Jean Klein - Where There is Happiness, Nobody is Happy

Do you live in a state of emptiness? I mean, when you are in meditation or even walking down the road, are you always in a state of emptiness?

Emptiness is not a state; I correct you, it is a non-state.

I’m curious to know whether, when thoughts spring up out of that emptiness, do they go on a quarter of your time, or three-quarters of your time, and if they do, how can you keep your mind still all the time like that? Aren’t you wanting to think about things?

I never think.

You never think. When you answer a question, are you not thinking?

No. I hear the question in silence, and the answer comes out of silence.

Don’t you yearn for something? Isn’t there a yearning, a magnet that is pulling you or bringing thoughts into you that makes you want to think? I’m trying to understand, because it used to be that I did not think; I used to space out when I was a child and I would just be nowhere. I would repeat a phrase over and over again or I would have a picture in my mind and would go through a whole picture and repeat the picture again and again. So I would not think. To get out of that, I worked to think, and now it is like a process—always wanting to go on. I always have to have my intellect going on.

What is the motive of this intentional thinking?

Knowledge, excitement, discovery.

But in the end what do you want really? Happiness? Joy? Peace?

Yes, joy; exciting joy.

So you think in order to find happiness. And have you found it?

Oh, yes.

So you are happy?

Yes, I am.

Well, marvelous!

I have states of spontaneous ecstasy where it… these time periods of incredible ecstasy, just joy and excitement and wonder… there have been time periods in my life, and then they go away and are not there any more….

You go away.

You mean, I go away?

Yes, be aware of these moments when you go away.

When I go away from the ecstasy, or when the ecstasy is not there any more?

You go away from your real self.

Oh, I see. So, you are saying that the joining of the self is the ecstasy?

You go away from your real self. Be aware in the moment when you go away. In happiness and in joy you cannot say, “I’m happy,” “I’m in joy”—it is not possible. When you think, “I’m happy,” you objectify it, make it a state. Where there is happiness, nobody is happy, nothing is happy. There is only happiness. You are still involved in calculative thinking, looking for a result, an experience. Real thinking is when you go away from thinking. When you look away from thinking, that is real thinking. All real thinking starts free from any thought. Real thinking comes out of silence. You may have a certain forefeeling of what you are looking for.

I get really confused with the terms: what is thinking and what is not.

What you understand by thinking starts with thinking. That is intentional thinking, superficial thinking, surface thinking. That is not thinking at all.

Just an exercise.

Yes. Real thinking starts from the unknown, from silence. This thinking has a completely other way of flowing, I would say. There is never assertion, there is never domination, never manipulation. This thinking is constantly in a state of “I don’t know.” The background of real thinking is “I don’t know.”

So is the excitement that comes out of the “I don’t know” the excitement of the non-state?

Yes. You are completely open to the unknown. In any case, what you are looking for you cannot know. All that you know is representation. When you say “I know,” you represent it. Thinking is in representation, but your totality—what you are fundamentally—can never be thought. You can only be it.

-Jean Klein

From Living Truth  

 This book can be purchased from Non-Duality Press

Read more about Jean Klein HERE

Jeff Foster - The Kingdom of One

Each breath is unique,
as each moment is unique,
as you are unique, friend.

Every wave
is a unique expression
in and of
the vast Ocean of life.

Unique, yet One.
One, but never the same.

This is the paradox
of each wave,
of each breath,
of each moment
as it dances in emptiness.

So take this breath, friend. 

And take your place
in the Kingdom of One.

https://www.facebook.com/LifeWithoutACentre?fref=nf 

http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/ 

Gavin Bryars - Cello Concerto - Julian Lloyd Webber

Araqi - All is Love

Every word of every tongue is Love telling a
story to her own ears.
Every thought in every mind, She whispers a
secret to her own Self.
Every vision in every eye, She shows her beauty
to her own sight.
Love courses through everything,
No, Love is everything.
How can you say, there is no love, when nothing
but Love exists?
All that you see has appeared because of Love.
All shines from Love,
All pulses with Love,
All flows from Love -
No, once again, all is Love!

Fakhruddin Iraqi, aka 'Araqi (1213-1289)
Persian philosopher and mystic of the Islamic tradition
From "The World's Wisdom,"
by Philip Novak

Kabir - The key of Love

So many bodies, so many opinions!
But my Beloved, though invisible, is in all these bodies.
There is no life at all without the Beloved;
the Self lives as each and every one.
What, then, 0 friend, are you searching for like a fool?
The object of your quest is within you,
as the oil is in the sesame seed.
As the pupil is in the eye, so is the Lord in the body;
The deluded do not know Him, and search for Him without.
The lock of error shuts the gate;
open it with the key of Love.
By opening the door, you shall wake the Beloved.
Kabir says: 0 brother, do not pass by such good fortune as this!

