Longchenpa on Dzogchen view

Longchenpa clarifies the Dzogchen view:

"Because Awareness (Rigpa) has no finite essence, and because suchness and deliberate activity are mutually exclusive, and because Awareness is already timelessly and spontaneously present, nothing need be done concerning levels of realization on which to train, spiritual paths to traverse, mandalas to visualize, empowerments to be bestowed, paths to cultivate in meditation, samaya to uphold, enlightened activities to accomplish, and so forth. This is because there is no need to accomplish anew what is already timelessly and spontaneously accomplished. If there were such need, it would be inappropriate to use the conventional designation "spontaneously present and uncompounded." And it would follow that dharmakaya was subject to destruction, because it would be compounded, and this because it would be created by causes and conditions." (practices etc.) Longchenpa, Choying Dzod, A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmission, page 120, first paragraph. Padma Publications.

Page 190: first main paragraph:

Longchenpa writes: "Since all phenomena are timelessly free, nothing need be done to free them anew through realization."

Next paragraph: "Even the thought that freedom comes about through direct introduction is deluded. One strives to free this essence from whatever binds it, but nothing need be done to free it, for unobstructed Awareness, which has never existed as anything whatsoever, does not entail any duality of something to be realized and someone to realize it. There is equalness because nothing is improved by realization or worsened by it's absence, so there is no need for any adventitious realization. And because there never has existed anything to realize- for the ultimate nature of phenomena is beyond ordinary consciousness- to speak of realization on even the relative level is nothing but deluded. What can be shown at this point is the transcendence of view and meditation, in which nothing need be done regarding realization, nothing need be directly introduced, and no state of meditation need be cultivated. So there is the expression 'it is irrelevant whether or not one has realization'."

Page 191: middle paragraph

"In this case what makes perfect sense in the Ati approach is the superior realization whereby one directly experiences the unobstructed state in it's nakedness, without relying on anything whatsoever. Since one does not experience separation from the essence of Awareness even for an instant, to say that is realized or perceived is merely to use a conventional expression."

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Chuck Surface - Understanding and Experience

Intellectual understanding, however diamond-like, will only push "you" shallowly beneath the waves. And that pushing, born of the mind having reached a “conclusion”, will need to be continued; remembering, reminding one's self, and re-concluding, again and again, of the "idea", the concept, that "All there is, is Consciousness." So many have planted a flag here, just beneath the waves, on the far frontiers of Heaven.

There "you" will drift, having seen through, intellectually, the falsity of identification with the wave you had taken yourself to be, identification, still present, now having simply shifted, in intellectual understanding alone, to the Ocean. You will have completed the “physics class” of contemporary nonduality.

You will have thought yourself, reasoned yourself, and come to a conclusion that you are free. You will know that you are not an object-perceiver-experiencer-person, but will continue to feel as if you are, in ways vast, varied, and supremely subtle.  Initially the psycho-intellectual shift will give cause for celebration, for it is not inconsequential. But in time... you will wonder why that which you had taken to be Wine, tastes like tepid water. The “thirst” of the mind will have been satisfied, but the Heart’s longing for the Drunkenness of Fullness, Completion, and Bliss will remain unsatisfied.

You will not know the Taste, the Fragrance, the Experience of Absolute Nonduality; the Embrace of The Beloved; the vanishing, in experience, not concept, of space, time, objects, and yourself. Nor will you know, in open-eyed existence in the Dream of space and time, the Experience of Dissolution and Bliss that only comes when not only the mind is Liberated, but the Heart, and the somatic aspect of the manifest Being is Illumined. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is Within. And you cannot read, hear, watch, or think your way to the Experience of it.  However powerfully evocative, these will only bring you to the frontiers. You cannot come to the Experience by locating it on a map, reading a description, however profound and articulate, or looking at photos, however beautiful.
 
