Saturday, April 26, 2014

Han Shan - ‘Cold Mountain’


The Tientiei Mountains are my home
mist-shrouded cloud paths keep guests away
thousand-meter cliffs make hiding easy
above a rocky ledge

among ten thousand streams

with bark hat and wooden clogs I walk

along the banks with hemp robe and pigweed staff I walk

around the peaks once you see through transience and illusion

the joys of roaming free are wonderful indeed.

Put a fish on land and he will remember the ocean until he dies.

Put a bird in a cage, yet he will not forget the sky.

Each remains homesick for his true home,

the place where his nature has decreed that he should be.

Man is born in the state of innocence.

His original nature is love and grace and purity.

Yet he emigrates so casually without even a thought of his old home.

Is this not sadder than the fishes and the birds?

Today I sat before the cliffs

I sat until the mists drew off a single crystal stream
a towering ridge of jade
a cloud’s dawn shadow not yet moving
the moons night light still adrift
a body free of dust
a mind without a care.

I love the joys of the mountains,
wandering completely free,
feeding a crippled body another day,
thinking thoughts that go nowhere.

Sometimes I open an old sutra,
more often I climb a stone tower and peer down a thousand-foot cliff
or up where clouds curl around
where the windblown winter moon looks like a lone-flying crane.

 



For what do people strive?
Money, fame, successful relationships, or the Dharma?
Attain Dharma and gain more than the other three combined.
He who has attained Dharma lacks nothing.

He called himself ‘Cold Mountain’ and lived as a hermit in the T’ien T’ai Mountains in China sometime around 750 to 800.
Han-Shan had worked in the capital for the government during the T’ang dynasty, was well educated and came from a life of privilege, but after a bloody rebellion he had to flee for his life.
Ever since he kept his true identity hidden behind the veil of ‘Cold Mountain’; it can be surmised that his new name and remote habitant were a form of self-preservation.
However, Han-Shan embraced the life of a recluse and wrote more than six hundred poems of which only three hundred have been recovered.
Gary Snyder translated Han-Shan’s poetry and Jack Kerouac dedicated The Dharma Bums to him.



 

Friday, April 25, 2014

Ken Wilber - The Seer


All those objects in your awareness are precisely not the observing Self. All those things that you know about yourself are precisely not the real Self. Those are not the Seer; those are simply things that can be seen. All of those objects that you describe when you "describe yourself" are actually not your real Self at all! They are just more objects, whether internal or external, they are not the real Seer of those objects, they are not the real Self. So when you describe your- self by listing all of those objects, you are ultimately giving a list of mistaken identities, a list of lies, a list of precisely what you ultimately are not.

So who is this real Seer? Who or what is this observing Self?

Ramana Maharshi called this Witness the I-I, because it is aware of the individual I or self, but cannot itself be seen. So what is this I-I, this causal Witness, this pure observing Self?

This deeply inward Self is witnessing the world out there, and it is witnessing all your interior thoughts as well. This Seer sees the ego, and sees the body, and sees the natural world. All of those parade by "in front" of this Seer. But the Seer itself cannot be seen. If you see anything, those are just more objects. Those objects are precisely what the Seer is not, what the Witness is not.

So you pursue this inquiry, Who am I? Who or what is this Seer that cannot itself be seen? You simply "push back" into your awareness, and you dis-identify with any and every object you see or can see.

The Self or the Seer or the Witness is not any particular thought--I can see that thought as an object. The Seer is not any particular sensation--I am aware of that as an object. The observing Self is not the body, it is not the mind, it is not the ego--I can see all of those as objects. What is looking at all those objects? What in you right now is looking at all these objects--looking at nature and its sights, look- ing at the body and its sensations, looking at the mind and its thoughts? What is looking at all that?

