Pointing To The Moon

What is it like to live an awakened life? - Adyashanti

"What is it like to live an awakened life?"

"While the world is trying to solve its problems and everyone around you is engaged in the same, you’re not. While everybody around you is trying to figure it out, trying to arrive, trying to “get there,” trying to be worthy, you’re not. While everyone thinks that awakening is a grand, noble, halo-enshrouded thing, for you it’s not. While everybody is running from this life right now, in this moment, to try to get there, you’re not. Where everybody has an argument with somebody else, mostly everybody else, starting with themselves, you don’t. Where everybody is so sure that happiness will come when something is different than it is now, you know that it won’t. When everybody else is looking to achieve the perfect state and hold on to it, you’re not." - Adyashanti via A Blissful Heart Tumblr blog

the greatest lie - steven norquist

"The greatest lie ever told is that there is a search, a quest. None of this exists. There is only pure consciousness, existing endlessly in perfect peace and perfection." - Steven Norquist, "What is Enlightenment, No, I Mean Really, Like What is It?" essay

who, then, is breathing? life expresses itself through you

"Observe your own body. It breathes. You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer conscious of your own ideas of self-identity. Who, then, is breathing? The collection of information that you mistakenly think is you is not the protagonist in this drama called the breath. In fact, you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening to you. You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot purposely keep your own life going. The expression, 'my life' is actually an oxymoron, a result of ignorance and mistaken assumption. You don't possess life; life expresses itself through you. Your body is a flower that life let bloom, a phenomenon created by life." - Ilchi Lee via crashingly beautiful blog

This is how you shall love - Adyashanti

A little backstory and context for this anecdote from Falling into Grace: Insights in the End of Suffering, by Adyashanti: He was four years into his spiritual quest--one that took him into a monastic meditate all-all-the-time route. He got to a point where he thoroughly frustrated, and was now staying at a mountain hut. "And as I sat there in that moment of utter and absolute defeat--a defeat that was so total that I didn't even feel sorry for myself--right in the middle of that moment, my heart began to flower. It was like a golden love just was being poured right into my being. It was as if I could hear everything, and it was just singing with this love.

I went out of the hut, and everything I looked at was an expression of this love, a manifestation of this love. The whole universe was nothing but this immense, infinite love, which I was being bathed in. It was then that I heard a voice--which was very odd to me, because in my spiritual life, I wasn't prone to visions or hearing voices. I didn't know where it came from, but it just said, "This is how I love you, and this is how you shall love all beings everywhere." When I heard this voice, I knew it was true. This inner voice had told me something that I'd known all along, but I could never make contact with. What I didn't know is that I'd been showered with this love my entire life, but that I was never completely open to it. This love also put down a challenge to me. It said, "This is how you shall love all things and all beings.""

we just are. we just are, and what happens just happens - Chuck Palahniuk

Nonduality isn't about special teachings and teachers. It's accessible to all because we are it. I've chosen a few quotes from fiction author Chuck Palahniuk (precisely because he's not typically called out as a "spiritual" teacher nor mystic) that resonate:

Reality means you live until you die. The real truth is nobody wants reality.

People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messed cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown. 

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.

... you practise to really get rid of the illusion—not to achieve the Reality - Douglas Harding

Short excerpt from an interview with Douglas Harding by Kriben Pillay, editor of The Noumenon Journal. reprinted in Realization.org:

KP: There is a kind of paradox, isn’t there, that one has to practise to be what one is naturally?

DH: Yes—well you practise to really get rid of the illusion—not to achieve the Reality.

KP: Yes, that is a very important point, because in the spiritual supermarket that has mushroomed over the last 20–25 years, there seems to be a constant movement to achieve some extraordinary state, and you’re directly the opposite. Would you not say that we’re really practising only to remove the illusion?

DH: That’s right. All of us are living from this. Ramana [Maharshi] kept saying everyone’s living from this—everyone’s enlightened. Everyone is firmly stationed—where else could they be but in natural nature—and the only difference between himself and others is that he enjoyed it and others ignored it. It’s not any different at all—except in that.

