Piers Moore Ede

2011-08-30T12:09:00.000+01:00

We think that there is something hiding our
reality and that it must be destroyed before the
reality is gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn
when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts.
That which will be on the day you laugh is also
here and now.

- Sri Ramana Maharshi

The Razor's Edge by Colin Drake

2011-08-27T14:09:00.001+01:00

I hope NonDuality highlights will forgive me for reposting this superb article by Colin Drake. Fantastically well put. So simple any 'one' could get it!

The Razor's Edge by Colin Drake

It has long been held that following the spiritual life to its goal, complete awakening, is very difficult, like walking along a razor's edge. This article addresses this and attempts to show that, whilst experiencing the first awakening is very simple and easy, to live this awakening requires great vigilance like walking a tight rope.

Let the wise merge the speech in the mind, and the mind into intelligence (philosophical reason); let him merge intelligence in the great self (pure awareness), and that great self into peace.

Katha Upanishad - 1.3.13

This signifies recognizing that thoughts (mind) and sensations (speech in this case) appear in (and are seen by) awareness i.e. are merged in that. This is to be discovered by 'direct seeing' which is informed by intelligence. Then by the same process one can discover that awareness, being always totally still and utterly silent, is always completely at peace. This is all fairly straightforward and easy to 'see' as the appendix, from Beyond the Separate Self (and A Light Unto Your Self) attempts to show.

Arise, awake, enlighten yourself by resorting to the great (teachers), for that path is sharp as a razor's, difficult to tread and hard to go by, say the wise.

Katha Upanishad - 1.3.14

This next verse says that the path of 'direct seeing' is sharp as a razor's edge and thus we should abandon this and resort to the great teachers. However, this advice itself is very difficult to follow for the modern sceptical Western mind which does not trust anything that lies outside its own experience or 'direct seeing'. Also the teachings of the great are often difficult to follow being somewhat cryptic and needing interpretation. resulting in different opinions leading to schisms and the formation of sects. From this also comes tribalism based on 'our teacher is the best' or 'our interpretation is the correct one' and the whole sorry saga of division and competition is perpetuated!

So based on this I think, on balance, we are better off following Buddha's final teaching which was that one is to become 'a light unto yourself'. This can be achieved by the 'direct seeing' of our essential nature by self-inquiry or 'investigation of our moment to moment experience' - see the appendix.

This results in an 'awakened moment' when one sees that deeper than thoughts (mind) and body (mind) one is pure awareness and the ramifications of this seeing can be amazing. However, due to our habitual identification with the body/mind one soon 'drops off' again requiring a further awakening by self-inquiry or investigation of experience. So to become 'totally awake' requires absolute vigilance and commitment, akin to walking a razor's edge.

However, this is not a problem, for as the periods of 'wakefulness' (which are totally carefree) increase so will the commitment to identifying with the level of pure awareness. This will lead to more reflection and investigation, resulting in further awakenings which will continue the process. To call it a process may seem a misnomer for when one is 'awake' there's no process going on, but the continual naps keep the whole thing running.

This does require us to be more interested in being awake than in our own 'personal story', and to prefer peace to mental suffering. It is amazing how many people identify with these and seem to actually enjoy them in a masochistic fashion. Assuming that this is not the case one can use mental suffering to be a wake up call that one has 'nodded' off again and return one to 'awareness of awareness'. So although staying awake is like walking a razor's edge it is very easy to see when one has slipped off this and to hop back on again!

There is another danger for those that feel that they have 'awakened' and that is spiritual pride based on the thought that "now I've really got it" and thus cannot fall off the edge. It is easy to see that this thought "now I've really got it" is dualistic involving a 'me' that's got something (else). This is the difference between thinking 'now I've really got awareness' and directly seeing that one is awareness itself. Any thought that objectifies the 'I' is to be avoided, for awareness is not an object but the constant conscious subjective presence. Once again vigilance is the key .

Thirdly for those of us who attempt, in our own feeble way, to point to awakening there is another greater danger, which is believing that we are (separate individuals) pointing . This belief can easily be strengthened by the appreciation that we receive by those who experience awakened moments based on this pointing. As 'awakening' is the most profound seeing that can occur, often with momentous implications, the gratitude expressed is often of the most lavish proportions. So we need to 'walk the walk' by continually realizing that we are ephemeral manifestations of That (consciousness), through which pointing is taking place, and that no separate 'pointer' exists!

In conclusion, 'awakening' is straightforward and available to all but is quickly countered by nodding off again. So we need to constantly reawaken by becoming aware of, and identified with, awareness itself. In this respect it is like walking a razor's edge, but it is not painful and hopping back on again is simplicity itself, by the relevant shifting of attention from thoughts/sensations to the awareness that sees these.

Appendix

Below follows a simple method to investigate the nature of reality starting with one's day-to-day experience. Each step should be considered until one experiences, or 'sees', its validity before moving on to the following step. If you reach a step where you do not find this possible, continue on regardless in the same way, and hopefully the flow of the investigation will make this step clear. By all means examine each step critically but with an open mind, for if you only look for 'holes' that's all you will find!

1. Consider the following statement: 'Life, for each of us, is just a series of moment-to-moment experiences'. These experiences start when we are born and continue until we die, rushing headlong after each other, so that they seem to merge into a whole that we call 'my life'. However, if we stop to look we can readily see that, for each of us, every moment is just an experience.

2. Any moment of experience has only three elements: thoughts (including all mental images), sensations (everything sensed by the body and its sense organs) and awareness of these thoughts and sensations. Emotions and feelings are a combination of thought and sensation.

3. Thoughts and sensations are ephemeral, that is they come and go, and are objects, i.e. 'things' that are perceived.

4. Awareness is the constant subject, the 'perceiver' of thoughts and sensations and that which is always present. Even during sleep there is awareness of dreams and of the quality of that sleep; and there is also awareness of sensations; if a sensation becomes strong enough, such as a sound or uncomfortable sensation, one will wake up.

5. All thoughts and sensations appear in awareness, exist in awareness, and subside back into awareness. Before any particular thought or sensation there is effortless awareness of 'what is': the sum of all thoughts and sensations occurring at any given instant. During the thought or sensation in question there is effortless awareness of it within 'what is'. Then when it has gone there is still effortless awareness of 'what is'.

6. So the body/mind is experienced as a flow of ephemeral objects appearing in this awareness, the ever present subject. For each of us any external object or thing is experienced as a combination of thought and sensation, i.e. you may see it, touch it, know what it is called, and so on. The point is that for us to be aware of anything, real or imaginary, requires thought about and/or sensation of that thing and it is awareness of these thoughts and sensations that constitutes our experience.

7. Therefore this awareness is the constant substratum in which all things appear to arise, exist and subside. In addition, all living things rely on awareness of their environment to exist and their behaviour is directly affected by this. At the level of living cells and above this is self-evident, but it has been shown that even electrons change their behaviour when (aware of) being observed! Thus this awareness exists at a deeper level than body/mind (and matter/energy[1]) and we are this awareness!

8. This does not mean that at a surface level we are not the mind and body, for they arise in, are perceived by and subside back into awareness, which is the deepest and most fundamental level of our being. However, if we choose to identify with this deepest level - awareness - (the perceiver) rather than the surface level, mind/body (the perceived), then thoughts and sensations are seen for what they truly are, just ephemeral objects which come and go, leaving awareness itself totally unaffected.

9. Next investigate this awareness itself to see whether its properties can be determined.

Firstly what is apparent is that this awareness is effortlessly present and effortlessly aware. It requires no effort by the mind/body and thoughts and sensations cannot make it vanish however hard they try.

10. Next, this awareness is choicelessly present and choicelessly aware. Once again it requires no choice of the mind/body and they cannot block it however they try. For example, if you have a toothache there is effortless awareness of it and the mind/body cannot choose for this not to be the case. You may think that this is bad news but it is not so: can you imagine if you had to make a choice whether you would like to be aware of every sensation that the body experiences? In fact be grateful that there is no effort or choice involved for awareness just to be - such ease and simplicity - which is not surprising for you are this awareness!

11. It can be seen then, that for each of us this awareness is omnipresent; we never experiences a time or place when it is not present. Once again be grateful that the mind/body is never required to search for this awareness; it is just always there, which of course is not surprising for at the deepest level we are this awareness.

