"This state of no-mind exists, as it were, on a knife-edge between the carelessness of the average sensual man and the strained over-eagerness of the zealot for salvation. To achieve it, one must walk delicately and, to maintain it, must learn to combine the most intense awareness with a tranquil and self-denying passivity, the most indomitable determination with a perfect submission to the leadings of the spirit." - Aldous Huxley
Huxley discerns the central paradox of any path to enlightenment, which must employ striving without striving, but I get the feeling that he is a mechanic who has yet to drive the car. It is much easier than all those nuts and bolts would suggest. Like Nisargadatta, he recognizes earnestness ("indomitable determination") as the essential attitude and he emphasizes the ultimate wisdom as beyond thinking. But then he goes off course with words like "achieve" and "maintain" balanced against "passivity" and "submission" in his attempt to convey a confluence of opposites, none of which exist in awakened sensibility because there is and never has been anyone to awaken.
Here is someone who drives the car:
"Pursue not the outer entanglements,
Dwell not in the inner void,
Be serene in the oneness of things,
And dualism vanishes of itself.
. . .
When the deep mystery of one Suchness is fathomed,
All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements;
When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness,
We return to the origin and remain where we have always been." - The Third Patriarch of Zen
No matter. Huxley was terrific at pooling wisdom literature for posterity, just as Eckhart Tolle does today with damn good stuff like "Stillness Speaks." They lead a modern horse to water. From there, cultivation of abandonment, surrender and acceptance resolve into all-pervasive love, which ultimately evaporates into peace beyond understanding.
Huxley discerns the central paradox of any path to enlightenment, which must employ striving without striving, but I get the feeling that he is a mechanic who has yet to drive the car. It is much easier than all those nuts and bolts would suggest. Like Nisargadatta, he recognizes earnestness ("indomitable determination") as the essential attitude and he emphasizes the ultimate wisdom as beyond thinking. But then he goes off course with words like "achieve" and "maintain" balanced against "passivity" and "submission" in his attempt to convey a confluence of opposites, none of which exist in awakened sensibility because there is and never has been anyone to awaken.
Here is someone who drives the car:
"Pursue not the outer entanglements,
Dwell not in the inner void,
Be serene in the oneness of things,
And dualism vanishes of itself.
. . .
When the deep mystery of one Suchness is fathomed,
All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements;
When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness,
We return to the origin and remain where we have always been." - The Third Patriarch of Zen
No matter. Huxley was terrific at pooling wisdom literature for posterity, just as Eckhart Tolle does today with damn good stuff like "Stillness Speaks." They lead a modern horse to water. From there, cultivation of abandonment, surrender and acceptance resolve into all-pervasive love, which ultimately evaporates into peace beyond understanding.
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