Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing Book Summary
Note: This summary is made up of my notes, thoughts and highlights of important passages while reading the book. I keep updating the summary when I revisit it, and occasionally may edit it to reduce summary length. Don’t be surprised if it has changed between visits. The author’s words are in normal font, while my interpretations are in italics.
That Which Cannot Be Simpler
How my words are received or what becomes of them after they leave my lips is beyond my ability to control.
“Act, but don’t reflect on the fruit of the act.”
Enlightenment is truth-realization. Not only is truth simple, it’s that which cannot be simpler; cannot be further reduced.
I doubt she equates enlightenment with the direct experience of reality in its infinite form.
Enlightenment isn’t when you go there, it’s when there comes here. … It’s not a visit to the truth, it’s the awakening of truth within you. It’s not a fleeting state of consciousness, it’s permanent truth-realization; abiding non-dual awareness.
Nobody resides in a state of permanent bliss.
Do you want to dedicate your life to the pursuit of the experience of mystical consciousness? Or do you want to wake up to the truth of your being?
“That’s pretty much what everybody is doing in the larger sense, wouldn’t you say? Moving toward something, away from something else?”
She believes, in the broadest sense, that something is wrong and that she can make it right.
The truth, though, is that nothing is really wrong. Nothing is ever wrong and nothing can be wrong. It’s not even wrong to believe that something is wrong. Wrong is simply not possible. As Alexander Pope wrote, “One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.” Wrongness is in the eye of the beholder and nowhere else.
The perception of wrongness, however, is absolutely critical to the perpetuation of the human drama.
Drama requires conflict; no conflict, no drama.
If something isn’t wrong, then nothing needs to be made right, which would mean that nothing needs to be done.
“The belief that something is wrong is the fire under the ass of humanity.”
A certain amount of rightness and wrongness is hardwired into the human machine. Hunger is wrong, eating is right.
If this whole existence thing is to have any dramatic element to keep it interesting, it needs conflict, and so an artificial wrongness must be inserted into the mix: Fear.
The fear of no-self is the mother of all fears, the one upon which all others are based. No fear is so small or petty that the fear of no-self isn’t at its heart. All fear is ultimately fear of no-self.
We are primarily emotional and our ruling emotion is fear.
For my part, this is how I figure stuff out; by expressing it. That’s how I learn what to say and how to say it.
The first order of business is getting her to loosen her grip on, well, everything; her opinions, her morality, her most cherished and deeply held beliefs. In short, her ego structure, her false self.
Paradox
You will never achieve spiritual enlightenment.
The you that you think of as you is not you. The you that thinks of you as you is not you.
There is no you, so who wishes to become enlightened? Who is not enlightened? Who will become enlightened? Who will be enlightened?
Enlightenment is your destiny— more certain than sunrise. You cannot fail to achieve enlightenment. Were you told otherwise?
Irresistible forces compel you. The universe insists. It is not within your power to fail. There is no path to enlightenment: It lies in all directions at all times.
On the journey to enlightenment, you create and destroy your own path with every step.
- No one can follow another’s path.
No one can step off the path. - No one can lead another.
- No one can turn back.
- No one can stop.
Enlightenment is closer than your skin, more immediate than your next breath, and forever beyond your reach. It need not be sought because it cannot be found. It cannot be found because it cannot be lost. It cannot be lost because it is not other than that which seeks.
The paradox is that there is no paradox. Isn’t that the damnedest thing?
Big Thoughts
I’m an observer more than a participant. TV, movies, books, news shows. I don’t take sides or have any concern for outcomes, it’s the drama I enjoy.
The power of our devotion to teachers and teachings is not a reflection of their value, but of ego’s will to survive. It’s ego—the false self—that exalts the guru and declares the teaching sacred, but nothing is exalted or sacred, only true or not true.
Awakening is the process of deprogramming. Enlightenment is the unprogrammed state.
The Mahabharata, Krishna and Arjuna are discussing the war that is soon to begin. Arjuna asks if the war will take place on the battlefield or in his heart. “I don’t see a real difference,” replies Krishna.
I don’t believe that they’re perpetrating any sort of intentional fraud. I think they’re just as convinced as those they convince.
The point is to wake up, not to earn a Ph.D. in waking up.
You’re either awake, or you’re not.
Placid and Self-Contained
They do not sweat and whine about their condition. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. – Walt Whitman.
Done
“I have no more questions,” Paul said. He didn’t just mean he had no more questions for me, he meant he had no more questions, period.
There’s nothing left to contend against and nothing left that must be done, and there will never be anything that must be done ever again.
I will continue to channel progressively less and less energy into my dreamstate being, my teaching will reduce down to its most refined and least tolerant form, my interest will withdraw from the world, and I will become as minimal as a person can be.
I am here.
I am not interpreting. I am not translating. I am not handing something down that was handed down to me. I’m here,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. – Walt Whitman
Once you get past the notion that duality (by any name) is “bad” and unity (by any name) is “good,” you also get past any need to “help” or “save” anyone.
I don’t think something is wrong and that I have to make it right.
You observe events and you allow the flow of things to do the steering and you go where you go.
Enlightenment isn’t like graduating high school only to start college, or even finishing college to enter the “real” world. It’s the final graduation. No more hunt, no more chase, no more battle.
The Savage Rocks of Eternal Mind
The misconception about enlightenment stems from, or is at least compounded by, the fact that most of the world’s recognized experts on the subject of enlightenment are not enlightened.
Nobody’s getting there because nobody knows where there is.
At the very heart of this confusion lies the belief that abiding non-dual-awareness—enlightenment—and the non-abiding experience of cosmic consciousness—mystic union—are synonymous when, in fact, they’re completely unrelated.
Enlightenment and mysticism have little or nothing in common.
Anyone, myself included, who has had a taste of mystic union will naturally assume it to be the very summit of human experience, which I believe it is.
