The sea will be the sea, whatever the drop's philosophy...
As long as one carries within oneself
the capacity to be appeased by a car,
a house, a woman, a dog, a profession,
a future, a past, a knowledge, a spirituality, a teaching,
there is not yet this ardour indispensable
to the bursting of what must burst.
This total madness of dissatisfaction
is the energy necessary for
the explosion of what is superficial in us.
I, old Tcheng, do not do anything to maintain, modify, or change the course of things by following the desires of the individual mind. Let there be neither distrust nor revolt but only the necessary act. If I behave in a different way with you, it is so that you might, at last, by yourselves, directly see original spirit instead of always seeking it through the mediation of dead fellows or by running after scatterbrains like me.
My own manner, indeed, is to shake you like saplings in the mountain wind. Thus, I break up all your struts and props, leaving you all undone, with nothing more to hold onto to. But since I break up all that you rely upon, filling you with fear, you say, to reassure yourselves, that I sin against the law and convention, and am but a vile blasphemer. So you go on desperately clinging to appearances and accessories instead of letting them depart from you by themselves, without striving to hold on to them.
My words find no echo in you, so I play a trick on you and tell you they come from a great and famous fellow who has been dead for centuries. But you still do not understand that they are your direct and immediate concern. On the contrary, you seize on them as something precious, good for keeping and to cultivate. Baldheads, by holding on to futilities, you simply waste your life away and the evidence of original spirit slips through your fingers. What a shipwreck for you!
*
Nitwits, original spirit does not appear when sleep leaves you and does not disappear when sleep comes to you. Original spirit is nothing and is totally independent of that which changes and dies.
If original spirit were truly your sole occupation, you would see all that alters and dies in the same way that you perceive the movements that dancers give to their streamers, and would resolve to constantly seek that which in you neither varies nor dies and, once you find it, then not one of the thousand worlds could divert you in your thoughts for an instant of a flash or in the slightest degree make you stray from it in your actions.
You believe you aspire to original spirit but you only actually seek the satisfaction of a condition, of learning, and of merit. Because of this, nincompoops, you are entirely under the fascination of all that in you and outside of you is not steadfast and just dies.
That is why the sayings of old Tcheng simply go through you without making an impression, like the birds which leave no trace in the sky.
Bald pates, all that you think and say concerning original spirit is but the erring and wandering of your own puny little minds. To that which nature spontaneously brings you, you respond only after interpreting it through all the words of those that you have put up on a pedestal above yourselves.
Baldies, this being as artificial as the dragons made for festivals, how can you hope to see original spirit in its spontaneity?
In my youth, I went all around the land spending my time in study and practices. I associated with those who had strayed and, imagining they had found the light, did nothing but cause others to stray. Then, I met him who enabled me to see all the useless mud I bore with me. The way of truth appeared to me and original spirit became my sole occupation. And, one day, everything suddenly collapsed into awareness.
I, old Tcheng, do not imitate so and so, or such and such a one. I hold to no belief, no school of thought do I follow, no one's disciple am I. In my true nature I know nothing, I own nothing, I am nothing... for there is no old Tcheng there! In the ordinary way, the things in which I take part, of themselves, just flow by, pass away on their own. Even original spirit is no longer my concern.
The words I speak to you come not from that which is learnt.
*
Shaved skulls, I have hidden nothing from you. What profit is there for you? Nothing but stuff and nonsense!
Exit old man Tcheng.
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Silence is painful, but in silence things take form,
and we must wait and watch,
In us, in our secret depth, lies the knowing element
which sees and hears that which we do not see nor hear.
All our perceptions, all the things we have done, all that we are today,
dwelt once in that knowing, silent depth, that treasure chamber in the soul.
And we are more than we think, We are more than we know.
That which is more than we think and know is always seeking and adding to itself
while we are doing - or think we are doing nothing.
But to be conscious of what is going in our depth is to help it along.
When subconsciousness becomes consciousness,
the seeds in our winter-clad selves turn to flowers,
and the silent life in us sings with all its might.
Salvador Dali - The Temptation of St. Anthony
What is going on is spontaneously naturally present
Without any doing or non-doing it is obviously so
A vast expanse it cannot be contained or captured as it has no edges or center or any place or thing that can be grasped
Limitless it cannot be imagined or thought about ...