Try to feel yourself right now--get a good sense of being yourself-- and notice, that self is just another object in awareness. It isn't even a real subject, a real self, it's just another object in awareness. This little self and its thoughts parade by in front of you just like the clouds float by through the sky. And what is the real you that is witnessing all of that? Witnessing your little objective self? Who or what is that?

As you push back into this pure Subjectivity, this pure Seer, you won't see it as an object--you can't see it as an object, because it's not an object! It is nothing you can see. Rather, as you calmly rest in this observing awareness--watching mind and body and nature float by--you might begin to notice that what you are actually feeling is simply a sense of freedom, a sense of release, a sense of not being bound to any of the objects you are calmly witnessing. You don't see anything, you simply rest in this vast freedom.

In front of you the clouds parade by, your thoughts parade by, bodily sensations parade by, and you are none of them. You are the vast expanse of freedom through which all these objects come and go. You are an opening, a clearing, an Emptiness, a vast spaciousness, in which all these objects come and go. Clouds come and go, sensations come and go, thoughts come and go--and you are none of them; you are that vast sense of freedom, that vast Emptiness, that vast opening, through which manifestation arises, stays a bit, and goes.

So you simply start to notice that the "Seer" in you that is witnessing all these objects is itself just a vast Emptiness. It is not a thing, not an object, not anything you can see or grab hold of. It is rather a sense of vast Freedom, because it is not itself anything that enters the objective world of time and objects and stress and strain. This pure Witness is a pure Emptiness in which all these individual subjects and objects arise, stay a bit, and pass.

So this pure Witness is not anything that can be seen! The attempt to see the Witness or know it as an object--that's just more grasping and seeking and clinging in time. The Witness isn't out there in the stream; it is the vast expanse of Freedom in which the stream arises. So you can't get hold of it and say, Aha, I see it! Rather, it is the Seer, not anything that can be seen. As you rest in this Witnessing, all that you sense is just a vast Emptiness, a vast Freedom, a vast Expanse--a transparent opening or clearing in which all these little subjects and objects arise. Those subjects and objects can definitely be seen, but the Witness of them cannot be seen. The Witness of them is an utter release from them, an utter Freedom not caught in their turmoils, their desires, their fears, their hopes.

Of course, we tend to identify ourselves with these little individual subjects and objects--and that is exactly the problem! We identify the Seer with puny little things that can be seen. And that is the beginning of bondage and unfreedom. We are actually this vast expanse of Freedom, but we identify with unfree and limited objects and subjects, all of which can be seen, all of which suffer, and none of which is what we are.

Patanjali gave the classic description of bondage as "the identification of the Seer with the instruments of seeing"--with the little subjects and objects, instead of the opening or clearing or Emptiness in which they all arise.

So when we rest in this pure Witness, we don't see this Witness as an object. Anything you can see is not it. Rather, it is the absence of any subjects or objects altogether, it is the release from all of that. Resting in the pure witness, there is this background absence or Emptiness, and this is "experienced," not as an object, but as a vast expanse of Freedom and Liberation from the constrictions of identifying with these puny little subjects and objects that enter the stream of time and are ground up in that agonizing torrent.

So when you rest in the pure Seer, in the pure Witness, you are invisible. You cannot be seen. No part of you can be seen, because you are not an object. Your body can be seen, your mind can be seen, nature can be seen, but you are not any of those objects. You are the pure source of awareness, and not anything that arises in that awareness. So you abide as awareness.

Things arise in awareness, they stay a bit and depart, they come and they go. They arise in space, they move in time. But the pure Witness does not come and go. It does not arise in space, it does not move in time. It is as it is; it is ever-present and unvarying. It is not an object out there, so it never enters the stream of time, of space, of birth, of death. Those are all experiences, all objects--they all come, they all go. But you do not come and go; you do not enter that stream; you are aware of all that, so you are not caught in all that. The Witness is aware of space, aware of time--and is therefore itself free of space, free of time. It is timeless and spaceless--the purest Emptiness through which time and space parade.