One is in the dream and the other is not. One is truth-realized and the other is not. One is within consciousness and one is independent of consciousness. The enlightened have awakened from the dream and no longer mistake it for reality. Naturally, they are no longer able to attach importance to anything.
“The wise see the same in all,” says the Gita.
“The wise are impartial,” says the Tao.
The enlightened cannot conceive of anything as being wrong, so they don’t struggle to make things right.
The enlightened view life as a dream, so how could they possibly differentiate between right and wrong or good and evil?
The enlightened may walk and talk in the dreamworld, but they don’t mistake the dream for reality.
Enlightenment is about truth. It’s not about becoming a better or happier person. It’s not about personal growth or spiritual evolution.
The price of truth is everything, but no one knows what everything means until they’re paying it.
Enlightenment is impersonal.
In all things, in every action, in every second of every day, she was practicing a conscious devotion to her lord. She was present in every moment, and every moment was a devotion to Krishna. Sonaya was doing what Sonaya did, and this was just the place where she did it.
She’s the mystical one. She possesses effortless correctness and imperturbability at all times and in all things. She is above and beyond the tasks and chores in which she is constantly absorbed.
I love this planet and this universe and this whole human thing, and one of the reasons I love it is because of the magic that holds it all together.
She reports to someone the exact wonderfulness of each wonder.
The fastest way to reduce otherwise decent people to a state of savagery is by tampering with their belief system.
We all get what we need when we need it.
When the teacher appears, the student is ready.
I don’t know what they think enlightenment really is because I only have them to go by and they don’t know.
Gertrude Stein: there’s no “there” there.
At the end of the day you’re either a caterpillar or a butterfly, and the only way anyone will ever have even the slightest sense of what it means to be a butterfly is to become one.
There are no butterfly experts among the caterpillars, despite innumerable claims to the contrary,
Enlightenment doesn’t require knowledge. It’s not about love or compassion or consciousness. It’s about truth.
Neither Holy nor Wise
When the mind is at peace, the world too is at peace. Nothing real, nothing absent. Not holding on to reality, not getting stuck in the void, You are neither holy nor wise, just an ordinary fellow who has completed his work. – Layman P’ang.
Commonality at this level is so basic that it’s probably not possible to imagine what it’s like when it’s not shared.
No two humans could have less in common than any human and me.
To be enlightened—just to take the First Step on the actual journey toward enlightenment—is to be henceforth and forever excluded from the whole human thing.
The fear revolves around money and security and relationships and vanity, all boiling down to fear of rejection and loneliness, which further boils down to the black diamond at the heart of all fears; fear of no-self.
The one and only truth of any person lies like a black hole at their very core, and everything else—everything else—is just the rubbish and debris that covers the hole.
All fear is ultimately fear of this inner black hole, and nothing on this side of that hole is true.
In Zen, no one is interested in spiritual growth. No one is interested in self-exploration or self-realization. They’re not trying to become better people or happier people. They’re not following a spiritual path, they’re following a wake-the-hell-up path.
When a Zen master uses the term makyo, he’s telling his students that the precious gems they’re stopping to pick up or the pretty flowers they’re pausing to collect only have value or beauty in the world they’ve chosen to leave behind. The Tao says ‘beware the flowery trappings’ because, in order to possess them or benefit from them, you must cease your journey, stay in the dream.
The price of truth is everything. Everything.
Western spirituality seems to equate enlightenment with self-perfection.
The quest for enlightenment; the you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence.
If anything requires knowledge and effort and seemingly superhuman powers of imagination, it’s not truth but delusion,
If anything is so wildly improbable as to defy belief, it’s not the vast ocean or the billions of fish in it, but the inability of those fish to find water.
The universe will give you whatever you want. That’s how it works, even if you don’t know it. It can’t be otherwise. You don’t have to be worthy, but you do have to know what it is that you want.
Heartless
The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue. – Antisthenes.
Emerson said “No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.”
Having the answer isn’t enough. You have to do the math.
There is a tendency to equate enlightenment with divinity.
“The technique is called Spiritual Autolysis. Autolysis means self-digestion, and spiritual means, uh. hell, I don’t really know. Let’s say it means that level of self which encompasses the mental, physical and emotional aspects; your royal I-ness. Put the two words together and you have a process through which you feed yourself, one piece at a time, into the purifying digestive fires.”
Just write down what you know is true, or what you think is true, and keep writing until you’ve come up with something that is true.
“If I draw a circle…”
I? When did you confirm the existence of an I? Draw? Have you already raced past the part where you confirmed that you are a separate physical being in a physical universe with the ability to perceive, to draw? Have you already confirmed duality as truth?
Start by using Ramana Maharshi’s query, ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What is me?’, and then just work at it. Just try to say something true and keep at it until you do.
This is about what you know for sure, about what you are sure you know is true, about what you are that is true.
The brain, unlikely as it may sound, is no place for serious thinking. Any time you have serious thinking to do, the first step is to get the whole shootin’ match out of your head and set it up someplace where you can walk around it and see it from all sides.
Writing it out allows you to act as your own teacher, your own critic.
By externalizing your thoughts, you can become your own guru; judging yourself, giving feedback, providing a more objective and elevated perspective.
Creative endeavor is erected on a foundation of knowledge and experience.
Wake up first. Wake up, and then you can double back and perhaps be of some use to others if you still have the urge.
Resolve your own situation first, and then maybe your compassion will translate into something of value to others.
It works the way it works.
You are of no use to anyone else if you’re in the same situation they are.
Use the process of Spiritual Autolysis as a means of expressing your own highest knowledge for someone else’s benefit.
Cogito ergo sum.
Truth exists.
The universe isn’t vague and ignorant; I am vague and ignorant.
The mere act of writing it rendered it obsolete in my thinking.