12. Next, notice that this awareness is absolutely still for it is aware of the slightest movement of body or mind. For example, we all know that to be completely aware of what is going on around us in a busy environment we have to be completely still, just witnessing the activity.

13. In the same vein this awareness is totally silent as it is aware of the slightest sound and the smallest thought. Therefore awareness is always completely at peace as to be absolutely still and totally silent is to be completely at peace.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] The theory of relativity, and string theory, show that matter and energy are synonymous.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Colin Drake's books are published by Jerry Katz's Nonduality Publications:

For Colin Drake's e-books, please visit

http://nonduality.com/colindrake.htm

Plain and simple.....

2011-08-22T12:11:00.002+01:00

There are no "masters." All of us--Buddha, Ramana, Nisargadatta, Dalai Lama, are just ordinary human beings. We tell you that explicitly, but you refuse to believe it. Ask yourself why you refuse to believe it.

A guru is just a human being like yourself. "Guru" simply means teacher.
There is a time in life to have a teacher, perhaps, but that person should never be worshiped. Listen to the message-but kill the messenger.

Reincarnation is nonsense. You are having enough trouble and suffering right now in this life. Why would you ever want another. If you will simply awaken to this very moment, you will not even want another moment, much less another life. You will not want anything.

There is no path, and no one to walk it. Gradual awakening is a fantasy which imagines time and space which do not exist. One awakens to truth now. Only now.

You are standing in a river dying of thirst. All you desire is here now.
You are that. Stop riding a donkey looking for a donkey.

Scripture is dead. Only you are alive. Forget words, and find out what you are. Everything you need to know will be apparent to you if you simply become silent. Don't listen to what others believe, just be yourself.

- Robert Saltzman, posted to NondualitySalon

The Telling Stones

2011-07-28T18:39:00.004+01:00

Put yourself in the company of an aging Aussie backpacking with a fantastic sense of humour and you'll have the basis of a night in with Ritkam Barry, author of Non Duality Press's latest foray outside the realms of conventional spiritual publishing, the fantastic The Telling Stones. Add to Barry's list of attributes, a collection of some of the funniest life stories you're likely to encounter, a shrewd understanding of human nature, and a genuine flair for the written word and you're getting closer. Even so, describing just what it is about this book that makes it so likeable isn't easy. As a spiritual guidebook it probably wouldn't be top of your list, nor would it necessarily lodge in your memory purely for the quality of its narrative. It's immense likeability rests on something between these two poles, to a degree that I read the book cover to cover in one sitting, most of it spent smiling. Barry's take on Non Duality doesn't differ widely from a lot of others, and indeed his references to it are somewhat brief, if one excludes the large portion of his life spent on the spiritual search. The final section entitled 'The Mad Bastards Guide to Enlightenment' is perhaps the weakest, one sensing this old talker hasn't yet learned quite how to speak about the ineffable. That said, he may do in time and it will probably be a hell of a read. Until then, content yourself with a simply conversational gem penned by one of life's originals. Rumour has it Barry's gone walkabout since the publication, vanished somewhere in the Outback without telling anyone where he is. If he's sitting around a campfire somewhere right now regaling one of these stories, his companions are in for a treat.

How Dzogchen points to the very same thing....

2011-07-20T13:58:00.003+01:00

The natural state is just itself and nothing else, whether thoughts are arising or not. Having no thoughts is not the essential practice of Dzogchen. There is nothing wrong with having thoughts; it is natural for thoughts to arise. They represent the creative potentiality or dynamism of the Nature of Mind. When we are in the Natural State, there are no special thoughts associated with it. The natural state is always there whether thoughts are present or not. The problem is to recognize this Natural State without being distracted by thoughts."

~Lopon Tenzin Namdak

another great one....

2011-06-09T18:54:00.001+01:00

The Ribhu Gita... wonderful... read by Mooji

2011-06-09T18:51:00.000+01:00

Can you be alone?

2011-02-11T16:15:00.002Z

A Rumi Poem

2011-02-07T11:50:00.000Z

If this me is not I, then

who am I?

If I am not the one who speaks, then

who does?

If this me is only a robe then

who is

the one I am covering?

- Rumi, translation by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi

perfect, mindblowing truth.....

2010-11-24T21:21:00.000Z

Please watch, listen, HEAR. Quite simply, one of the best things I've ever heard on this subject. It says it ALL....

Transmission of the Flame

2010-10-18T15:24:00.000+01:00

Non Duality Press's reissue of Jean Klein's Transmission of the Flame is a welcome event. More and more I feel Jean Klein was a figure of the stature of Krishnamurti or Nisargadatta, and his teachings perhaps clearer than either. In this book, carefully edited by Emma Edwards, we find a series of a dialogues illustrating different facets of the understanding. Klein's wisdom is penetrating and full of love, and his teachings a continual invitation to drop into the unknown.

We often hear, "First I will make money and then I will retire and devote myself to truth seeking"...

This comes from the calculating mind. It is a statement from complete ignorance. There is nothing functional in this reasoning. It is only a postponing... What is important is that you feel an inner need to be. Then your surroundings - what belongs to you - arrange themselves accordingly. Existence on this earth gives everyone the opportunity to know Life and to be awake in Life. What we are looking for is our nearest.

On Listening, Klein writes:

Listening is our basic nature. We are more or less accustomed to listening to an object, to our surroundings and to our nearest environment: body, senses and mind. But I speak of today of that listening where there is nothing to listen to.

You can never think this listening, you can never objectify it, you can never fix it; and in listening there's not a listener, there's no place for a listener, a controller, a doer, for an enjoyer, for a sufferer. Listening is free from all furniture, from all memory. It is a non state. In a state you go in and come out; listening is a continuum. Wen you are listening to your body, senses and mind, then your listening is completely open; there's no grasping, no taking. The perceived comes directly from your openeness.

The Light that I am - Notes from the Ground of Being

2010-09-08T14:59:00.001+01:00

J. C Amberchele has a great story. He's a lifer, as they say in the US, serving for a pretty serious crime in one hell of a serious prison. He grew up ultra tough, by his own admission, schooled in the ethos of John Wayne. He became a criminal, a junkie, and a con man. And then it all fell apart....

In prison J C Amberchele - or whatever his real name actually is - came across Douglas Harding's 'Headless Way.' And in the long series of revelations this discovery provoked, he began to see the great cosmic joke in the life he'd been leading with all its cover ups, pretense and distractions. He began to see that the person he'd been trying to protect didn't' actually exist....

What follows is a fascinating, occasionally brilliant book in the lineage of Douglas Harding. If you can get beyond the cover (which is truly a shocker! ) you'll find the heartfelt confessions of a man whose had more reason than most to question the fundamentals of self-identity. Childhood was all about performance, learning to be a 'good boy', a 'sport', a kid like all the others and yet better, more distinct, he writes. What it was really about was building a false identity, one that said I was this body and these thoughts, and object for myself when prior to that I had been naturally (and unconsciously) Aware Open Space and all it contained.

Amberchele writes well and, so I've discovered, has written a novel to boot which must be worth a read. He's frank about his life in prison - no picnic despite the change in perspective non duality has brought him.

At the most basic level nothing has changed because nothing ever happened, he writes. But I have to add that at the level of this life story, the story is transformed. For instance, taking seriously what I find when I simultaneously 'in' see and 'out' see, relationships radically changed. You walk into the room and I can clearly see that I disappear in your favour, that I cannot but give way to allow you into my space, that I am not here to confront or be afraid of you. As pure awareness I am permeated by you and even more remarkably, I see that you appear in me as one of my appearances. Who is there to dominate whom? Who is there to defend? How can I even describe such a relationship except to say that Subjectivity is relating to Itself, and for no reason other than to see just this?

Ordinary Freedom by Jon Bernie

2010-08-17T12:16:00.000+01:00

Personally I've never got the whole Adyashanti phenomenon. I mean he's eloquent yes, and makes long pauses between his sentences, but I just don't feel the gravitas. However, he's certainly helped a lot of people so he must be doing something right. One of those, now a teacher in his own right, is the author of this book, Jon Bernie. Ordinary Freedom is a collection of his dialogues really, published with customary excellence by Non Duality Press.

This is actually a fantastic and eloquent expression of non duality teachings, and definitely one of my favourite books of late. It starts as it means to go on, with a paragraph that really makes you stop and think.