You must dive deep...  behind...  before all that appears, including the felt sense of yourself as the investigator, the enquirer, the one seeking to experience Pure Awareness. For Heaven, Pure Awareness, is only experienced when all that appears ceases, including the experiencer-perceiver, leaving only That to which, from which, within which, and most confoundingly as which, all appears.

     Back... back...
     Before... before...

     Before thinking,
     And the felt sense of yourself as the thinker.

     Before language, words, and mental images,
     And the meanings and emotions they carry.

     Before perceptions and sensations,
     And the felt sense of the their perceiver-experiencer.

     Back... back...
     Before... before...

The outward wandering Wave of Attention must be fiercely committed to discovering its Source, The Ocean within, from which it arises and to which it returns; Fierce enough not to stop at intellectual understanding; Fierce enough to go beyond, behind, before knowing and understanding; Fierce enough to move in Feeling Enquiry to the point of its own Vanishing in The Great Mystery that lays  before, beyond, behind all duality, Absolutely.

     The Kingdom of Heaven is Within.
     Go there.
     And don’t stop at understanding,
     Continue on, until Experience alone exists...

     Free, at last, of the experiencer.

     Dip the salt doll self,
     Again and again and again,
     Into the Ocean of Pure Awareness,
     Until only a handful of saltwater emerges.

     Understanding will lead you to the Shore,
     Where thinking must give way to Feeling,
     Where concept must give way to Experience,
     Of Existence as Pure Awareness...

     Heaven.

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Jeff Foster - the One who survives

You are awake.

You feel infinite depths of loneliness and despair,
no longer your own, but all of humanity’s. 

You are now moved by the smallest of things. 

A word. A sound. A breath.

Your heart has cracked open and cannot be closed.

 

They may call you 'selfish'
but they have no idea
what the self actually is.
They have not yet plunged
into its fathomless depths.

 

Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom
to know ourselves
as the One who survives.

Sometimes it is the fall
that wakes us. 

 Both photos Enzo Perrazziello

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Rumi - Subtle degrees

subtle degrees
of domination and servitude
are what you know as love

but love is different
it arrives complete
just there
like the moon in the window

like the sun
of neither east nor west
nor of anyplace

when that sun arrives
east and west arrive

desire only that
of which you have no hope
seek only that
of which you have no clue

love is the sea of not-being
and there intellect drowns

this is not the Oxus River
or some little creek
this is the shoreless sea;
here swimming ends
always in drowning

a journey to the sea
is horses and fodder
and contrivance
but at land’s end
the footsteps vanish

you lift up your robe
so as not to wet the hem;
come! drown in this sea
a thousand times

the moon passes over the
ocean of non-being

droplets of spray tear loose
and fall back
on the cresting waves

a million galaxies
are a little scum
on that shoreless sea


-- Version by Daniel Liebert
(no ode number given)
“The Rumi Collection”
Threshold Books, 1998

Amata Natasha Goldie ~ Love’s Ecstacy ~

You are my core, my essence,
Yet I cannot hear your heartbeat,
You are my song, my hearts’ calling,
Yet, I cannot feel your soft breath,
You are my deepest yearning, my intoxication,
Yet, distance tortures us, into submission,

And now, Beloved,
We are together,
Our hands move as rapid whispers,
In the forbidden forest of Loves’ desire,

O divine ache,
You leave me unfeathered,
The memory of your scent,
Traces a path of tenderness to my soul,

O sweet lover,
Come to me, in pure nakedness,
And leave the world at my feet,
This longing can only be complete,
When our worlds meet,
As one virtuoso, one symphony

To sing Loves’ ecstasy

© Amata Natasha Goldie – All rights reserved

 

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Chuck Surface - What If

What if you knew little of the walled villages,
Of religion, of belief, of faith, and philosophy,
And then experienced, one day,
What seemed, when considered after the fact,
A loss of consciousness,
The vanishing of Everything from Awareness,
Including yourself as the one aware. and yet…

Awareness continued?