Empty space is my reality. The void. No-self. I abide in non-dual, non-relative awareness.
No one can say “I am enlightened” because there is no “I” to it. There is no such thing as an enlightened person. The person writing these words, the person that speaks to the students, isn’t the enlightened one.
My personality, my ego, what appears to be me, is just an afterimage; a physical apparition based on residual energy patterns.
Jed McKenna is like the outfit an invisible man wears so that he can interact with people without freaking them out.
Both In and Out of the Game
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. – Walt Whitman.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world: a star at dawn, a bauble in a stream; a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream. – Buddha
I see people fulfilling their roles and “acting” like “themselves” and I tend to forget that they really identify with their character and their character’s plight.
Make them self-conscious so they observe themselves observing dramatic performances, which might in turn encourage them to become detached observers in their own dramatic performances.
I may be doing this or that—fulfilling my role—but I’m almost always out in the seats somewhere, watching it all, as unprepared for the next thing I do as anyone else. Being a detached observer is my reality and I find it belief-defying that everyone isn’t the same; that they’re up in their characters playing out all this life stuff like it’s for real.
Truth doesn’t need to be sought because it isn’t lost.
Truth is everywhere at all times.
Possessing the ability not to see truth, now that’s the most amazing thing.
I don’t see it as my role to save or rescue anybody any more than regular people feel the need to rescue each other from sleeping and dreaming.
That’s how it is in dreams; thoughts become things practically before they’re thought.
Sonaya combines the attributes of selflessness and causelessness, allowing people to give of themselves not for the higher good of some doctrine or organization, but simply for the giving.
A poem by Ryokan comes to mind:
Too lazy to be ambitious, I let the world take care of itself. Ten days worth of rice in my bag; a bundle of twigs by the fireplace. Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment? Listening to the night rain on my roof, I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
Kill the Buddha
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. – Basho
I think of storms as boisterous sound and light shows put on by the universe for those who have the sense to appreciate the majesty and grandeur of them. Nothing to do with enlightenment, just something I like.
I’ve never really made the connection between Zen and Buddhism. For one thing, I never figured out how desire got to be the bad guy and compassion became the good guy.
Suzuki said that Buddhism wasn’t something you had deep feelings for, that just doing normal things like eating meals and going to bed was Buddhism.
I keep thinking that the point of Buddhism is waking up from delusion, but maybe it’s not. Maybe the point is just eating meals and going to bed.
Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all about keeping God happy so he keeps us happy. Hinduism is similar, but with more gods.
The apparent paradox of the desire to be desireless being itself a desire.
Living a fulfilled and contented life was very much at the heart of Buddhism.
Non-attachment isn’t a key to liberation, it’s a byproduct.
It’s the belief that if you want to be Christ-like, then you should act more like Christ.
There are many byproducts of enlightenment, but cultivating them, no matter how devoutly, would never actually bring about enlightenment.
‘Hey! He only eats rice. We must only eat rice if we wish to attain Nirvana!’ But, of course, that’s not true.
Say I’m well fed and you’re starving. You come to me and ask how you can be well fed. Well, I’ve noticed that every time I eat a good meal, I belch, so I tell you to belch because that means you’re well fed. Totally backward, right? You’re still starving, and now you’re also offgassing like a pig. And the worst part of the whole deal—pay attention to this trick—the worst part is that you’ve stopped looking for food. You are now programmed to fail; your starvation is assured.
Wake up first, and then you can have non-attachment by the truckload.
Be in the world but not of the world.
“So here I am, on stage right now, this very minute, speaking with one of the characters in the soap opera. This particular character has a storyline that revolves around breaking out of the soap opera itself. This particular character wants to know whether it has an existence outside the dramatic framework of the soap opera, or whether it is nothing more than a two-dimensional character that will cease to exist when the writers kill him off or the show gets canceled. Will this character succeed or fail in his bid for freedom? Will he continue in his quest or change course? Does it really matter? Tune in tomorrow to find out.” … “So,” I continued, “you, Andrew, are both in the soap opera and of the soap opera.”
“You make it sound like enlightenment is…” “What?” “Well, like, nothing. Unimportant. Like it’s…” “Beside the point?” I supplied. “Imagine that you’re watching a soap opera on television but you have the power to step into it. One minute you’re watching a goofy TV show, the next minute you’re in a hospital room visiting a character who is dying of brain cancer. It’s real to him, he’s in the pit of despair, but to you he’s just an actor playing a role. Nothing is really at stake. How much genuine empathy do you have for his plight?”
“I’m just a fictional character,” he said flatly. “I’m the one with brain cancer. You’ve stepped into my soap opera.”
Soap opera analogy is very succinct in making the two points that Andrew and I had been toying with; one, that Andrew himself was a fictional character, and two, that all importance is illusory.
“And who created your character?” I asked him. “You mean, who made me what I am?” “Who is the author of you?” “Well, to some degree, I am.” Andrew replied. “Okay, then who is the author of the you that you say is, to some degree, the author of you?”
“Oxymoron. There is no true self. Truth and self are mutually exclusive.”
The author of you is not you.” “So I’m… what? What does that make me?” “I don’t know. What does it matter?”
There is a benefit, however, to realizing that who you are has little or nothing to do with you.
Who you are has little or nothing to do with you.” “Me who?” “Well said.”
They think that this is like school where you have to understand one thing before you can understand the next thing. But all that is about knowing and this is about unknowing. All this so-called knowledge is exactly what stands between the seeker and the sought.
Waking up isn’t a theoretical subject one masters through study and comprehension, it’s a journey one makes; a battle one fights.
Like most spiritual seekers, Andrew never signed up for enlightenment at all, but for a heaven-on-earth fantasy called, in this case, Nirvana.
