“What is important in meditation is the quality of the mind and the

heart. It is not what you achieve, or what you say you attain, but

rather the quality of a mind that is innocent and vulnerable.

Through negation there is the positive state. Merely to gather, or to

live in, experience, denies the purity of meditation. Meditation is

not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end. The mind

can never be made innocent through experience. It is the negation

of experience that brings about that positive state of innocency

which cannot be cultivated by thought. Thought is never innocent.

Meditation is the ending of thought, not by the meditator, for the

meditator is the meditation. If there is no meditation, then you are

like a blind man in a world of great beauty, light and colour.”  Jiddu Krishnamurti

Then Manjushri asked Chief of the Virtuous, “Since that which the Buddhas realize is but one truth, how is it that they expound countless teachings, manifest countless lands, edify countless beings, speak in countless languages, appear in countless bodies, know countless minds, demonstrate countless mystic powers, are able to shake countless worlds, display countless extraordinary adornments, reveal boundless different realms of objects, whereas in the essential nature of things these different characteristics cannot be found at all?” Chief of the Virtuous answered in verse:

The meaning of what you ask

Is deep and hard to fathom.

The wise are able to know it,

Always delighting in Buddha’s virtues.

Just as the nature of earth is one

While beings each live separately,

And the earth has not though of oneness or difference,

So is the truth of all Buddhas.

Just as the nature of fire is one,

While able to burn all things

And the flames make no distinction,

So is the truth of all Buddhas.

Just as the ocean is one

With millions of different waves

Yet the water is no different:

So is the truth of all Buddhas.

And as the nature of wind is one

While able to blow on all things

And wind has no thought of oneness of difference:

So is the truth of all Buddhas.

Also like great thunderheads

Raining all over the earth,

The Raindrops make no distinction:

So is the truth of all Buddhas.

Just as the element earth, while one,

Can produce various sprouts,

Yet it’s not that the earth is diverse:

So is the truth of all Buddhas.

Just as the sun without clouds overcast

Shines throughout the ten directions,

Its light beams having no difference,

So is the truth of all Buddhas.

And just as the moon in the sky

Is seen by all in the world

Yet the moon doesn’t go to them:

So is the truth of all Buddhas.

Just as the king of the gods

Appears throughout the universe

Yet his body has no change:

So is the truth of all Buddhas.

]]> http://cosmicecho.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/an-enlightening-being-asks-for-clarification/feed/ 0 brannu23 http://cosmicecho.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/snow-under-warmer-temperatures/ http://cosmicecho.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/snow-under-warmer-temperatures/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:06:19 +0000 brannu23 http://cosmicecho.wordpress.com/?p=171 Continue reading »

… or maybe this life and all of the big and little things that come along with it are like snow slowly melting under warmer temperatures; here to enjoy and appreciate temporarily but passing by as quickly as they come.

It’s so beautiful to watch. After the long hot summer and the drawn out autumn, here comes the winter and the moment that you knew would surely come. You sit by your window and watch the snow flakes fall to the ground, slowly accumulating like sand in an hourglass. A beautiful meditation reflecting the stillness that life carries within its boundlessness.

You throw on your boots, winter jacket and gloves … and go out to play in this wintry love because you know, inherently, that life is for participation, not just observation. Maybe you make a snowman. An igloo? Maybe you’ll find the nearest lake that has become frozen over and see how far you can slide on your belly. Ice fishing? Cross country skiing?

In the participation is meditation. Meditation is participation … and in that participation we enjoy as much as we can in this very moment because we understand, emphatically, that there won’t be another one like it.

No, we don’t sit by idly waiting for the snow and cold to pass, although we know that it will. In attuning our observation in participation there is informal education … even medication. No doubt that there is elevation because your view has move from isolated insulation to become one with creation.

This life and all that comes with it is slowly melting away like this snow under warmer temperatures. Maybe some of us would like the temperatures to stay cool so that we can continue to enjoy all of the things that come along with this snow, but we know, fo’ sho’, that life and its perpetual flow provides us with ample opportunities to practice the art of … letting go.