...when you are enlightened the whole notion of enlightenment and someone who is enlightened is a big joke. - Adyashanti

"Do not think that enlightenment is going to make you special, it's not. If you feel special in any way, then enlightenment has not occurred. I meet a lot of people who think they are enlightened and awake simply because they have had a very moving spiritual experience. They wear their enlightenment on their sleeve like a badge of honor. They sit among friends and talk about how awake they are while sipping coffee at a cafe. The funny thing about enlightenment is that when it is authentic, there is no one to claim it. Enlightenment is very ordinary; it is nothing special. Rather than making you more special, it is going to make you less special. It plants you right in the center of a wonderful humility and innocence. Everyone else may or may not call you enlightened, but when you are enlightened the whole notion of enlightenment and someone who is enlightened is a big joke. I use the word enlightenment all the time; not to point you toward it but to point you beyond it. Do not get stuck in enlightenment." -- Adyashanti

Prayer as Part of a Spiritual Practice by Thich Nhat Hanh

An excerpt from the book "The Energy of Prayer: How to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" by Thich Nhat Hanh in the subsection, Prayer as Part of a Spiritual Practice:

"Even if you don’t pray very often, and spiritual practice is not a big part of your life, you may find yourself praying for health, prosperity, and good relationships. But for those who become monks, nuns, and for others with a strong spiritual practice, there is another object of prayer. In the Buddhist chant, “The Disciple Touches the Earth in Respect,” the goal is put like this:

To go beyond the cycle of birth and death, to realize the unborn and the undying.

Of course people who have devoted their life to spiritual practice also pray for health, success, and harmony, but these things alone are not enough. As you deepen your spiritual practice, you begin to question. You may want to know clearly, Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where shall I go? After death, do I continue to exist or not? Is there any relationship between myself and Buddha, between myself and God? What is the original purpose of my being here? These are the questions, the prayers, of a dedicated spiritual practitioner.

If we are practicing, and we only pray for health, success, and good relationships, we are not yet an authentic practitioner. An authentic practitioner has to pray at a deeper level. We have to practice in such a way that in our daily life we are able to have insight into the interdependent nature of all beings. Our greatest desire as spiritual practitioners is to discover the essence of things and to be in touch with this essence. When this satisfaction is there, then whether we have very good health or poor health, we can still be happy. Whether we are successful or not successful in our work, whatever it is, we do not suffer. When our happiness is not dependent on our success or our health, we will be less likely to argue with others or make them suffer. Good relationships will be there quite naturally.

So, how is this kind of prayer different? It is different because of the level of our prayer. When we have been in touch with the ultimate dimension, with nirvana, when we have been in touch with God, then we can accept whatever happens in the here and now. We have already gone to the land of peace and joy and we do not need to suffer. Whether we have another ten years to live or five years to live makes no difference to us. At that point we have changed our way of seeing the world.

If we do not pray and deepen our spiritual practice, we suffer intensely when we don’t have what we want in the world. But when we have been in touch with the essence, the suchness of all things, then it doesn’t matter if we don’t have what we want. Before, if we were not successful in what we wanted, we thought our whole life was a failure. But when we have been in touch with the ultimate dimension, then whether our temple or our practice center burns down, whether people smear our reputation, are jealous of us, or accuse us unjustly, we can still smile and be peaceful and joyful as usual. What we thought to be success, what we thought to be the basis of our happy life, we do not need anymore. Because our happiness is already there in the ultimate dimension, it goes beyond all ideas of success and failure.

When we can see that we and all living beings are of one and the same nature, how can there be division between us? How can there be lack of harmony? We are one with God, with Buddha, so how can there be any division? The deepest desire of a practitioner is to be in touch with the ultimate dimension. Once we have been in touch with the ultimate dimension then quite naturally our health will get better, we shall be successful in our practice and our helping others, and we shall be able to form a peaceful and joyful community that lives together in harmony." - by Thich Nhat Hanh

p.s. I have a private Spiritual Circle on Google+, if you'd like to join. It's private and as interactive (or not) as we'd like it to be. It's more personal than this blog, here's a sample posting. You may join Google+ by accepting this invitation.

The radio sings and speaks, but if you open it you will find no one inside. - Ramana Maharshi

"The radio sings and speaks, but if you open it you will find no one inside. Similarly, my existence is like the space; though this body speaks like the radio, there is no one inside as a doer." -- Ramana Maharshi

(via Michael Jeffrey's compilation of 400 Good Spiritual Quotes)

 

 

The quest for enlightenment is the quest for truth or reality. - Adyashanti

"A great Zen master said, “Do not seek the truth; simply cease cherishing illusions.” If there is a primary practice or path to enlightenment, this is it—to cease cherishing illusions. Seeking truth can be a game, complete with a new identity as a truth-seeker fueled by new ideas and beliefs. But ceasing to cherish illusions is no game; it’s a gritty and intimate form of deconstructing yourself down to nothing. Get rid of all of your illusions and what’s left is the truth. You don’t find truth as much as you stumble upon it when you have cast away your illusions." -- a paragraph from "The Quest", by Adyashanti (entire article is online)

We realize that the heaven everyone is seeking is where we have always been. - Adyashanti

