Barry Long - Feelings

image Benoit Courti

 

“I suppose the most radical part of my teaching at present is that love is not a feeling. Everybody suffers from love, or the fear of it, or the lack of it. Why? Why is love so universally and inevitably heart-breaking, whether it be through the end of a love affair, the death of a loved one or being locked in with the habitual casualness or grim indifference of a partner? The answer is because we’ve been taught and conditioned by the world to believe that love is a feeling.

Love is not a feeling; it’s a sensation. Drinking water when you’re thirsty is a sensation, not a feeling. Being in nature or swimming in the sea is a sensation, not a feeling. Lying down when you’re tired is sensational, not a feeling, although you may say it feels good. Feeling is an emotional interpretation of experience and these sensations don’t need interpretation; they are just good or right. Making physical love rightly is a sensation, not a feeling. So is the love of God. The same goes for joy and beauty; both are sensational.

But in our ignorance we emotionalise joy, beauty and love. We make feelings of them, personal interpretations based on our old emotions. We put our personal past on the present with the result that joy, beauty and love don’t seem to last. But it’s our emotional substitutes that don’t last and we become bored, discontented and unhappy again. The sensation or knowledge of joy, beauty and love is of course still there but it’s overwhelmed by these coarser feelings.

Feelings are constantly changing. None is dependable for long. You can love someone intensely today, and tomorrow or next month not feel a thing. Except perhaps for the feeling of doubt or depression that what was so beautiful could change so quickly.

Feelings, even the best of them, turn to negativity – disappointment, anger, discontent, resentment, jealousy, guilt, etc. A good feeling starts off being elevating, exciting, like taking a drug substance, alcohol or having sex. But what goes up must come down and feelings are no exception. So in a couple of hours or days the down side starts and you perhaps wonder why you feel moody, depressed, suicidal or just plain unhappy. You’re paying the piper for yesterday’s music. And between the upside and the downside is the no-man’s and no-woman’s land of boredom, indifference, inertia, weariness and pointlessness.

Okay, so you don’t have drugs, alcohol and sex but you love someone, as a feeling. Then it won’t be long before you’ll be experiencing one or more of the painful feelings I’ve mentioned above – and thinking it’s natural! Wait and see. Even in every day living you’re continually interpreting experience via your emotions instead of being the experience direct. “This is good, that’s bad,” your feelings swing subtly to and fro all day long obscuring the reality, the sensational knowledge or gnosis that it’s not bad at all; it’s simply life as it is.

All feelings are false and deceptive. […] Enlightenment is to be emptied (not empty) of feelings and thus at one with the pure sensation of divine being. And that pretty well sums up the whole spiritual process. But the spiritual process is so little understood that people don’t realise their feelings are personal and false and have been misleading them all their life. If that’s not true, why is humanity still unenlightened and basically unhappy after all this time – when enlightenment is the completely natural, sensational state of being every moment?

By disidentifying with your feelings you break your attachment to them. When that is done sufficiently you’re back at the beginning, in pure sensation or unconditioned knowledge. You’ve been beating your head against the wall to get some feelings and all you’ve got to do is break the habit and get used to living anew without pain and conflict. But that’s a mighty realisation, and a mighty simple one which few are going to accept – they’ll be too busy defending their feelings! So, I guess I’ll still be demonstrating this the day I die.” 

 

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http://www.barrylong.org/ 

 

 

Clare Blanchflower - Devotion Is/Just This

Devotion Is

In the willingness
to be so fully undone
For all strategies to end
Surrender is here

To see and be seen
in the light
of what is

To rest
as undefended
presence
at the feet of Life

Being humbled
again and again
As threads
of defense
dissolve
and the true power
of Being
is embodied
Life living itSelf

A pure power
that wants nothing
A power
that says
I don’t know
there is no knowing
there is only this

And the eternal heart
beats in
silent reverence
Devotion Is

 

Just This

Fall at the feet
of Being
Dare to
fall off your perch
Use your wings
to fly
Actually fly
into the infinity
of You
Surrender your
position as
a somebody
Be a nobody
Fall into your Self
Into the emptiness
of Now
Be free
Truly
Utterly
Free

 

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Robert Wolfe - Freeing your thoughts

 

photo H.kopp delaney

 

 

You want to know what is meant when you see the phrase “thought-free”.

If you concern yourself with whether you are thought-free or not thought-free, would it be possible to be “thought free”, in that circumstance?

As the Dzochen Rinpoche Tulku Orgyen has commented:

“Checking, ‘Is there a thought now; or (am I) free of thought?’— isn’t that just another thought?”
These teachers speak of a “natural” mind. During your day, all sorts of thoughts come and go, spontaneously arising and dissolving, like surf washing up on a beach. Isn’t this what is natural to all of us?