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So it is that things that are erected are eventually reduced to their original nothingness. This continuous movement of formless manifestation plays tricks on ones inherent need to possess, thereby informing awareness that attempting to hold onto … anything … is like building sand castles on the beach … it’s going to be washed away.

Most things (everything?) in life are just like this. Relationships, jobs, personal achievements, material possessions, etc. It really doesn’t matter how much work, money, attention and energy that you put into them … the ocean of life will come to reduce those sand castles back into their formless state.

Enjoy the endeavor. Don’t become possessed by the outcome. Create … by all means … create. Throw recognition to the wind. Lend a helping hand where a helping hand is needed. Give thanks for being able.

We own nothing. The path is empty.  Our cup runneth over.

Sandcastles on the beach.

I have come to sing
The song of life
I know not how to teach.

I have come to love
The diversity of life
I know not how to preach.

I have come to live
A sane healthy life
I know not how to lead.

My heart is a lotus
These words are petals.
This is my gift to you.

-Vimala Thakar

The origins of existence are untraceable, yet its creative potential has been passed down through innumerable generations of a stumbling humanity. The illumination of the great mystery is burrowed deeply into every cell, echoing its infinitude … listen … and … give thanks.

The Unknown, with its ever expansive divine magic is intangibly palpable … like … on the tip of your tongue, literally, yet can’t be spoken. Even if it’s eternal language could be grasped and eloquently verbalized, it would come across as gibberish to even the most intelligent of our human breed. Give thanks in understanding that it created and understands the limitations of the symbols we use to express a mere teardrop of its infinitely oceanic depths.

Don’t take yourself too seriously. This life is but a blink of an eye to the divine omnipresence that is continually renewing itself through the life cycles of all of creation. Why not live the four season in a day? In continually renewing oneself, we continually give space of the mysterious magician to continually renew its creative genius to dispel our conditioned irrationality with miracles. Give thanks in recognizing that waking up is but one of a million that happen regularly.

Who in the hell knows what the fuck is going on outside of life … just living? (I curse to keep you on your toes) The books that have been given, have been written, got you all smitten, are just that … books. But, if you were to put the bible, koran, torah, bhagavad gita, upanishads and all the other holy books along with all of the words of all of the great teachers, mystics, priests and such that have testified to the mystifying, awe inspiring, genius of nothingness and bring them into create an all encompassing library of this luminous mysterious magician … you still wouldn’t be able to utter a word that would be able to reflect its amazing awesomeness. Give thanks that the infinite … is beyond words.

… live to give love …

we are able to push past …

and through … the red tape …

the yellow tape … bodies outlined in chalk …

To talk.

To talk about love.

Love of the earth

and its inhabitant.

We are coming together in squares,

in circles,

on city blocks,

in front of federal buildings …

to raise the ceiling, then

collapse the roof with truth.

Truth?

The earth is crying.

Her tears erupt on homeless bodies dying … in these streets.

These streets that are paved to an early grave for young

brilliant minds whose family, community, city and country

didn’t find the time to find the roots of the crimes

committed against them.

The truth is … it’s time.

It’s time we stop bullshittin’ and listen.

Listen to the echoes of violence that ring out loud from

a crowd of innocent Arab children.

Listen to the pains of those vets who come home 

to realize that this feels nothing like home. 

Listen to the  single mother with two kids, two jobs

who can’t afford two meals to feed her kids … properly.

Listen to the millions of people that are gathering in circles

and squares, on city blocks … worldwide … occupying the

planet with love.

Love for the earth …

and its inhabitants.

(get involved)

Life is perfect … even when it is not going the way in which we wish that it would.

The incomprehensible mystery is magnetically inspiring. It is so attractively captivating that my curiosity wants to uncover every detail of its incomprehensibility. Understanding the unfathomable beauty of The Eternal I realize how much of a challenge it is to slow down – numb – this naturally investigative curiousness.