“Suffering is irrelevant,” I told him. “Compassion is irrelevant. To begin with, neither one of us has the slightest idea what the Buddha said because he didn’t write it down and get it notarized. And since he’s not here to explain, we’re on our own.”
The Buddha was just some guy who got serious and figured it out for himself, so maybe that’s his real teaching; that you can figure it out for yourself.
“As to suffering,” I continued, “forget it. It’s a non-issue. Suffering just means you’re having a bad dream. Happiness means you’re having a good dream. Enlightenment means getting out of the dream altogether.
Words like suffering and happiness and compassion are just bags of rocks. Eventually, you’ll have to set them down if you want to keep going.”
The Tao says that the sage walks in the world but leaves no footprints.
The way to become a sage isn’t to act like one. Become a sage first and then you pick up all the sagely characteristics free and easy.”
The misconception about mimicking enlightenment as a way of becoming enlightened can be seen everywhere.
If you just want to be happy and acting like a vampire makes you happy, then super; that’s definitely the thing to do. But, if you want to become a vampire, then wearing black and getting your canines capped isn’t going to do the trick.
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” … “It means something along the lines of ‘When you get to the second stoplight, take a left.’” … “It’s a travel direction,”
It’s a somewhat disconcerting aspect of the journey that you catch up to, and go beyond, some of your own mentors; move beyond people you’ve held in the highest possible regard.
The teachers we need will always be there when we need them, no reason to track down someone else’s.
Kill the Buddha is one of these signs that has been left by a previous traveler. It means further. At a very exact point in the journey when it would be very easy to sit down and think you’re done, it means Get up! You’re not there yet. Don’t be deceived.
You’re still seeing two where there’s only one. That image you’re kneeling in front of—whoever it is, whatever it is—is just another projection of your own bullshit. Kill the fuckin’ thing and keep going. That’s what it means.
One Truth
In all ten directions of the universe, there is only one truth. When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same. What can ever be lost? What can be attained? If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time. If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us. Look: This ball in my pocket: can you see how priceless it is? – Ryokan.
The Ultimate Truth
I was dreaming that I was a butterfly fluttering happily. Suddenly, I awoke— Now, I wonder who I am— A man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming it is a man. – Chuang Tzu.
When you boil water for rice, remember that the water is your own life.
“I will obtain the Ultimate Truth and Ultimate Reality,” she reads slowly, thoughtfully. “That is the ultimate aim of my life in this world—whether my body may remain with me or go to pieces. My bones and flesh may go into complete annihilation or remain with me; I shall obtain the True Form of the Universe. Through innumerable incarnations, good results; I have obtained a human body. I will not lose this golden opportunity and will certainly obtain samadhi and the Real Form of Consciousness. Calamity may come or go, mountains may break upon my head, but I will not leave my promise to obtain nirvanam.”
Zen has a very alluring patina to it.
Real Zen is about the hot and narrow pursuit of enlightenment; the shortest distance between asleep and awake.
New Zen—the Zen that drives a publishing and merchandising industry—is all about being asleep and staying asleep.
Mystics suck. Enlightened guys rule!
Refiner’s Fire
The battle for truth Is waged upon untruth. When the flames have consumed all, and the smoke has cleared, Only truth remains. Destroy everything. Burn it all. Incinerate even your heart. Throw your soul into the furnace. This is the Great Conflagration. Nothing false will survive. Nothing true will perish. This is the process. This is the war. The battlefield is you. The battle is absolute. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. It will always be here, waiting. – Jed McKenna.
The Willing Suspension of Disbelief
Let us forget the lapse of time; let us forget the conflict of opinions. Let us make our appeal to the infinite, and take up our positions there. – Chuang Tzu.
Money is just something that flows; that it comes and it goes and that if you don’t disrupt the flow there’s always plenty.
If you’re trying to explain fire to someone who’s never seen it or felt it, then you’re pretty much stuck with comparing it to things they’re already familiar with.
Have you heard the term ‘willing suspension of disbelief?’ She shook her head no. “It’s the deal you make every time you go to a movie. You agree to relax your discrimination and let the movie in. You know the movie isn’t reality, but you will sit quietly for two hours and allow yourself to experience it as if it were. You suspend your disbelief in order to form an empathetic bond with the plight of the characters and the movie, in return, agrees not to over-strain credulity and make it too difficult for you to believe. Make sense?” “Like playing make-believe?” she asked. “Exactly. And then, when the movie’s over, you go back out into the harsh light of reality and stop suspending your disbelief. Okay?”
The images on the screen are reality and that’s what life is.
One day, for whatever reason, he happens to look down and notice that his shackles aren’t really locked. His captivity has been an unchallenged illusion.
For the first time ever, stands up and looks around. In looking around, it begins to dawn on him that there’s another level of reality of which he has always been completely ignorant. That makes him wonder about the images on the screen that he had always unquestioningly accepted as reality, so he looks around and sees the flickering lights overhead and traces them back to source.” “The projectionist’s booth.”
Our guy has freed himself from delusion and begun the process of awakening to the larger reality, right?
Now he identifies the projectionist’s booth as the true source of reality since that’s where the light is coming from; the only light in the whole place.
The guy is in his first stages of breaking free and discovering the truth. He’s seeing that what he always thought of as reality was just a two-dimensional trick of light and shadow. He’s pulled back the curtain and revealed the wizard.
If I could only have one teaching tool, it would be the updated cave allegory, (or, better yet, the Wachowski brothers’ cave allegory, The Matrix).
Almost any aspect of the journey of awakening can be explained within the framework of the cinema, and on the aisle that leads to the exit.
Thinking before speaking. Always a good sign.
She’s alone and scared and looking for a new herd, which she’ll have no trouble finding and being welcomed into. Plenty to choose from, but all of them effectively subherds of the one great herd.
People don’t like to have their version of reality fucked with.