Nagarjuna - The Refutation of Criticism

Dependently arisen entities
Are called “emptiness,”
[For] that which is dependently arisen
Is that which has no inherent nature. (22)

One magical creation halts another,
One illusory being puts an end to
The wrong views of his illusory opponent.
When I refute the arguments of others, that is exactly what is happening. (23)

Another example: suppose a man falls in love with an illusory woman,
Then another illusion comes along
And shows the man what a fool he has been—
That’s my work. (27)

If I took a position,
Then I would have a flaw.
Since I take no position,
I have no flaw at all. (29)

If the son is produced by the father,
But the father is also produced by that very son,
Then will you please tell me,
Which one is the true “cause” and which the true “result?” (49)

If emptiness is possible,
Then all objects are possible, all levels attainable.
If emptiness is impossible,
Then everything else is [impossible] as well. (70)

I prostrate to the Awakened One, the Buddha,
Who taught that dependent arising and emptiness have the same meaning,
And that this is the middle way path.

Your words are supreme, their meaning unsurpassed. (Concluding homage)

Under the guidance of Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, translated by Ari Goldfield, May 21, 1997.

Vernon L.Howard - Psychic sleep

Art Andrew Wyeth

  Psychic sleep is the cause of every human problem and disaster. It is sleeping people who suffer from heartache and loneliness, from fear and violence. Only self-awakening can end these sorrows. However — and please emphasize this point in your mind — man does not know he is asleep. So deep is his immersion in psychic hypnosis, that he instantly denies his actual condition. In other words, he does not know that he does not know. He spends his entire life under the gigantic illusion of being happy and productive, never once facing the terror in which he lives. Man huddles fearfully in a haunted house which he calls a castle.
    Have you ever been in a room full of people when someone behaved foolishly or childishly? You sensed that he did not know how he appeared to others. In fact, he may have believed he was behaving cleverly or courageously. Everyone in the room saw him as he really was, except the man himself. That is a perfect example of human hypnosis, of psychic unawareness.
    The ancient philosopher, Socrates, provided a classic illustration of man’s mental sleep. He told about a group of men who were huddled together in a deep cave. Their only light was a fire that blazed in the center of the cavern. The fire cast strange shadows against the wall of the cave, frightening the prisoners. So the men sat there in terror and confusion.
    One of the prisoners made up his mind to explore the cave. When doing so, he found a secret tunnel. Following it all the way, he finally found himself in the outer world of sunshine and beauty.
    We will now look at a chief characteristic of spiritual sleep. When this is understood, all the pieces of life fall into place, revealing the whole picture. Man has a false idea of who he is. He has an illusory sense of identity. This false self is manufactured out of self-flattering imaginations and out of self-pleasing labels. He labels himself as a successful man, or as an intelligent thinker, or as a human being with lofty motives. But these are mere ideas he has about himself and he is not these ideas. We can easily prove this.
    Whenever a man feels depressed or irritated, it is simply because his false identity seems not to be confirmed. Both these reactions are false, so man is their slave.
    Have you ever noticed how nervous people get when their pet ideas are challenged? Let this be a clue for you. By patient self-investigation we discover who we are not, and that ends the anxiety of not knowing who we are.
    To summarize this vital point, man wrongly believes that he possesses a separate self, an individual ego. This false idea causes fear, loneliness, neurosis. It throws him into conflict with other people who are also under the illusion of having separate selves. No man is apart from the whole, from the all. Man is one with the universe. Human beings are like dozens of ponds, each reflecting the light from the same moon. This is not philosophy, this is fact.

 

The Esoteric Path to aNew Life http://www.anewlife.org/ http://www.vernonhoward.org/

Stuart Schwartz - The addiction to ME

The addiction to ME is the final addiction
it is the motivator for all the other addictions we have meetings for.

The symptoms of ME are my personal obsessions:
my desires, my problems, my solutions, my seeking,
my grasping, and especially my future.

In any given moment it is possible to have a disinterest
in all personal concerns and to leave them alone.

The meeting is Satsang, a gathering in truth.
OM is the practice,
being the sound and presence of Silence,
the undercurrent of the universe.

To know ourselves as silent open awareness is limitless freedom.

http://www.satsangwithstuart.com/

Hafiz - Attachments

Art Kamran Pouyan

Once a young man came to me and said,

 “Dear Master,

I am feeling strong and brave today,
And I would like to know the truth
About all of my –attachments.”

And I replied,

“Attachments?
Attachments!

Sweet Heart,
Do you really want me to speak to you
About all your attachments,

When I can see so clearly
You have built, with so much care,
Such a great brothel
To house all of your pleasures.

You have even surrounded the whole damn place
With armed guards and vicious dogs
to protect your desires

So that you can sneak away
From time to time
And try to squeeze light
Into your parched being
From a source as fruitful
As a dried date pit
That even a bird
Is wise enough to spit out.

Your attachments! My dear,
Let’s not speak of those,

For Hafiz understands the sufferings
Of your heart.

Hafiz knows
The torments and agonies
That every mind on the way to Annihilation in the Sun
Must endure.

So at night in my prayers I often stop
And ask a thousand angels to join in
And Applaud,

And Applaud
Anything,
Anything in this world
That can bring your heart comfort!”

