Pointing To The Moon

Who you really are begins right now in timeless, non-reactive awareness that can see any and all of that. - Richard Moss

"... out of long habit, our minds quickly hijack us into our past, future, me, and you-stories and we begin to view life through our thoughts (beliefs, judgments, memories, fantasies, opinions, and so on) instead of our Now-moment awareness. Instantly, we start to react and fight against what is and in this mind-made struggle all of our suffering begins.

.... The simple, but radical truth is that the center is the Now, not your ordinary sense of yourself, not what you mean when you think, or say “me” or “I.” Who you really are does not start with your beliefs about yourself, nor what you are feeling. It does not begin with someone else who you have made critically important to your happiness, or with anything else, such as money or your job. You do not begin in your past, nor arrive at yourself in the future. Who you really are begins right now in timeless, non-reactive awareness that can see any and all of that.

It is the power of this deeper awareness that can set you free. Your life will always go off-course and lead you into suffering if you do not learn to start each moment from your deeper awareness. How can you expect love to thrive in your relationships if your mind is in the past comparing what you are experiencing to what you have already lived, or in the future fearing that the present relationship will not be as good as what you remember, or that it might even be worse?

We all need a compass, something to steer our lives by, a consistent place to start from when we are facing anything life may bring. Grasping the potential to return the mind to the Now is key to the Mandala Work. The Now is the starting and ending point of every inquiry. It is crucial that you remember, and repeat to yourself again and again: “Who I really am begins Now.” This fundamental truth is the most empowering thing you can ever learn. -- Richard Moss, The Mandala of Being

release the judgment of what you perceive of as being unawakened

"...the only thing holding you from awakening is your belief that you are not ready because you are still having experiences that you are judging to be un-awakened. So to awaken is not to change; it is to release the judgment of what you perceive of as being unawakened in order to remember that you are awakened."

- Story Waters, http://www.evolvingtruth.com/333/

All the Buddhist texts talk about duality...

"All the Buddhist texts talk about duality," Gil said. "Can you explain this to me?"

Hamid had become more preoccupied by Oy, who had stopped to photograph the paw prints of a large tiger that had preceeded us toward the pass...

Gil persisted. "Does it mean that whatever we see is actually taking place inside our heads and therefore does not really exist?"

"Something like that," Hamid responded... "Buddhist philosophy reveals that what appears as external and self-existing is ultimately a function of consciousness; it has not inherent existence. To say that reality is nondual doesn't mean that all is illusion, but that appearances arise in conjunction with our perception. When we recognize that perception dictates our reality, the forces of greed, anger, and delusion lessen and we attain a freer responsiveness to the events around us."

"You mean we don't get attached?"

"Right, we just recognize them as the play of consciousness, a kind of virtual reality. This isn't just artful fantasy," Hamid continued. "Science recognizes the same thing; that reality does not exist separately from our perception."

"So what's real then?" Gil asked. "Just this collective and intersecting delusion?"

"No," Hamid answered. "That's the whole point of Buddhism--to wake up from this collective dream and to recognize that there are no inherent boundaries between external reality and the circuitry of consciousnessness. If we could live in full awareness of this nondual reality, there would no longer be any basis for alienation, greed, anger, fear, and all the other mental poisons that Buddhism speaks about. We would take responsibility for our own perceptions and begin to work with them, in full consciousness of our interconnectedness with other beings." -- a conversation from The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place, by Ian Baker

Buddha, by Deepak Chopra

"You see," said Buddha, "even holiness has become food for your ego to feed on."

...

He threw the dust into the air, it remained suspended like a murky cloud for a second before the breeze carried it away.

"Consider what you just saw," said Buddha. "The dust holds its shape for a fleeting moment when I throw it into the air, as the body holds its shape for this brief lifetime. When the wind makes it disappear, where does the dust go? It returns to its source, the earth. In the future that same dust allows grass to grow, and it enters a deer who eats the grass. The animal dies and turns to dust. Now imagine that the dust comes to you and asks, 'Who am I?' What will you tell it? Dust is alive in a plant but dead as it lies in the road under our feet. It moves in an animal but is still when buried in the depths of the earth. Dust encompasses life and death at the same time. So if you answer 'Who am I?' with anything but a complete answer, you have made a mistake."

"I have come back to tell you that you can be whole, but only if you see yourself that way. There is no holy life. There is no war between good and evil. There is no sin and no redemption. None of these things matter to the real you. But they matter hugely to the false you, the one who believes in the separate self. You have tried to take your separate self, with all its loneliness and anxiety and pride, to the door of enlightenment. But it will never go through, because it is a ghost."