"When you have let go of all conditions - when you have let go of how you want your own awakening to be and what you want the journey to be like - you have let go of your illusion of control.  In fact, we have to be willing to lose our whole world.  That may sound romantic when you first hear it - "Oh yes, let me sign up! I'm willing to lose my whole world." But when your whole world starts to crumble, and you start to emerge from unimaginably deep states of denial, it is something altogether different.  It is something altogether more real and gritty.  It's something that some people sign up for and some people don't.  This isn't a journey about becoming something.  This is about unbecoming who we are not, about undeceiving ourselves.  In the end, it's ironic.  We don't end up anywhere other than where we have always been, except that we perceive where we have always been completely differently.  We realize that the heaven everyone is seeking is where we have always been. " -- The End of Your World, by Adyashanti

I can’t tell you what it is; no one can. It’s not a thing, it’s not a concept, it’s not a place. - Jed McKenna

An Interview with Jed McKenna...

A: The truth is that enlightenment is neither remote nor unattainable. It is closer than your skin and more immediate than your next breath. If we wonder why so few seem able to find that which can never be lost, we might recall the child who was looking in the light for a coin he dropped in the dark because “the light is better over here”. 

Q: What is enlightenment?

A: No-self. Okay, what is no-self? Abiding non-dual awareness. Okay, what is—? I can’t tell you what it is; no one can. It’s not a thing, it’s not a concept, it’s not a place. There’s no explaining fire to someone who’s never seen fire; no description can do justice to the direct experience of fire."

-- from Jed McKenna's Notebook

Through us the One Life spontaneously unfolds, when our hearts are open, when we don’t think that we know. - Almine

"In imagining the physical as our confinement and identity, we believe that loss and abandonment can be a reality; like a child who cries feeling bereft, not understanding that his mother in the adjoining room, has not left him. We dwell in Oneness, each nevertheless unique. The illusion of separation, when dissolved, eliminates suffering.

Our bodies cannot be incarcerated when our spirits are free. We are only imprisoned when we are programmed by beliefs. No matter how lofty their philosophies seem, revere not the thoughts of men that have been. Through us the One Life spontaneously unfolds, when our hearts are open, when we don’t think that we know.

The student seeks truth from another’s words, the master practices and lives the wisdom he’s heard. But the incorruptible one realizes there is nothing to know, allowing life to spontaneously unfold. Truth is created one moment at a time. Surrender and find the experience of spontaneous life.Then, as all preconceived notions are erased – pain shall cease. No longer shall expectations cause suffering, but joy shall come to be, and wonderment at the beauty of life’s unfolding journey." - Almine

So throw away your baggage and go forward. - Aldous Huxley

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered." - Aldous Huxley, Island

in the Matrix, not of It

Beautiful:

"When we checked into this simple, old-time motel, the man at the counter was very business-like. My impression at the time was that he was very rigid and unforgiving. As we were leaving, he said, “There will be coffee and donuts in the morning;” as I turned to look at him and acknowledge what he said, the atmosphere shifted, everything seemed to be in slow motion, and as I looked into his eyes, there was a profound connection that we both entered into. All pretense fell away, we were so connected, I realized that nothing was as it seemed. The room quietly disappeared and there was only the awareness of a profound nature that left the world behind. This experience lasted less than a minute and yet was timeless.

The next morning I was in the dining area, pouring my first cup of coffee. As I was looking around, thinking these digs are not too impressive, there was this profound shift in my seeing, again. The entire room became alive, effervescent. It is difficult, impossible to put the unworldly into worldly terms. The motel did not change in appearance in the sense that everything became clean and new and fresh, it changed in the sense that everything, every thing, had a quality about it. All I saw was what I felt-- love, peace. There was a profound stillness, and as I walked back to our room, I realized I was seeing everything in Truth and not through my body's eyes. I was walking on the sidewalk, feeling part of the sidewalk; I opened the door and walked into part of me, I felt a part of everything immersed in myself. Everything was one, the same. I was seeing beyond my own eyes. I was the awareness of the experience. I was pure, free and unlimited. I was joy, happiness and love. I was everything and yet nothing. I was affected and unaffected. I was functioning in my world, and yet I knew I was not of my world. I fell through the false into certainty. Everything and everyone is all-encompassing singularity." -- Ray Comeau's wife write-up (excerpted from his blog, Through a Mirror Brightly)

It's also worth reading this other post by Ray, an excerpt below:

"When I first awakened yesterday morning, I found myself in a state of mind where I had no sense of identity.

This is difficult to express; I was in a state of total, let's say, blankness. I did not begin saying to myself, "Well, today, I'll do this, I'll do that." I was totally blank. I felt totally relieved. Words can hardly express this sense of relief.

My sense of identity, or Ray, my limited self, narrating my life, was simply not in my awareness.

There was an experience of a state of mind that was still, limitless, changeless, and eternal.