So this pure Seer is prior to life and death, prior to time and turmoil, prior to space and movement, prior to manifestation--prior even to the Big Bang itself. This doesn't mean that the pure Self existed in a time before the Big Bang, but that it exists prior to time, period. It just never enters that stream. It is aware of time, and is thus free of time--it is utterly timeless. And because it is timeless, it is eternal--which doesn't mean everlasting time, but free of time altogether.

It was never born, it will never die. It never enters that temporal stream. This vast Freedom is the great Unborn, of which the Buddha said: "There is an unborn, an unmade, an uncreate. Were it not for this unborn, unmade, uncreate, there would be no release from the born, the made, the created." Resting in this vast expanse of Freedom is resting in this great Unborn, this vast Emptiness.

And because it is Unborn, it is Undying. It was not created with your body, it will not perish when your body perishes. It's not that it lives on beyond your body's death, but rather that it never enters the stream of time in the first place. It doesn't live on after your body, it lives prior to your body, always. It doesn't go on in time forever, it is simply prior to the stream of time itself.

Space, time, objects--all of those merely parade by. But you are the Witness, the pure Seer that is itself pure Emptiness, pure Freedom, pure Openness, the great Emptiness through which the entire parade passes, never touching you, never tempting you, never hurting you, never consoling you.

And because there is this vast Emptiness, this great Unborn, you can indeed gain liberation from the born and the created, from the suffering of space and time and objects, from the mechanism of terror inherent in those fragments, from the vale of tears called samsara.


excerpt from chapter 13 of Ken Wilber's book A Brief History of Everything.


Get the book  Here

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Avaiyar - Vinayagar Agaval


The anklets
on the red lotus feet
of the cool baby elephant
sing many songs.

The golden waist chain
and fine skirts
resting upon his rainbow waist
beautifully shining.

His weighty tusk!

His elephant face
& the auspicious orange mark
is easy to perceive.

Five hands,
goad & noose,
his body of deep blue
has made my breast its home.


His hanging mouth,
four sets of shoulders,
three eyes,
and three musk trails...

His two ears,
with golden hair shining,
and three threads intertwined
upon his glowing breast...

He is the true knowledge:
Turiya, the Sleepless Sleep,
goes beyond
the word's meaning.

Wonder
has stood personified
as the Wish-fulfilling Tree!
As the Bull Elephant!

He who rides the mouse
sniffs out the three fruits.
I begged him,
"Take me now...
as your servant!"

He appeared as a mother
and showered his grace upon me.
Cleaved from me
the confusion that...
"Once born, I shant die."

Thus the pristine
and primal letters five
shall unite with me.
Shall came and enter my heart.

Assuming the Guru's guise
and keeping a sacred foot
upon this Earth,
he establishes life's meaning.

He joyously bestowed the grace
of the Path of No-Suffering.

Wielding his tusk as a weapon,
he weeds out
the cruel fruits of action.

My ears devour his teaching
without ever being filled.

He reveals the insatiable
Clarity of Wisdom.
The means to master the five senses.

He has sweetly graced me
with joyous compassion.


He proclaimed
that single thought
which shrinks
the delusionary power of the senses.

Putting an end
to this birth
and the next,
he has removed darkness,
and graced me with all
the four stages of mukti (enlightenment).

He cuts off the delusion
of the three impurities.


With one mantra
he showed how
the Nine Openings
and the Five Sense Doors
can be shut...

This is the Ankusha (elephant-goad)
of the six chakras:

Without stopping...
Standing firmly...
Let idle chatter be discarded.

He announced the letter
of the Idylla & Pingala
and showed that the end
of the Circle's Edge
is in the skull.

The snake hangs
on the pillar
that is the junction
of the three realms.

He helped me realize
it's tongue.

In the Kundalini
one joins the silence...

It breaks open...
and the mantra that rises up
comes out
because of his teaching.

The rising flame,
breaking out
of Muladhara,
is caused to rise
by the wind.