Or conceived of in any way
It is pure and unstainable and cannot be added to or subtracted from
We all know this it is deeply intuited
Yet the apparent arising of self and all other things seems to hide this unutterable knowing ness*
This recognition of unicity cannot be contrived or arrived at as it is already the case
As long as there is belief in separation there will be an attempt to reconnect that which has never been separate
One tries to imagine this feeling of oneness and creates a goal that seemingly can be attained
But that idea of oneness is simply that
And all ideas of future attainment merely perpetuate the feeling of going somewhere and the illusion that there is a you that can do somerhing to get there
But there is no future it is an idea
Past is merely memories occuring in the Ungraspable unfindable inseparable moment
There nothing outside of it nor things inside yet it contains and includes all thingness
It simply cannot be grasped or understood as there is no separate grasper or things to be grasped
This is it always
Just as it is
Looking for it is included
As well as the recognition of it
Life simultaneously writing and erasing itself
Of itself so
Knowing this intellectually will not stop the seeking for it
Seeking is a perpetually self sustaining loop
Something else uncaused happens that breaks the circling the spinning in which an imaginary center arises
And if even if the words we use to describe this vast uncpounded limitless expanse are beyond imagining than how could what's going on be within the realm of imagination
As it is like a dream like an illusion like a hologram like a mirage ****an echo a reflection ****
No word concept idea can touch it grasp it kiss it
Yet it includes all words and descriptions
Edgeless seamless infinite centerless indivisible****with no reference points whatsoever
Yet vividly apparent all things seem to arise
Having no independent existence
Like imaginary castles in the air you cannot move in ****like a mirage in the desert you cannot drink from them****like a reflection of your lovers face in the mirror you cannot kiss it***** as space cannot be grasped ***and you can never find harbor on a shoreless ocean****there is nothing to be gained by looking for fullfillment in an empty glass that has no bottom or sides or emptiness and you cannot fill something which has no space to be filled
Even as things seem to arise they are merely made up as pure space cannot be divided
There is no extremes of change nor non change
Freedom versus non freedom.
Here nor there nor place nor non place
No time nor timeless ness
No inside nor outside nor both nor neither
There are no separate things to be lost
And no one to find them
There is no one to put together what was never separate
All dream trying perpetuates the illusion of a tryer and a goal of wholeness
As wholeness cannot be imagimed as it has no edges
It remains an idea a goal to reach in the nonexistent future
The trying is like the prow of a ship pretending to slice up the sea.....
The deep intuitive knowing, also called ' the shift ' or ' the ignorant ', does not happen to ' you '.
It adds no speciality to ′′ your ′′ being that the others don't have.
Where there is no you, there is no other!
This is undoubtedly clear when this shift takes place, without actually happening.
The shift knew the ′′ you ′′ that was never out of time and space that never existed either.
Nothing ever really happens in this mysterious unknowable.
The shift can't be reduced to the DNA.
No microscope can see it.
An encephalogram will show no sign of it, although the brain activity can certainly show an unusual rest.
Brain activity tends to slow down after the shift.
Preoccupation with past and future is almost coming to a standstill.
The flow of energy in the body passes into a subtle sense of deep confidence and wellbeing.
Enlightenment is not a sweet homecoming in a divine realm!
It's not like sitting quietly in God's lap.
It adds not an inch to your wisdom.
It turns you into a fearless, motherless child.
It resets the brain to the default values.
It has no spiritual meaning at all!
The shift relates to a very sober vibrancy.
A zero point perspective.
It doesn't connect you to the divine.
The shift doesn't heal your pains or wash away your tears.
It brings an energetic torrential flood of intensity to every cell in the body.
And yet it brings the most ordinary ease of being.
There is no divinity in what is.
All there is is is what apparently happens.
All there is is life's never ending unknowable dream.
Nothing is ever realized or acknowledged as truth.
There is no truth to discover.
There's nothing behind a mask.
What is seen centerless, is seeing it yourself..
It is the playful love of this magical void called No-Thing.
It is the joy of life for life itself.....
Question : We live in a very dark era, which also has its bright side; but politically and socially it is dark. Do you think we have much hope of getting out of this end of century and of millennium crisis?
Eric Baret : I hope not, because in the end, what is dark is the so-called spiritual quest. What is dark is to see yoga teachers on every corner. What is dark is channelling. What is dark is modern spiritual quest, that kind of running away from the moment. On the other hand, what is auspicious is the approaching war, it is the coming cataclysms, because they deeply question the human being, they make him ask the real questions. Everything else makes him sleep. So, it should be very clear that the state of the world is its chance. If the gods want the world to benefit from these movements, it is the supreme gift. Unfortunately, there are times when a cataclysm is the only way to bring about a questioning. In their generosity, I think the gods will help us more and more in that direction. All this romanticism of yoga, of the East, of spirituality, all these spiritual techniques of progression, of purification, they belong to the dark ages. They really are a waste of money and energy. One day they will completely disappear, and maybe that day we won't need cataclysms to wake up.
Q: With these words, you could create a scandal…
E. B. : The scandal is to make people believe that through some exercises they will be better and their deep questioning will be satisfied. It is to make people believe that by following this therapy, by adopting that concept, by wearing that particular color of clothes, by hanging on their wall or to their neck the picture of a popular guru, it will bring about a profound questioning. That is charlatanry.
Real life is facing the moment. The different possibilities of conflict express themselves in the world: you face them, you look at what is touched in you, you look at what is death, destruction. In this way, you realize what you are. When your house is destroyed, when your body is broken, when your family is wiped out, you realize to what extent you are free or not from yourself. But to sit in a room to do yoga, to chew hundred times a mouthful of brown rice... of course, you feel good, but there is no questioning. It's a real calamity.
Meditation doesn’t promise anything.
It isn’t a strategy.
It simply is.
When we exist within meditation,
there is no room for strategies of
becoming, achieving, attaining, owning.
Within meditation,
silence is the only strategy,
because everything is
too sudden for planning,
too rich to want,
too hushed for noise.
stillnessspeaks.com/teacher/robert-rabbin/
