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#3262 - Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
This is an introduction to the little known website of Jasper Solomon, entitled Who Am I? What Are We? Jasper told me that his site was intended for a few close friends, but they urged him to seek a wider audience. His writing is based on the works of Wei Wu Wei. I'm including the first and last chapters of his website/book.
You may read the entire work at http://www.whatweare.co.uk/.
Here are just a few quotations:
“The being of separate beings is non-separate being.” Chuang-tse (c.369-c.286 BCE).
“We, the originally vast, serene, and marvellous mind are all pure and illuminatingly all-inclusive. Nothing can hinder us: we are as free as the firmament.” Tsung Kao (1089-1163)
“From the beginning, not a thing is.” Hui Neng (638-713)
“Be still. And know I am God” Psalm 46
“This consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists.” The Vigyan Bkairava and Sochanda Tantra.
“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” Meister Eckhart
“Seeing that one cannot see the absence-of-things (subjectivity) is true seeing, permanent seeing.” Shen Hui
“You must have a clear understanding that all things are only a manifestation of the mind itself. Everything, everything in this world is nothing but a complex manifestation of one’s mental activities.” Lankavatara Sutra
“Remember that from the first to the last not even the smallest grain of anything perceptible has ever existed or ever will exist.’ Huang Po
“I am Not, but the Universe is my Self.” Shih T’ou (700-790)
“Body, heaven and hell, bondage and freedom, as also fear, all these are mere concepts. What have I to do with all these, I who am pure Consciousness?” Ashtavakra Gita
“Apart from nothing there is no anything, and apart from anything there is no nothing. Apart from our phenomenal world there is no Void, and apart from the Void, there is no phenomenal world.” Heart Sutra
“Let me remind you that the perceived cannot perceive.” Huang Po
“Prajna (Subjectivity) is our true nature.” Hui Neng
“Our original Buddha-nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any atom of objectivity.” Huang Po
“I’ve told you all that constitutes the very core of Truth; there is no you, no me, no Superior Being, no disciple, no guru.” Dattatreya
“Moreover, in thus contemplating the totality of phenomena, you are contemplating the totality of Mind. All these phenomena are intrinsically void and yet this Mind with which they are identical is no mere nothingness.” Huang Po
“Phenomena only exist in the mind that perceives them.” Tibetan Book of the Dead
“What you are looking for is what is looking.” St. Francis of Assisi (attrib.)
“Simply see the world as yourself. Embrace things as they are.” Lao Tzu
And how about the sages and others of the present or recent past? Let’s sound out a few:
“Since there is no room in the Infinite even for nothingness, I cannot be nothing; and since the Infinite has no parts, I am therefore the Whole.” Shaikh Ahmad al Alawi (1870-1932).
“The essential Understanding is that in reality nothing is. This is so obvious that it is not perceived.” Wei Wu Wei
“There is neither creation nor destruction, neither destiny nor free will, neither path nor achievement. This is the final truth.” Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)
“The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realise that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of the dream and not another. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs to be done.” Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897?-1981)
“There is no such thing as an entity. Now you know you are awake because you are here and you have that knowledge. There is nothing else other than this knowledge, no entity.” Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Greater than the greatest good in life is to know who we are.” Nisargadatta Maharaj
“With the belief in the individual entity/doer, problems never cease. When the illusory nature of the individual is seen, problems never arise.” Ramesh Balsekar
“There is a Presence that is unnameable that thought cannot touch. It is not your possession; it is what you are.” Adyashanti
“From the perspective of the infinite it is obvious that the individual self absolutely does not exist. The idea that we have a self that controls, arbitrates, or is the doer behind our actions, is absurd. The individual self is nothing but an idea of who we are.” Suzanne Segal
“All said and done: everything is I and I am no thing. All phenomena are objective manifestations. What I am objectively is the totality of phenomenal manifestation. What I am subjectively is all that all phenomena are. Nothing personal about it anywhere or at any stage. The personal notion is not inherent and is the whole trouble.” Wei Wu Wei
“I am Presence; not I am present or you are present or he is present. When one sees the situation as it really is, that no individual is involved, that what is present is Presence as a whole, then the moment this is perceived there is liberation.” Nisargadatta Maharaj
“The Vastness is perceiving itself out of itself at every moment, within every particle of itself everywhere simultaneously.” Suzanne Segal
“ So-called self-realization is the discovery for yourself that there is no self to discover.” U.G.Krishnamurti
“You will come in due course to realise that your true glory lies where you cease to exist.” Ramana Maharshi
“What is real does not die. What is unreal never lived.” Nisargadatta Maharaj
“A person is not a thing or a process but an opening through which the absolute manifests.” Martin Heidegger
One thing emerges from what they are saying – we are not what we think we are. We believe we are this self, this body and the mind that seems to go along with it. If we are not that, what are we?
Let’s consolidate some of what I have been saying. Other than Consciousness or Mind, there cannot be anything. What else could there be since nothing is cognisable otherwise than by Mind? Mind alone cognises and all cognition takes place in Mind, yet Mind ‘itself’ is uncognisable since there is nothing to cognise but Mind and Mind cannot cognise the cognising, which is all that it is. Mind itself is no ‘thing’, for a ‘thing’ is only that which is cognisable and Mind can never cognise its cognising. Phenomena are Mind. All that is perceived through our senses is Mind. And, at the same time, we are the Mind that is doing the perceiving and cognising.
The source of appearance is not apparent because there is no ‘thing’ to conceive its source in order to make it apparent. All sentient beings are the source of the apparent universe by means of their experiencing their world as what they are. The sentient being’s objectivity is only an appearance in mind and his subjectivity is the source of all possible experience. The fundamental nature of all phenomena is simply the perceiving of phenomena. Phenomena, including what we think we are, can have only apparent existence in space and time as concepts in Mind.
Let’s try to set this out in simpler terms by using a quote from Wei Wu Wei – he always manages to put points in the clearest possible way:
From all these few pages, there is only one thing to be understood and from which all else follows:
And if you want it in four words, how about Huang Po’s “The perceived cannot perceive”. That says it all.
Read this online book here: http://www.whatweare.co.uk/
Jasper is considering expanding his website into a larger book.