The Harmony of the Spheres
This journey then, is nothing more, yet nothing less than a period of acclimating to a new way of seeing, a time of transition and revelation as it gradually comes upon “that” which remains when there is no self. This is not a journey for those who expect love and bliss, rather, it is for the hardy who have been tried by fire and have come to rest in a tough, immovable trust in “that” which lies beyond the known, beyond the self, beyond union and even beyond love and trust itself. – Bernadette Roberts
The giver is always the true recipient.
The part describing the mystical experience that I’ve been thinking about: It is an ecstatic state, characterized by the loss of boundaries between the subject and the objective world, with ensuing feelings of unity with other people, nature, the entire Universe, and God.
They speak about cosmic unity, unio mystica, mysterium tremendum, cosmic consciousness, union with God, Atman-Brahman union, Samadhi, satori, moksha, or the harmony of the spheres.
The samadhi that Grof describes is, of course, the most beautiful and profound experience a human being can hope to have, but it is only of peripheral interest within the context of spiritual awakening.
My opinion is that the experience of unity is like the most uplifting piece of music one can ever hope to hear.
The mystical experience is something to have, not something to have had. The memory of it begins receding the moment it’s over and it quickly takes on the remote quality of a dream.
Words are a lousy means of communication, brains are no place for serious thinking, and indescribable experiences are silly things to try to describe.
Murder Me
If in hell I could hold one curl of your hair I’d think the saints of heaven in torment. – Rumi.
“Punctuality is the politeness of kings.”
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise? The answer is yes because the question says so. The question establishes that the tree and the forest exist without being seen, so it naturally follows that any sounds would exist without being heard.
What do we know for sure? That’s the real question. That’s what the cogito is. That’s what solipsism is. … It’s all about figuring out exactly what we know for certain as opposed to everything else.
We don’t know anything; can’t know anything.
“Solipsism is defined as the belief that the only thing you can know for sure is that you exist, and that any other true knowledge is impossible. You know that you are. Body, planet, space, time, people, everything else is taken on faith.”
All this doesn’t mean that what seems to be isn’t, just that it’s unverifiable.
There’s no particular likelihood whatsoever that your perception of reality has any basis in reality.
“You’re enlightened but you obviously have an ego. Isn’t that a contradiction? … Yes, I have an ego and it looks similar to the one I dropped to, as you say, achieve nirvana. But then I came back all enlightened and everything, and I needed something to wear. I look around and there’s my discarded ego lying in a pile on the floor so I slip into it and here I am.”
Ramana Maharshi addressed it this way: “The ‘I’ casts off the illusion of ‘I’ and yet remains as ‘I’. Such is the paradox of Self-realization. The realized do not see any contradiction in it.”
‘Before enlightenment a mountain is a mountain, during enlightenment a mountain is not a mountain, and after enlightenment a mountain is a mountain again.’
Before enlightenment I believed my ego was me, then enlightenment comes along and no more ego, only the underlying reality.
Before enlightenment, you’re a human being in the world, just like everyone you see. During enlightenment you realize the human being you thought you were is just a character in a play, and that the world you thought you were in is just a stage, so you go through a process of radical deconstruction of your character to see what’s left when it’s gone. The result isn’t enlightened-self or true-self, it’s no-self. When it’s all over it’s time to be a human being in the world again, and that means slipping back into costume and getting back on stage.
Happily, I never know what my character is going to do or say until he does it or says it, so the whole thing stays interesting.
It’s all contradictions.
Whitman said, ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.’
Jane Roberts said that miracles are nature unimpeded.
Ability to relax into the moment and let the universe do the driving. If there was a secret to happiness in life, I’d say that was it.
The Unlocked Cage
If you’re not amazed by how naïve you were yesterday, you’re standing still. If you’re not terrified of the next step, your eyes are closed. If you’re standing still and your eyes are closed, then you’re only dreaming that you’re awake. A caged bird in a boundless sky. – Jed McKenna.
Codename Beatrice
My birthplace is placelessness, My sign is to have and give no sign. You say you see my mouth, ears, eyes, nose; they are not mine. I am the life of life. I am that cat, this stone, no one. I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag, I see and know all times and worlds, As one, one, always one. – Rumi
Agapè – “Yes, it’s like the highest form of love. Divine love.”
Love as we know it is like a shadow of agapè; like the candlelight flickering on the wall and not the flame itself.
Love is the closest representation of agapè available.
Morality is a just a shadow of right action. Right action isn’t the highest degree of morality any more than agapè is the highest degree of love.
When you understand and are able to act from right action, morality is no longer necessary; it’s instantly obsolete and discarded. This is at the heart of the Bhagavad Gita.
Morality is the set of rules and regulations that you use to navigate through life when you’re still trying to steer your ship rather than let it follow the flow.
The Tao says ‘When the great Tao is forgotten, kindness and morality arise.’
He sees the future flowing towards him and he moves with it. He’s not stopping to consult someone’s book of rules.
Relinquish the illusion of control.
The act of faith in something other than self allows you to release the tiller; to surrender.
It’s going to be a very positive change because it’s going to be the infinite and unerring intelligence of the universe that takes over.
Abandoned the illusion of control. It doesn’t matter why you do it, just that you do.
Fear and ego—in other words, ignorance—are keeping your hand on the tiller. Release the tiller for whatever reason, and the steering takes care of itself.
Returning is the motion of the Tao. Everything is in a constant process of returning to its true state.
“What does it mean to be in the world but not of it?”
They’re basically redefining the question as “How can one pursue a spiritual life in a material world?”
Anyone who wants to repackage enlightenment for mass consumption must first create the illusion that it’s comfortably within the consumer’s reach.
When the subject is enlightenment, you’re pretty much confined to saying what it’s not because there’s no saying what it is.
No spiritual teacher leads to enlightenment because there is no leading to enlightenment.
There is no teaching of enlightenment.
