What we are is beyond eternal and infinite, because these are concepts and we are prior to conceptualization--or any other sifting of the primordial One. What we are precedes emotion but resonates love. We are always already free and pure and fecund and redolent, empty and brimming at once. This is the open secret veiled deeply beneath layers of conditioning, foremost among them our mistaken identification with a separate and personal self.
"Be free of name and form and of the desires and fears they create, then what remains?" - Nisargadatta Maharaj
What has been, what is, what will be, all abide in this present moment. My father is dying. I am born. A full-throated bird chirps from the bushes behind me. These are not separate events but for the limiting and qualifying nature of mind, which invented time and imposed space upon the inviolate unfolding Noumenon.
"You may call it God, or Parabrahman, or Supreme Reality, but these are names given by the mind. It is the nameless, contentless, effortless state, beyond being and not-being." - NM
"To perceive it does not need the senses; to know it does not need the mind." - NM
"All is a play in consciousness. All divisions are illusory." - NM
On the other hand, today's paper brought me news of a 17 year-old mother who, irritated by the incessant bawling of her 7 week-old infant, poured scalding water over its head, face and body until the "skin bubbled." The child is currently in a medically induced coma and, should it survive, faces a lifetime of torturous surgeries, not to mention the mental anguish and emotional scars. Short of the Holocaust, that about sums up human depravity for me. Is this just a play in consciousness? How can searing pain be called illusory? It can't. Upon the level most of us live, such acts violate every shred of compassion and justice. Even realized sages would affirm this, but from a place of greater context. They recognize the snake eating its own tail, and more, that the snake is in fact a mirage born of a twisted length of rope. Therein lies our elemental confusion and with it the potential for depraved behavior.
"Be free of name and form and of the desires and fears they create, then what remains?" - Nisargadatta Maharaj
What has been, what is, what will be, all abide in this present moment. My father is dying. I am born. A full-throated bird chirps from the bushes behind me. These are not separate events but for the limiting and qualifying nature of mind, which invented time and imposed space upon the inviolate unfolding Noumenon.
"You may call it God, or Parabrahman, or Supreme Reality, but these are names given by the mind. It is the nameless, contentless, effortless state, beyond being and not-being." - NM
"To perceive it does not need the senses; to know it does not need the mind." - NM
"All is a play in consciousness. All divisions are illusory." - NM
On the other hand, today's paper brought me news of a 17 year-old mother who, irritated by the incessant bawling of her 7 week-old infant, poured scalding water over its head, face and body until the "skin bubbled." The child is currently in a medically induced coma and, should it survive, faces a lifetime of torturous surgeries, not to mention the mental anguish and emotional scars. Short of the Holocaust, that about sums up human depravity for me. Is this just a play in consciousness? How can searing pain be called illusory? It can't. Upon the level most of us live, such acts violate every shred of compassion and justice. Even realized sages would affirm this, but from a place of greater context. They recognize the snake eating its own tail, and more, that the snake is in fact a mirage born of a twisted length of rope. Therein lies our elemental confusion and with it the potential for depraved behavior.
No comments:
Post a Comment