Tulku Rinpoche has said, “ it is not beneficial to continuously pursue a special, thought-free mental state. Rather, simply allow yourself to be in naturalness, free of any fabrication”; that is, conceiving of, and attempting to engineer, some special state of mind or condition for thought. “Thought-free means free of conceptual thinking,” he states.

Tulku’s eldest son, Chokyi Nyima also speaks of the dualistic distinction between “thought” as compared to “thought-free”.

“What is to be practiced has nothing to do with thoughts and conceptual mind…The main practice is to simply rest vividly awake in this nondual awareness. Relax loosely, and remain naturally. Totally relax and do not check or question; remain totally free from accepting or rejecting—that is the conducive situation for meeting the natural face of awareness. Apart from this, you don’t need anything else to meditate upon.

“Whenever something is denied, something is affirmed at the same time. Whenever something is rejected, another thing is automatically accepted. This dualism is the very nature of conceptual judgment.

“When not involved in any kind of conceptual judging, that itself is innate suchness, thought-free wakefulness, and genuine ordinary mind.”

He has further stated:

“When leaving this fresh ordinary mind as it is, without correcting or modifying it, without altering it in any way, without accepting and rejecting, there is no fixating on anything.
“In the guidance manuals for meditation, it is often phrased like this: do not alter your present fresh wakefulness. Do not rearrange even as much as a hair tip. Just leave it exactly as it is. This is very profound, and there is a lot to understand here…

In the present moment, do not correct,
Do not modify,
Do not accept or reject.
Don’t try to rearrange your present wakefulness.
Instead, leave it as it naturally is
Without any attempt to alter it in any way.
That is called sustaining your natural face.”

Another son of Tulku Rinpoche, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, speaks in detail about the innate naturalness of the mind free of such dualistic concepts as thought versus no thought:
“Like many of the people I now meet on teaching tours, I thought that natural mind had to be something else, something different from, or better than, what I was already experiencing. Like most people, I brought so much judgment to my experience. I believed that thoughts of anger, fear, and so on (that came and went throughout the day) were bad or counterproductive—or at the very least inconsistent with natural peace! The teachings of the Buddha—and the lesson inherent in this exercise in non-meditation—is that if we allow ourselves to relax and take a mental step back, we can begin to recognize that all these different thoughts are simply coming and going within the context of an unlimited mind, which, like space, remains fundamentally unperturbed by whatever occurs within it.
​
“All you have to do is rest your mind in its natural openness. No special focus, no special effort, is required. And if for some reason you cannot rest your mind, you can simply observe whatever thoughts, feelings, or sensations come up (hang out for a couple of seconds and then dissolve) and acknowledge, ‘Oh, that’s what’s going on in my mind right now.’ Wherever you are, whatever you do, it’s essential to acknowledge your experience as something ordinary, the natural expression of your true mind. If you don’t try to stop whatever is going on in your mind, but merely observe it, eventually you’ll begin to feel a tremendous sense of relaxation, a vast sense of openness within your mind—which is in fact your natural mind, the natural unperturbed background against which various thoughts come and go.”

 

 

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Come, come, you are the life and salvation of man.
Come, come, you are the eye and light of Joseph.
Touch my head
for your touch removes
the darkness of the body.
Come, come, for you bestow beauty and grace.
Come, come, for you are the cure of a thousand ills.
Come, come, even though you have never left—
come and hear some poetry.
Sit in the place of my soul,
for you are a thousand souls of mine.
Begone with your cares and your ancient longings—
you are the Beloved!
If the King did not sit
on the throne of this world
There would be darkness and confusion.
You are joyous and alive by His breath.
You move by the power of His love.
Now, like an artist, you create.
Now, like a servant, you sweep the floor.
Everything you touch
will reach its goal
and fly with the wings of an angel....
But wings cannot carry you to God.
Like the mule that carried the Prophet,
Only love can carry you there.

 

Rumi ♡ The Drunkards And The Tavern

 

 

 I’m drunk and you’re insane,
who’s going to take us home?
How many times did they say,
“Drink just a little, only two or three at most?”
 
In this city no one I see is conscious;
one is worse off than the next,
frenzied and insane.

 
Dear one, come to the tavern of ruin
and experience the pleasures of the soul.
What happiness can there be apart
from this intimate conversation
with the Beloved, the soul of souls?
 
In every corner there are drunkards, arm in arm,
while the Server pours the wine
from a royal decanter to every particle of being.
 
You belong to the tavern: your income is wine,
and wine is all you ever buy.
Don’t give even a second away
to the concerns of the merely sober.
 
