Desire and Austerity

Desire is not wrong. But then why all religions are against it? Is not desire the basis of life? Desire carries people away. It is not desire that is wrong but its narrowness and limitedness. When your desire increases and expands, you give up your limited entity to attain the unlimited. It is this desire for the infinite transforms into love and devotion. You love your self and you long to be happy, then what makes you suffer? You loving your self stupidly makes you suffer, your indulgence makes you suffer, love your self wisely. Then why austerity is suggested? Austerity is not against desire, both austerity and desire have same purpose: to make you happy. Nobody is imposing austerity on you; it is your own choice.

Going through the same experience again and again and again is indulgence; austerity is not going through the same experience again. Austerity helps you to check your indulgence, and make way for better and new desires to grow in knowledge and experience. We continuously deceive ourselves by imagining small things like food, sex, power and fame will give happiness. Only something infinitely vast and deep such as your real self can make you truly and permanently happy.

So live your life with awareness of your deepest self always. To put it simple and straight, all that you seek is to express in action what you are. For this purpose you have your toolkit :-) your body and your mind, see how they can help you in fulfilling your purpose.

Desire the Unlimited

There could only be one desire: "to be unlimited" All other desires are nothing but substitutes to this or small fractions of desires leading towards this ultimate desire of being unlimited. The conflict between the "desire to remain being a separated entity" and "desire to become unlimited" makes you go through time and paves your path of life. Desire to change, either personally or one's environment or occupation etc. are also strongly connected with desire for unlimited. Not desiring for change is being bound to existing pattern for reasons such as fear of the new, or loss of secured feeling, attachments so on. Both desiring and non desiring being simultaneously present keeps you where you are now. If your experience is not in total you may either continue with the same situations or get into new situations but for the same experience (as this new situation will help you to experience better). Once you are fully done, after going through your experiences in total, you will automatically get into a unique situation what I call 'situation of transcendence'. Once the desire is transcended you will see yourself in a totally new situation to go through absolutely new experiences. When this happens you would feel in total, with out any conflict at all, have absolute insight and sure sense of direction. The clarity of mind would surpass the clarity of the five senses.

This shift will not be due normal boredom feeling of "I’m not interested anymore, I don’t belong here anymore, I don’t feel like doing anything... I should be doing something else". The next situation or the next new experience will pull you instead of just wishing for a change or escape out or boredom of routine mundane activities. All you can do is keep responding to situations wherever you find yourself. Over a period of time spontaneous actions would arise, this is totally different from minds impulsive action. A chain of events would lead you to what is destined for you... intact you would not even bother about all this when you are in that mode. But on a normal day to day scenario whenever we analyze ourselves we find ourselves with either too many desires or no desire standing out and therefore no clarity of purpose. It cannot stand out...'cause it’s all interconnected any desire starts from you "limited separate entity".... ends with the union with unlimited-ness where time is said to stop 'cause there is no movement in any direction and hence no desire! Until then....keep meditating!

Suddenly you may find one desire standing out strongly among many others, later it may be substituted with another and it goes on. The mind tends to react to that desire with some impulsive reaction. So it’s better to take cumulative aggregation of our desires to decide, if at all the decision has to be taken. But I would suggest allowing the chain of events to take care; of course you will have to respond. Reacting to spike waves of the mind is not a wise thing to do, because if you continue to react it is difficult to know if the desire is still alive or not, as the desire starts working from the unconsciousness and also it keeps multiplying! 'cause waves in the mind give rise to reactions and reactions will maintain the waves of the mind....vicious circle? Mentally accepting that the desire being present is also minds reaction, instead try simply seeing the desire arising and falling, if you feel any response is need allow it, without any thinking and intellectualizing. Reaction of acceptance only reinforces the turbulences of the mind, though it is suggested as the solution it is just the first step. So if you respond with an action which is free from minds reactions it will be spontaneous, true and straightforward. Like having food when hungry, this may seem as a reaction to hunger as long as mind is involved... but spontaneously eating food is pure action if it’s got nothing to do with the exaggerations of the mind. Seems difficult to understand but its simple once the mind gets hold of this truth... and this truth will work against the mind when you intellectually get it right :-) One thing to remember is that objective accomplishments have got nothing to do with feeling accomplished (but mind connects these both) and hence the confusion... mind puts a rule that only if so and so objectives are accomplished there will be happiness, like “only if I go to the mountains I will become peaceful”. Here, is not feeling peaceful more important and going to the mountains? Coming back to hunger example, its like saying only if I eat pizza my hunger will cease, this is the mind, intuitively eating the best among anything available around you to satisfy hunger is your natural response. I will leave you to see the truth as it is for yourself.