Awakening in its essence is simply being here. It's not the thought, 'being here,' or a story you tell yourself internally: 'I'm being here.' There is no thinker or storyteller. There is no one who is being here.

Now if I were forced to try an explain what non duality is in a few brief sentences, that might be one of the best replies one could come up with.

Amazingly, all you need to learn is simply to be available to what is. That's all that's required. But instead we often tend to go, 'I want this, but not that. I want the bliss, the oneness, the joy, but I don't want the pain, the fear, the grief, the anger,' Ironically, a lot of so-called teaching is just pointing out that not wanting.

It's not the experience itself - pain, fear, whatever - that's the problem. It's the resistance to that experience: the trying to get rid of it, the trying to fix it, the trying to understand it. I call that the primary resistance. That resistance is usually unconscious, but it can come to the surface if your willing to really stay with your experience. That's actually all that's required, just hanging in there. Of course, that can sometimes be more challenging than it sounds, because it can often be a very bumpy ride.

But as you gradually become more and more available to the truth of what you are, you'll find that 'hanging in there' is just what naturally happens. As first, allowing what is may seem to require effort; but as you become established inn awareness you'll find that what really takes effort is resisting, struggling with what is. WHen you can finally let go of that effort, then being with what is, whatever it is, becomes truly effortless.

Fantastic stuff and I look forward to sharing more about Jon Bernie in the future. He holds regular Satsangs in the SF bay area, and you can see his schedule here: http://www.sf-satsang.org/

Dismantling the Fantasy by Darryl Bailey

2010-07-26T11:51:00.000+01:00

This slim little book has been in my bag for the last couple of weeks and has been read so many times it's beginning to look severely battered. Dismantling the Fantasy by Darryl Bailey is, in my humble opinion, an immediate spiritual classic.

According to the backcover bio, Darryl has a fairly weighty history of meditative training: spending nine years apprenticed to Ruth Denison and another six years as a monk in the Thai forest tradition under the guidance of Ajahn Sumedho. What's amazing about this though is that - on the face of things at least - Darryl's message is absolutely free of any kind of spiritual affiliation, Buddhist terminology or non dual mumbo jumbo of any kind. 'I'm not concerned with any of that,' he writes. 'I'm interested in a certain kind of freedom that sometimes arises in this exploration.'

Dismantling the Fantasy seems to explain this freedom in a way very few spiritual books come close to. Darryl Bailey does this not through any concrete definition of what freedom is, or by being more linguistically precise than others in this field. He manages it instead by explaining that what freedom actually is is a process of 'turning away from defining life..There is eventually no belief in the stories of thought. They're needed for functioning, but the obsessive need to explain existence falls away.'

Q Some say if we drop the focus on perception and thought, we come to pure awareness, or pure consciousness. Do you agree?

DB: No. That's just another thought. There are incorrect assumptions about existence. No one ever left the womb thinking that they were awareness or consciousness. It takes a long time for society to programme us to think like that.

People often object to this kind of statement, saying that to dismiss such things is nihilistic, useless, life denying, and even damaging.

Q: Isn't it?

DB: Not in my experience. A reaction like that indicates they don't understand what I'm pointing to.

People desperately want to describe existence and, historically, they speak of matter, energy, consciousness, spirit, oneness and mystery. But descriptions are merely limited interpretations. All of them. They can never tell us what life actually is.

I say there is no matter, energy, consciousness, spirit, oneness, or mystery. This is often misunderstood, because people think it's saying there's nothing at all, and that sounds very bleak.

To say that life is not mystery, not oneness, not consciousness, not any thing, this is not the same as sating there's nothing. It's not pointing to some state of oblivion or bleak emptiness. In fact it's just the opposite.

Try asking a newborn baby whether there is awareness or consciousness. Ask an infant if a world exists. Awareness, consciousness, and world are merely labels taught to us by society long after we leave the womb. For a newborn, there are no things, no definable forms, no labels, no awareness, no body, no mind, and no world.

However, this doesn't mean there's nothing. I don't have the impression that a newborn baby is feeling lost and bleak without ideas of awareness, consciousness, or the many other things of life.

An infant is a vital, pulsing event - lively, sensitive, alert, and highly responsive. There's nothing nihilistic in that.

Ideas don't tell us what life is. They don't even focus on life. They focus on abstract notions of division and comparison, dividing life's constantly vibrant movement into false impressions of static form, describing one false form as different from another.

That's how we get the impression of understanding something: it's one form, or thing, as opposed to some other form, or thing.

But calling one portion of the moment 'awareness', and another portion 'the object of awareness', never tells us what the basic happening is. Instead, it gives the mistaken impression that this happening is divided into different forms that can be understood.

When you're one hour old, you thinking you're an awareness experiencing a world. According to research into child development, it takes seven years to be fully trained to think like that.

You may think I'm ultimately saying life is a mystery, but I'm not. 'Life' and 'mystery' are just more lables. To me this is not about coming up with another label. It's not about fixating on though, It's about dropping the obsession with thought, by seeing it's limitations.

Q: If we drop the focus on thought, what are we left with?

DB: Motion, expressing itself.

That should give you an idea of what a treat you've got in store. Buy this book, give it to your friends and family, leave it on buses to make its way into the world. To quite Joan Tollifson whose quote adorns the back cover: 'This is one of the finest books on non-duality I have come across.

Standing as Awareness by Greg Goode

2010-07-03T10:19:00.004+01:00

While some non duality books nudge against the new age genre, others stand far closer to philosophy. Standing as Awarenessby Greg Goode is very much in this latter category, and hence can occasionally seem like something of a dry read. It's worth persevering with, however, for Greg brings a clear and patient understanding to the task of leading the reader through the teachings of Sri Atmananda, also known as The Direct Path.

The book starts with a simple premise: take your stand as awareness.

What if you took a stand, right now, as awareness? Sure, it can seem that 'everything is awareness' is almost a cliché these days. But what if you really treated this pronouncement, this recent cliché, as true? Simply you will discover that experience confirms your stand.

Greg's second step is: fall in love with awareness.

Falling love with awareness consists of being pulled by the curiosity, the yearning, the sweetness. This love is always answered fully by awareness itself..... This sweetness spreads until you come to experience yourself and the world as one undivided awareness.

The third step is: the Witness: from establishment to collapse.

You have realized the witness when nothing seems like it is other than awareness. You no longer have that feeling that there is awareness, and also things existing independently of awareness. Even violence, sickness and biological death don't seem external to awareness.... At this point, higher reason has almost finished all the work it can do....Having realized the witness, you discover that you've always been home. You no longer feel that you were born, or that you will die. If the universe itself perishes, you as awareness are there.

All in all, Standing as Awarenessis a valuable addition to the genre. My feeling on non duality books is that, although they're often saying basically the same thing, everyone's take on this is different. Sometimes a particular writing style or tone can resonate with one person and not others, and it's for this reason that it's worth reading a broad spectrum, to appreciate the myriad ways in which Oneness can be spoken of, and to hope for those few lines in which our understanding of reality might crack open.

Greg Goode's website is here and is a particularly valuable source of information, especially for those interested in the crossover between Western philosophy and Advaita Vedanta.

A very special version of Rupert Spira's book

2010-06-26T13:06:00.009+01:00

Non duality books are often - visually, at least - somewhat new-agey affairs, whose covers do little to advertise the true worth of the goods inside. It doesn't really matter, one might think, since these teachings are of an order that seeks to transcend the petty preferences of a dualistic mind, and cut through to that place beyond good or bad. Ha ha.. well I'm not there yet. What a delight, then, to discover this new version of one of the most profound non duality books of recent years: Rupert Spira's The Transparency of Things. Designed by Rupert himself, this beautiful hardback has a cream coloured textured dust wrapper with the title embossed in red foil over a red cloth hardback binding. It's a stunning piece of design, and has already become one of my most prized books.

For those not familiar with the teachings of ceramicist Rupert Spira, his particular methodology is to force the individual into very concrete examinations of what we have taken for 'experience.' Is it not true, he points out that:

The perception of a sound, the sensation that we call my hand' and the current thought, all appear free-floating in the same space as Consciousness. Is that not our actual experience?

Is it true that our thoughts are on the inside of this consciousness and that sounds are on the outside?

What is our actual experience of the boundary between what is 'inside' myself and what is 'outside' myself? There is no experience of such a boundary!

You can't buy the hardback version of The Transparency of Things from Amazon by the way, but only from Non Duality Press here or at Rupert's talks.