~ Hafiz translated by Daniel Ladinsky

susan kahn - No Separate Self

picture H.Kopp-Delaney

People commonly believe that they have a separate self that is fixed and unchanging, an inside core that is a me. Despite noticing that all thoughts, feelings, perceptions and body sensations change every instant, it is believed that there exists a separate self that remains the same.
~
So one holds on tightly to this identity of me and to the mine for fear of grave loss, leaping from one imagined cliff to another.  However, that very attachment and that very strategy, only fuels fear.  It is a painful feedback loop and an unnecessary one, as it is driven by the illusion of fundamental separation.
~
There is no actual separation that a person has from life to defend against. There is not an independent self that remains removed from what happens.  Experiences and all sense of subjectivity depend upon countless conditions that are not even considered to be subjective. A seer, for instance, could exist without the seen.  Therefore, there is no actual seer of things.  For a seer cannot see without what does not see. This is because a subject needs an object to be a subject.  Both are inseparable, mutually arisen.  This also applies to awareness, emotion, perception and sensation.
~
This is why the separate self is an illusion.  There is no independent self to be found.  What we call a self depends upon thought, feeling, sensation, perception, a body, which further depend upon all that is the earth and sky.  If even air or water was removed, there would be no self essence, nature or being left over.  Whatever exists dependently, cannot also exist independently or separately.
~
It’s the same as with a house.  A house depends upon wood, cement, windows, nails, etc., which further depend upon rain clouds, air, metal, minerals and so forth.  There is nothing independent that is house, that exists as its own thing.  One might say that these parts belong to the house.  If these parts did belong to the house, then the house was already there before the parts, and there must then be two houses, one with parts and one without parts.
~
A good emptiness inquiry is to see if you can find even one aspect of what you consider to be the self that exists independently and does not depend upon something else or on other conditions.  As another example, thought depends upon what does not think, because it does not exist with its own independent nature.  For thoughts are always thoughts of objects, including thought objects that do not themselves think. There no subject-object divide.
~
There is diversity in life, but this is not a diversity of separate things. Everything is an interreflection, just as objects in dreams objects lack their own substance and are not self-established.  And as there are no separate entities existing as their own things, there is not one universal essence that is everything either.  Nothing can be pinned down.  Everything is empty of self-establishment.
~
Being interrelated, who can say that things are the same or different?   There are appearances and the functional naming of things, but they are not self-created, nor self-enduring entities.  As everything depends upon relative otherness, rather than existing in and of themselves, a self of persons and all phenomena must be empty of their own separate being.
~
Realizing this is how fear is removed from the root

http://emptinessteachings.com/

Coleman Barks - Not true distinctions -Rumi ❤

“This opening up of identity is the great work, and no effort in it is ever wasted. Those who find their way to the shore of this sea are ennobled and transformed. Those diving in discover they are no different from the sea. They were God’s secret. Now God is their secret…”

“We are moving into a new course of study, away from the certainties of acquired knowledge and into the mysterious work of knowing ourselves.”

~Coleman Barks & Michael Green from The Illuminated Prayer

Papaji - It is so easy to Be

Question: How to stop thinking?

Papaji: By Being! (giggles) When you think that you are an object, a person, a body, or some other idea, but by Being there is nothing! Just Being. And Being is already there. You are always Being. To become something you must meditate and perform some mantra, ritual, practice. Just to Be is simple. Without Being you can't do any practice.

So don't think of anything else. Just Be!
It is so easy to Be.

Question: But when I try to just be, so much thinking happens. I am sure everyone has this problem.

Papaji: Thinking happens when you want to become something. Then you must think. But to not become something what is there to do? Stay as you are! Be as you are in whatever circumstances, just always Be, It doesn't need any practice. Whatever you get by practice you will lose, but Being will never be lost because you will not get it by any experience or practice. It simply is, Simply Be.
Don't stir your mind in Being, don't think and don't make effort. I will tell you how to be Being itself. No effort, no thinking. Avoid thinking and avoid not thinking. What is between these two?

Art  Mamhoud Farshchian

Adyashanti - My secret is Silence

artist unknown

The waves of mind
demand so much of Silence.
But She does not talk back
does not give answers nor arguments.
She is the hidden author of every thought
every feeling
every moment.
Silence.
She speaks only one word.
And that word is this very existence.
No name you give Her
touches Her
captures Her.
No understanding
can embrace Her.
Mind throws itself at Silence
demanding to be let in.
But no mind can enter into
Her radiant darkness
Her pure and smiling nothingness.
The mind hurls itself
into sacred questions.
But Silence remains
unmoved by the tantrums.
She asks only for nothing.
Nothing.
But you won't give it to Her
because it is the last coin
in your pocket.
And you would rather
give her your demands than
your sacred and empty hands.

http://www.adyashanti.org/

Ghalib - Single face

The world is no more than the Beloved's single face;

In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist.

Each place, each moment, sings its particular song of not-being and being.

Without reason, the clear glass equally mirrors wisdom and madness.

Those who claim knowledge are wrong; prayer just leads to trance;

Appearance and faith are mere lees in the Unknowing Wine.

Wherever the Footprint is found,

that handful of dust holds the oneness of worlds.

This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love

That the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light.

~ Ghalib

translated by Jane Hirshfield

from The Enlightened Heart,

An anthology of sacred poetry edited

by Stephen Mitchell