O lute player, are you more drunk, or am I?
In the presence of one as drunk as you, my magic is a myth.
 
When I went outside the house,
some drunk approached me,
and in his eyes I saw
hundreds of hidden gardens and sanctuaries.
 
Like a ship without an anchor,
he rocked this way and that.
Hundreds of intellectuals and wise men
could die from a taste of his yearning.
 
I asked, “Where are you from?”
He laughed and said, “O soul,
half of me is from Turkestan
and half from Farghana.
 
Half of me is water and mud, half heart and soul;
half of me is the ocean’s shore, half is all pearl.”
 
“Be my friend,” I pleaded,
“I’m one of your family.”
“I know the difference between family and outsiders.”
 
I’ve neither a heart nor a turban,
and here in this house of hangovers
my breast is filled with unspoken words.
Shall I try to explain or not?
 
Have I lived among the lame for so long
that I’ve begun to limp myself?
And yet no slap of pain could disturb
a drunkenness like this.
 
Listen, can you hear a wail
arising from the pillar of grief?
Shams al-Haqq of Tabriz, where are you now,
after all the mischief you’ve stirred in our hearts?

 

 

Lisel Mueller - The World in Different Light

 

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent.  The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Lisel Mueller
1924-2020

 

 

Lisel Mueller
 

Original title - "Monet Refuses Operation"

"Her poems are 'a testament to the miraculous power
of language to interpret and transform our world'
and 'a testament that invites readers to share her vision
of experiences we all have in common: sorrow,
tenderness, desire, the revelations of art, and
mortality - 'the hard dry smack of death against the glass'"
(Washington Post)

Lisel Mueller was a German born American Poet.
Her family fled the Nazi regime in 1939 when she was 15.
She worked as a translator and academic teacher.  She
began writing poetry in the 1950's, publishing her first
collection in 1965.

~

Main photo and post - Mystic Meandering

 street light through ice on window...

Jean Klein - Living in the unknown

 

Many of us have heard the Zen story of the Renowned Quantum Physicist who came to the tea pouring Zen Master for further knowledge of the Theory of Everything. But that’s only part 1, there is a part 2. For the sake of those who have not heard part 1 here it is:

So there was this renown physicist in the field of quantum physics, totally fascinated with getting to the bottom of grasping an intellectual understanding of the mystery of life, determined to discover the ‘Theory of Everything’ but after decades of researching has come to a head. So he decided to visit a unknown tea pouring Zen master for advise???

After the introductions and paying due respect, the Physicist began, “Here is what we know: We have conducted double-slit experiments, quantum entanglement experiments, ‘ … the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter … the creator and governor of the realm of matter… the observer creates the reality …’

As the Physicist continues to speak of what he knows, the Master began pouring tea for his guest. The tea cup became full and yet the Master continues to pour and tea was now overflowing from the already full cup. Seeing this and seeing that apparently the Master is not stopping, the Physicist couldn’t help it and exclaimed, “Stop already, the cup is full!” To this the Zen Master says, “Sir, your cup is full, how can knowledge be revealed in a cup that is already full? Please come back when you have emptied your cup.”

So the Physicist left with his cup full of tea but now realise that he has a cup full of tea. That’s part 1.

Part 2

So the Physicist went back realizing that he had to dismantle the whole mental structure that he had built up over the years. Finally, after what seems like a long time, he felt that his cup was now empty, it’s time to revisit the Zen Master.

Master, ever since our last meeting when you highlighted to me that I had a cup full of knowledge and couldn’t be receptive to the real knowledge, I have worked on myself to remove one by one all of my accumulated knowledge, until finally I am now empty of knowledge, look, this tea cup that you gave me before is now empty; I am now ready for knowledge. The Zen master, took the empty tea cup from the Physicist, had a look at its emptiness and threw it over his head breaking it to pieces on the ground. “Good, keep it empty!”

“There is nothing eventually knowable ... living in non-concluding from moment to moment … Living in non-concluding does not mean being passive. Let us be clear about this. Non-concluding means you don’t conclude through personal interference. Things, situations, conclude by themselves when you leave them alone. Is there a choice for the girl on the tight-rope? You can be sure she does not think of left or right, but is established unthinkingly in the centre. She is spontaneously in non-conclusion. When you are established in globality, it is normal to live in choiceless awareness like the ballerina in the circus … When you are beyond choosing, like the dancer on the rope, when the mind does not plot, the conclusion comes instantaneously when the facts are ‘ripe.’ Live open to all perceived, open to the openness … In non-conclusion the world is rich and intelligent. One must come to the state where there is a complete shift in energy. 

 

 from living in the known, to living in the unknown. ” ~ Jean Klein, The Book Of Listening 

 

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