Uselessness?

Few of them whom I have met in the recent past have been discussing about their feeling the uselessness of all things. But that’s good sign! The main reason for this kind of a feeling is, continuous setbacks, in the sense their dreams and desires continuously not getting fulfilled 'as they had imagined it to be'. So by simply not bothering about 'that' which is feeling the uselessness, would render 'that' useless and there by breaking the dam and causing 'that' to be in the unlimited universal flow. Now are you still bothered of your uselessness, purposelessness, or uselessness of all things etc.?... if yes keep your attention on 'that' which is getting troubled with the uselessness, and find 'that' to have the roots in some established usefulness in the past, or similar mental construct.

blissful sleep

Bliss without awareness, the unaware bliss is same as good sleep. Bad sleep is no sleep at all as your mind is disturbed and there is very little settling down. Good sleep is what you get naturally after the days work, your mind being undisturbed through out the day. Though unaware you get a glimpse of bliss during good sound sleep, and so deep sleep is always so good and refreshing. If unaware bliss is equal to such good sleep then, how will the bliss with full awareness be?

Hunting for the truth?

Why waste time hunting for the truth? It pulsates in every thing that can be percieved. Be still and see it in the mountain, in the trees, and also in yourself. You will never discover it by accumulating more knowledge. Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you greedy for more knowledge. Because the truth is so subtle and the understanding and awareness can open the doors. Understanding that the named objects come out of unamed, beings come out non-being, the world emananetes from empty space, then know that the truth is in your own self and then remain content. Instead of making impulsive moves, be still and watch the world, you will know that it is already perfect, this subtle perfection declines when artificial actions are performed, so just be aware and be blissful. Be still and quiet. Discover the harmony in your own being. Embrace the truth. With this your real actions spring out with awareness. If you can do this, you will gain everything, and in your perception the world will become healthy again. If you can't, you will be lost in the shadows forever.

-Teachings of Tao

KEU - Knowledge, experience and understanding...

Knowledge if outdated becomes out of context for the current situation. Trust in the knowledge, experience and understanding that is available and existing for you NOW. Because the next moment brings new and fresh knowledge, experience and understanding for you to perceive! and so it goes on. Knowledge, experience and understanding thus not perceived at that moment becomes dead and past, that may torment you in future :-)

life and death...

There are many who think, "Nothing more for me to do, I’m just moving towards death"! If that’s the case you would have been dead long back even before you can think of this. Normally people who are too ambitious their desires are never satisfied with small expressive work that they can do immediately. Because they feel that their work or creative expression is too small and limited when compared to the big giants who have accomplished huge credits behind them. Pure expression of creation is withheld due to ego problems of the mind, such as internal fear of criticism, fear of non acceptance, fear of failure so on. Once the mind considers itself too inferior to others a state of non doing settles down, this state of non doing is very different form the state of non doing of a master, who really is the master of consciousness. Moment to moment creative expression though seem like drops of water will transform into a big ocean which IS the flow of universe itself, one has to embrace this natural growth. However apparently insignificant, the smallest flower blooms and participates totally in the 'universal flow'. The decline of pure creative expression conforming to the universal flow, gives birth to other negative virtues like greed, anger and fear. Allow life, allow death, and allow the universal flow. "The Mighty Oak was once just a small nut that held its ground."

showing off will help!

Creation is good... but why showing off? Why that inherent tendency of sharing the creation with people around? Because the reason of creation is mutual not individual. One can understand this when he sees creation as it is, as a whole. Nature creating itself. When we discriminate and see as "I create" then it is followed by need for sharing, opinions of others, appreciation, comparison and all the ego gratification around it. To know this, try showing off your creation to somebody who can give a bad or good opinion about it and carefully observe tendencies, emotions and reactions that follow, that would create a tumble on your creation the next moment...this happened when i tumbled after showing this blog to my dearest master, who spends lot of time making me wise.

create and forget!

What is one supposed to do in this world? In this endless universe that keeps creating and expanding, all that happens is more and more creation, why then destruction? obviously to facilitate more creation. Creation becomes impure when intent is on acceptance, recognition, fame, money etc. creation has to be for the sake of creation! so create and forget. Because if you cling to your creation that obstructs further creation. Any obstruction of creation causes fear, suffering, anget, rejection, depresson etc! So just create and be blissful!