There. That's more like it; no sense of an identity as a person, as a body, commenting on its state of mind." - Ray Comeau, Through a Mirror Brightly blog

My grandfather used to tell me that life was a dream. - Miguel Ruiz

"All my life magic was around me. When I was a kid it was an everyday thing. But I was very, very skeptical. I became even more so when I went to medical school to become a surgeon.

It was in my last year of medical school that I crashed my car and had an out-of-body experience. That changed everything. After that experience I began looking for answers. I went searching right away, because I had had the most incredible experience, but there were no words to explain it. It changed my life completely because I understood that my everyday life was not exactly as I had believed.

My grandfather used to tell me that life was a dream. He also said that when people finally realized this, the dream could be changed, and then humanity would change. After my accident, everything I had witnessed as a child started making sense.

You know that it's one thing to hear about something and another thing to have an experience. After the accident the things my grandfather said were no longer theories for me, they were facts.

I knew that I was not my physical body. I experienced myself as a force that moves the physical body. A force that is hard to talk about, but we can see its results and manifestation in everything. It is this force that opens the flowers and it is the same force that moves the stars and moves the atoms. That is what I am and what you are.

There is no difference between the force that opens a flower and the force that makes us grow up and the force that makes us grow old. This is life!

After the accident, my point of reference was changed radically. I saw that we are used to illusion, or maya.[3] I saw the reason why we get upset and angry, why we become violent. I saw that we misperceive everything. And it is this misperception, this distortion that creates all the problems for humanity." - from a longer interview with Miguel Ruiz by Diane M. Cooper

[3] Maya refers to the concept that the material world is an illusion; it means the ''illusion of matter.''

when i allow this instant to be as it actually is and not as I want it to be? - adyashanti

""Recognize that waking up is waking up to that which is not coming and going, neither high nor low, not some compromise between high and low. It isn't about avoiding discomfort or sustaining the big moments.

...Your mind's job is not to let things be; thinking is the only interest it has. Letting everything be is an attitude, a state of openness and curiosity: what is happening in my mind, in my body, when I allow this instant to be as it actually is and not as I want it to be? It's a question with no answer. That's meditation, and the whole foundation of retreat, too. Life doesn't have to be the way the mind says it does to be happy. In fact, there's no relationship between the two. We know what we're like when we don't allow everything to be -- conflicted, angry, fearful -- fighting with some part of experience." - Adyashanti, via Sprituality and Health magazine

"Dynamic ocean of being, everything is constantly swirling in and out of existence..." - Jed McKenna

An exchange between Jed McKenna (pseudonym) in his book, Spiritual Warfare, and a student:

"Scoop a jar of water out of the ocean and put a lid on it, I tell them. Study it in its segregated state.Where is the ocean in that jar? Where are the tides and the currents? Pour it back into the ocean and it returns to its integrated state. The temporary entity no longer exists.

Entity? Ronald asks.

By scooping it into a jar, you've created a new entity, a sub-ocean. It's not possible to subdivide infinity, of course, but try telling that to your new entity. It has all the properties of the ocean from which you scooped it, in no way greater or lesser than any other sampling you might take, yet it bears little resemblance to its authentic oceanhood. It has an independent existence, yet as soon as you pour it back, it merges seamlessly back into the integrated whole. Where is that particular sub-ocean entity after you pour it back in? The same place it was before; everywhere and nowhere. It didn't exist before you scooped it up, but you didn't create it. It doesn't exist after you pour it back, but you didn't destroy it. So what was born when you segregated that jarful? What died when you reintegrated it?"

recognize ourselves to be that which is impersonal and absolute

"The narcissistic ego always wants to know who we are when we look in the mirror. But when we die into our own True Self and recognize ourselves to be that which is impersonal and absolute, we stumble upon the miracle of enlightenment. We find that the Self that we have discovered is a mystery that cannot be seen with the eye and cannot be recognized by the mind. And that is why, if we want to truly know that Self, we have to be willing to not see it with our eyes and not know it with our mind. If we want to be free, we actually have to let go of the very thing that we want to know in order to truly know it. We have to be willing to forget ourselves utterly and die into that ungraspable mystery. And from then on, we have to always be willing to live in a state of unknowing, a state in which we don't know who we are." - Andrew Cohen, Living Enlightenment

the whole universe is looking out of your eyes...

"When you look without grasping, the whole universe is looking out of your eyes. It’s an opportunity to see what it is to move without a sense of a central me." -- Mukti

In the Waiting Room by Elizabeth Bishop

In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic 
(I could read) and carefully 
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson 
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
--"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice--
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
even then I knew she was 
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't.  What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.

I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities--
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts--
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How--I didn't know any
word for it--how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?

The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.

Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth 
of February, 1918.