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PeterParticipantCleaning it up
“We shine most brightly in community, the whole bedraggled, worn, frayed and tattered lot of us, bound together forever by a shared courage, a family forged in the heat of earnest struggle.” – Richard Wagames
PeterParticipant<p lang=”en-US” style=”margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt;”>”we shine most brightly in community, the whole bedraggled, worn, frayed and tattered lot of us, bound together forever by a shared courage, a family forged in the heat of earnest struggle.” – Richard Wagamese</p>
PeterParticipantNot a saying but read this meditation today and liked it. Fitting as the first snows of winter arrived
“In the deep snow moons of winter, their are stories hovering around us. They are whispered by the voices of our ancestors, told in ancient tongues, told in the hope that we will hear them.
Listen…
In the drape of moonbeams across a canvas of snow, the lilt of birdsong, the crackle of a fire, the smell of smudge and the echo of the heartbeats of those around us, our ancestors speak to us, call to us, summon us to the great abiding truth of stories: that simple stories, well told, are the heartbeat of the people. – Richard Wagamese – Embers“So tell me… which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?’ – Life of Pi
PeterParticipantI am new to this forum and want to understand how to become happy and emotionally strong as I am going through severe depression.
“In racing, they say that your car goes where your eyes go. The driver who cannot tear his eyes away from the wall as he spins out of control will meet that wall; the driver who looks down the track as he feels his tires break free will regain control of his vehicle.” ― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
Hi Mahvash
Sorry that your in a time of depression. Though my own search I have found that Happiness like, Joy Love aren’t ‘things’…things to be sought out or become. I found the search itself prevented its finding or becoming and that the surest thing to kill a experience of happiness are the words ‘I am happy’. In that moment we can’t stop ourselves from trying to hold on, grasping and fearing we will lose it, we find ourselves unhappy.
The car goes where the eyes go. Staring at a road sign, as the back tires start to spin-out from under, signs that read ‘here is happiness’ and another that reads ‘here is sadness’ the result is the same, the car ends up off the track or even crashing. ‘We have a bad habit of mistaking words/signs for the territory‘.
In the spheres of experience, the temporal and the eternal, the temporal is time, measurement, language, duality, the playground of ego consciousness… in the eternal, which is not a measurement of time, the realm of silence, stillness, (non-duality), Love...
I wonder if ‘happiness’ it a realization of the relationship of the temporal to the Eternal Now, the stillness within movement, silence within the noise, the Love within Life… all life arising from and returning to the Eternal Now (stillness, silence, Love)
The car races around the track, the rain falls, the eyes soft, still, silent, focused.. looks forward at the curve ahead, even as back wheals slip, the car adjusts, continues…. That is the eternal now, no measurements, no words, stillness in motion… glorious, happiness??? not in the destination, not in the wining or losing a race in time, but in the moment of driving…
The mind, this thing we call self seeks out the playground of time as it ought. the trick perhaps is not mistaking the playground for home. We are meant to play, have fun and even know happiness in those moments of relationship to home, the Eternal now, which is always, as it is.
PeterParticipantI prefer the metaphorical ‘slap’ of a kaon and paradox too the physical one 🙂
I read to many personal accounts where the physical ‘slaps’ intention was lost, a case where a method was confused with the destination.The ‘slap’ is meant, I think, to jolt the mind out of its own created traps. Mind creating the problem of duality then trying to use Mind to ‘fix’ it. as Watts put it “You can’t lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. It won’t work! It won’t happen! “
PeterParticipantThe book is hard to find so the link is apricated.
I find when it comes to books on Zen a good practice is to not to hold the words to tightly. Zen tends to use language to ‘slap’ the student so that they might avoid falling into that temptation of mistaking the map for the territory. Though it may not always appear so, Zen never asks that the student to understand or believe.
Man is originally endowed and invested with Hara. But when, as a rational being, he loses what is embodied in Hara it become his task to regain it.