Born of the single thought
which he has taught.

He related...
The state of drinking Amrita,
The movements of the Sun,
& the character of
The One Who Favors the Lily (the Moon).

He revealed
the 8+8 facets
of Vishudha Chakra
along with all the qualities
of my bodies wheels.

He sweetly graced me
with the ability to contemplate
the six faces gross
and the four faces subtle.

He enabled me to perceive
the subtle body,
and gain the darshan
of the Eight States.

He has revealed
within my mind
the Skull's Gate,
and given the sweet grace
of being established in mukti.


He made me know myself.
He showered me with grace.
He pulled out past karma...
by its root.

Without a single word or thought
my mind is one with him.


He has concentrated my mind,
clarified my intellect,
and said,
"Light & Darkness
share a common place."


He presses me down
into the grace giving ecstasy.

In my ear
he renders limitless bliss.

He has weeded out all difficulty
and shown the path of grace.

He has revealed Sada Shiva
within the sound.
He has revealed the Shiva Lingam
within the mind.

And he has revealed that...
The smaller than the smallest,
The larger that the largest,
stands within�
like ripe sugarcane.


He made me understand
the role of the ash
smeared on the brows
of the devotees merged in truth,
with whom
he made me
one.

He made both heart & mind
achieve the state of knowing
the precious meaning
of the Five Letters.

Having given to me
the True Nature of All Existence...

I am ruled
by the wise Vinayagar...

at whose feet
I take refuge.

English version by Layne Little
Original Language Tamil




Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Eppi Sukhu - Taste of Heaven



That glorious day I sat in wonder gazing; just gazing all around
Stretched out, throughout all of Life.

Oneness, complete oneness
Magnificent radiance, power, awareness, life: everywhere.
So great this vision. Blissful, truly.

I sat in wonder,
One, with this Inner External Eternity, seeing that
It was before me, it will yet be after me; it is my Self;
Always existing, so beautiful, so complete, so perfect.

In God there is Life, in Self there is Life, in All there is Life;
Reality, yet in another light.

Expression fails at every turn, every word, every attempt
To convey it; to share it; to capture it.

I can clearly pen only then, that I lost myself that day and the
Bliss of it calls me always.

Holding great reverence for Life everywhere, great humility
Now I know that
All is forgiven and there is only Life to return to.
Blessed is this, that I lost myself in Everything.

So enamoured with it I am —
I revere it, I am prayerful,
I am free, I am humble,
I see with new eyes, all around me.

Blessed is this that I lost myself, in Everything.





Source: Sukhu, Eppi. 2007. The Endeavour
Book II (download it here).






Alan Watts - "Tt"




To go anywhere in philosophy, other than back and forth, round and
round, one must have a keen sense of correlative vision. This is a
technical term for a thorough understanding of the Game of Black-and-
White, whereby one sees that all explicit opposites are implicit allies—
correlative in the sense that they "gowith" each other and cannot exist
apart. This, rather than any miasmic absorption of differences into a
continuum of ultimate goo, is the metaphysical unity underlying the
world. For this unity is not mere one-ness as opposed to multiplicity,
since these two terms are themselves polar. The unity, or inseparability,
of one and many is therefore referred to in Vedanta philosophy as "nonduality"
(advaita) to distinguish it from simple uniformity. True, the
term has its own opposite, "duality," for insofar as every term
designates a class, an intellectual pigeonhole, every class has an outside
polarizing its inside. For this reason, language can no more transcend
duality than paintings or photographs upon a flat surface can go beyond
two dimensions. Yet by the convention of perspective, certain twodimensional
lines that slant towards a "vanishing-point" are taken to
represent the third dimension of depth. In a similar way, the dualistic
term "non-duality" is taken to represent the "dimension" in which
explicit differences have implicit unity.


