Pointing To The Moon

... 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.

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)

 

 

Generosity

One may question if I am really seeing through this grand illusion at all with recent posts in my main blog. While I agree with my teacher that the song,"Row Row Row Your Boat" is one of the highest spiritual teachings, yes, at other times even though it seems absurd on any absolute formless sense, as a human, as Ramana Maharshi says, you weep with the weeping.

This has reminded me with these words by Chogyam Trungpa which I refer to over and over again:

"Traditionally, there are three types of generosity. The first one is ordinary generosity, giving material goods or providing comfortable situations for others. The second one is the gift of fearlessness. You reassure others and teach them that they don't have to feel completely
tormented and freaked out about their existence. You help them to see that there is basic goodness and spiritual practice, that there is a way for them to sustain their lives. That is the gift of fearlessness. The third type of generosity is the gift of dharma (the teachings). You show others
that there is a path that consists of discipline, meditation, and intellect or knowledge. Through all three types of generosity, you can open other people's minds. In that way their closedness, wretchedness, and small thinking can be turned into a larger vision." - from Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness, edited by Judith Lief

Mirror Metaphor

You see a reflection in the mirror and the mirror. You know the mirror to be the reality and the picture in it a mere reflection. Is it necessary that to see the mirror we should cease to see the reflection in it? - from Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi by David Godman

Why Being Free...

"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be." - Voltaire

A person goes to sleep in this hall and dreams he has gone on a world-tour, traveling over various continents. After many years of strenuous travel, he returns to this country, enters the ashram, and walks into the hall.

Just at this moment, he wakes up and finds that he has not moved at all but has been sleeping. He has not returned after great efforts to this hall, but was here all the time.

If it is asked, "Why, being free, we imagine ourselves bound?" I answer, "Why, being in the hall, did you imagine you were on a world tour, crossing desert and sea?"

It is all mind. - Ramana Maharsi, from The Essential Teachings of Ramana Maharshi: A Visual Journey