Saturday, May 25, 2013

Mooji - Nothingness

image source Mebilia

With this body, you have the experience of time, taste, smell, touch — the taste of otherness, of beauty.
But I want you to come deeper in, beyond the field of phenomena.
Your attention was going out through the senses.
Now we press the reverse button.
Make a U-turn and come inside as far as you can go but carry nothing with you.
Now, behind the facade of the body, go past emotions, feelings, thoughts.
Dive deeper and deeper inside, bypassing everything …
family, education, culture, conditioning, self-image.
Very good. Now come even more inside…
Still, come past silence, come in more.
Bring your attention back to confirm the place beyond which you cannot go. Be here.
And now what happens….
Don’t just look with eyes, look with heart also.
Look with the fullness of yourself.
‘Here there is Nothing,’ you say!
And I ask: Is there anything behind nothing?
What perceives nothing itself?
Not easy questions, but they are our questions.
The human being must go through one door after another, and each and every door closes behind him until he comes here.
Now you are here… Inside the inside itself.
You are this nothingness itself experiencing itself beyond duality.
Rare is a human being who allows himself to come so purely back to base.
Not base camp … Just Base…

Friday, May 24, 2013

Pablo Neruda - Too Many Names

Alfred T. Bricher - Twilight in the Wilderness

Too Many Names

Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays
and the week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your weary scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed out by the waters of night.

No one can claim the name of Pedro,
nobody is Rosa or Maria,
all of us are dust or sand,
all of us are rain under rain.
They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,
of Chiles and of Paraguays;
I have no idea what they are saying.
I know only the skin of the earth
and I know it is without a name.

When I lived amongst the roots
they pleased me more than flowers did,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang like a bell.

It is so long, the spring
which goes on all winter.
Time lost its shoes.
A year is four centuries.

When I sleep every night,
what am I called or not called?
And when I wake, who am I
if I was not while I slept?

This means to say that scarcely
have we landed into life
than we come as if new-born;
let us not fill our mouths
with so many faltering names,
with so many sad formallities,
with so many pompous letters,
with so much of yours and mine,
with so much of signing of papers.

I have a mind to confuse things,
unite them, bring them to birth,
mix them up, undress them,
until the light of the world
has the oneness of the ocean,
a generous, vast wholeness,
a crepitant fragrance.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Wei Wu Wei - Free-will versus Determinism

'Discussions concerning the predominance of the will over destiny, or vice versa, can only take place among those who lack knowledge of the root of both. Those who have knowledge of the Self, sole root of the will and of destiny, are free from the one and the other. After that how can they take part in such discussions?'
Ramana Maharshi Ulladu Narpadu, 19
(Forty Verses on the Knowledge of Being)

An essential difference between a Jivan Mukta and an ordinary unenlightened man is that the former has transcended the duality inherent in that apparent contradiction of between Free-will and Determinism.
The Jivan Mukta, having abandoned the concept of an ego, subject to which the ordinary man lives, his will no longer has any alternative to complete harmony with that of the cosmic order, so that he 'wills' what must be, without any kind of resistance (there being in him no longer any psychic mechanism capable of resistance), whereas the ordinary man, subject to his ego-concept, is unable to perceive what must be, and seeks to substitute the desires aggregated to his artificial 'ego', which he imagines he is free to fulfil if he can.
Neither is 'free' in the sense thought of by the ordinary man, but the one experiences no lack of 'freedom' or any constraint, whereas the other spends his life in an imaginary conflict, a tilting against wind-mills, trying to assert a 'freedom' he could not possibly enjoy.
That is why the Jivan Mukta lives his life without conflict, and usually devotes himself to helping the unenlightened to rid themselves of their errors by transcending the ego-concept, for on that plane, the plane of understanding, real understanding being in a further dimension that is not subject to the Space-Time mechanism, even the ordinary man is 'free' (of the aforesaid mechanicity) to rid himself of his ignorance.

from the book " Why Lazarus laughed"

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Longchen Rabjampa - Reflection of the Moon in Water (Dzogchen)


Reflection of the Moon in Water: The Fifth Analogy

The buddhas in their wisdom have said
all experience is like the reflection of the moon in water
and here I explain it so you may realize it directly.

