Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Find the Buddha

If you wish to find the Buddha,
first you must look into your own mind,
outside of the mind, there is no Buddha.

- Hakuin
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Stale buzzwords

Whatever happened to “understanding”? Remember when that was a buzzword a few years ago? People were divided between those who had understanding and those who didn’t. I don’t think I had it because I talked about donuts a lot.

When I used to hang around the Muktananda ashram in Santa Monica in 1980, there were people who were “receiving the light” and those who weren’t. I know I wasn’t receiving the light because … because I wasn’t receiving a damn light, that’s why.

Another buzzword: “Are you free?” Someone asked me the other day whether I was free. I said, you mean do I have the time to go get a beer or something? He said, “No, are you FREE.”

“Oh, I got you,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m free or not. I don’t know if I have understanding. I don’t know if I’m receiving the light. I don’t know if I have clarity. But if you want to hang out for a few minutes, fine, If not, fine.”

Another popular thing is the ability to see what’s obvious and to recognize it as “this.” There’s some kind of connection between “obvious” and “this.” Like you’re walking with a fellow nondualist and one of you goes, “Yeah, like it’s all just ‘this’.” Yeah, I get that. I don’t get the other buzzwords, but I get that one.

In a few years we’ll be all nostalgic about the days when “this” was such a cool buzzword. And it’s the only one I get.

I don’t think I had understanding, I was never in the Be Here Now, I definitely didn’t receive the light, and I’m not Free especially if it means I have go around asking people if they’re Free. I’d rather have a cell in San Quentin, thank you.

What I do have is my finger on the pulse of all the buzzwords. I can tell you that they go stale as quickly as a half eaten donut underneath the seat of your car. But when they’re hot and fresh we sink our teeth into them, one after another. Mmmm, the good greasy sugar of carnival food.

- From the Nonduality Blog of Jerry Katz at
http://nonduality.org/
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Monday, September 29, 2008

All effort

at controlling thoughts, appetites and desires cannot but strengthen them along with the ego. Whatever has to go must fall off by itself. All that you are concerned with, all that you are, is the impersonal functioning of understanding. So let that understanding work through witnessing without judgement, knowing that there is nothing else that you can do.

- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory

Why go anywhere?
Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out.
The dream is not your problem.
Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another.
Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining.
When you have seen the dream as a dream,
you have done all that need be done."  

- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj 
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