Yet, what i have come to further realize is that this inquisitive magnifying glass known as the intellect is its most overactive in objectified observation. Disquietude is reverberated loudly, with enduring intensity, when the falsity of otherness becomes the object of questioning.

When awareness becomes the ever evolving one movement of interpenetrative timelessness …

silence lives as the evolving, transcendent, unfathomable incomprehensibility …

which we have always been …

thereby numbing intellectual stupidity, analytical feebleness … petty microscopic meddlesomeness.

Death is a funny thing. Not the death of the physical body when it loses its operational status, but, the dying of the internal voices that have blocked us from greater, deeper, intimate experience with all of existence.

From such an early age we have been conditioned to follow various ideas that have been passed down throughout the ages. They continue to fall upon us like a bad storm that never seems to pass, with those waters nourishing ill concepts and behavior patterns that are as old as the human clan itself. We have remembered such scripts so well that even in the year 2011 and innumerable wars we continue to normalize violence. We have heard these scripts repeated to us for so long that they have become so embedded in our consciousness that the vast majority of us believe that the disease of hatred will never die.

What has never come to assist us in our psycho-social evolution is a mass of people who arise in unison to echo a new understanding that informs the lot of human beings and educates us into understanding that as long as we hold onto a false concept of how life is that it will never die and its delusional nature will forever continue to condition our capacity to reify its detrimental nature. Naturally, this is not just with violence, hatred and other forms of antagonism, as these unproductive seeds of thought are abundant in our cultural programming. They have become the weeds of war, classism, sexism, homophobia, racism, childish lust, enslavement to the ideas of familial tradition, cultural exclusivity, unelected moral authority, corporate/political manipulation, possessiveness based relationships, religious division, on and on and on.

The sad aspect of this messy entanglement is that we don’t know how to release ourselves from the shackles of the many enslaving concepts. Furthermore, as previously stated, these destructive ideas and thought patterns that have conditioned how we live have been normalized. We have conditioned ourselves to believe that because these ways of being have been around forever, that they will inevitable be around … forever. A peaceful world without divisive antagonism, inherent with a compassionate caring of the earth, its inhabitants and life lived openly vulnerable to newness of each day is not only not dreamed of/imagined on a large scale … most of us don’t even believe it possible. This pessimistic view of human possibility naturally puts an end to any practice of a new standard for living.

It’s hard to realize the fact that most of us live a life that has been conditioned into our way of thinking since we were babies. It’s hard to fathom the depth at which this programming has taken place in our consciousness and how it continues to be programmed into our awareness from each moment to moment of inattentive repetition. From this view, meditation becomes a subtle art form that needs continual presence in each moment of each day.

I’ve seen this for a long time, but it’s greater realization came to me as I was contemplating my move back to the original digs that I have disassociated myself with a long time ago. I watched how the script in my mind painted a particular picture of Ravenna, Ohio … and Ohio in general. I looked at an entire dialogue that I had built up in my mind about the people, the culture, the politics, the land, and how much of that world view was built against my own, natural approach to living and what I believed to be important to me.

“Wherever you don’t want to go, you will find him.” Avi (again from the movie Revolver) — talking about where to find our trickster ego.

We place so many barriers around our experience by labeling things in a way that prevents us from entering into life openly. This could be relationships, cultures, places, cities … almost any field of experience that we have built up aversions to. We have told ourselves the same stories about life that we have shut down and shut out so much possibility that it is not hard to imagine why we live in a world where antagonism is naturally expected.

In this way, we become actors in a movie not our making. We have been provided with the scripts, rehearsed the scripts for years, thereby conditioning our minds against particular experiences, only to live out these scripts in our waking life. It is a really difficult pill to swallow when we realize that these scripts aren’t our own. We have been subtly manipulated/socialized into accepting and believing certain ideas, thereby only enslaving us to other people’s ideas about what life is and how it should be lived.

Understanding this, and understanding that we cannot continue on this road, we have to ask then, what is revolution? Does revolution – the real revolution – live in our ability to lay waste to these scripts and awaken the unconditioned? Could it be that we are addicts addicted to a destructive lifestyle and that unless we can stop taking in these negative, unproductive, antagonistic attitudes that we will inevitably reproduce the same cycle of violence that has been plaguing us throughout the centuries?