What Book!?

2010-06-24T09:05:00.010+01:00

Wanted to diverge very slightly today from my usual topic to mention a small gem of a poetry book I came across recently called What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop. It's been a while since I was so bowled over by a collection of poems, finding myself smiling mysteriously on buses and trains as a certain line resonates, striking through to the very heart of things. Gary Gach, poet and translator, has done a fine job of culling the best from the distinctive expression that the Western Buddhist tradition has given to the Buddhist philosophy. There are the obvious inclusions like Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Ginsberg. But also some more unusual entries for a book of this theme: Derek Wallcott's Love after Love makes the list, and the language poet Clark Coolidge. Anyway, I highly recommend this. Slim enough to fit in the pocket but punching well above it's weight.

Fitting perhaps to quote Nina Wise's poem, included here, about the late and much missed H. W. L Poonja.

To Papaji

I looked for you all my life
by 747, bullet train, camel back, by foot;
snatched fractured glimpses
that burrowed beneath my skin.

I looked for you everywhere,
in bhavans, mountains, monasteries, stones,
fretted koans, ate sweet rice,
drank yak tea, and bowed.

I looked for you all my life,
then found you in the chant
of the tangerine man pushing
his wooden cart of the thick skinned sweets
down dung-smoked roads.

I looked for you everywhere
then found you in the eyes
of the peanut boy, perched cross-legged
in his once white kurta, stirring
warm-weather snacks in a roasting pan.

I looked for you all my life,
then found you in the upturned palm
of a white-maned man, propped in a deluge
of car horns and fumes, his plastic legs
upright beside him.

I looked for you everywhere,
then found you in the rough tongue
of a wattled white cow, royalty
in the road, sliding a banana peel
quick from my offering hand.

I looked for you all my life,
then found you in the high whine
of a mosquito breaking into my netted sleep,
close as a lover, whispering:
Sweet nothing, sweet nothing.

You asked me, Who are you,
the one who is looking; who looks?
and I traced my name in a field of dots
as it disappeared into always.

So this is love, my memory sang,
The lane so narrow two cannot exist,
you said. Chasms opened.
Hearts leapt

into the molten place where light embraces
form and what matters waits patient
as a a mountain expecting a slow train,
its cars dismembered in an accident.

Reassembled, I made my way
to the peak to view the lay
of the land: beginnings, endings,
seasons, weather moving.

Back home, slippers, dog at my feet,
an open window, I find you in the breeze
that caresses my face with a whisper:
Sweet nothing, sweet nothing.

Visit Nina Wise's site here.

I am that I am

2010-06-22T18:00:00.008+01:00

The film company Neti Neti films deserve some sort of award for their work in preserving and promoting the teachings of the late Indian master Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. In collaboration with Stephen Wolinsky, one of the few living direct students of Maharaj, I am that I am is the first in a series of DVD's unpacking Maharaj's teachings. Although I personally find Wolinsky quite eccentric, this DVD does a good job of explaining in simple language what can be quite esoteric in the words of the master.

Nisagardatta was born on April 17, 1897, at break of dawn, during the full moon in the month of Chaitra, to a devout Hindu couple Shivrampant Kambli and Parvatibai. The day was also the birthday of Lord Hanuman, hence the boy was named 'Maruti', after Lord Hanuman himself. He became a simple man, running a small bidi shop on a bustling street in Bombay. Always interested in spiritual matters, he was introduced to his guru, Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, the head of the Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, by his friend Yashwantrao Baagkar in 1933. His guru told him, "You are not what you take yourself to be...". He then gave Nisargdatta simple instructions which he followed verbatim, as he himself recounted later: "My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I am'. It may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked!"

After an association that lasted hardly two and a half years, Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj died on November 9, 1936, though by that time he had done his task. Maruti had reached self-awareness. Soon he adopted a new name, 'Nisargadatta' meaning the one who dwells in the natural state. He was also appointed as the spiritual head of the Inchegeri branch of Navnath Sampradaya, the 'Nine Masters’ tradition, a place he retained through his life.

According to Sri Nisargadatta the purpose of spirituality is to know who you are, a fact he spoke of often in the talks he gave at his humble flat in Khetwadi, Mumbai. He talked about the 'direct way' of knowing the Final Reality, in which one becomes aware of one's original nature through mental discrimination, a method which is common to the teachers of the Navnath Sampradaya. This mental discrimination or the Bird's way ('Vihangam Marg') was also presented by Nisargadatta's co-disciple, Sri Ranjit Maharaj; wherein Self-Knowledge is gained just as a bird flying in the sky goes easily from branch to branch, instead of slowly crawling its way up the tree like an ant, as in the 'Pipilika Marg'. Here the disciple reaches straight to truth, without wasting time in long drawn out practices that would take him to the 'fruit' no doubt, only slowly. He proposed to use one's mental faculty to break from the unreal to the real, and the mind's false identification with the ego, simply by listening to and constantly thinking over what the master has said, and knowing that "You are already That".

If you haven't encountered the teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, you can buy this excellent introduction from Neti Neti films here.

Jean Klein: The Big Book of LISTENING

2010-06-18T13:58:00.013+01:00

Musicologist and doctor, Jean Klein was born in Brno in 1916. He arrived in France in 1933, worked for the French Resistance, then spent three years studying yoga in India. From what we know it was the teachings of Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon that had the most influence on him, leading him to a profound self-realisation some time during the 1950's. He became one of the most eloquent communicators of the teachings of non-duality the West has ever been fortunate enough to have, and thanks to Non Duality Press most of these are now available again, and in English!

The Book of Listening is the first of these I'm going to review here. 'Listening' was originally produced by the Jean Klein Foundation in single volumes (ten volumes in total) over a six year period from 1989 - 1995 and is now recreated here as a paperback. It reads an extraordinary medley of interviews, quotations, discourses on specific themes, and extracts from specific poems enjoyed by Jean Klein himself.

The Glimpse

Q: You speak very often of an insight or glimpse. What is the nature of it and how does it manifest?

Jean Klein: Imagine that you live in a dark room and are more or less accustomed to the dark, then one day you suddenly see a crack through which the light comes. The light represents the insight; it is a glimpse of reality in the context of being understanding. It is truth.... In the same way when you understand clearly that an object can only be explained by referring to another object, but that all objects find their meaning in the light of consciousness, you will no longer be bound to the object world. In the moment you see the crack of light, light which comes from beyond the object world, in this moment you are liberated from bondage to objects.

Q: Can we do anything to bring about this insight?

Jean Klein: An insight is produced spontaneously by life, or a teacher can bring you to the threshold by informing you of your true state: you are objectless. Through higher reasoning on the ultimate subject, the teacher brings the mind to its limits. The point where the mind is exhausted and says, 'I don't know' is the threshold where the insight occurs.

The Book of Listening, I would suggest, is not a book to sit down and read cover to cover, as with a good novel. Rather, it's a book to live with, pick up and ponder, and to dip into like a diver in search of the pearl of great price. What comes through these pages most of all is a sense of what a wonderful, wise and intelligent human being Klein was, an Indian sage dressed in the guise of a middle class Frenchman with snowy hair.

There is a lively Facebook page for those interested in the work of Jean Klein here.

kindness

2010-06-18T12:54:00.006+01:00

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend.

Poem: "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. © Eighth Mountain Press, 1995.

Awake in the Heartland: The Ecstasy of What is by Joan Tollifson

2010-05-12T16:39:00.008+01:00

To use the author's own wording: This is a book about what could be called Zen or Advaita or meditative inquiry or radical non-duality in the context of an actual life with all its messiness. This is refreshing. What this isn't, therefore, is one more book about a person who 'got it' in a blinding flash of light, and then proceeded to coast through life in a beatific glow thereafter. It's about a lifelong seeker, a woman with addictions and anxieties and a compulsion for biting her fingernails until they bleed. It's about a satsang junkie who veered one from teacher to the next, always in search of that defining experience which would wipe away a lifetime's suffering, and finally make the world OK. That moment never arrived.

But something else did arrive. The realisation that this moment is all there is. Joan Tollifson's book is all about this present moment: how we spend our lives running from it, taking substances to escape it, looking for wealth or relationships to augment it. Life always gives us the teacher we need at every moment, she writes. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the Guru.