Five words: Ask yourself “Who am I?”
By what mechanism does such a simple thing as self-inquiry get mangled and bloated beyond all recognition? Ego. Always ego.
Ego desires spiritual enlightenment, but ego can never achieve spiritual enlightenment.
Self cannot achieve no-self.
The quest for the grail is about the quest, not the grail.
Here’s all you need to know to become enlightened: Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what’s true until you know.
Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what’s true until you know. In other words, go jump off a cliff.
In-the-world-but-not-of-the-world cover. It means what we talked about, I continue. It means that you’re playing your role on the stage, but you don’t confuse your role with yourself or the stage with reality.
It’s like lucid dreaming. You achieve normal waking consciousness within the dream so that you’re in the dream but not of the dream.
Can you live a spiritual, compassionate life and still raise kids and have a house and a stock portfolio and a demanding career and all that, I assume the answer is yes.
“So how do vampires see people?” “As partial. Half alive. Half awake. Potentially awake, but not.”
Imagine you’re in the audience watching a play, and you slowly come to realize that the actors don’t know they’re actors.
I view people as half-asleep, or, as the Tao says, as straw dogs.
What on earth is the point of being enlightened on earth?
The difference between us is that I know it and you don’t. I possess selfless awareness and you don’t.
Searching for enlightenment is like fish in the ocean struggling to find water.
I don’t operate at the level of belief.
When someone says that they became enlightened in an instant, they’re probably talking about the transformation brought on by a transcendental experience; an experience of mystic union or some variation of it.
In terms of Plato’s cave, those who have stared into the fire that illuminates the cave will naturally believe that they’ve arrived at the source, but the fire is a mere spark of the sun that illuminates all, including the mountain that houses the cave.
Right Here, Right Now
I don’t think. I don’t make choices or decisions. I don’t weigh possibilities and select one over others. Instead, I observe patterns and move with them.
No decision in my life is made through ratiocination. I wait for unfolding. I sense currents and I flow with them.
You don’t have to be enlightened to operate this way; you just have to release the tiller.
The smart way is seldom the best way to do anything.
Stopping being smart was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.
This is a poem by Rumi I’ve been carrying around. I clear my throat and read: I said Oh no! Help me! And that Oh no! became a rope let down in my well. I’ve climbed out to stand here in the sun. One moment I was at the bottom of a dank, fearful narrowness, and the next, I am not contained by the universe. If every tip of every hair on me could speak, I still couldn’t say my gratitude. In the middle of these streets and gardens, I stand and say and say again, and it’s all I say, I wish everyone could know what I know.
Pasupatastra!
I see only patterns. I have no eye for detail.
Truth-talk in the Dreamstate
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.
Humans are comprised of emotion and intellect.
Truth makes for a very uncompanionly companion.
Emotion and consciousness are the same thing, or, more accurately, that emotions are states of consciousness.
Self-realization—truth-realization—isn’t a state of consciousness. If anything, it is consciousness without statehood.
Truth isn’t an idea or a concept.
That’s what heresy is; truth-talk in the dreamstate.
Truth isn’t about knowing things; you already know too much. It’s about unknowing. It’s not about becoming true, it’s about unbecoming false.
All belief systems are just the stories we create in order to deal with the void.
Ego abhors a vacuum, so everybody’s scrambling to create the illusion of something where there’s nothing.
Belief systems are simply the devices we use to explain away the unthinkable horror of no-self.
Beliefs are candles that man uses to ward off the surrounding darkness.
Your moments of blackest despair are really your most honest moments; your most lucid moments.
At the heart of that black despair is the knowledge that that’s what’s real; everything is futile.
“No belief is true. No. Belief. Is. True.”
“All beliefs. All concepts. All thoughts. Yes, they’re all false; all bullshit. Of course they are. Not just religions and spiritual teachings, but all philosophies, all ideas, all opinions. If you’re going for the truth, you’re not taking any of them with you. Nothing that says two, not one, survives.”
“There is no meaning. There is no meaning of life.”
Our existence is utterly, perfectly, gloriously meaningless.
The black cloud is reality so deal with it and if it kills you, so the fuck what?
Everything in duality is false; false as in not true.
You are true or you’re a lie, as in ego-bound, as in dual, as in asleep.
‘When the student is ready, the teacher appears.’
The knowledge you need will appear when you’re ready for it.
The ability to open the next door is never denied, but the ability to open the door after the next is never granted.
The Golden Rule
The great path has no gates, thousands of roads enter it. When you pass through this gateless gate you walk the universe alone. – Mumon
It’s only magic when you don’t know how it works. Once you know, you know.
To achieve enlightenment one must pass through the gateless gate. The gate refers to the barrier that stands between the unawakened mind and enlightenment. From the perspective of the person wishing to become enlightened, this gate appears enormous and impassable.
When they talk about a finger pointing at the moon, they’re saying you should look where the finger’s pointing, not at the finger itself. Don’t mistake the finger for the moon.
Much of what you’ll read about Zen is a finger pointing at the finger pointing at the moon rather than at the moon.
Enlightenment isn’t a peak experience. It’s not an altered state of consciousness.
If your beliefs aren’t your own, whose are they? Who are you?
Think for yourself. That’s the golden rule.
The universe is funny about how it puts us exactly where we need to be to pick up the next piece of the puzzle.
Breathe more deeply, drink more water, meditate more often. Take it easy.
You must feel terribly out of place almost all the time, like you don’t belong anywhere. Is that how it is? You always feel like you’re always outside looking in?
The question is, who is doing the dreaming and how do we wake up? How do we get real?
Krishna, “Ghatotkatcha has saved you. To preserve your life, I sent him to his death. Tonight I’m breathing in joy. I was born to destroy the destroyers, and I became your friend out of love for the world.”
