Tag Archives: mind

the primary fact

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Sometimes a stunning image calls for an equally knock-out quote. I’m moved to post this one from Nisargadatta, because there’s so much misunderstanding around the ‘primary fact’. It shows up as stories that equate Reality with divine or sublime objects, or posit that it’s an experience one should strive to attain (via a smorgasbord of profit-earning materials and activities). It’s touted to ‘bring’ peace, happiness, awakening, enlightenment, and of course the obliteration of all our messy emotions as well as the problems we have with ‘others’.

Bring? The primary fact is that these supposed attributes are immanent in every case.

The primary fact is not metaphorical, mythical, magical or mystical. It’s not able to be experienced yet all experiences depend upon it for their existence. It is prior to anything conceivable and depends upon nothing for its absolute and ever-available presence.

And yet: It can only be apperceived as its display. How sweet is that?

 

Tree of Life: photograph by Kenneth Mucke

 

Beyond the mind there is no such thing as experience.

Experience is a dual state.

You cannot talk of reality as an experience. Once this is understood, you will no longer look for being and becoming as separate and opposite. In reality they are one and inseparable like roots and branches of the same tree.

Both can exist only in the light of consciousness, which again, arises in the wake of the sense ‘I am’.

This is the primary fact.

If you miss it, you miss all.

– Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That

 

What are the implications of this view?

There is only The Dance. Today you are as twinkle-toed as a prima ballerina. Yesterday you dragged those feet as though they were cast in lead. Tomorrow? Who knows what will arise and choreograph your steps with exquisite fidelity to your patterned preferences and aversions?

It’s all the same, beloveds: Reality r-e-a-l-s on regardless; it only has one pair of shoes.

One-size-fits-all.

the great perfection

Photograph: Tree of Life, copyright Kenneth Mucke: more information here.

love is what’s left . . .

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Apologies, dear friends, for my absence these past weeks. I’ve been beavering away very one-pointedly at another of my online passions – the awakened eye website and blog. The project saw a couple of hundred pages transferred from the original self-hosted website to the WordPress blog associated with it – literally weeks of (joyful) work. The reason? Simplification – downsizing – economics. Please zoom over and have a look at the new site. Feedback appreciated!

I’ve also been putting together a little essay for an online publisher about the “journey home” as it has unfolded for the emelle character – a project that turned up some surprises for her as she joined the dots of the decades. (More about this later.)

One thing I noticed as I examined my own experience over those decades, was a reluctance to use words like “love” when attempting to express the freefall into thusness. Maybe it was my education, which alerted me to recognition of terms that are merely conceptual referents. Maybe it was an awareness of how this word has lost its true meaning as a result of being mouthed ad nauseum by new age adherents and god-botherers in general.

Rupert Spira’s take on love is big enough for me, though. The following is part of a reply he wrote to someone who was courageous enough to ask for clarity about the real implications of this belief-burdened four-letter word.

Whatever is not present right now is not worthy of the name love and is likewise not worthy of our desire. Forget it. Whatever is not present now, even if it is one day found, will by definition one day disappear.

Why go for something temporary? It can never fulfill you. Let go of everything that can be let go of, everything – and anything that appears can be let go of – including all your, my and everyone else’s ideas about love.

In fact, as soon as we look for what is present, it is gone. We cannot focus on or even think about what is truly present. We can only think about an object, about the past, about the future. In other words, we can only think of a thought.

Thought can never know or find the one thing that it almost constantly seeks. It can only dissolve in it.

The mind dies as it turns towards love like a moth in a flame.

Let the mind dissolve in the understanding that it simply cannot go to the place of love and yet, like a fish in the ocean searching for water, it is already swimming in it.

Let everything pass by.

Remember William Blake:  “He who binds himself to a joy does the winged life destroy.”

The ‘winged life’ is love itself.  It is apparently destroyed by our looking for it as an object, by ‘binding’ our self to an object, which means to the past or the future.

Let go, let go, let go.

Let your tears be the river into which everything you know is offered up, all your longing, everything.

Someone once asked Mother Meera if it was okay to offer everything to God or whether only ‘positive things’ should be offered, and she replied: “A child offers its mother a snail, a stick or a stone; the mother doesn’t care what is offered; she is just happy to have been remembered.”

Offer everything. The love you seek is all that will remain behind.

– Rupert Spira

Yes. Love is all that’s left, but it’s not like any kind of love you imagined. It has no object. It has no opposite. It is a simple, open acceptance without condition, of all that appears. It is no other than your natural self – whatever you are called.

–

I’m out of my mind

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Rainforest Hermitage

 

there I was
in the grip of
grimness
in the midst
of this glorious
rainforest

self-loathing had its
garrote
around my throat
and depression urged it
to finish the job

the cackling clockwork chorus
was in full voice:
homeless, hopeless!
alone, undeserving!
penniless, shameful!
exhausted, wimp!
confused, idiot!
repeat
repeat

 

repeat

 

then suddenly, a shift,

– subtle yet seismic –

and I’m out of my mind
and absorbed into a bright beingness
that needs no healing
because it knows no
brokenness

the clamor dies down
consciousness folds itself
back into its contents

the light
that’s never needed a housekeeper
beams itself up as a
world
that falls to its mossy knees
and scribbles a poem

–

birthday poem 2013

this awareness is not aware that it is aware

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To say that “awareness is aware of itself”
is to split it into two:
one bit as the viewer
and the other as the view.

But is this really so?
(Not according to any teaching
or dogma or philosophy; no,
save me from second-hand ‘truths’!)
What’s the experience right here,
beyond the cunning concepts
that inevitably appear?