And what if the nature of that Awareness,
Pure and unsullied by space, time, and objects,
In which even you, the experiencer, had vanished,
Was so Ineffably Sublime that words did not exist,
To express its Ecstasy, its Rapture, its Perfection,
The Fulfillment of your Heart's Desire,
Fullness, Completion, Bliss, and…

Love?

And what if you found yourself, thereafter,
Imbued always with the touch of that Heaven,
Felt as a Radiance in the Locus of your Heart,
Sometimes the ambient background of experience,
Sometimes flooding the foreground, acutely,
Ever available to the mind's Attention,
Ever available to the Heart's Remembrance…

A Wellspring of Grace?

And what if you then entered the spiritual marketplace,
In search of someone, anyone, to explain the Mystery,
Wandering the rows of stalls, past the shouting sellers,
Each declaring the “Truth”, and decrying the others,
Until your eyes and ears could bear it no longer,
And your Heart, bruised, pleaded with you to leave,
The pedantry, the arguments, the profaning of Love…

And return to the Simple Experience?

The simple Experience, not yet debased by the mind,
Beyond knowledge and understanding,
Not poured into the mold of another's interpretation,
Not bound by prescription, proscription, and dogma,
Not requiring you to do this, and refrain from that,
Without cause, without condition, ever present,
A touch of Heaven ever Shining…

Grace, Unimaginable.

And what if, in time, that Presence in your Heart,
Like a Wellspring of Transmutation, within,
Diminished the terrible pain of your self,
Leaving intact all that you had taken yourself to be,
But stealing from your experience, the felt sense of “you”,
That very felt sense that had vanished that fateful day,
So long ago, in time, when time and all things Vanished…

And only The Mystery remained?

And what if, now free of the need for knowledge,
You returned to the spiritual marketplace,
Moved now only by Curiosity, Wonder, and Love,
And found yourself Dancing through the stalls,
Stealing this jewel from here, that jewel from there,
Until, your satchel full to overflowing,
You Blessed them all, and returned again…

To the Simple Experience?

And what if you then were moved by Delight,
To declare in poetic verse,
“Ah… this Most Beautiful Presence,
This Shining Radiance within,
This Exquisite Rapture,
This Fulfillment of all desire,
The Divine Thief that has stolen ‘me’…

I will call it God,
I will call it Brahman,
I will call it The Beloved,
I will call it The Holy Spirit,
I will call it Emptiness,
I will call it The Inner Light,
I will call it The Unnameable…

I will call it Love.”

And what if you were told,
To your surprise and amazement,
By some among the Friends you made,
That the ember in their Hearts,
Ignited, to their Delight and Inspiration,
In moments of Relationship with you,
Shining ever more Brightly, over time…

Until they found themselves, in time,
Imbued always with the touch of that Heaven,
Felt as a Radiance in the Locus of their Heart,
Sometimes the ambient background of experience,
Sometimes flooding the foreground, acutely,
Ever available to their mind's Attention,
Ever available to their Heart's Remembrance?

I will call that… a reason to live.

And what if these Illumined Friends were told,
To their surprise and amazement,
By some among the Friends they made,
That the ember in their Hearts,
Ignited, to their Delight and Inspiration,
In moments of Relationship with them,
Shining ever more Brightly, over time…

Until they found themselves, in time,
Imbued always with the touch of that Heaven,
Felt as a Radiance in the Locus of your Heart,
Sometimes the ambient background of experience,
Sometimes flooding the foreground, acutely,
Ever available to their mind's Attention,
Ever available to their Heart's Remembrance?

I will call that… the Transmission of The Flame.

And what if you found, in the course of your life,
No finality in the milestones come to along The Way,
No flag to be planted, no summit declared,
And that however Profound and Transmuting,
More should not be made of them,
Than should be made,
Each being merely a juncture arrived at…

On a Journey of…
Endless Enlightening.

 

 

 

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Hafiz - Now is the time (2)

art Mahmood Farshchian

 Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

  -Hafiz, from The Gift by Daniel Ladinsky