Raw Human Things
The universe is the unity of all things. If one recognizes his identity with this unity, then the parts of his body mean no more to him than so much dirt, and death and life, end and beginning, disturb his tranquility no more than the succession of day and night. – Chuang Tzu
Layers
Concepts can at best only serve to negate one another, as one thorn is used to remove another, and then be thrown away. Words and language deal only with concepts, and cannot approach Reality. – Ramesh S. Balsekar
It’s not my job to figure out where the words go once they leave my mouth.
My job is to speak, to transmit, to say what I know. Reception is out of my hands.
Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh says that there are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes. The other is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes.
I have no sense of self, I have no sense of possession or right or entitlement. I don’t take anything for granted. Nothing is mine; it’s all on loan and it must all go back.
The process of awakening might be viewed as the transition between these two poles; the journey from fear and wrong-making to gratitude and open-eyed acceptance.
Developing and sharpening this sense—the ability to detect fear and the source and emanations of fear—amounts to nothing more than disengaging your own autoimmune system.
The way out is through, and there can be no rebirth without first a death.
Communicating is a powerful key to understanding.
The mind naturally aligns itself into a more coherent state when it seeks to transmit knowledge than when it is merely processing it for its own needs.
Life is not a race and the only destination is the journey itself.
This isn’t my teaching, it’s the only teaching and this is just my way of delivering it.
The reason for all the excess is that there’s no saying it directly because there’s no it, so everything has to be communicated indirectly—what it’s not, what it’s like—never what it is.
He does not possess his views; they possess him.
The forest of delusion is treed with concepts, and ultimately, all concepts mean the same thing; you’re still in the forest.
Even the Poorest Thing Shines
My daily affairs are quite ordinary; but I’m in total harmony with them. I don’t hold on to anything, don’t reject anything; nowhere an obstacle or conflict. Who cares about wealth and honor? Even the poorest thing shines. My miraculous power and spiritual activity: drawing water and carrying wood.- Layman P’ang
“No-mind” is considered synonymous with “awake.”
Beginning by asking themselves, “Okay, where are we? What do we know for sure? What do we know that’s true?”
“Without the element of containment, the opposing elements could not exist, much less maintain their balance. The container is what defines the whole of which black and white are the two aspects.”
Duality is always contained, always within a finite sphere outside of which it cannot exist. It’s the sphere that defines the context within which opposites exist.
“The yinyang symbol isn’t the symbol of universal harmony and balance, it’s the symbol of duality and the false universe?” “Well, it’s both, I suppose, depending on your mood.” “And what’s outside the sphere? What’s outside the bubble?”
Once you’ve arrived at the conclusion that reality as we think of it isn’t reality at all, then the question becomes, what is? What’s beyond the dualistic illusion? What’s beyond context?
The truth is out there—the void, the abyss, no-self—and our fragile little bubbles are what let us float around in the infinite, able to enjoy the experience of somethingness where only nothingness exists.
The illusion of opposites; good and bad, love and hate, joy and sorrow. These aren’t available out in infinite reality, only in the artificial micro-environment of ego.
I think the bubble is a magnificent amusement park and leaving it is a damn silly thing to do unless you absolutely must. And I would advise anyone who didn’t absolutely have to leave to just head back in and enjoy it while it lasts. The good and the bad. The white and the black.
“So who are the priests of all religions?” she asks me. “They are your shepherds,” I respond, “keeping the sheep in the fold, away from the cliffs.”
The Origin of All Poems
The clock indicates the moment— but what does eternity indicate?
Theater of the Absurd
Understand this if nothing else: spiritual freedom and oneness with the Tao are not randomly bestowed gifts, but the rewards of conscious self-transformation and self-evolution. – The Hua Hu Ching
Krishna, however, is not a god of love and light; he represents the whole thing, so in him all qualities must be found.
Peter Brook’s insightful question “Who’s to judge?” It’s not a definition of God that’s being demolished by this query, it’s one’s own place in the universe; one’s own relationship to the absolute.
Oscar Wilde wrote, “All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.”
Self-realization isn’t about more, it’s about less.
Mystics stay in the theater, but the theater isn’t the whole thing. It’s not the final, total, most ultimate thing. Enlightenment isn’t in the theater. If you want to be enlightened you have to go up the aisle and out the exit to the sunlight and totally leave the theater!
“So you’re saying the mystics are in the theater?” “Yeah,” she says, “but the rest of the theater isn’t reality, it’s just a different part of the whole fake thing. It’s more real than the movie, I guess, but it’s still not really real.”
The mystics are the most awake of all, or maybe whoever is the most mystical is the most awake… but if they knew about the sun, about the light in the projector just being a tiny spark, then they wouldn’t be in the theater, they’d be heading out, so then they don’t know either, really.
“If you’re still in the theater, you’re still not awake. You’re still asleep, but, like, you’re dreaming that you’re awake. You still don’t know what reality is… like, the sun! The theater is like a dream, and… But… hmmm. So a mystic, or anyone like me who’s not a mystic but not in chains either… It’s something, but it’s not the thing.”
No-Self is True-Self
The man in whom Tao acts without impediment Does not bother with his own interests And does not despise others who do. He does not struggle to make money And does not make a virtue of poverty. He goes his way without relying on others And does not pride himself on walking alone. While he does not follow the crowd He won’t complain of those who do. Rank and reward make no appeal to him; Disgrace and shame do not deter him. He is not always looking for right and wrong Always deciding “Yes” and “No.” The ancients said, therefore: “The man of Tao remains unknown. Perfect virtue produces nothing No-Self is True-Self And the greatest man is Nobody.” – Chuang Tzu
Like a Death Sentence
My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon. Taoist saying.
(Q: “Why am I always so dissatisfied? Why can’t I ever just be content?” A: “You weren’t born to be content. Your discontent is the engine that drives you, be grateful to it.”