I wanted so much to write a pure book, she writes, a book that spoke only the highest truth. But I kept discovering that what people seemed to appreciate most about me is my honesty. Being a fucked up mess was beginning to seem like my vocation.

Joan Tollifson's honesty is indeed one of her greatest assets. But she's also a wonderful writer. It's been a long time since I read a book about spirituality with such keen observation of the natural world, or such powerful description of inner mind-states. What also sets this book apart is that it feels real. Jack Kornfield is another writer who possesses this quality, which is to write from a position that every reader can equate with, and to speak convincingly of life-situations at the opposite end of the spectrum to so-called 'spiritual experience' in a way that makes you know they've been there.

Ultimately, Joan Tollifson finds 'what is' to the goal of all her seeking. When I look for what I know to be true beyond any doubt, she says, what I come to is presence itself: the simple fact of being here. Everything else is made up.

Call it emptiness, presence, awareness, the Tao, the Self, God, groundlessness, the Absolute, Consciousness, or refuse to speak about it all. It eludes all attempts to capture it. It is truly nothing. And yet, here it is. Here you are. Presence. Awareness. This.
What is this?
What are you?
Are you the character in the story, or the aware space in which the story appears and disappears?......
If the character is no more real than a dream, what is it that's dreaming?

Joan Tollifson's website (with an exceptionally good 'Recommended' section) is here.

Awake in the Heartland is published by Non Duality Press. You can buy her book below:

The Writings of Robert Wolfe

2010-05-08T15:25:00.008+01:00

Robert Wolfe is a new name to me, discovered via the excellent Non Duality Highlights Yahoo group, run by Jerry Katz. I am, however, absolutely blown away by Wolfe's writings, and the book Living Nonduality, available to read at his website. As the story goes, Wolfe took himself to the woods in a camper van to understand the meaning of life. Three solitary years later it all clicked, so to speak, with Wolfe emerging back into the world to share his discovery. Anyway, the long and the short of it is, he's written what I feel to be a deeply profound book, certainly one of the best things on non duality out there. Stylistically it's somewhere between Wei Wu Wei and Alan Watts, and hence not always easy. But worth persevering with and, for absolutely no charge, a total gift from the universe. Generally, I'm a little sceptical when it comes to notions of humanity entering some golden age, or 2012, or the flowering of human consciousness as Eckhart Tolle likes to put it. But at the same time it seems extraordinary that books like Rupert Spira's and this should be appearing so thick and fast these days, spinning out through the web to wake people up. One could almost think consciousness was enjoying this play of awakening to itself after having pretended to fall asleep, as one more aspect of a cosmic game, the rules of which lie far beyond all understanding.

Could it be possible that our earliest assumption, that we even exist as a separate self, is fundamentally a misapprehension? Some aver that our earliest condition of consciousness - before we considered our "self" - was without any perception of self or not self. It is further alleged this primal consciousness is the platform upon which our subsequent sense of self arises. In the same manner in which that sense of self has arisen, it can again subside. In other words, they say, the assumption of self-existence is not entirely necessary to the function of operative consciousness.

To discover for ourself whether such an operative form of consciousness is a practical possibility, as some of sound mind have claimed, would seem to merit more of our attention than that directed towards fruitless externalising.

Were we to discover for ourselves such a possibility, perhaps we might then have some effect on the me against them mindset amongst our neighbours.

Check out his website here or buy the print book from Amazon below.

Randall Friend

2010-05-01T14:10:00.016+01:00

Advaita, these days, is one of the more busy aisles in the spiritual supermarket. Endless teachers lean down from brightly lit shelves yelling 'there's nothing to buy', and 'who would be there to buy anything, anyway!' while holding out there hands for the 'non existent' dollars. Amongst all this, it seems relatively rare to find a teacher completely uninterested in the guru game, but with a clarity of presence that suggests he's speaking from a place of deep realisation. You are No Thing immediately suggested this to me, and the subsequent podcasts I listened to on the Urban Guru Cafe confirmed this many times over.

You are No Thing, published by Non Duality Press, comes in at a slim 125 pages. If we can talk of lineage now that Advaita's left the East, Randall comes from Nisagardatta Maharaj via Sailor Bob Adamson and Gilbert Schultz of Australia. This book reminded me of Sailor Bob's teachings in many ways, in that it manages to make the traditional teachings of Advaita completely accessible for a Western audience. There are no Hindu words thrown in here to add authenticity, or heady tales of enlightenment to add drama. Quite the opposite in fact, You are No Thing offers: absolute simplicity, clear pointing, and no fluff of any kind.

We go in search of this enlightenment. Many people seem to be getting a lot off this enlightened person's books or meetings or website. We pick up the book which has the most positive reviews, we visit some websites, yet we aren't really sure who really is enlightened. How the hell are we supposed to know? We dive in, we read, we listen, we spend endless hours listening to online videos or driving to satsangs. We sit there and listen, trying to figure out just what the hell they're saying....

Yet we're left in our old, crappy life. We're left still not knowing what it's all about. We're left still seeking answers. We're eternally stuck in a mere intellectual understanding. We wonder why we keep on reading all this, listening to all this, wasting our time on all this.

Maybe we begin a path, We start meditation. We start repeating mantras. We buy the right clothes and listen to all the right music, we start looking at how we can be more compassionate, more selfless. We try to be the witness. We try to see God in everything.

And in this trying, in this effort to become, in this habitual glossing over of the core of the message, to get that quick fix, that instant makeover, that enlightenment-in-ten-easy-steps, we have already ensured that we will miss the point.

We have totally missed the fact that what we are seeking has been staring us in the face.
Our original face.
The face before we were born.

This is great stuff. Clear, unpretentious, wise. In the hands of some, this simple message seems to become increasingly obscure. In others, even the simplicity is peeled away. There is no where to stand, no concepts within which to hide, and no personality to call your own. You are No Thing.

Randall also holds weekly meetings as the avatar Avastu Maruti in the 3d virtual world Second Life that I've heard good things about. His website is called You are Dreaming.

Hubert Benoit

2010-04-26T11:58:00.007+01:00

Classical violinist, surgeon, psychologist and writer, Hubert Benoit was an extraordinary renaissance man, and one of the key figures in bringing Zen to Europe. Sussex Academic press has recently reissued two of his classic works The Supreme Doctrine and The Realization of the Self in one volume The Light of Zen in the West. Since Benoit's time there have been many attempts to locate the teachings of Zen within a psycho-therapeutic framework, but as one of the first and most influential, this is certainly worth a read. While Western psychology places the emphasis on the ego and its adjustment to the world, Benoit explained to a generation the astonishing hypothesis that this very ego may actually not exist at all in the way we think.

Man obtains satori, then, as a result of turning his back, as thoroughly as possible, on his centre, as a result of going right to the ultimate limits in this centrifugal direction, as a result of pushing to its ultimate degree of purity the functioning of the discursive intelligence which keeps him away from Wisdom. He ought to accomplish formal thought to the point of breaking up the form. In order to do that he ought to make his formal mind function in a persevering attempt to perceive, beyond it limits, the in-formal; an attempt that is absurd in itself but which brings about the release one day of the miracle of satori ... .

One of the most fruitful outcomes of the 20th century dialogue between Eastern and Western thought has been the acceptance that both interpretations: mind and no-mind, are valid. Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield has written a superb article called Even the Best Meditators have Old Wounds to Heal which seems to lay this out perfectly. We're fortunate indeed to live in a time when such dialogues are available to us, and when one can use the fruits of both systems to activate the potential of individual lives.

Also worth reading in this vein is:

A letter from Rupert Spira

2010-04-19T10:52:00.013+01:00

Of all the book on non duality I've read recently The Transparency of Things by noted British ceramicist Rupert Spira is the most persuasive. A student of Frances Lucille, Spira has an exacting way with language, and uses a series of 'contemplations' to ruthlessly dissect our false assumptions about 'experience'. This is a book, I suspect, that will spread the ideas of non duality far outside its normal circles. Any student of philosophy, for example, would do well to consider just what is being suggested here about the nature of reality, and I defy them to contradict it! Rupert is also available for email discussions with those earnest about truth, and - as can be seen below - offers exceptionally clear pointers. See his website, here, for more information, and a calendar of his forthcoming meetings.

Dear Piers,

Thank you for your appreciative email.

Piers: I'm aware that the search itself is the thing blocking understanding.

Rupert: The apparently separate 'I' does not DO the search. It IS the search.