In the deep, pellucid lake of mind’s nature
lie bright images of spontaneity, timelessly arisen;
but the rough polluting waves of dualistic perception
roils the clarity already churned by a storm of concepts.

That worldly confusion springs from belief in an ego, a self,
and primal awareness now opaque, dull and emotional,
sinks into beginningless and endless samsara.

Just as the stars’ reflection in a pellucid pool of water
shines steadily, absent yet apparent,
so delusory images appear in the still mirror of mind,
and those evanescent images worry us.

Nothing solid, nothing to grasp,
no specific marks, nothing to identify,
neither existent nor nonexistent, beyond real and unreal—
that is what the buddhas intend by ‘reflection’.

Colour and form, all sensory perception,
therefore, are like the reflection of the moon in water:
because there is appearance without existence,
because nothing permanent can be found,
because its features, uncongealing, uncrystallizing,
uncompounded, remain but a film of light-form,
the constructs of the eye, the visual faculty and cognition,
suffused by emptiness, are but hollow fictions,
reflections of the moon in water.

We see all things as devoid of truth,
like a ghost, like a banana palm, without a core.

The mind, uncircumscribed, uncontaminated,
uncontrived like the reflection of the moon in water,
simple, empty light-form, unstructured,
we now know as profoundly peaceful, thought-free,
utterly inexpressible primal awareness,
unmoving from the space of its own clarity.

Insofar as the moon appearing in water is not the moon,
so multiplicity as it occurs cannot be substantiated;
free of conceptually imputed divisions of time,
beyond any conceptual elaboration, let it be, just let it be.

Since pure mind has no purpose whatsoever,
we envision it without outside or inside, beyond thought;
since reality surpasses all invidious, partial distinctions,
we give up the struggle for spiritual capital and status.

Unthought, always a multiplicity, as primordial space,
everything that appears, however it appears,
all things are like the reflection of the moon in water;
not true, not false, samsara and nirvana the same,
let the mind relax into the space of reality just as it is.

The apparent world and all our lives, samsara and nirvana,
are our pictured forms of emptiness, like the moon in water;
nothing in origin, nothing in their advent, nothing in the moment,
duplicitously imputed by the intellect as true or false, real or unreal,
why should we cling to opinions and preferences?

So long as the intellect compulsively assumes an ego, or Self,
there is no possibility of release from samsara;
yet beyond belief, naturally settled, in genuine ease,
transparent, transcendent, free in itself and wide open,
the mind egoless, why try to change anything?

When every situation is devoid of ego and substance
like the reflection of the moon in water,
and the intellect free of compulsive activity
and free of habitual presumption about reality,
since in perceptual nonduality mind and its object are one,
this is the space of unmediated, involuntary, Dzogchen.

With a receptivity that takes every occurrence as friendly,
knowing the spontaneity of the cool, nondiscriminating, bliss,
now we are left without anywhere at all to go
and we stay in this pure mind in the primordial ground.

With such realization, abiding in such space,
unerringly, we familiarize ourselves with all experience
as the reflection of the moon in water.
The fortunate person should faithfully recognize
that whatever occurs is a floating, shimmering, mythic reality.

The Meditation
As before, in preparation, aspire to see every moment
as the reflection of the moon in water.
The main praxis is to settle in cognitive sameness,
allowing the mind to perceive what arises
as the reflection of the moon in water.

At night-time, as before, but focus
on the mystical experience of reality
as the reflection of the moon in water;
abiding in unitary space without any clinging
we seize the citadel of the sovereign nature of mind.

Now gazing at whatever appears, free of attachment,
there arises a radiant brightness, the clear light,
that is like the reflection of the moon in water.
Let the supremely fortunate become familiar with that!