To rediscover the unity concealed in the contradictions through which he perceives life intellectually is the nerve of his existence. As a rational being he feels himself suspended between the opposite poles of heaven and earth, spirit and nature. This means first the dichotomy of unconscious nature and of the mind which urges him to ever increasing consciousness; and second the dichotomy of his time-space reality on this earth and the Divine beyond time and space. Man’s whole existence is influenced by the tormenting tension of these opposites and so he is forever in search of a life-form in which this tension will be resolved. – Karlfried Graf Durckheim
PeterParticipantI found Karlfried Graf Durckheim book – ‘Hara: The Vital Center of Man’ helpful
If you google ‘Path of Initiation – the wisdom of Karlfried’ there is a Youtube video worth listening to.
PeterParticipantI’m not a fan of Koan’s myself and not sure how effective they are anymore what with all the books and such explaining them. Which totally misses the intention. Having answers to the unanswerable is a very western objective measuring mind kind of thinking thing to do.
Having no desire to be liked or understood, still a times thin skinned…. feels like a kind of Koan 🙂
PeterParticipantThanks Helcat
I’ve never been comfortable with the words enlightenment or for that matter the word meditation. Like most westerners the tendency to apply measurements and judgments to the words get in the way.
I’ve been looking into Krishnamurti life who uses a kind of Socratic method to look past our constructs. He’s not a easy read but I think he would agree with your thoughts on the ‘stages in meditation’
I’ve been playing around with a slow realization that ‘Stillness’, Calm, ‘Silence’, Eternity… are not measurement’s, are not things to be measured. I find it freeing. Neurologically I suspect these are right brain experiences.
My mediation a kind of Ying Yang flow between the left and right spheres of the brain. Carry water chop wood (left side) AND Carry water chop wood (right side) The Doings are the same but the experience different.
PeterParticipantThanks Anita you have a wonderful way with words and its helpful to see what I attempt to work through reflected back so succinctly.
Though I was taken aback by Tommy’s tone for a moment (a old wound of not being seen or understood showed up) I wasn’t offended.
As we were referencing a Zen Koan, after taking the moment, I had to laugh as ‘BS’ is actually a appropriate reply. A Zen master would have no doubt ‘slapped‘ both of us. If I understand correctly the Koan’s are paradoxical and intentionally frustrating the idea being to break (slap) the hold of the grasping measuring mind or something… the imagined Zen Master just slapped me again. 🙂
Tommy’s mention of monkey mind caused me to pause. My process of ‘sitting in a Koan’ (Paradox, dualism) with free flow of thoughts (slowed down by typing them out) actually calms the monkey as it tends to end in silence. But that’s my process and I see why it might find it ‘to much’.
PeterParticipantLOL Tommy.
Perhaps why language fads to silence as it should.
Seeking stillness while on a planet spinning through space a fools game. yet when Stillness isn’t a measurement
The mountain still a mountain “seen” for the first time, not a only or just
PeterParticipantHi Tommy
I’ve been pondering what you wrote – “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”
Being a Zen Koan I suspect were not to answer it but sit in it. The first thing I notice is the same frustration, what’s the point. A strong indication that I’m sitting in the temporal measuring mind and that the desire for ‘enlightenment’ was/is a quest to avoid pain cover up fear and anxiety.
Is it possible to sit in the Koan without desire without a goal or even answers?
“Attending completely, listening with all your heart, with all your brain, with all your senses? If you are so completely attending there is nothing more. That is meditation.” – KrishnamurtiMeditation isn’t practice, isn’t concentration, isn’t focus, isn’t silence, isn’t stillness, isn’t passive, isn’t a goal… all such thoughts and measuring restrict attending?
“There is something beyond words, beyond all thought which time has not touched, which is the origin of all things. This is the origin of all things and therefore the most sacred, most holy, timeless.” – Krishnamurti
Sitting in the Koan, all things are an arising from and a return to… movement arising from and returning to stillness, language and measurement/judgment arising from and returning to silence, time arising and returning to the eternal now… Stillness, silence, eternity not a something to attain, but attend to…
Movement creates Life, Stillness Love… to be still yet still moving that is everything.