...

How could he tell them what he really wanted to say? All of you are Buddha.

...

"If Nature is awake everywhere we look, then human beings deserve the same. Waking up shouldn't be a struggle."

"You struggled," said Assaji.

"Yes, and the more I did, the harder it was to wake up. I made my body and mind into an enemy. On that road lies only death and more death. As long as your body is your enemy, you are tied to it, and the body has no choice but to die. Death will never be defeated until it becomes unreal."

-- snippets from Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment, by Deepak Chopra

Adrian Cooper: Enlightenment is a process of Becoming in the Only Moment

"If you endeavour to realise the object of a desire through "effort", in other words by "thinking" then "doing" something, then you are more likely to block that desire.

It is only possible to Realise genuine desires Through "Being".

Again - we are Human Beings - not Human Doings.

This applies at every level of Experience - even Enlightenment.

Those who strive for Enlightenment can never achieve Enlightenment.

Enlightenment is a state of Being, not a state of striving.

A few weeks ago I mentioned Zen, and that Zen is not always Buddhism.

Zen is the practice of Zazen - of simply Being - whereas Buddhism is a culture built on rules, philosophy and practice based upon "doing" and "thinking" to rules.

Around 2500 years ago, Prince Siddhārtha achieved Enlightenment, not through the philosophical practice that became "Buddhism", but through dedicated Zazen.

Prince Siddhārtha shunned the trappings of his royal birth in the realisation that only by sitting and Being can anything True and Worthwhile be Experienced - including Enlightenment - again Which is a Path, not a definable State of Being.

So again, it is crucial to note that Prince Siddhārtha, in the practice of Zazen, was not "trying" to become Enlightened - that is impossible - he was simply practicing Zazen which is, in and of itself, a Path of Enlightenment - not "to" Enlightenment. During Zazen the Buddha State of Being is Experienced. Buddha is just a Symbol for the Experience of Being. Enlightenment is that Journey - not Enlightenment itself.

"To" implies a start and finish, a beginning and an end - these are erroneous ideas.

In Being, All Is One and Now. There are no "paths, only the journey.

Those seeking Enlightenment are driven by Ego and Karma. Enlightenment is a process of Becoming in the Only Moment - Now. It is only possible Experience Enlightenment by Being - not by seeking or doing.

Zazen is not a "practice". To "practice" is to "do" rather than to Be.

Now I mention Zazen only because it is pure, and a phrase that anyone me research for themselves. Ultimately even giving "Zazen" a name is erroneous, born out of a need to identify with something that can never be identified with.

To identify with Zazen is a paradox that can never be realised." - Adrian P. Cooper, excerpted from January 10, 2010 "Our Ultimate Reality" newsletter

Story Waters: That Which You Are Is That Which You Seek

"The path of awakening is one of coming to know thyself, for that which you are is that which you seek. This is to realize that the state that is called awakening is not some 'level' of consciousness to be reached or achieved, but is a state of inner freedom where the Self comes to experience that which it already is – the limitless free flowing stream of love, joy and abundance that is Source." - Story Waters, www.evolvingtruth.com

Byron Katie: "it was all pulsing with life and delight, and it was all one unbroken experience."

"I fell in love with myself one morning in February of 1986. I had checked myself into a halfway house in Los Angeles after years of suicidal depression. A week or so later, as I lay on the floor of my attic room (I felt too unworthy to sleep in a bed), a cockroach crawled over my foot, and I opened my eyes. For the first time in my life, I was seeing without concepts, without thoughts or an internal story. All my rage, all the thoughts that had been troubling me, my whole world, the whole world, was gone. There was no me. It was if something else had woken up. It opened its eyes. It was looking through Katie's eyes. And it was crisp, it was bright, it was new, it had never been here before. Everything was unrecognizable. And it was so delighted! Laughter welled up from the depths and just poured out. It breathed and was ecstasy. It was intoxicated with joy: totally greedy for everything. There was nothing separate, nothing unacceptable to it. Everything was its very own self. For the first time I -- it -- experienced the love of its own life. I -- it -- was amazed!