It is not at first easy to maintain correlative vision. The Upanishads
describe it as the path of the razor's edge, a balancing act on the sharpest
and thinnest of lines. For to ordinary vision there is nothing visible
"between" classes and opposites. Life is a series of urgent choices
demanding firm commitment to this or to that. Matter is as much like
something as something can be, and space is as much like nothing as
nothing can be. Any common dimension between them seems
inconceivable, unless it is our own consciousness or mind, and this
doubtless belongs on the side of matter—everlastingly threatened by
nothingness. Yet with a slight shift of viewpoint, nothing is more
obvious than the interdependence of opposites. But who can believe it?
Is it possible that myself, my existence, so contains being and
nothing that death is merely the "off" interval in an on/off pulsation
which must be eternal—because every alternative to this pulsation (e.g.,
its absence) would in due course imply its presence? Is it conceivable,
then, that I am basically an eternal existence momentarily and perhaps
needlessly terrified by one half of itself because it has identified all of
itself with the other half? If the choice must be either white or black,
must I so commit myself to the white side that I cannot be a good sport
and actually play the Game of Black-and-White, with the implicit
knowledge that neither can win? Or is all this so much bandying with
the formal relations between words and terms without any relation to
my physical situation?


To answer the last question affirmatively, I should have to believe
that the logic of thought is quite arbitrary—that it is a purely and strictly
human invention without any basis in the physical universe. While it is
true, as I have already shown, that we do project logical patterns (nets,
grids, and other types of calculus) upon the wiggly physical world—
which can be confusing if we do not realize what we are doing—
nevertheless, these patterns do not come from outside the world. They
have something to do with the design of the human nervous system,
which is definitely in and of the world. Furthermore, I have shown that
correlative thinking about the relation of organism to environment is far
more compatible with the physical sciences than our archaic and
prevalent notions of the self as something confronting an alien and
separate world. To sever the connections between human logic and the
physical universe, I would have to revert to the myth of the ego as an
isolated, independent observer for whom the rest of the world is
absolutely external and "other." Neither neurology nor biology nor
sociology can subscribe to this.


If, on the other hand, self and other, subject and object, organism and
environment are the poles of a single process, THAT is my true
existence. As the Upanishads say, "That is the Self. That is the real.
That art thou!" But I cannot think or say anything about THAT, or, as I
shall now call it, IT, unless I resort to the convention of using dualistic
language as the lines of perspective are used to show depth on a flat
surface. What lies beyond opposites must be discussed, if at all, in terms
of opposites, and this means using the language of analogy, metaphor,
and myth.


The difficulty is not only that language is dualistic, insofar as words
are labels for mutually exclusive classes. The problem is that IT is so
much more myself than I thought I was, so central and so basic to my
existence, that I cannot make it an object. There is no way to stand
outside IT, and, in fact, no need to do so. For so long as I am trying to
grasp IT, I am implying that IT is not really myself. If it were possible,


I am losing the sense of it by attempting to find it. This is why those who
really know that they are IT invariably say they do not understand it, for
IT understands understanding—not the other way about. One cannot,
and need not, go deeper than deep!


But the fact that IT eludes every description must not, as happens so
often, be mistaken for the description of IT as the airiest of abstractions,
as a literal transparent continuum or undifferentiated cosmic jello. The
most concrete image of God the Father, with his white beard and golden
robe, is better than that. Yet Western students of Eastern philosophies
and religions persistently accuse Hindus and Buddhists of believing in a
featureless and gelatinous God, just because the latter insist that every
conception or objective image of IT is void. But the term "void" applies
to all such conceptions, not to IT.


Yet in speaking and thinking of IT, there is no alternative to the use
of conceptions and images, and no harm in it so long as we realize what
we are doing. Idolatry is not the use of images, but confusing them with
what they represent, and in this respect mental images and lofty
abstractions can be more insidious than bronze idols.