So, if we consider ourselves to be a separate entity, then the search is inevitable.

If, as this apparent entity, we then add a new belief (on top of the belief that we are a separate entity) that the search is blocking our understanding and, as a result, try to call off the search, we are in effect searching for happiness by negating the search for happiness. We end up with suppression, frustration and resignation rather than peace and happiness.

If we were truly aware that it is the search that is blocking understanding (and understanding is just another name for happiness) then the search would cease right there.

Rather, we have superimposed the belief that searching is wrong on top of our much deeper and truer desire to search for happiness.

I do not say this with any judgement, but simply to lay bare the situation so that we are able to search intelligently and legitimately for what we deeply want.

So, see clearly that as long as the apparent 'I' is present, the search is present.

Normally we think that it is the apparently separate 'I' that will find happiness, without realising that this apparently separate 'I' in fact veils happiness.

So I would suggest turning attention towards this apparently separate 'I' so so as to see very clearly exactly what it is made of.

We have no doubt that whatever this apparently separate 'I' is, it is seeing these words right now. We say, " 'I' see these words."

So turn your attention towards whatever it is that is seeing these words. Be very specific.

Whatever it is that is seeing these words is also experiencing whatever else is being experienced in this moment - thoughts, images, bodily sensations and perceptions. Turn your attention towards that one, that 'knowing' or 'experiencing' one.

Can you find it? Can you see, touch, feel or perceive it? Can you locate it?

No! But do you have any doubt that you are that one?

Could you ever find that one as an object? No, because you would be the one knowing or experiencing that object.

And if you cannot find it as an object, how do you know that it has limits, that it is located, separate, personal, that it was born or will die, or that it has a certain age or gender?

See that that one that we intimately know ourself to be is present and aware. Could we ever not be that one? Could we move closer to or further away from that one, that is, from our self? Where would we go to get away from it? What would we have to become in order not to be it?

We would have to pretend that we are something else. We would have to somehow veil the knowledge that we have of our self as that one and seem to be something else.

And how is this done? That one, that we intimately know ourselves to be, creates the mind within itself, or rather takes the shape of the apparent mind, which has the possibility of all thinking, sensing and perceiving within it.

It creates as it were, a collage of thinking/imagining/sensing/perceiving.
At this stage there is no duality, no separation of experience into separate parts, entities, objects, others or the world.

All is simply known intimately to be simultaneously made of and known by that one that we directly know ourselves to be.

And then that one takes the shape of a particular thought which exclusively identifies it, that one, with a little fragment of the whole, that is, with a little fragment of itself.

So that one now considers itself to be a little fragment rather than the whole, and every thing that lies outside that fragment is considered to be not that one, not 'me.'

At that moment, the peace and happiness that are inherent in that one, that is, inherent in Awareness, is veiled. It is veiled by the apparent dividing of the seamless totality into two seemingly separate parts, a knowing subject and a known object.

I say all this to make it very clear that, one, we are already Awareness, that is, Awareness is already, always and only itself and two, the apparently separate 'I' that we consider ourselves to be is never found. It is simply a figment of the mind's own imagination.

There are not two 'I's - a small, limited, unreal one and a universal, real, unlimited one. There is one 'I,' Awareness, which SEEMS to become a small personal 'I' by taking the shape of a thought that seems to limit it by exclusively identifying it with a bodily sensation.

But Awareness, the only 'I,' never actually becomes that little 'I.' There is no little, false 'I.' There is always only the true 'I' of Awareness.

It is in the clear seeing of this that the apparently separate 'I' is truly undermined. That is, it is seen to be utterly non-existent as such. This clear seeing reveals the true 'I' to be utterly present as Awareness.

When it becomes clear that it is this apparently separate 'I' that veils the peace and happiness that are inherent in Awareness, it becomes clear that this apparently separate 'I' cannot by definition find happiness, any more than the darkness can find light.

It is this clear seeing that truly dissolves the apparently separate 'I.' It is not that something that really exists is dissolved, but rather than it is seen to be utterly non-existent. The BELIEF in its real existence is dissolved by SEEING that it is non-existent.

Until this has become clear I would recommend continuing to explore your experience very deeply.

Separation

2010-03-24T09:51:00.003Z

Tony Parsons speaks eloquently of our basic human desire for wholeness, this longing for return. Could it be that all of our actions, conscious and unconscious, are motivated by a primal desire for unity. Could it be that all the clubs, all the wars, all the ideological viewpoints are a futile attempt to find security within egoic thought structures? And could it also be - as much of Eastern thought suggests - that the only place where this journey finds its resolution is in the dissolving of ego itself, so that we come to rest in presence, a simple 'not-knowing.' This idea fascinates me. Reflecting on the veracity of it in our own lives and those around us, it seems glaringly obvious. The way the shop keeper scowls for no apparent reason. The way that mother berates her child for it's unruly behaviour. The way people join forces against a mutually perceived threat, finding enormous self-affirmation in the process. The ego is a shifting unsettled creature, seeking a certainty it can never have. Spiritual practice, it seems to me, is about recognising this puppet show that is dancing in the light of pure awareness, and seeing it for what it is, a defence mechanism, the possibility machine projecting possibilities because it can.

All of which is easier said than done, and yet we are granted moments of reprieve, sometimes at the least expected moments.

A line of icicles on a winter branch.
Unasked for compassion from a stranger.
A snatch of music from an open window.
Indian chai taken at first light from a clay cup.
And so on..............................................

Satsang with Mooji

2010-02-11T06:20:00.006Z

Having just spent several years of my life trekking around India on a search for answers, it seems more than a little ironic to find out that the one I was looking for was in London all the while, selling incense in Brixton market. Life's got a big smile on its face over this one. In any case, discovering Mooji has thrown everything upside down. I've just now returned from Tiruvanamalai where Mooji was giving his annual free satsangs in the shade of the mighty Arunachala. For ten days I sat and listened, and split my sides with laughter, and watched the tears roll down my cheeks. Self Enquiry can occasionally feel like such a dry process, but with Mooji it's anything but. He's got a great gift for storytelling, and it was impossible not to feel - sharing the bamboo hut with other seekers after truth - that this ancient format of master and disciples really was the very same that one might have found in Galilee several thousand years back. For any that might read such claims with scepticism I simply recommend to go and attend a Satsang yourself. It can be tough hearing a constant negation of one's own personality, but it's ultimately deeply liberating. Through Mooji, I've finally understood that the fundamental nature of all human longing is to return to our true nature: to become the pure subjectivity in which the phenomenal world arises. This is the discovery without which life cannot be complete - and which paradoxically IS life in its completeness.

Check out: http://mooji.satsangs.net/ for some videos.

William Samuel

2009-12-22T05:15:00.003Z

This week the name William Samuel has entered my consciousness, first via his intriguing book Two Plus Two, and secondly via the recorded lecture transmitted on the always excellent Urban Guru Cafe. Ten years ago I wouldn't have got more than a few lines into his work before the 'God' language sent all kinds of judgements whirring in my brain. A close reading of his work, however, reveals that here was a man - a humble baker from no less than Birmingham Alabama (a place which history, alas, has forever allied with the very opposite of 'enlightened thinking) - who was, in effect, a Buddha working among us.

The story goes that Samuels first encountered Eastern thought while serving in the American military in China, during the 1940's. His translator during this time was a Taoist monk and it is perhaps from him that some understanding of 'The Way' first permeated the young soldier's mind. After the war he returned to Asia for further study, then back to Alabama where he married, had three sons, and become the proprietor of his father's bakery. Over the years that followed he became known as a healer and mystic of some repute, and published several books. Two Plus Two is available as a free download from this site, and it really is a quite remarkable piece of work, as clearly stated as anything written by Ramana Maharshi, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj or anyone else.

Samuel's discovery, needless to say, was that he was not the limited, autonomous human being which he had believed himself to be, but a simple manifestation of the cosmic principle which governs all things. He uses the illustration of arithmetic with great efficacy.

Consider numbers for a minute. They exist because the principle of arithmetic exists. If there were no principle there would be no numbers. Because the principle is infinite, there is an infinity of numbers. We might say that numbers “live and move and have their being” in the principle of arithmetic because the principle is...... No number can exist outside the perfect principle. No number has a mind or will of its own to do what it chooses. No single number or group of them can be anything other than exactly what they are, which is Principle manifest as that particular aspect of principle. There is no life, truth, intelligence and substance in the numeral itself.