Satori: "It Was Just Obvious,"- Elizabeth Gilbert

An account of satori by Elizabeth Gilbert, in Eat, Pray, Love: "As a reader and a seeker, I always get frustrated at this moment in somebody else's spiritual memoirs -- that moment in which the soul excuses itself from time and space and merges with the infinite. From the Buddha to Saint Teresa to the Sufi mystics to my own Guru -- so many great souls over the centuries have tried to express in so many words what it feels like to become one with the divine [1], but I'm never quite satisfied by these descriptions. Often you will see the maddening adjective indescribable used to describe the event. [2] But even the most eloquent reporters of the devotional experience -- like Rumi, who wrote about having abandoned all effort and tied himself to God's sleeve, or Hafiz, who said that he and God had become like two fat men living in a small boat--"we keep bumping into each other and laughing" -- even those poets leave me behind. I don't want to read about it; I want to feel it, too. Sri Ramana Maharshi, a beloved Indian Guru, used to give long talks on the transcendental experience to his pupils and then always wrap it up with this instruction: "Now go find out."

So now I have found out. And I don't want to say that what I experienced that Thursday afternoon in India was indescribable, even though it was. I'll try to explain anyway. Simply put, I got pulled through the wormhole of the Absolute, and in that rush I suddenly understood the workings of the universe completely. I left my body, I left the room, I left the planet, I stepped through time and I entered the void. I was inside the void, but I also WAS the void and I was looking at the void, all at the same time. The void was a place of limitless peace and wisdom. The void was conscious and it was intelligent. The void was God, which means that I was inside God. But not in a gross, physical way -- not like I was Liz Gilbert stuck inside a chuck of God's thigh muscle. I just was part of God. In addition to being God. I was both a tiny piece of the universe and exactly the same size as the universe. ("All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop," wrote the sage Kabir -- and I can personally attest now that this is true.)

It wasn't hallucinogenic, what I was feeling. It was the most basic of events. It was heaven, yes. It was the deepest love I'd ever experienced, beyond anything I could have previously imagined, but it wasn't euphoric. It wasn't exciting. There wasn't enough ego or passion left in me to create euphoria or excitement. It was just obvious. Like when you've been looking at an optical illusion for a long time, straining your eyes to decode the trick, and suddenly your cognizance shifts and there -- now you can clearly see it! -- the two vases are actually two faces. And once you've seen through the optical illusion, you can never not see it again.

"So this is God," I thought. "Congratulations to meet you." [My note: As author was traveling in India, many people would greet her in English this way.]

The place in which I was standing can't be described like an earthly location. It was neither dark nor light, neither big nor small. Nor was it a place, nor was I technically standing there, nor was I exactly "I" anymore. I still had my thoughts, but they were so modest, quiet and observatory. Not only did I feel unhesitating compassion and unity with everything and everybody, it was vaguely and amusingly strange for me to wonder how anybody could feel anything but that. I also felt mildly charmed by all my old ideas about who I am and what I'm like. I'm a woman, I come from America, I'm talkative, I'm a writer -- all this felt so cute and obsolete. Imagine cramming yourself into such a puny box of identity when you could experience your infinitude instead.

I wondered, "Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time?" 

Awareness, like love, is totally stripped of time

Student's comment: "I find it impossible to be aware all the time."

J. Krishnamurti's reply: "Don't be aware all the time. Just be aware in little bits.

Please, there is no being aware all the time -- that is a dreadful idea. It is a nightmare, this terrible desire for continuity. Just be aware for one minute, for one second, and in that one second of awareness you can see the whole universe. That is not a poetic phrase. We see things in a flash, in a single moment; but having seen something, we want to capture, to hold it, give it continuity. That is not being aware at all. When you say, "I must be aware all the time," you have made a problem of it, and then you should really find out why you want to be aware all the time -- see the greed it implies, the desire to acquire. And to say, "Well, I am aware all the time," means nothing.

Is love, like marriage, for ever and ever? Are marriages for ever and ever? You know better than I do. Is love for ever and ever, or is it something totally stripped of time?"

the direct recognition of your true nature is available in every instant, on or off the cushion, whether you meditate or not

"When Zen Master Nan-chuan saw his student Ma-tsu diligently practicing meditation hour after hour, he sensed a certain effort and ambition in the young monk’s demeanor, so he sneaked up behind him and asked, “What are you doing?” “I’m trying to become a Buddha,” Ma-tsu replied proudly. Nan-chuan then picked up a stone and began rubbing it against a spare tile from the monastery floor. Hearing the sound, Ma-tsu asked, “What are you doing?” Said Nan-chuan: “I’m trying to make a mirror.” Ma-tsu had an awakening.

Everything is just as it is! Ma-tsu is Ma-tsu, the tile is the tile, and you are you, just as you are. There’s no Buddha apart from this fundamental truth, and any attempt to achieve some special state of mind just leads you away from who and what you already are. In the direct approach to truth ..., the direct recognition of your true nature is available in every instant, on or off the cushion, whether you meditate or not. You merely need to “take the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate the Self,” as Dogen Zenji said." - Stephan Bodian