Nisargadatta Maharaj - "being lived"

 Quote of the Imaginary Moment by Nisargadatta Maharaj

“If you have really perceived this, is it possible for you to go on thinking any longer that there is any villain in life with an independent, autonomous entity, possessing enormous power for 'evil'? Or, that there is any Avatar possessing enormous power for 'good'? Surely you must realize that 'good' or ‘bad' are mere inter-dependent opposites, essential manifestations in duality, appearances acting their respective roles. Indeed, there can be no entity separate from the overall.”
 “Is there any question of having to decide the propriety or otherwise of any action? Who will make the decision? Does one have the independence of volition to make the decision? Is there really any choice? Once it is perceived that there is no entity with any independence of action, would 'living' thereafter not be totally non-volitional living? Would not, in other words, the perceiving itself lead to an abandonment – or more accurately-- a spontaneous cessation of the very concept of volitional activity? One may think that one lives; actually, one is only 'being lived.'”

 

post and following comment by Miranda Warren

 

When it is somehow known without question that one’s apparent life is not one’s own, that there is no stage with separate actors but simply a single play in which all appear, the ability to attribute labels to what happens seems to fall away. In the movie you may see the demon chasing the little girl, but there is no separate demon, no little girl, just “appearances acting their respective roles.” It is the very same in the movie we call “life.” When the concept of volitional activity, of freedom of choice held by autonomous beings, is seen as illusory, the division of what happens into separate parts that are sometime good or other times bad is discontinued. The character is seen as reacting without any more choice than the movie character, and your own apparent reactions to life are seen as lacking any independence. Nothing is apart from all that is, and the life of an endless series of discrete events, judged constantly as good or bad or harmful or hurtful, dissolves into the seamless awe of what simply is. ❤