Awareness awares.
That’s all that I can say;
its ceaseless unlit light
both creates and acts its play.

Even emptiness is empty
and mind a four-letter word;
my gut rips wide open
as I fall on my sword.

Just this! I cry –

yet instantly it’s clear
that thusness is a step too far
from the lucid living light
that’s plainly shining

h e r e

[~ ml – emmelle – on exiting retreat]

the transcendent silence of ‘I’

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There is a silence which transcends sound and silence. If I am not speaking, then some might say I’m keeping silent. If I am thinking, then some would say my mind is not silent.

Whether the voice is speaking, or the mind is thinking there is a silence which transcends both speech and thought and which is ever present to both of them.

It is the silence in which sound and silence take place. It is the silence in which speech and thought take place.

This silence is one’s true nature, and it is ever present, no matter what is going on.

This silence doesn’t walk or talk or think or make any noise at all.

It is That in which everything takes place. The recognition of That silence is called ‘self-knowledge.’

How is this silence described in relationship to spoken words and thoughts?

From the Upanisads:

“That [brahman] from which words return, not having reached, together with the mind.” (Taittiriya 2. 9. 1)

This statement might seem quite obscure unless explained.

The mind cannot ‘go’ there, as silence, (one’s true nature) is not an object to be cognized in the way that objects in duality are cognized.

The silence cannot be heard, touched, seen, tasted, or smelled. Thus it is not available for sense perception.

Nor is the silence an object of thought in the mind, like happiness, sadness, or any other thought at all.

We have no word which is adequate to describe this silence as all words initially point to something in duality.

Yet words handled appropriately lead one to recognize one’s very own self as this silence.

Not an object of cognition, yet known as my very svarupa, my very own nature.

Unavailable for hearing, touch, sight, taste, or smell,
yet known by the mind as ‘I,’ ‘I,’ ‘I,’ the silent changeless being
of all changing things, that ever present one, that one am I.

~ Dhanya

Read more of Dhanya’s writing on her blog at the Advaita Academy

~

Related posts on this blog:

the cathedral of emptiness

why you don’t really want to awaken

silence is the essence of us all

don’t look for me in my story

come sit with me

silence has found me

~

a mind full of light

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A drop of water has the tastes of the water of the seven seas: there is no need to experience all the ways of worldly life. The reflections of the moon on one thousand rivers are from the same moon: the mind must be full of light.
~ Hung Tzu-ch’eng, 1593-1665

How do you get a mind full of light? That is an intriguing question. Like a dipper of cold water, a mind full of light would be soothing to the parched soul. Enlightenment must equal that.

But wait a minute. Hang on a sec; there is no mind. It has been said, however, that when the mind is still it can reflect the Self. That is why we sit in meditation, pray, do zazen, whirl, and so forth. We want what we haven’t got, a mind full of light.

I am not such a good student of Zen koans. To me the sound of one hand clapping is pretty clear. A dog has Buddha-nature and you can’t put a head on top of a head, but I am getting off topic. I see that someone has put up a sign saying, “Mind has just been mopped. Stay off of it.” Okay, okay.

Right now I am in the school cafeteria of life and as usual I have put more on my tray than I can eat. First I grabbed dessert—lemon icebox pie. Then I saw clear red cubes of Jell-o and grabbed that too. Next came fried chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans—gotta have a yeast roll and a cup of coffee. That’ll be—how much?!

I sat down with some other students and saw that they had done the same thing. Bitten off more than they could chew. Karma, predestination, free will, nonduality all look pretty tasty until you start to consume your attachments. Belly ache, get the Pepto, call the witch doctor—where’s a good shaman when you need her?

I had completely forgotten that I wanted a mind full of light—an empty tray sitting serenely, reflecting light from the overhead fluorescent bulb. I come to myself—hear dishes banging, silverware clanking and water running. I just sit and take it all in. So that’s how I get a mind full of light. Neat.

~ Vicki Woodyard

Vicki Woodyard's book 'Life With A Hole In It'If you haven’t delighted in doing so yet, this guest post from Vicki is a gentle reminder to read her book, LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT: That’s How The Light Gets In.

The e-book  and paperback versions can be ordered here: http://www.booklocker.com/books/4931.html

Jerry Katz has said, “Vicki Woodyard is one of the treasures of spiritual literature.”

I so agree!

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everything you ever wanted is right here

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Longtime readers of this little blog are familiar with my addiction to retreat.  Today I’ve been inspired by a blog post by self-confessed “Inner-revolutionary, truth-teller, writer, thinker, and dreamer” Sandra Pawula, about a disappearing Dharma teacher.  He’s off on retreat in the great tradition of super-yogi Milarepa, “wandering from place to place, staying in remote caves and sacred sites with no plans or fixed agenda, just an unswerving commitment to the path of awakening.”  He’s off.  No one knows where to or for how long.  Here are some gems from his parting letter.

All that we are looking for in life — all the happiness, contentment, and peace of mind — is right here in the present moment. Our very own awareness is itself fundamentally pure and good. The only problem is that we get so caught up in the ups and downs of life that we don’t take the time to pause and notice what we already have.

Don’t forget to make space in your life to recognize the richness of your basic nature, to see the purity of your being and let its innate qualities of love, compassion, and wisdom naturally emerge. Nurture this recognition as you would a small seedling. Allow it to grow and flourish.

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, pause from time to time and relax your mind. You don’t have to change anything about your experience. You can let thoughts and feelings come and go freely, and leave your senses wide open. Make friends with your experience and see if you can notice the spacious awareness that is with you all the time. Everything you ever wanted is right here in this present moment of awareness.

~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

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