You were probably brought up in a culture where the presiding
image of IT has for centuries been God the Father, whose pronoun is
He, because IT seems too impersonal and She would, of course, be
inferior. Is this image still workable, as a functional myth to provide
some consensus about life and its meaning for all the diverse peoples
and cultures of this planet? Frankly, the image of God the Father has
become ridiculous—that is, unless you read Saint Thomas Aquinas or
Martin Buber or Paul Tillich, and realize that you can be a devout Jew
or Christian without having to believe, literally, in the Cosmic Male
Parent. Even then, it is difficult not to feel the force of the image,
because images sway our emotions more deeply than conceptions. As a
devout Christian you would be saying day after day the prayer, "Our
Father who art in heaven," and eventually it gets you: you are relating
emotionally to IT as to an idealized father—male, loving but stern, and
a personal being quite other than yourself. Obviously, you must be other
than God so long as you conceive yourself as the separate ego, but when
we realize that this form of identity is no more than a social institution,
and one which has ceased to be a workable life-game, the sharp division
between oneself and the ultimate reality is no longer relevant.
Furthermore, the younger members of our society have for some time
been in growing rebellion against paternal authority and the paternal
state. For one reason, the home in an industrial society is chiefly a
dormitory, and the father does not work there, with the result that wife
and children have no part in his vocation. He is just a character who
brings in money, and after working hours he is supposed to forget about
his job and have fun. Novels, magazines, television, and popular
cartoons therefore portray "Dad" as an incompetent clown. And the
image has some truth in it because Dad has fallen for the hoax that work
is simply something you do to make money, and with money you can
get anything you want.


It is no wonder that an increasing proportion of college students want
no part in Dad's world, and will do anything to avoid the rat-race of the
salesman, commuter, clerk, and corporate executive. Professional men,
too—architects, doctors, lawyers, ministers, and professors—have
offices away from home, and thus, because the demands of their
families boil down more and more to money, are ever more tempted to
regard even professional vocations as ways of making money. All this is
further aggravated by the fact that parents no longer educate their own
children. Thus the child does not grow up with understanding of or
enthusiasm for his father's work. Instead, he is sent to an understaffed
school run mostly by women which, under the circumstances, can do no
more than hand out mass-produced education which prepares the child
for everything and nothing. It has no relation whatever to his father's
vocation.



Along with this devaluation of the father, we are becoming
accustomed to a conception of the universe so mysterious and so
impressive that even the best father-image will no longer do for an
explanation of what makes it run. But the problem then is that it is
impossible for us to conceive an image higher than the human image.
Few of us have ever met an angel, and probably would not recognize it
if we saw one, and our images of an impersonal or suprapersonal God
are hopelessly subhuman—jello, featureless light, homogenized space,
or a whopping jolt of electricity. However, our image of man is
changing as it becomes clearer and clearer that the human being is not
simply and only his physical organism. My body is also my total
environment, and this must be measured by light-years in the billions.
Hitherto the poets and philosophers of science have used the vast
expanse and duration of the universe as a pretext for reflections on the
unimportance of man, forgetting that man with "that enchanted loom,
the brain" is precisely what transforms this immense electrical pulsation
into light and color, shape and sound, large and small, hard and heavy,
long and short. In knowing the world we humanize it, and if, as we
discover it, we are astonished at its dimensions and its complexity, we
should be just as astonished that we have the brains to perceive it.
Hitherto we have been taught, however, that we are not really
responsible for our brains. We do not know (in terms of words or
figures) how they are constructed, and thus it seems that the brain and
the organism as a whole are an ingenious vehicle which has been
"given" to us, or an uncanny maze in which we are temporarily trapped.
In other words, we accepted a definition of ourselves which confined
the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This
definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow
brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way
that we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think—only we can't
put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing
such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of
all their details.