Reality Vs Concepts

Most of us live our lives in mental concepts. Our good and bad values are more of a mental construct fed or programmed by our culture or society. These mental concepts become a great obstacle to direct experience of truth. Every concept restricts the flow of consciousness. Our mind gets attached and identified with many such concepts and eventually is in chaos!

Concept is static it’s got a label. For instance a bird or a tree once conceptualized and labeled in our minds it stops flowing in our perception, in other words it dies to our perception and gets disconnected from our being. It becomes static…it becomes a thought and not feel anymore. We somehow don’t perceive or feel its flow or its ever changing property. Other good example would be the river, once we give it a name or label and put it in a box it loses its flow. In our minds we just have it as a static dead object!.. Flow is moment to moment, it has to be experienced beyond our conceptions of our mind, and at that point truth is perceived.

Our concepts and labels filter out the truth or direct seeing. Our perception is devoid of truth, when perceived through mind it is colored and limited. Our own identification and clinging limits our perception. Once we get to see beyond our mental constructs, belief systems, concepts, clinging, attachments etc in other words once we get to see beyond our mind we are subject to direct seeing, or direct experiencing of truth. You become the truth. Reality is one and concepts are many!

Blissful morning flower

All the scriptures, sayings and songs of the enlightened masters are nothing but expressions of their experience of truth. They have no purpose other than this. Ignorance and craving makes us think that scriptures are for changing the world, or for giving directions to common people. Our mind and intellect want some reasoning of purpose to support our ego.
The world is already perfect and its going in the right direction. Our lack of trust on the existence makes us assume that things are wrong in this world and this usually follow with blaming and other negative emotions. This wrong understanding leads us to suffering, because: "if the world is not right I’m not right" "if I'm not right the world is not right" is just a vicious circle! The questions like what’s my purpose etc have no purpose. Just sing your song and dance your dance. The master's expression of truth is like blissful blooming morning lotus. No purpose, no expectations, just pure expression. Simply responding to your feel and allowing the energies to flow every moment gives the experience of truth. Can anything else be more true than this?

Love... a Prejudiced idea?

Can you really fall in love with other?... You can only fall in love with your own idea of the other! You can fall in love with your own judgement of the other! You can fall in love with your projected mental image of the other... all these are preconcieved notions and far from reality! Real love happens beyond mind and its unlimited and unconditional. Real love happens with complete unlimited trust on the existance... so duality ceases with love, in other words, nonduality is absolute love.

Eligibility?

Who are eligible to get liberated?

Your have to be bound to get liberated. In other words "You are bound to be liberated!"
Liberation and bondage are in the realm of the mind only, truth is "There is no bondage and there is no liberation" because true freedom is beyond both!

How can doing something lead to liberation?

Any doing if based on desire or mind it fails to get you liberated. Non doing and allowing the change to happen will transcend desire, there by truth is attained. How can only a particular action will make you know the truth, any action performed intensively will lead to truth. That’s the way to transcend mind. Intensified actions finish off the stagnant tendencies one by one and finally leading to emptiness or truth. Otherwise mind keeps shifting to something new continuously without finishing off with a particular experience.

Its like accumulating stones without end, when the limit is reached we only replace an existing stone with some new stone, there by taking full load and mind is never free from tendencies and always lack energy. These tendencies act as leeches that keep sucking the limited energy, and also block unlimited energy to flow in for the expansion of consciousness.

Suffering?

Who is suffering? Who ever has built a thorny fence around himself will suffer. The fence hurts him and also others! Remove the thorns from the fence first! But you become more sensible to find that the fence itself hurts. Remove the fence then. But now your entity's dimension expands and you redefine yourself! The meaning of "I" changes, and suffering?.... no trace of it!!!

Truely present?

The 'past' is a memory,The 'future' is a supposition,The 'present' is passed before we can apprehend it. The processes of perception and conception are complicated and require a lapse of time for their completion.

The only 'present' therefore is presence and it is what we are.Such presence, then, is inevitably outside and beyond time. As time and space are both mutually interdependent the "Presence" is beyond both time and space!

The seeker is the found,

The found is the seeker,

As soon as it is perceived

There is no Time!

THIS which is seeking is THAT which is sought,

andTHAT which is sought is THIS which is seeking.

As soon as it is perceived
There is no Time!

