Questions for contemplation
Did you come to learn or get something here? Something new? Something you don’t have or are not yet? It can be very subtle!
If it is sat-chit-ananda as Hinduism calls it – existence (being), consciousness (knowing), bliss (loving to be or stillness) then:
Can you deny your being? (Try not to be!);
Are you unaware (unconscious)?;
Would you rather be dead?
Doesn’t it mean that YOU ARE THAT (sat-chit-ananda) already?
If is true what they say in the great mantra (Mahavakya) – I Am That – wouldn’t it be essential to look what the word ‘THAT’ represents?
What is THAT in our language?
What is not THAT?
What is the word after all?
What is the word “I” or “ME”?
Where you born with any words?
How were they acquired?
If Buddhism points to it as ‘non-conceptual, ever fresh presence awareness and nothing else (just this) – are you not aware of this presence right now?
What else do you expect if they say ‘just this, nothing else’?
In Christianity we have Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, what does it mean?
Isn’t ‘Omnipotence’ the TOTAL power? Is there any room for Higher Power, power of thought or entity doing something?
Is it any other power running the universe or your body?
Are you doing (do you have power to do) digestion or replacing cells in the body?
Are you doing seeing or thinking (how?)?
Isn’t ‘Omnipresence’ the TOTAL presence? Can ‘you’ be separated or excluded?
Isn’t ‘Omniscience’ the TOTAL knowing?
Is belief ever the actual? (example: Thought of lust is a sin, Earth is flat, Santa Claus is real…) Is that true when investigated?
When we seek to become whole and complete – we want liberation – who is that for? Who is the “we”? Is there a personal self?
Is the Person ever a reality? Where did that word ‘Person’ come from? Doesn’t it mean THE MASK in Latin? The Mask of a conceptual image?
Isn’t the conceptual image based in believed past? Isn’t it dead? Where is the freshness and newness in it?
Relating to the false image, what are you going to liberate yourself from?
What realisation and for who?
Do you still believe you can find the answer in the mind?
Do you think you can get peace of mind?
What is the nature of mind? How does it vibrate into interrelated opposites? Can it work in any other way?
What is there when vibration ceases for a moment or is not attended to?
If there was an answer in thought, how long would that be valid for? And why hasn’t anybody found it there yet?
Is the word – the actual? Can the word water – make you wet; or word fire – burn?
Is it any different with the rest of the words in the manifestation? Are they the real things?
Isn’t it dream-like illusion sustained by the energy of belief (attention)?
Is there anything permanent or static in the manifestation? Anything solid?
Do you have the same body you were born with?
Where is that original cell, sperm and ovum dividing into a foetus – right now?
Did it start then or much earlier, when your parents where eating food and breathing prana which enabled these cells to form?
What is the body anyway? What is it made of?
Is any of the elements (air, matter (earth), fire (temperature), water, space separate from the totality?
Can you separate yourself from (remove) water (body is mostly water!), air, heat or space?
Can you function if you stop replenishing them from the environment?
Isn’t the body just a vibrating pattern of energy? When you break it to elements or further to subatomic particles or waves or energy – isn’t it as they say the no-thing? Isn’t it the same with every form in this manifestation made of phenomena?
What is phenomena, how does the dictionary explains it? Isn’t it that, which appears to be?
So are you this body?
Don’t you call it my body just like my coat or my car?
Could the body be a kind of coat or car?
Doesn’t language suggest it when you say you are an owner of the body or coat or car?
Who is that owner?
Are you this mind?
Don’t you say my mind just the same way?
Can you show me your mind?
Is it anything else other than thought?
What is thought? Isn’t it a subtle sound or vibration of energy?
How did it all start after the baby was born?
What can you remember without words, before reasoning and storing memory was possible?
How did you learn you are a person, who told you and what did they say you were?
What did you add to it, what are you relating to as “me” right now?
Isn’t it all relating to the past events? How else would you know what you like or dislike?
Isn’t this reference point a dualism?
Can there be a duality in non-duality?
If ego is a problem, can you get rid of it? Who would be trying to remove it if not ego itself?
Is there such a thing as an ego?
In relating to past image of what is good or bad; and wanting to keep the good and push away the bad – aren’t we in conflict with what is right now? Isn’t it RESISTANCE?
Doesn’t conflict make you anxious, depressed, uneasy?
Isn’t un-easiness a dis-ease?
Isn’t all the psychological suffering a conflict or dis-ease?
What if you don’t relate it to a reference point (me)? Where does it go?
How about Nature? Does it relate anything to anything? Doesn’t it also vibrate in opposites, day/night, summer/winter – without any conflict? Does silence fight the sound?
25 Are you anything other than Nature?
How to do the investigation? Look: Are you seeing right now?
Did you decide to start it in the morning? Or was it there, already available as the rest of functioning?
Isn’t it the same seeing with you right now? Content is different, but has the seeing capacity change?
Isn’t it the same with hearing?
Does my eye tell me “I see”? Does it say “Look at this, look at that”?
Isn’t the thought “I see” merely a translation of the mind creating a subject-object split in plain singular seeing?
Can that thought “I see” actually see? Close your eyes and check!
If eye is only an instrument and thought only translation – WHAT IS SEEING?