Anyway, have a look. It's a radical message, because if 'you' truly listen to it, then 'you' will have to disappear.... forever.

Revisiting Alan Watts

2009-12-11T03:39:00.003Z

Revisiting Alan Watts this week, who's book The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are has been resounding in my conscious like the most beautiful of tuning forks. What a genius the man was! How prolific! Why isn't he required reading in every 'religious studies' class in the known world? In this work, he imagines out loud about the kind of book about life he would wish to pass on to his own children, that could 'slip them into a new domain, not of ideas alone, but of experience and feeling. It would be a temporary medicine, not a diet; a point of departure, not a perpetual point of reference. They would read it and be done with it, for if it were well and clearly written they would not have to go back to it again and again for hidden meanings or for clarification of obscure doctrines.'

What's he talking about? What is this ultimate taboo?

The lowdown (which is, of course, the secret and profound view) on life is that our normal sensation of self is a hoax or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing—with our own tacit consent,just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized.

Rarely have I heard it put better than this! Whatever we may hear about Alan Watts - alcoholic, relentless womaniser etc - it seems abundantly clear that he had realised his true nature. And despite the occasionally dated (but quite endearing) 60's language he uses, such as 'beat,' 'square' etc, he was also a true writer, and his communication of these ideas remains absolutely bang on.

I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time—a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution, where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment only to vanish forever. Under such conditioning it seems impossible and even absurd to realize that myself does not reside in the drop alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies to the nuclear fields in my body. At this level of existence "I" am immeasurably old; my forms are infinite and their comings and goings are.

All of this rings true in the most wonderful sense. As indeed, does Watts's tracing of this great 'taboo' through the technocratic heart of Western civilization, in which we seek - through ever more elaborate means - some illusion of control. Why instead do we not simply accept that we have no control, that we are mere functioning threads of an infinite system, completely indivisable from the whole itself. This, surely, is where the sense of meaning actually lies - not in some finite moment of personal power, but in the absolute negation of the personal, and the sure realisation that we are the entire system itself, enjoying 'itself' through the medium of this individual body, and nothing more, because there quite simply IS nothing more. What we are encompasses the deep blue infinitudes of space, and the closest penetrating glimpse through a quantum lens. It is the Gandhi and the Hitler, the healing hands and the acid rain. Nothing is outside of us, no matter how vile, or how full of something we may term 'love.'

Varanasi: notes from the holy city

2009-11-18T09:59:00.005Z

Strange days in the City of Light. Here to write a book about the city, I'm staying on the edge of Assi Ghat, overlooking the muddy brown Ganga. Sounds of drumming rising up from the narrow streets, and a harmonium from a nearby ashram. Bird sounds, sunlight, colourful washing moving on a line. Across the rooftops, a number of small children flying their one rupee kites with delight, occasionally cutting their opponents from the sky with shrill cries of triumph. Car horns, the mooing of cows, a goat bleat, hammering from some distance construction site. And just a few yards away the river flowing slowly, carrying boatman and tourists, travelling some 2500km from the western Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. Beneath all this, there is an endless silence, a pure awareness 'Self.' Onto this empty screen comes the whole world and all the things within in. But this screen is not itself 'nothing': but the absolute presence upon the manifest world arises. It cannot be seen or touched in any way by the conceptual mind. But in the quietude of the moment, it can be simply 'known' and accepted as the stuff of life.

This was Kabir's city. Even today this mystic is revered across Varanasi, especially in the weaving communities of which he was a part. Raised by childless weavers, he came to espouse a philosophy that eschewed all dogma, practice and ritual.

What is seen is not the Truth
What is cannot be said
Trust comes not without seeing
Nor understanding without words
The wise comprehends with knowledge
To the ignorant it is but a wonder
Some worship the formless God
Some worship His various forms
In what way He is beyond these attributes
Only the Knower knows
That music cannot be written
How can then be the notes
Says Kabir, awareness alone will overcome illusion

(For those interested in reading more Kabir, I highly recommend the translations of Robert Bly, which I think are up there with Coleman Barks' translations of Rumi. Magical stuff.)

Wei Wu Wei

2009-09-13T14:26:00.010+01:00

Could any human concept be more irritatingly difficult, more cryptic, more non nonsensical than the idea of our own non existence? Surely, the very fact that 'I' am reading this blog, or writing this blog in my case, means that 'I' must exist. Apparently not.

Unfortunately for those of us still deluded by this mysteriously persuasive 'I' concept, every enlightened master since the beginning of time confirms our mistake. 'What is not present in deep sleep,' does not exist was Ramana's take on it. Wei wu Wei said: 'In reality, nothing is.' Nisagardatta Maharaj asked his students to: 'Realize you are a dream you call the world.' David Carse, who's recent book 'Perfect Brilliant Stillness' I highly recommend, likes to say: “there is no one home, there is nothing happening here.”

This, then, is why no 'one' has ever become enlightened. To gain the ultimate understanding, any and all personal 'self' must be wiped away. It does not mean that the body/mind vanishes, nor that the world vanishes. It means that concept of an individual reference point against which the world can be measured ceases to exist. UG Krishnamurti points out that 'maya' which is consistently translated as meaning: 'illusion' has it's roots in the word to 'measure.' This constant measuring of a world against an imaginary yardstick 'I' is the problem.

Whether or not you are able to indulge the very possibility that you, as you have imagined yourself, do not exist, it's easy to realise that if there weren't a personal 'I', life might be a good deal simpler. No one would be around to suffer all my problems! No one would feel cold, hungry, fearful etc. Quite simply, all problems would vanish. How could they not? Suffering can only exist if there is someone to suffer it!

How then can we get a grip on what is meant by 'no self'? Is there any way to understand it intellectually? To my mind, the indomitable Wei Wu Wei ( the nom de plume of one Terence Gray 1895-1986) has come closest - at least for the Western mind - in explaining this conundrum. His book Open Secret is the kind that makes your head feel like it's going to explode but it's worth persevering with.

From Open Secret: Hong Kong University Press, 1965.

OBJECTS ARE only known as the result of reactions
of the senses of sentient beings to a variety of stimuli.

These stimuli appear to derive from sources external
to the reagent apparatus, but there is no evidence of this
apart from the reagent apparatus itself.

Objects, therefore, are only a surmise, for they have
no demonstrable existence apart from the subject that
cognises them.

Since that subject itself is not sensorially cognisable
as an object, subject also is only a surmise.

Since the factual existence of neither subject nor
object can be demonstrated, existence is no more than a
conceptual assumption, which, metaphysically, is inacceptable.

There is, therefore, no valid evidence for the existence
of a world external to the consciousness of sentient beings,
which external world is therefore seen to be nothing but the
cognisers of it, that is—sentient beings themselves.

But there can be no factual evidence for the existence
of sentient beings, either as subject or as object, who therefore
are merely a conceptual assumption on the part of the
consciousness in which they are cognised.

It follows that 'consciousness' also can only be a
conceptual assumption without demonstrable existence.

What, then, can this assumption of consciousness
denote? This question can only be answered in metaphysical
terms, according to which consciousness may be regarded
as the manifested aspect of the unmanifested, which is
the nearest it seems possible to go towards expressing in a
concept that which by definition is inconceivable.

If you've made it through that lot without spontaneous combustion, I congratulate you. Or I would congratulate you if there were in fact anyone here to write this, or anyone there to read it.

Before language

2009-09-02T14:46:00.011+01:00

As a writer I'm accustomed to venerating language more than most. But until recently I never fully appreciated the role it played in forming our conceptions of the world. More than ten years after being bored to death by semantics at university, the truth is beginning to dawn. Recently, I came across this article by one Leonard Rubinstein which seems to put the matter well. He describes the consciousness of a baby as 'an infinitely various, constantly shifting, kaleidoscopically colored field.' I find this arresting. For in considering the non-conceptual awareness of babies and young children we gain an inkling of the goal of all world religions and spiritual practices: truth, reality, the Absolute.

The baby 'has not yet been separated from the world,' Rubinstein continues. 'It is what it sees: infinity. Adults are separated by what they see: What they see is the seen, and they are the seers.' Reading this, I realised that I had found a description of 'Buddha nature', whether or not the writer intended it as such. Pure awareness self, without the intervention of any concept. How extraordinary!

