March 30, 2012

"My life is a succession of events, just like yours.  Only I am detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you stick to things and move along with them." - NM

So, my stint in the rat race really amounted to no more than "Glengarry Glen Ross," only I never knew it to be a movie.

"The only difference between us is that I am aware of my natural state, while you are bemused." - NM

March 29, 2012

""Don't you see that all your problems are your body's problems.  Food, clothing, shelter, family, friends, name, fame, security, survival--all these lose their meaning the moment you realize that you may not be a mere body." - Nisargadatta Maharaj

The currents of this life, which appear to us as a riptide of birth, struggle and death, continuously swell and subside without altering the ocean in the least.  I am this ocean first and foremost, though the currents play havoc with this body-mind.  

March 25, 2012

"When pure awareness is attained, no need exists anymore, not even for 'I am', which is but a useful pointer, a direction-indicator towards the Absolute.  The awareness 'I am' then easily ceases.  What prevails is that which cannot be described, that which is beyond words.  It is this 'state' which is most real, a state of pure potentiality, which is prior to everything.  The 'I am' and the universe are mere reflections of it.  It is this reality which a jnani has realized." - Douwe Tiemersma

"Having gone beyond the I-am-the-body idea, he had acquired a mental state so joyful, peaceful and glorious that everything appeared to be worthless compared to it.  He had attained self-realization." - Maurice Frydman speaking of Nisargadatta Maharaj

To speak of that "which is prior to everything" is about as close as language will take us.  

March 24, 2012

"We are free; the work is to know it." - Vivekananda

March 19, 2012

"...what is lost in time may be made up by speed in work.  So, says Vedanta, religion is to be realized now.  And for you to become religious means that you will start without any religion, work your way up and realize things, see things for yourself; and when you have done that, then, and only then, do you have religion." - Vivekananda

V is not speaking of religion in the conventional sense of organized, pew-sitting religion, but about spiritual tradition that culminates in actual Realization for the seeker.  He urges us to begin now regardless of circumstance or belief, nor is he ignorant of real-life concerns that divert so many of us off-course:

"It is very hard work to get money.  It is harder work to keep it.  You fight the whole world to get a little money together and fight all your life to protect it.  Therefore there is more anxiety for the rich than the poor....This is the way it is." - V

No wonder Republicans are so high strung these days.

March 17, 2012

"All sentient beings, if only they were able to realize it, are already in Nirvana." - Ashvaghosha

Such a huge statement, how is it that we live our lives largely unawares?  Well, huge distractions exist, beginning first and foremost with the frenetic buzzing of our minds and the stampede of our senses rushing to and from ceaseless stimuli.  There is the past.  There is the future.  There pervades our every thought and action instincts to survive and  to propagate and protect..  There is ego everywhere.  If we are to penetrate these many veils, we must act, and this involves taking up some manner of genuine spiritual exercise and with the purest of motivation.

"To believe that their use either constitutes enlightenment, or guarantees it, is mere idolatry and superstition.  To neglect them altogether, to refuse to find out whether and in what way they can help in the achievement of our final end, is nothing but self-opinionatedness and stubborn obscurantism." - Aldous Huxley

The "final end" is not so much an achievement but more an unraveling of distractions.  It is a ripening of "alert passivity in relation to Reality" that persistently subverts distractions, takes back the weed bed, so that "when distractions appear in the foreground of consciousness, we take notice of their presence, then, lightly and gently, without any straining of the will, we shift the focus of attention to Reality which we glimpse, or divine, or (by past experience or an act of faith) merely know about, in the backgound.  In many cases, this effortless shift of attention will cause the distractions to lose their obsessive 'thereness' and, for a time at least, disappear." - A.H.

For me what began as an act of faith is now daily experience.  The path has taken many turns over 25 years, and ultimately it has found a home in Advaita Vedanta. For me, blind faith  in dogma will never endure.  To take this path, I need the promise of personal revelation and confirmation of those who went before me.

"They could go beyond the bounds of senses and catch a glimpse of that which is beyond.  We shall believe that when we are able to do it ourselves, and not before." - Vivekananda

March 3, 2012

When I blow out that candle tonight on my 60th birthday cake, along with the usual wish for everyone's health and happiness I will also wish that each of us use his or her mind as a vehicle of transcendence, that each take each to its limits beyond this body, this planet, beyond this universe and all of the infinite unfolding multiverse, beyond the furthest bound of thought, and then rest just beyond, there.

March 1, 2012

"Dispassion is not possible unless there is satiety through enjoyment." - Bill W. Ramakrishna

How can one realize God?  "By directing your love to Him and constantly reasoning that God alone is real and the world illusory.  The aswatha tree alone is permanent; its fruit is transitory."

This calls to mind the anonymous monk of the Dark Ages whose "The Cloud of Unknowing" urges a kind of bhakti approach toward a God beyond the ken.  Spray enough arrows of love and one eventually finds the mark.  Maintain a beam of devotion until it illuminates the mother ship.  Pray with a yearning heart, expecting nothing.

February 29, 2012

"Some frequent the company of holy men in order to smoke hemp.  Many monks smoke it, and these householders stay with them, prepare the hemp, and partake." - Ramakrishna

So, there has been a long line of hemp-smoking moochers after all.

"Discriminate and turn the passions away from worldly objects.  When the elephant is about to devour the plantain-tree in someone's garden, the mahut strikes it with his iron-tipped goad." - R

Oh, that fucking iron-tipped goad!  I know it all too well.

February 28, 2012

"They say that when your eyes are painted with collyrium made from the ashes of a frog's head you see snakes everywhere.." - Ramakrishna

"You may discriminate, saying that the ego is nothing at all; but still it comes, nobody knows from where.  A goat's legs jerk for a few minutes even after its head has been cut off." - R

Homespun Advaita from the loom of a true child of God.

February 27, 2012

"By being lowly one can rise high....Cultivation is not possible on high land; in low land water accumulates and makes cultivating possible." - Ramakrishna

"'I' and 'mine' - that is ignorance.  Reason it out.  Are you the body or the flesh or something else?  At the end you will know you are none of these.  You are without attributes." - R

February 26, 2012

We are both source and sustenance of suffering.  Buddha cited attachment as its root, meaning our attachment as human beings to things, things from the greatest to the slightest, from the material to the conceptual, from what we believe real to what in the end proves illusory.  Our first instincts are to avoid and to end suffering, and we spend the rest of our lives running this gauntlet.  We grasp and clutch, possessed by our possessions, driven by "woman and gold" as Ramakrishna termed lust and greed, yet restlessness and discontent, frustration and the incessant gnawing prompt still more grasping after transitory things - such a vicious circle!  And we are so thick-headed and slow to awaken.  Liberation for most of us requires round after round of failed attempts to find freedom in things, in a gauntlet of temporary surcease run to exhaustion.  The big boys like Buddha and Jesus and Ramakrishna can assist with method, but run it we must until, completely spent, we surrender every trace of selfhood in a final swoon across the finish line, free at last.

"Bound souls who constantly dwell with 'woman and gold' do not think of God even for a moment.  How can you expect noble deeds of them?  They are like mangoes pecked by a crow...." - Ramakrishna   

February 23, 2012

"What is the use of giving an elephant a bath.  It will cover itself with dust and dirt again and become its former self.  But if someone removes dust from its body and give it a bath just before it enters the stable, then the elephant remains clean." - Bill W. Ramakrishna

"The dogmatist says 'my religion alone is true, and the religions of others are false.'  This is a bad attitude.  God can be reached by different paths." - R