In the temporal measuring sphere of the left side of the brain we do not have words for something that is both stillness and movement, time and eternal (eternal that is not a measurement of time). As we drift to the right side of the brain, eyes ‘see’ the stillness in movement, movement in stillness… ears ‘hear’ the silence in language/thought/measurement… Self senses the eternal in the temporal, temporal in the enteral…
We return… chop wood, carry water… same temporal needs, but not the same doings… Bitter sweet, the heart opens?
“These are just words, but if you live without fear, if you have understood knowledge, you have gone beyond sorrow, therefore you have this quality of love and compassion with its intelligence, and having laid the foundation then meditation is something marvelous, something that thought can never understand. Then only there is that which is timeless, most holy.” – Krishnamurti
Can we live without fear when it has defined our experience? Without such fear what role does belief, desire, right practice, knowledge, guru’s…. have? Do our beliefs, goals and desires reenforcing fear?
In the eternal fear has nowhere to take root… The question arises Do we dare to ‘see’ Life as it Is? Is it possible to answer Yes without belief? Compassion bitter sweet…
Chop wood, carry water, engage in life… I don’t know Tommy I have my moments of staring into space unable to sleep.
I try to notice when I’m in my temporal, measuring judging, dualistic self and then remind myself of the return from which all arose, even if for only a moment. (LOL till I ‘measure’ the moment as a measurement of time, sending me right back into it. no wonder the Buddha laughs)
Allan Watts viewed the temporal sphere of experience as a playground (game) for the self/ego and eternal Home. Perhaps the trick is the realization that the two arn’t separate states of being.
PeterParticipant🙂 A ‘timing’ for everything…
Blessed are the ‘Wonder-full’
PeterParticipantI have always found ‘The Heart Sutra’ difficult. I think that is intentional as it pushes the mind towards silence, towards a ‘knowing’ experience.. So I feel that its related to the reflections on the ‘blank canvas’
The Heart Sutra
The Bodhisattva of Compassion,
When he meditated deeply,
Saw the emptiness of all five skandhas (senses)
And sundered the bonds that caused him suffering.Here then,
Form is no other than emptiness,
Emptiness no other than form.
Form is only emptiness,
Emptiness only form.Feeling, thought, and choice,
Consciousness itself,
Are the same as this.
All things are by nature void
They are not born or destroyed
Nor are they stained or pure
Nor do they wax or waneSo, in emptiness, no form,
No feeling, thought, or choice,
Nor is there consciousness.
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;
No color, sound, smell, taste, touch,
Or what the mind takes hold of,
Nor even act of sensing.No ignorance or end of it,
Nor all that comes of ignorance;
No withering, no death,
No end of them.
Nor is there pain, or cause of pain,
Or cease in pain, or noble path
To lead from pain;
Not even wisdom to attain!
Attainment too is emptiness.So know that the Bodhisattva
Holding to nothing whatever,
But dwelling in Prajna wisdom,
Is freed of delusive hindrance,
Rid of the fear bred by it,
And reaches clearest Nirvana.
All Buddhas of past and present,
Buddhas of future time,
Using this Prajna wisdom,
Come to full and perfect vision.Hear then the great dharani,
The radiant peerless mantra,
The Prajnaparamita
Whose words allay all pain;
Hear and believe its truth!Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!”Into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond.
Into the gone completely beyond (beyond movement, time, language, measurement, duality..) the other shore, awaken.PeterParticipant“Practice the transfer now by breathing in Eternity and Stillness and breathing out Time and Movement” that was nicely put Anita
inter-be what a wonderful way of ‘clearly’ seeing. Thanks for sharing Roberta
I wonder if clearing seeing, the realization of the temporal and eternal is related to a move towards the “right” side of the brain where the experience of time, that the past, present and future happen all at once and a experience of the eternal now, and where language (measurement, duality) fade? We tend to set up our ‘throne’ on the left side where the I likes to reside and measure everything.
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Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 