There is neither Creation nor Destruction,

Neither Destiny nor Free-will,

Neither Path nor Achievement;

As soon as it is perceived

There is no Time!

This is the final Truth.

All things arise and pass away

World arises whenever we try to resist the life flow and try to cling to fixed forms which are all "maya", whether they are things, events, people or ideas. The idea of ego, or separate self, is also maya.

Crystal clear

For a person who has made investigation, who has a mind with its movements stilling, who is giving up thinking and imagination, who is giving up visible objects, who is perceiving the seer and not the seen, who is wakeful while living in the highest truth, who is asleep to the world of dense ignorance, who is indifferent to objects of enjoyment and without desire then, the inherent nature of the person clears up through the power of knowledge as water clears up on condensation.

Growth and Enlightenment

Every material calamity is bound to bring spiritual growth! Until this is understood material calamity will bring great distress! With the distress and pain comes understanding. With understanding comes great awareness. With awareness comes great spiritual growth. With great spiritual growth comes enlightenment!

"Calamities can bring growth and Enlightenment,"said the Master.
And he explained it thus:
"Each day a bird would shelter in the withered branches of a tree that stood in the middle of a vast deserted plain.One day a whirlwind uprooted the tree, forcing the poor bird to fly a hundred miles in search of shelter till it finally came to a forest of fruit-laden trees."
And he concluded:"If the withered tree had survived,nothing would have induced the bird to give up its security and fly."

Listening to Silence?

Silence is not just silence of sound! It is silence of your mind that we are talking about, so its more inner than the outer. Outer noise is only a reflection of inner noise, so make the inner silent first.

Silence

Said a traveler to one of the disciples,"I have traveled a great distance to listen to the Master,but I find his words quite ordinary."
"Don't listen to his words.Listen to his message."
"How does one do that?"
"Take hold of a sentence that he says.Shake it well till all the words drop off.What is left will set your heart on fire."

---

"Every word, every image used for God
is a distortion more than a description."
"Then how does one speak of God?"
"Through Silence."
"Why, then, do you speak in words?"
At that the Master laughed uproariously.
He said, "When I speak,
you mustn't listen to the words, my dear.
Listen to the Silence."

---

"Are there ways for gauging one's spiritual strength?"
"Many."
"Give us one."
"Find out how often you lose your silence

and become disturbed in the course of a single day."

---

Believing is not enough you must know!

You are!

Look back and see what all you believe. Investigate if all that you believe are true. You will end up knowing that nothing is true! You will know that you are the truth and nothing of this so called world is true! You know that ‘you are’ in this world, without this world do you know that you are? ........................

You are!

How can limitedness know unlimitedness, how can mind know the self? If the object of awareness ceases the world ceases, awareness remains and object perishes. When the world ceases for you; you truly are! But then you are not of this world! When you always desire something of this world how can you get something beyond this world? Stop the cycle right now. Stop reading this right now, there is nothing to know.

You are!

Is man truly unlimited?

On the lowest level anybody can eat and sleep. On the highest level anybody can eat and sleep  superficially both look same but how they eat and sleep matters a lot. If you can eat and sleep with totality you do it unified and fulfilled, then there is bliss. If you eat and sleep with a thousand splits or thoughts in your mind then what is the use... You don’t do justice to even that!
If somebody can perform the smallest of the work in a highest possible way, he truly can also perform biggest of the work in highest possible way. There by nothing binds him and so he becomes unlimited. Law of nature is simple, more the intensity, less the time. Complete intensity, no time!
Here intensity need not mean force; intensity would mean involvement and complete conscious attention. We can see more involvement when one does things that one loves to do, though involvement can be high by doing anything and everything. If one does anything with total involvement and intensity he goes beyond time and becomes unlimited. That how, complete action can result in enlightenment.

People with great energy and potential do many things at a time but collapse because of the split or thoughts and get entangled. Masters with unified consciousness remain unlimited and become multidimensional.

Integrity

Whole world is nothing but strive for integrity. In other words union with the divine or the absolute consciousness is integration or yoga. Dis-integrity is pain and Integrity is bliss. Jiva or the individual is nothing but a speck of consciousness that assumes duality and perceives itself disintegrated. It attains bliss or nirvana the moment it gets integrated with the divine. But the truth is it is always integrated with the absolute and the jiva fails to see it. The very doing separates it from being integrated.