There’s insecurity in not knowing. There’s insecurity in not having a script about other people, places and things.  There’s insecurity in not having a knowledge base from which to enter out into the world with. However, living in and of itself, is a practice of insecurity. Although we believe in the certainty of tomorrow … it is everything but certain. Looking at our lives from this lens we come to understand that no matter what scripts that we hold about our world, we never know anything absolutely.

I had this running script that the SF Bay Area was the best place on earth to live, not ever having visited all places on the earth. I had this script that said, “It has everthing that one could ever want. Lots of culture, the mountains meet the oceans, progressive politics, people from all walks of life coming together, meeting each other, engaging in the world with each other.” Blah, blah, blah. Although these things are true and the SF Bay Area is a great place to experiment with the possibilities of the utopian melting pot, that doesn’t mean that it is particularly aligned with what is needed for everyone, particularly me at this point in my life. Yet, the point is now that i can lay waste to this script and I can completely open myself to the possibilities of life as it lays before my adventurous quest, it opens my consciousness in ways previously unforeseen. The expansiveness is … boundless really.

What if we are able to do this consciously, moment to moment, with the various little details of life? All the little things that we are antagonistic towards? What if we just simply allowed ourselves to surrender into the unknown, be completely open and allow that which is nameless and beyond intellectual grasp to pour into our movement and guide our being? What would that be like? Too scary? Is it difficult to live without such control?

What if we were able to look squarely at ourselves and others without these scripts? What if I were able to look at others without a preconceived definition of their being? Even those that I am already intimate with? How would that enable us to see each other from a much wider lens of possibility?

This is where the revolution lives. Cosmetic changes to our political apparatus is meaningless if we as individuals do not step into a greater capacity of viewing our relationships from an unconditioned perspective.

Let it go. Right? We hear that all the time. Let it go. There is such practical depth in that statement that because we hear it so often we tend to overlook its importance. Letting things go allows for this infinite life to be continually creative. In reference to “let it go”, I sometimes like to say, “let it flow”. Because when we are able to observe life and let go of the ideas, feelings, perceptions and such that keep us at odds with life, we then allow life to flow naturally. Releasing all of the junk that inhibits our ability to flow with life is freedom. Jiddu Krishnamurti calls this “Freedom From The Known.” Vimala Thakar called it being “On an Eternal Voyage.”

There is so much more to life beyond what we know. It is imperative that we give ourselves, others, and this life the space to grow … naturally. We tend to objectify existence. I say this to mean that we typically look at objects and define them based on appearance, without ever slowing down to contemplate the space that exist between (within) all things. That space is the unconditioned loveliness that maintains all of life.

Contemplate space.

Space engenders everything and is infinitely creative … let it flow. When we are able to allow space to do what it does naturally, then maybe this is when we can be said to be (flow)ering.

“No one has the impression that a plant is in charge of its growing; it’s a movement of nature. Why would you think it’s different for us?” – Darryl Bailey

I started writing this a few weeks back and never got the opportunity to finish it. Now I’m in Ohio. I just got here last evening. It’s strange … but, then again, not really. It’s familiarity is unfamiliar. The trees feel different. I imagine that all this may just be a reflection of my openness … allowing things to be what they are and not placing judgement on anything (or anyone).

I am now beginning to truly live. The innocence of unknowingness is beautifying. It’s beauty is found in freeing others from your own imprisoning scripts that doesn’t allow them to be other than what you continually imagine them to be. No judgments, no blame, no antagonism … only forbearance/allowance/space … letting things flow naturally and letting “others” be … beautiful.

Take the “Eternal Voyage” … live the unscripted life. Because as Vimala pointed out in her classic portrayal of her “Explosion” …

“Only truth liberates. Only truth transmits fresh life. Truth breathes innocence into you. Destruction and creation mingle in that breath.”