Thus it will often happen that when you tell a girl how beautiful she
is, she will say, "Now isn't that just like a man! All you men think about
is bodies. OK, so I'm beautiful, but I got my body from my parents and
it was just luck. I prefer to be admired for myself, not my chassis." Poor
little chauffeur! All she is saying is that she has lost touch with her own
astonishing wisdom and ingenuity, and wants to be admired for some
trivial tricks that she can perform with her conscious attention. And we
are all in the same situation, having dissociated ourselves from our
bodies and from the whole network of forces in which bodies can come
to birth and live.


Yet we can still awaken the sense that all this, too, is the self—a self,
however, which is far beyond the image of the ego, or of the human
body as limited by the skin. We then behold the Self wherever we look,
and its image is the universe in its light and in its darkness, in its bodies
and in its spaces. This is the new image of man, but it is still an image.
For there remains—to use dualistic words—"behind," "under,"
"encompassing," and "central" to it all the unthinkable IT, polarizing
itself in the visible contrasts of waves and troughs, solids and spaces.
But the odd thing is that this IT, however inconceivable, is no vapid
abstraction: it is very simply and truly yourself.



In the words of a Chinese Zen master, "Nothing is left to you at this
moment but to have a good laugh!" As James Broughton put it:


This is It

and I am It

and You are It

and so is That

and He is It

and She is It

and It is It

and That is That.



True humor is, indeed, laughter at one's Self—at the Divine Comedy,
the fabulous deception, whereby one comes. to imagine that a creature
in existence is not also of existence, that what man is is not also what
everything is. All the time we "know it in our bones" but conscious
attention, distracted by details and differences, cannot see the whole for
the parts.


The major trick in this deception is, of course, death. Consider death
as the permanent end of consciousness, the point at which you and your
knowledge of the universe simply cease, and where you become as if
you had never existed at all. Consider it also on a much vaster scale—
the death of the universe at the time when all energy runs out, when,
according to some cosmologists, the explosion which flung the galaxies
into space fades out like a skyrocket. It will be as if it had never
happened, which is, of course, the way things were before it did happen.
Likewise, when you are dead, you will be as you were before you were
conceived. So—there has been a flash, a flash of consciousness or a
flash of galaxies. It happened. Even if there is no one left to remember.
But if, when it has happened and vanished, things are at all as they
were before it began (including the possibility that there were no
things), it can happen again. Why not? On the other hand, I might
suppose that after it has happened things aren't the same as they were
before. Energy was present before the explosion, but after the explosion
died out, no energy was left. For ever and ever energy was latent. Then
it blew up, and that was that. It is, perhaps, possible to imagine that
what had always existed got tired of itself, blew up, and stopped. But
this is a greater strain on my imagination than the idea that these flashes
are periodic and rhythmic. They may go on and on, or round and round:
it doesn't make much difference. Furthermore, if latent energy had
always existed before the explosion, I find it difficult to think of a
single, particular time coming when it had to stop. Can anything be half
eternal? That is, can a process which had no beginning come to an end?
I presume, then, that with my own death I shall forget who I was, just
as my conscious attention is unable to recall, if it ever knew, how to
form the cells of the brain and the pattern of the veins. Conscious
memory plays little part in our biological existence. Thus as my
sensation of "I-ness," of being alive, once came into being without
conscious memory or intent, so it will arise again and again, as the
"central" Self—the IT—appears as the self/other situation in its myriads
of pulsating forms—always the same and always new, a here in the
midst of a there, a now in the midst of then, and a one in the midst of
many. And if I forget how many times I have been here, and in how
many shapes, this forgetting is the necessary interval of darkness
between every pulsation of light. I return in every baby born.
Actually, we know this already. After people die, babies are born—
and, unless they are automata, every one of them is, just as we ourselves
were, the "I" experience coming again into being. The conditions of
heredity and environment change, but each of those babies incarnates
the same experience of being central to a world that is "other." Each
infant dawns into life as I did, without any memory of a past. Thus
when I am gone there can be no experience, no living through, of the
state of being a perpetual "has-been." Nature "abhors the vacuum" and
the I-feeling appears again as it did before, and it matters not whether
the interval be ten seconds or billions of years. In unconsciousness all
times are the same brief instant.
This is so obvious, but our block against seeing it is the ingrained
and compelling myth that the "I" comes into this world, or is thrown out
from it, in such a way as to have no essential connection with it. Thus
we do not trust the universe to repeat what it has already done—to "I"
itself again and again. We see it as an eternal arena in which the
individual is no more than a temporary stranger—a visitor who hardly
belongs—for the thin ray of consciousness does not shine upon its own
source. In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is
looking at itself—through our eyes and IT's.