Can effort bring us close to integrity? If you want to sleep will you put in effort? It has to come by itself, all you can do is lie down and relax and do nothing. Any effort you put in you are only going far away from it! Silence, can you put in effort and a chive silence? Your wanting to be silent is itself disturbing, its creating wave in the silent space of consciousness.

Same it is with enlightenment do absolutely nothing and see! But mind and ego wants to do something... always! That’s how people fool themselves saying that I’m doing this or that for integrity, enlightenment or whatever, attain this attain that so on, they end up being hypocrites.

If you really want to be integrated then,
Undo doing to get the doing done!

The art of meditation.

There has been too much confusion and complexity on such a simple thing! Simply close your eyes and feel your breath. There is no doing, no effort, no expectations. Let the point of attention on the feel of the breath move or be stationary, do nothing just OBSERVE THE FEEL of the BREATH as it is.

Remember to get back and observe the breath whenever you get lost in your thoughts.

This seemingly simple thing could change your perceptions leaps and bounds in geometric progression, for your expansion of the consciousness. But let there be no seeking for the perception of unexperienced altered frequencies. Simply allow it to happen!

Centering

Conscious attention can be confusing if it is just the mind that is attentive. Because mind can color everything even truth! that is right in front of ur eyes! So your whole being will have to be just that witnessing or seeing and not what you are witnessing or seeing. If you focus on the object then the witnessing disappears. Forus on witnessing and see the how you get enlightened :-) this is also called CENTERING
When you are totally centered the world dissappears! The circumference dissappears. Then, what remains is only pure truth, which may also be called Absolute consciousness, Self or TAO

Silence of the mind?

Opposites are used to define many things in our language of words, what is life? that which is not death.. what is death? that which is not life.But we are using the opposites to define each other! we are using undefined to define!

Without opposites there is no mind, because mind cannot compherend beyond opposites and divisions. So What could be the silence thats beyond the silence of the mind?

Mind?

Ofcourse i can hear ur mind.. and its noise. Best thing for you will be not to reject anything and not to crave anything. If you take sannayas u will have rejected the world (thats is part of you now) if you become worldly you will have rejected the inner side. So take both and go beyond both and you will have gone beyond mind.

Beautiful environment, budda's picture, cleanliness of the room, dhammapada all are also mind stuff.. that which mind likes. The rituals and environment definitely help, but they are not mandatory for your travel inside yourself. They are actually burdens for the mind! They at the most help you to snap you from other worldly things, but remember even these are worldly things!

Dwell in that "you" that can see all these things. Tell me which one is greater... the natural beauty or that which is able to comprehend this natural beauty? The buddha or that which is able to comprehend the buddha? Dhammapada or that which is able to comprehend dhammapada?

Mind will persue the divided duality, because thats its nature. Understanding the futility of all these worldly things will be the first step beyond mind.

There are only two ways for enlightenment.
Active and passive
Active way is extrovert way that involves in activity and world of action.
Passive way is introvert way that involves inner world and dreams.
example of active way is patanjali, sivananda, yogananda and other yoga and kriya masters
example of passive way is ramanamaharishi, lao tzu, chuang tzu and other zen masters

Active or the way of action is effort based and takes time
Passive way or the way of inaction is timeless and so its instanteneous

You dont have to choose just one and struggle, because the destination is beyond both. So you can choose both or keep shifting this and that and finally reach. The difference is only the time taken to reach.

strange beings!

Strange beings with strange mental impressions and desires due to their past influence, bound to strange circumstances. In every direction they rise and fall like bubbles of water. Like these are countless born like water particles from a great water fall! Billions of individual souls spring from the cosmic mind which arises in the absolute.

Can you witness these silently?

"How does one seek union with God?"
"The harder you seek, the more distance you createbetween Him and you."
"So what does one do about the distance?"
"Understand that it isn't there."
"Does that mean that God and I are one?"
"Not one.Not two."
"How is that possible?"
"The sun and its light,the ocean and the wave,the singer and his song...Not one.Not two."

---

words

Those who know do not say;Those who say do not know.

I was contemplating on these words and was wondering whether to say or not! I went beyond words and here im typing these words!

An ancient ZEN story:
When the master enters,Disiples ask him what the words meant.Master says, "Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose?"All of them indicate that they know.Then he says, "put it into words."All of them are silent.

Alas! Its too diffficult to put the truth experienced in words.

purpose

What could be the ultimate vision of human beings, whose consciousness and awareness are at its peak?