Hologram: The Tenth Analogy

The buddhas in their wisdom will say
that all our experience is like a hologram.
Again listen to the elucidation of that truth.

Just as a hologram is visible but insubstantial
so magical illusion is absent yet apparent;
all our experience is insubstantial delusion,
the maya of false concepts like a hologram,
even immaculate maya like a hologram.

Just as each part contains an image of the whole,
just as a single particle of it contains the entire light-form,
so by knowing a part we know the whole—
we know the universe in a grain of sand.

Like electrons communicating regardless of proximity,
the nature of mind is all-embracing,
each experience an unbounded whole,
space-time as the ground in which it arises.

When its bricks and mortar are empty unitary fields,
space-time is groundless, lacking root or core;
like phantasm, all apparition, like a hologram,
every experience a unitary light-form of mind and its field.

Samsara is an interference pattern, a meaningless jumble,
until illumined by the laser-like light of the mind;
then all our samsaras are nirvana, patterns of light,
like a hologram, awareness of clarity and emptiness.

When the hologram is divided its parts are identical.
Like the hologram that is indivisible into discrete parts
so each of the parts of our experience is a whole—
here and now only this unitary light of the mind.

If the particles of a hologram are identical to all others
instant timeless connectivity ensues;
three-dimensional space is a prefabricated illusion
and there are no divisions of time in the here and now

The Meditation
To prepare, as before, we aspire to see all things as a hologram
and the main practice is to gain familiarity with that insight.

First visualise oneself as a hologram,
then include the immediate environment in that hologram
and increase the scope to include the whole world
and finally the entire cosmos with its stars and galaxies.

Experience all the events of the waking state as holograms,
all form as shimmering, scintillating light-form,
abiding where inner and outer, present and absent, are one,
where mind and its transparent creations are only one.

As in the day so at night: fix the mind in the heart centre
and sleep in the space where dream is like a hologram,
and lucid dream, and so on, as before, will certainly arise.

Even visions and great insights are like holograms.
The eye of insight, psychic powers, samadhis
and perfectly responsive spontaneity are achieved,
and living as buddha we become lamps to all living beings.
Familiarise yourselves with all situations as a hologram! 

Monday, May 20, 2013

Ashtavakra Gita - Unbounded

I lived bewildered,
In illusion.

But now I am awake,
Flawless and serene,
Beyond the world.

From my light
The body and the world arise.

So all things are mine,
Or nothing is.

Now I have given up
The body and the world,
I have a special gift.

I see the infinite Self.

As a wave,
Seething and foaming,
Is only water

So all creation,
Streaming out of the Self,
Is only the Self.

Consider a piece of cloth.
It is only threads!

So all creation,
When you look closely,
Is only the Self.
Like the sugar
In the juice of the sugarcane,
I am the sweetness
In everything I have made.

When the Self is unknown
The world arises,
Not when it is known.

But you mistake
The rope for the snake.

When you see the rope,
The snake vanishes.

My nature is light,
Nothing but light.

When the world arises
I alone am shining.

When the world arises in me,
It is just an illusion:
Water shimmering in the sun,
A vein of silver in mother-of-pearl,
A serpent in a strand of rope.

From me the world streams out
And in me it dissolves,
As a bracelet melts into gold,
A pot crumbles into clay,
A wave subsides into water.

I adore myself,
How wonderful I am!

I can never die.

The whole world may perish,
From Brahma to a blade of grass,
But I am still here.

Indeed how wonderful!
I adore myself.

For I have taken form
But I am still one.

Neither coming or going,
Yet I am still everywhere….

I am the infinite ocean.

When thoughts spring up,
The wind freshens, and like waves
A thousand worlds arise.

But when the wind falls,
The trader sinks with his ship.

On the boundless ocean of my being
He founders,
And all the worlds with him.

But 0 how wonderful!

I am the unbounded deep
In whom all living things
Naturally arise,
Rush against each other playfully,
And then subside.