Now you know—even if it takes you some time to do a double-take
and get the full impact. It may not be easy to recover from the many
generations through which the fathers have knocked down the children,
like dominoes, saying "Don't you dare think that thought! You're just a
little upstart, just a creature, and you had better learn your place." On
the contrary, you're IT. But perhaps the fathers were unwittingly trying
to tell the children that IT plays IT cool. You don't come on (that is, on
stage) like IT because you really are IT, and the point of the stage is to
show on, not to show off. To come on like IT—to play at being God—is
to play the Self as a role, which is just what it isn't. When IT plays, it
plays at being everything else.



From Chapter 6 of his book: "On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are"

PDF       HERE

Monday, April 21, 2014

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - I have seen the truth


I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth — it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it.


Jiddu Krishnamurti - How do you know?


Question: You have realized reality. Can you tell us what God is?

Krishnamurti: How do you know I have realized? To know that I have realized, you also must have
realized. This is not just a clever answer. To know something you must be of it. You must yourself
have had the experience also and therefore your saying that I have realized has apparently no
meaning. What does it matter if I have realized or have not realized? Is not what I am saying the
truth? Even if I am the most perfect human being, if what I say is not the truth why would you even
listen to me? Surely my realization has nothing whatever to do with what I am saying and the man
who worships another because that other has realized is really worshipping authority and therefore
he can never find the truth. To understand what has been realized and to know him who has realized is not at all important, is it?
I know the whole tradition says, ”Be with a man who has realized.” How can you know that he
has realized? All that you can do is to keep company with him and even that is extremely difficult
nowadays. There are very few good people, in the real sense of the word - people who are not
seeking something, who are not after something. Those who are seeking something or are after
something are exploiters and therefore it is very difficult for anyone to find a companion to love.
We idealize those who have realized and hope that they will give us something, which is a false
relationship. How can the man who has realized communicate if there is no love? That is our
difficulty. In all our discussions we do not really love each other; we are suspicious. You want
something from me, knowledge, realization, or you want to keep company with me, all of which
indicates that you do not love. You want something and therefore you are out to exploit. If we really
love each other then there will be instantaneous communication. Then it does not matter if you
have realized and I have not or if you are the high or the low.

excerpt from "First and last Freedom" PDF Here


Sunday, April 20, 2014


Jiddu Krishnamurti - You and nothingness are one


You are nothing.
You may have your name and title, your property and bank account, you may have power and be famous; but in spite of all these safeguards, you are as nothing. You may be totally unaware of this emptiness, this nothingness, or you may simply not want to be aware of it; but it is there, do what you will to avoid it.
You may try to escape from it in devious ways, through personal or collective violence, through individual or collective worship, through knowledge or amusement;
but whether you are asleep or awake, it is always there.
You can come upon your relationship to this nothingness and its fear only by being choicelessly aware of the escapes.
You are not related to it as a separate, individual entity;
you are not the observer watching it;
without you, the thinker, the observer, it is not.
You and nothingness are one; you and nothingness are a joint phenomenon, not two separate processes.
If you, the thinker, are afraid of it and approach it as something contrary and opposed to you, then any action you may take towards it must inevitably lead to illusion and so to further conflict and misery.
When there is the discovery, the experiencing of that nothingness as you, then
fear—which exists only when the thinker is separate from his thoughts and so tries to
establish a relationship with them—completely drops away.

PDF  Here