as a
dog thinking that it must chase its tail in order to attain its
tail. The dog already has full possession of its tail from the
very beginning. Besides, once the dog grasps his tail, he will
have to let go of it in order to function. So even if you were to
find the truth through grasping, you will have to let it go at
some point in order to function. But even so, any truth that is
attained through grasping is not the real truth because such a
truth would be an object and therefore not real to begin with.
In order to seek, you must first have an idea, ideal, or an
image, what it is you are seeking. That idea may not even be very
conscious or clear but it must be there in order for you to seek.
Being an idea it cannot be real. That's why Seng-ts'an says
"only cease to cherish opinions." By opinions he means
ideas, ideals, beliefs, and images, as well as personal opinions.
This sounds easy but it is rarely as easy as it seems. Seng-ts'an
is not saying you should never have a thought in your head, he is
saying not to cherish the thoughts in your head. To cherish
implies an emotional attachment and holding on to. When you
cherish something, you place value on it because you think that
it is real or because it defines who you think you are. This
cherishing of thoughts and opinions is what the false self
thrives on. It is what the false self is made of. When you
realize that none of your ideas about truth are real, it is quite
a shock to your system. It is an unexpected blow to the seeker
and the seeking.
The task of any useful spiritual practice is therefore to
dismantle cherishing the thoughts, opinions, and ideas that make
up the false self, the self that is seeking. This is the true
task of both meditation and inquiry. Through meditation we can
come to see that the only thing that makes us suffer is our own
mind. Sitting quietly reveals the mind to be nothing but
conditioned thinking spontaneously arising within awareness.
Through cherishing this thinking, through taking it to be real
and relevant, we create internal images of self and others and
the world. Then we live in these images as if they were real. To
be caught within these images is to live in an illusory virtual
reality.
Through observing the illusory nature of thought without
resisting it, we can begin to question and inquire into the
underlying belief structures that support it. These belief
structures are what form our emotional attachments to the false
self and the world our minds create.
This is why I sometimes ask people, "Are you ready to lose
your world?" Because true awakening will not fit into the
world as you imagine it or the self you imagine yourself to be.
Reality is not something that you integrate into your personal
view of things. Reality is life without your distorting stories,
ideas, and beliefs. It is perfect unity free of all reference
points, with nowhere to stand and nothing to grab hold of. It has
never been spoken, never been written, never been imagined. It is
not hidden, but in plain view. Cease to cherish opinions and it
stands before your very eyes.
© Adyashanti 2007
The momentum for this cosmic Game is created whenever you pretend
that what isn't, somehow, is far superior to what is. Although
this belief keeps you focused on a never-ending journey towards
happiness, enlightenment, etc., it also guarantees that you will
never reach a point of permanent satisfaction and peace. Why?
Because this whole notion of being on a `journey-to-fulfillment'
is actually the secret method that the desperate ego uses in
order to survive in the face of personal annihilation by
Consciousness. In other words, as long as the ego stays more
focused on making the `journey,' it can continue to avoid
disappearing entirely in the blinding realization of the true
identity of the mystic `traveler.' This frenzied activity around
pursuing enlightenment helps the ego to maintain a sense of
personal dooership. When what is not present is perceived as
better than what is present, the precious reality contained in
this very moment is inwardly resisted. However, Consciousness has
no opposite, it's the only thing that's present, and it can never
really change into `what isn't.'
It just is what it is.
However, by pretending that `something else is better,' the ego
hopes to survive by enthusiastically pursuing the disowned
`other.' Of course, the cosmic joke, is that the ego is caught on
a self- generated treadmill because it already `is' what it is
looking for. The valiant struggle to be enlightened secretly
protects the ego from being exposed as the phantom it truly is.
As long as the search continues unabated, the searcher is
validated as being separate from the very thing that he is
searching for. But, in Truth, we can never really run away from
ourselves because we already are who we are running from, and we
already are where we are running to.
Chuck Hillig, posted to The_Now2
truth/reality is not a concept, and can't be known. it is what
is, inexplicable, ever present and timeless. "tat tvam
asi" ("that thou art" as the upanishad put it).
this is what 'we', and all-and-everything is, ever. this
realization is inexpressible by words, ideas or imaginations.
but poetry, art and music reflect it.
only way this wordless realization is expressed is by living it
fully every moment - like ramana, buddha, jesus, mohammed and
other (known or not) countless and nameless realized 'beings'.
their life is their message.
and so is the life of each and every one, friends. our life is
our message. rest is just stories.
- Yosy Flug, posted to SufiMystic
Mama: What is the meaning of life, Sophia?
Sophia: the meaning is love.
- Sophia Zandi (age 3) and Jeannie Zandi, from Song of
the Wildchild: Poems and Drawings by Sophia
http://wildchildpoetry.com