Without Blinking An Eye

A long, long time ago in Japan, it was quite normal for marauding armies to ransack villages, with the villagers having to flee or be killed.  In one such village an old Zen master sat peacefully in his very humble abode as chaos reigned outside.  All of a sudden, a fearsome soldier kicked the master’s door open and stood menacingly in the doorway; the master was unmoved.  The soldier sneered and said, “what are you still doing here, are you not afraid?  All of the villagers are either dead or have fled, yet you remain here.”  The master replied, “what have I to fear, and besides, where would I go?”  The soldier became angry, and drawing his sword raged, “don’t you know that I am a man who can run you through without blinking an eye?”  The old master looked at him and said, “don’t YOU know that I am a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?”

With a body or without a body; it is all the same to one who has realised.  Live or die; the master knows there is no death and therefore remains unmoved.  There is also the paradox here between the polar opposites of “doing” and “being”.  The soldier wants to “do” (kill) the master, but that in itself is a fruitless task, as the most he can achieve is to be the cause of the master’s body evolving (effect) into a different form.  You cannot kill anything in reality as all is consciousness and is in a constant state of flux.  What would happen to the body?  If buried it would eventually decompose and merge with the earth.  If cremated, the cremation process would cause the flesh to evolve into heat energy and be absorbed back into the total energy mass.

The master remained in a state of pure knowing, enlightenment, awakening, bliss or whatever description you wish to use; all are just terms for “Being”.  The master remains blissful regardless of which action the soldier chooses to take.  He says, “besides, where would I go?”  Indeed, where would the master go?  There is only here and now; it is all we have.



He Who Knows

The title of my forthcoming book has changed already!  It is now called “The Road to Nowhere – embracing the totality”, and here for your pleasure (I hope) is another extract to be…

A group of disciples were in the temple one morning awaiting the arrival of their master, Lao Tzu.  As they waited, they pondered the meaning of one of the great master’s teachings:

He who knows

Does not speak

He who speaks

Does not know


When their master appeared, they asked him to elaborate on the meaning. Lao Tzu responded by asking them if they had ever experienced the fragrance of a rose.  Every single hand went up.  He then asked the question, “who among you is able to explain it to us?”  No hands went up.

And this lovely little parable aptly demonstrates, that for some things, there is simply no explanation.  Just how would anybody describe the fragrance of a rose to any degree of accuracy?  There are simply no words in the dictionary to describe such beauty.  The same can be said of enlightenment, which for me is the meaning contained within this teaching.  I do not for one minute claim to be a fully realised soul.  However, I am going through a tangible awakening process that has been happening to me in stages for some years now.  There are copious amounts of words that I could use in order to describe my experience; emergence, awakening, eureka moments to name but a few, but none of them would come anywhere near an apt description.

I have heard people use the expression, “I am awake”.  But ultimately, this is only the ego speaking.  To make the statement “I am awake”, or “I am enlightened”, implies the existence of opposite states of being asleep or unenlightened.  This is duality.  In consciousness there is no duality; there is only One, therefore, a truly awakened individual would not offer any explanation of being awake or otherwise.  They would simply abide in the one true state of consciousness.

Ramana Maharshi also has a take on this, which I find quite beautiful.  He said that “truth has no words” and that “silence is the eternal flow of language, obstructed by words”.

Absolutely Old Boy!

All talk of Heaven and Earth is only relevant when one falsely believes the unreal to be real. From the perspective of the ego there is a huge gap between Heaven and Earth; a gap that cannot be explained in words, such is its gulf. It is also a myth that there are stages to attaining the dizzy heights of Heaven (enlightenment). The truth is that when the ego is present we create our own Heaven here on Earth (or Hell). In the same way that comparing a low number, for example 2, with a high number, say 20 billion, pales into insignificance from the perspective of the Absolute, where all numbers are irrelevant, the same can be said for comparisons between Heaven and Earth. In Absolute Reality, there are no stages to work through, no places to go to or compare; there is only the truth of Being, no separateness, no subject/object relationships; only One. Nothing else exists.

The Mysterious Mystery

Hello! My name is Richard!

Hello! My name is Richard!

Life is a magical mystery; we cannot know the unknowable; we cannot comprehend that which is beyond comprehension. Religion offers an imaginary God (as a separate being) and a list of do’s and don’ts (moral code) for the masses to follow blindly. However, practitioners of religions more often than not end up using their moral code as a yardstick for passing judgement on others. The Divine cannot be known, it can only be experienced and no amount of scriptures and commandments will ever change that. Enlightenment, is coming to the understanding that everything we are looking for is contained within us; that we ourselves are Divine; that we ourselves are contained within every leaf of nature…