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Tag: mind

  • The helper

    What becomes clear after a period of the conscious seeking taking place is that the ego mind always wants to do the job of helping to reach enlightenment. This is its strategy for maintaining its image of itself as the doer or controller of what is simply happening.

    Any form of meditation that holds an intention within it is for a future moment and as long as this imagined future moment is envisioned so is the continuation of the ego concept. What is a requirement for awakening is the realization that there is no actual past or future, just the moment, which has already dissolved when it has been claimed to be.

    In the seeing of Oneness not only is there no past or future, other than a thought arising in that particular way, but there is no NOW! The term “Be Here Now” has no place in this seeing for where is NOW?

    This term also implies that there is a someone to be here now and this is not the case. There is not and never has been a someone here now, such a term is based upon a deep ignorance and given as an order by this ignorance to an imagined someone. There is only this and this is already passed by the time it is claimed to be this, immediately replaced by a new this.

    In fact unless the word THIS is referring directly to Awareness, which is the permanent this, it is a misused word. Awareness is an unchanging, permanent presence, even in those moments when its attention is on objects, and therefore unaware of itself. It is ALWAYS present as THIS that cannot be described because it is not a thing as such, it is indescribable because of the very fact that it has no description.

    Usually when an experience has taken place which the mind has claimed to be enlightenment the expression is stated with awe “ It is indescribable WOW ”. This is a description of something NOT nothing. In the moment of actual realization there is a wow but is a gentle wow, a sort of “Ah! This is it” in all its obviousness, nothing new, totally familiar.

    The so called spiritual seeker has been filled with the nonsense of spiritual jargon and has been measuring that against all the experiences, waiting for that to fit one of those experiences and so confirm that enlightenment has taken place. The moment of enlightenment is self confirming and fits none of the previously given descriptions for it has no description.

    No help at all is required of the ego to bring about the elimination of the ego as the entity that it is imagined to be, when it is seen to be no more than an activity.

    Any help or effort with intention will guarantee the continuation of the ego concept holding its place in the mind as an imagined entity.

    This does not mean that there is abstinence from experience, in fact experiences are taken on board more fully than ever as there is no one to refuse them and so they are received and expressed fully. They come, they remain in expression momentarily and they dissolve, leaving behind THIS that is NOT an experience. All is simply happening, to no one.

    Too often it is seen that helpers are present offering solutions in the form of deliberate doing to imagined doers to bring about the moment when it is realized that there is no doer, only the action of doing taking place as the stillness of Awareness releases and gives rise to another bubble of activity. This is a joke, the Divine joke, for ALL action is Divine action. The one imagined to be resisting this recognition and the one imagined to be no longer resisting are both activities of the One.

    No one realizes and no one does not realize, these both are impersonal actions arising as sensation or thought, witnessed by this empty Awareness, no one.

    When this is clearly seen it is obvious that all seeing is seen, witnessed, by the same Being and that it is this Being itself which is manifesting temporarily as things but is in itself the no-thing within which the manifestation is appearing, it is all One.

    This then is “I”, I am the nothingness out of which all manifests AND the manifestation itself. This is what is true of us all, there is no US, there is only I.

    I am appearing as you and myself as these apparently separate objects in all circumstances. There is therefore no actual separation but only apparent separation, the former is a BELIEF and the latter is SEEN. The former is the illusion of no other than the latter, witnessing , for there is no actual witness only witnessing. Throughout the whole of creation that is action only, no actor.

    “ There is doing but no doer thereof ”

    The Buddha

    “ There is writing but no writer, a verb but no noun.”

    Avasa

  • Enlightenment

    Enlightenment is total emptiness of mind. There is nothing you can do to get it. Any effort you make can only be an obstruction to it.

  • The way to peace

    Emotional reactions, born of ignorance or inadvertence, are never justified. Seek a clear mind and a clean heart. All you need is to keep quietly alert, enquiring into the real nature of yourself. This is the only way to peace.

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • Death Experience

    It was about six weeks before I left Madura for good that a great change in my life took place . It was quite sudden. I was sitting in a room on the first floor of my uncle’s house. I seldom had any sickness and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden, violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it; and I did not try to account for it or to find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt, ‘I am going to die,’ and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or my elders or friends. I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, then and there.
    The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: ‘Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.’ And I at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither the word ‘I’ or any other word could be uttered, ‘Well then,’ I said to myself, ‘this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body ‘I’? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the ‘I’ within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. This means I am the deathless Spirit.’ All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. ‘I’ was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centred on that ‘I’. From that moment onwards the ‘I’ or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on. Other thoughts might come and go like the various notes of music, but the ‘I’ continued like the fundamental sruti note that underlies and blends with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading, or anything else, I was still centred on ‘I’. Previous to that crisis I had no clear perception of my Self and was not consciously attracted to it. I felt no perceptible or direct interest in it, much less any inclination to dwell permanently in it.

    Sri Ramana Maharshi

  • The Fasting of the Mind

    PHENOMENAL life in an apparent universe is nothing but objectivisation: all that we know as ‘life’ is only that process. Living, for the ordinary man, is a continual process of objectifying. From morning till night, and from night till morning, he never ceases to objectify except in dreamless sleep. That is what manifestation is, and it is nothing but that, for when objectifying ceases the objective universe is no more—as in deep sleep. But when Ch’an monks ‘sit’ they seek to empty their minds, to practise a fasting of the mind, for while the mind ‘fasts’ there is no more conceptualisation; then no concept arises, not even an I-concept, and in the absence of an I-concept the mind is ‘pure’ (free of objects); then, and only then, it is itself, what-it-is and as-it-is. When that is permanent it is objectively called being enlightened, when it is temporary it can be called samddhi. In that state of fasting the mind is only ‘blank’ in so far as there is a total absence of objects; itself it is not absent but totally present, then and only then. Nor is ‘objectivising’ replaced by ‘subjectivising’; both counterparts are absent, and the subject-object process (whereby subject, objectifying itself as object, thereby becomes object, which object is nothing but subject), the ‘spinning of the mind’, ceases to operate and dies down. The mind ceases to ‘do’; instead, it ‘is’. In the absence of objectivisation the apparent universe is not, but we are; which is so because what we are is what the apparent universe is, and what the apparent universe is—is what we are; dual in presence, non-dual in absence, sundered only in manifestation.

    Open Secret,
    Wu Wei

  • Ashtavakara Gita

    Liberation is when the mind does not long for anything, grieve about anything, reject anything, or hold on to anything, and is not pleased about anything or displeased about anything.

  • Zen mind

    In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.

    Shunryu Suzuki

  • Unconditioned, sane, really free human being

    “I’m simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I’m saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.

    It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process.

    It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.

    And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.

    That’s the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.”

    Osho

  • A Net of Jewels – August 25

    Fabricating objects in the split-mind is what is called “thinking.” But thinking is not man’s real nature – it is what prevents us from seeing our real nature. Yet there cannot be any prescriptive method to bring about the cessation of thinking because any such effort would emanate from a “me” that is itself nothing but a product of thought.

    Ramesh Balsekar

  • Ever-present background

    Just keep in mind the feeling “I am,” merge in it, until your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection, and your mind will be firmly established in the thought feeling “I am.” Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind.

    Nisargadatta Maharaj