Recognising the absolute inadequacy of any form of language to communicate what IS, seems to explain many of the crazy wisdom stories inherent in the Zen and Sufi traditions, about people responding to questions with a finger held aloft etc. Words are a finger pointing at the moon, a crude symbol at best before the shining mystery itself.

My favourite Zen story about silence goes thus:

Four monks decided not utter a word for two weeks in order to indulge in silent meditation. On the very first night the flame of the candle went out throwing them into darkness.

The first monk voiced out : "Oh, no! The candle is out."

The second said : "Aren't we not suppose to talk?"

The third followed the second, "Why must you two break the silence?"

The fourth laughed and proudly declared : "Ha! I'm the only one who didn't speak."

things change

2009-09-02T10:51:00.011+01:00

Everything in life changes - we don't need the Buddha to tell us this. Decay is inherent in all component things. Sam Taylor Wood's famous video piece showing the bowl of fruit is a beautiful take on this. But it's evident in the dead skin that comes off us every time we have a shower, leaf mould pulling nutrients back into soil, cloud formations dissolving into whiteness. And yet this fundmental condition of human existence is the thing we rail against most vehemently. We don't want to admit our mortality. We resent aging, idolize youth, struggle against the tide of it like Canute, up to his waist in the crashing water, still refusing to accept what IS. Could anything be more futile than this?

Perhaps the point at which we accept this changefulness, absolutely, is the moment a spiritual life may finally begin. Once we recognise the inevitability of things, clinging to any given phenomena can be seen for what it is: the root cause of suffering. To understand this is to begin the process of letting go.

On this subject, I came across this nice piece written by Laurence Khantipalo, a Buddhist monk who lives in North Queensland. I found it most profound, and a fitting thing to post here.

A Walk in the Woods

by Phra Khantipalo

Come with me for a walk in the woods. It is hot, silent, and nearly midday but there are patches of shade here and there where we may sit. Around us trees of forty years are only twenty feet high, so great is the struggle to survive. Many die young and never mature. You can see their young skeletons being relentlessly devoured by the termites. Taller trees are scattered here and there, battered survivors of a continuous fight for life. Many of their limbs have been torn off in sudden monsoon squalls, or else they have rotted away by fungus and disease and finally fallen off. You see that “sawdust” about this tree? Its top will soon fall as some grub is eating away its heartwood. Look over there at that young tree all askew — its roots have been attacked by some predator and so it has been blown over. And there, do you see that large tree, its bark covered with mud-plaster? The termites are under that gnawing away its green wood and when they succeed in ringing it all round then, in a single day, all its leaves will turn yellow and sixty years of growth comes to an end.
Above us, young leaves of translucent green match their brilliance against the startling blue sky. Even these young tender leaves are full of holes, delicacies for the great beetles that bumble about in the evening air. Lower down these trees, the more mature leaves are ragged and lend to the forest a threadbare look. Though they must be tough still it seems they are the food of some insect. Here and there you can see at the base of branches and round the lower parts of the trees yellow leaves hanging, stiffly awaiting, as it were, the executioner who will come as a breath of wind and bring them down. Parted, they are disjoined forever — one changing process from another changing process. They fall with a crash among the undergrowth. There they join hundreds of thousands which fell before them and litter all the ground with a crackly layer of decay. But they do not just decay slowly at their own speed. Their decay is quickened by a myriad of ants, termites, worms, and funguses, all ready for food and fighting to get it, a fearsome underground jungle in miniature.
A bird calls and is still. Far away the bells on the necks of the water-buffalo at work in the rice-fields jingle. Insects drone by. You see, insects are always either looking for food or avoiding becoming the food of others. A breeze sways the trees and a huge round wasps’ nest at the top of a slender sapling looks most insecure. Danger! Flies hum and buzz, perching on a bamboo swinging in constant motion. Cicadas tick, click, and whir far and near as though they were counting the seconds of their own — and everyone else’s — lives. Seconds and minutes fly into days and months towards death. A ground lizard darts for its prey, catches it and chews the living insect with great relish. Another death in this round where death goes unremarked because it is everywhere.
Ants swarm everywhere in lines, parties or armies, in all shapes and sizes, according to their species. They play a great part in the change of this forest for they are the scavengers. They have only to scent death and they will be there ready to undertake the dismemberment of the corpse. Sometimes it is still alive. No decay is uninteresting to them, it is their livelihood and they are always busy for beings never cease decaying and dying.
Spiders too are found in great variety, all of them ready to pounce on and bite to death unwary small creatures that become entangled in their shimmering webs. They hang them, iridescent in the sunlight everywhere and it is a wonder that anything can fly and yet escape them. But even spiders do not escape death, usually from the stings of their enemies, the hunting wasps. Though the swaying bough of bamboo is most graceful it has been marked as part of this menacing world by a spider’s web hung among its leaves. And bamboos are cut down by men for their usefulness. Everything, the beautiful and the ugly is subject to impermanence.
Clouds pass across the sky bringing coolness to us here below. Their shapes change from minute to minute. Not even one second the same. They look very solid yet we know how insubstantial they are. They are just like this present time… changing… changing…
Look over here in the forest, a pile of ashes and a few burnt-out logs rotting away, and look: here is another older heap nearly dispersed. And other piles are round about with occasional carved wooden posts set in the ground, all smoldering. What are they? These mark the ends of men and women. This forest at the back of the Wat¹ is used for cremation. Some days, if you go in the late afternoon you will find a group of villagers, and a very simple open-topped coffin. Everyone can see the body there clothed as he or she died and looking, as corpses do unless interfered with, quite repulsive. The day of cremation is the day on which the person died, or the very next day at the latest. Change sets in fast and hideously in a body kept in the hot countries. A big pile of logs has been made and without ceremony and with no pretentious solemnity the coffin is hoisted on top. Bhikkhus having viewed the corpse are then asked to chant and some gifts are given and dedicated for the good of the dead man. Then without more ado paraffin is splashed over the pile and it is set alight. Some stay to see it burn. You can soon see the body roasting through the flames when the thin-walled coffin has burnt out… until amidst the embers there are only some charred pieces of bone… “Aniccaa vata sankaaraa…”
Now the sun, “the eye of the day,” has changed his position, or we have changed ours and our short walk in the woods is nearly over. What have we seen that does not pass away? Even though I may say that I look out of the windows of my hut every day and see the same trees, how near to truth is this? How can the trees be the same? They are steadily changing they are unstable and certain to come to an end in one way or another. They have had a beginning and they must have an end.
And what about this “I” who sees these trees, the forest, the burning ground and so on? Permanent or impermanent? Everyone can answer this question, for we have seen the answer in the forest. When “I” feel depressed and look at the trees they seem stark, ugly moth-eaten specimens. But when “I” am glad and look upon them, see, how beautiful they are! If, while on our walk, we looked only at the impermanence “out there,” now is the time to bring the lesson home to the heart. Everything that I am is impermanent, unstable, sure to change and deteriorate.
If impermanence meant change all the time towards better and happier states how excellent our world would be! But impermanence is allied with deterioration. All compounds break down, all made things fall to pieces, all conditioned things pass away with the passing of those conditions. Everything and everybody — that includes you and me — deteriorates, ages, decays, breaks up, and passes away. And we, living in the forest of desires, are entirely composed of the impermanent. Yet our desire impels us not to see this, though impermanence stares us in the face from every single thing around. And it confronts us when we look within — mind and body, arising and passing away.
So don’t turn on the TV, go to the pictures, read a book, seize some food, or a hundred other distractions just to avoid seeing this. This is the one thing really worth seeing, for one who fully sees it in himself is Free.
— The Jewel Forest Monastery
Sakhon Nakorn, Siam

Notes
1. Wat is the Thai word for a Buddhist monastery.
Source: The Wheel Publication No. 186/187 (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1981). Transcribed from the print edition in 2005 by a volunteer, under the auspices of the Access to Insight Dhamma Transcription Project and by arrangement with the Buddhist Publication Society. Minor revisions were made in accordance with the ATI style sheet. Pali diacritics are represented using the Velthuis convention.
See also The Three Basic Facts of Existence III: Egolessness (Anattaa), The Wheel Publication No. 202/203/204.
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Copyright © 1981 Buddhist Publication Society
Access to Insight edition © 2006

Thanks to http://www.sxc.hu/, user 'zweettooth' for the nice image.