Same way – does the thought “I hear” – actually hear?
Is the thought “I’m aware” – your awareness? I choose – the choice maker?
Can you choose thoughts? Would you ever have unhappy thoughts if you could choose them?
How many thoughts can a CORPSE have? How much can it see or hear?
How much information can you get out of the computer if the power is not ON?
How long are you searching? Could it be that you are seeking in the wrong place?
Do you think you can find it in future? Become something? Is becoming – being? If it is to be found in time, can you trust it? If it has a beginning, wouldn’t it be just passing phenomena, experience? Is that what you want? Pleasure? Bliss?
Isn’t TIME the mind? Is there a past or future or time if you don’t think about it?
Who are you if you don’t think about it? Who are you without your past? Would the conceptual answer ever satisfy you? For how long?
What is wrong with right now if you don’t think about it?
ReplyDeleteGreat,thank you for posting!
Hello,
ReplyDeletemy name is Petrica Verdes, translator of Ilie Cioara into English.
I also manage the page https://www.facebook.com/silencebook
I would like to send you all 4 of Ilie Cioara's books in pdf format.
If you feel inspired by them, you can use any part of them to create posts for your blog.
It is simply beautiful what you are doing - the silent emotion provided by words and images.
If you post something by Ilie Cioara, I will also share it on the Ilie Cioara Facebook page.
Namaste. Pranaams <3
I uploaded the books here https://easyupload.io/vacu92
ReplyDeleteand here https://transferxl.com/08jm2dY5mxXYdN
If you write an article, also post the link in the comments on the Ilie Cioara - The Silence of the Mind - Facebook Page and I will repost it.
Thank you again
DeleteHi Petrica
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your kind comment and your offerings...
i would love the pdf of course...
i believe i have 6 posts from Ilie Cioara already here...
if you scroll down there is a search box where you can find posts by author....
Thanks again.
Love/Light.
♡
actually there about 12 of his writings....
DeleteThank you.
ReplyDeleteI already posted a few of the No-mind's Land posts and I will post all of them, gradually, on the Facebook page.
I love them so much and I love the reverence and love you put in making these posts, they are great. There is an exquisite understanding of no-mind in the way you make this blog with love.
If you feel inspired, do some more, but there is no obligation on your part as far as I'm concerned. If any of these do get made, I take them as an unexpected gift.
I've known your blog for a year now, and shared some of your Ilie Cioara posts. I just now had the idea to send the books.
You can also check the notes section here
https://www.facebook.com/pg/silencebook/notes
In the notes section I posted a few new excepts which are not in any of the books.
As I said, there is no obligation, I just felt great joy to send you the books because I feel you will truly understand them.
Have a beautiful day.
Lots of love
I wanted to give you an interesting quote, where Papaji explains no-mind (Nothing Ever Happened vol 2).
ReplyDeletePapaji explains explain the difference between silent mind and no-mind.
Silent mind means to keep quiet temporarily. It is simply a suppression of the objects in the mind. It can happen many times, but it will not last.
Still mind is also temporary. Meditation or concentration can result in still mind. It is like the flame of a candle. When there is no breeze, the flame will be still. When a wind comes, the candle will flicker and go out. Still mind will be blown away as soon as it encounters the wind of a new thought....
Before we speak about no-mind, we have to see what mind is. Let us start from consciousness. Sometimes you want to look in a mirror to see what you look like. In the same way, consciousness sometimes wants to look at itself to see what it is. A wave will arise in consciousness. It will ask itself, ‘Who am I?’
This wave that arises in consciousness imagines itself to be separate from the ocean. This wave becomes ‘I’, the individual self. Once it has become separate, this ‘I’ degenerates further and starts to create. First there will be space, the vast frontierless emptiness of infinite space. And along with space, time will be created, because wherever there is space, there must be time. This time becomes past, present and future and from these three, attachments arise.
All creation arises within the past, the present and the future. This is called samsara. Samsara means time. Samsara is endless past, present and future. Anything which is born in time, which stays in time, will be finished in time. And all this is mind. The ‘I’ arose and created space, then time, then samsara. This ‘I’ has now become mind, and this mind is ‘I’.
Then at some point an intense desire for freedom will arise. The desire will arise from consciousness itself. Originally there was a descent from consciousness – from the ‘I’ to space to time to samsara. Now there will be an ascent. As you ascend, attachment to physical objects will go, then vital, then mental, then intellectual. Finally you return to ‘I’ alone. This ‘I’ is still mind.
This ‘I’ has rejected everything. It exists alone with no attachments. It cannot go back to the world of attachments, to samsara. It has a desire for freedom; it wants to return to its original place. The ‘I’ which rose from consciousness is now returning to consciousness. It takes the decision, ‘Become no-mind now’,and with that decision the ‘I’ is gone. The ‘I’, which is the mind, has been rejected, but there is still something there which is between the ‘I’ and consciousness. This in-between thing is called no-mind. This in-between entity will merge into consciousness, and then it will become consciousness itself...
When you go from mind back to consciousness, you go through this stage of no-mind. In that state there will be the feeling, the recollection, ‘Now I have no-mind’. Gradually, slowly, this no-mind will merge back into the beyond. But how it happens I do not know.