If Jesus comes into the kitchen right now and starts talking, I can handle it. I can deal with him. I can hold my own with anyone on this subject. What I can’t deal with is any statement that begins with ‘Some book says that some dead guy said…’ See what I’m saying?
There’s no outside authority. You have to verify everything yourself.
I mean, if you view dualistic reality as a dream, which I do, no discrimination is really called for. Where do you draw the line in a dream? It’s all good. Nothing of importance to me hinges on how I view such things, so I just view them.
I think of belief and faith as being ways of dealing with things you can’t know for sure,
There’s just nothing to say. Caterpillars may talk to each other, but butterflies don’t.
Once one has arrived at the destination, the vehicle is discarded, forgotten. If I take a train to Chicago I get off the train and enjoy Chicago. I don’t drag the train around behind me.
I don’t have to wish for possessions because I have a pretty good idea of how the universe works and my wishes are fulfilled practically before I know I wished them.
“Power, prestige, wealth, adulation, six pack abs, sure, whatever defines us. However we describe ourselves, think of ourselves, project ourselves. Every feature, trait, characteristic, feeling, belief, opinion. All of it. Self-ness.” “It’s all just, like… worthless? Is that what you’re saying? Like… a person is just a costume?” “A costume, yes. Worthless is redundant in a game without stakes.”
We erect ego to compensate for the lack of direct self-knowledge. Lack of perception of true-self is translated by the individual as non-existence of true-self. In other words, because true-self is unseen, it’s assumed not to exist.
Can’t see it because it’s not there. There is no true self to perceive; there’s only false self and no-self.
“But what about when people explore their inner selves? Make journeys of self-discovery? Aren’t they going within to find the truth?” “They’re just exploring the ego—making a study of the false self—which is a lifequest as valid as any other.”
The deepest truth of any person is no-person. One may insist otherwise with every thought and feeling, but that doesn’t change the truth. It’s not fear of death that drives humans, it’s fear of non-being. Oblivion.
The underlying cause of all shame is the deep and unshakable suspicion that I am an impostor. I sense the absence of true-self in myself, but not in others, so I naturally assume others to be real people and myself to be false. Seeing the outer shells everyone else has so convincingly erected and not knowing them to be hollow, I necessarily feel singularly fraudulent and, of course, shameful.
Depression, for instance, might be hard to combat; because it can be perfectly rational response to a highly irrational situation—namely, life—especially when the depression revolves around futility or insignificance. After all, you can’t be much more futile or insignificant than a character in a dream.
“What’s the point of depression?” … “Same as the point of any other ride in the park. The point of the ride is the ride.”
“So unenlightened people don’t know themselves? Don’t know their own true natures?” “And so they have to create artificial selves because…” She jumps in. “Because that’s the only self they know. And
“So I’m constantly constructing a false self?” “Constantly, yes. That’s how you spend your energy; your lifeforce. It all goes into projecting the illusion of you. You’re constantly projecting an external representation of yourself that is always a work in progress, always shifting and evolving.”
A selfless person has found definition in something other than self. Rather than projecting, they’re fulfilling.
They’re still on stage, it’s still a costume, their life-force is still spent animating their character, but they are stepping into a role rather than creating one.
A selfless person has dedicated—or abdicated, to put it another way—himself or herself to a single defining ideal.
All those things that define a person—career, community, family, and so forth—are all just predefined roles that one steps into, animates.
They’re all acts of abdication, but who is abdicating? What is being abdicated? Those are the real questions.
An onion is only layers. So is ego—self—only layers. Remove all the layers and no-self is left.
“And no-self is true self?” “There is no true self, but yeah, that’s the general idea.” “Then… then… then who am I talking to?” “You’d do better to wonder what you’re referring to when you say ‘I’. Or who’s referring to ‘I’. Or who’s wondering who’s referring to ‘I’. And so on.”
Time and space come and go but what’s true is true and all the rest is but a dream.
“Money is energy once removed. It’s an exchange medium for energy.”
If you wish to think of yourself as a caring, giving person, you’ll have to care for something, give to something. If you want to be physically attractive, you have to do all the things necessary to project attractiveness in order to have it reflected back to you.
The false self cannot be perceived directly, but only by the reflection it casts in the eyes of others.
So if I want to think of myself as attractive, I need other people to see me as attractive? Sure. We spend our lives and our life-force cultivating and grooming our appearance in the eyes of others. That’s how we know that we exist. That’s how we know who we are. That’s where we find reassurance that we are real and not just hollow dream characters.
“Perception is reality. There is nothing else. Just like in a dream.” “Then who’s doing the perceiving? The dreaming? Who’s the dreamer?” “Well, from my perspective, it’s me.”
In the Ward of Fevered Minds
Bed after bed, child after child. Some calm, some thrashing. Some laughing, some wailing. Calling for mommy. Calling for God. One sits up, eyes open, asking. I go to him, sit, answer. He nods, falls back, gone again. I was once in a bed like them— fevered, deluded. Now I’m in a chair— I suppose it’s better. A roomful of loonies. I return to my crossword puzzle Until the next one sits up, asks. – Jed McKenna
Die While You’re Alive
Die while you’re alive and be absolutely dead. Then do whatever you want: it’s all good. – Bunan
Anyone headed for truth is going to get there over the ego’s dead body or not at all.
The caterpillar doesn’t become a butterfly, it enters a death process that becomes the birth process of the butterfly.
The appearance of transformation is an illusion. One thing doesn’t become another thing. One thing ends and another begins.
Success, within the context of the dream, is pointless, whereas failure, or, at least, struggle, is very much to the point.
Actual enlightenment is seldom the point of the quest for enlightenment.
Success in realizing one’s true nature is absolutely assured because, well, because it’s one’s true nature.
We’re all afloat in a boundless sea, and the way we cope is by massing together in groups and pretending in unison that the situation is other than it is. We reinforce the illusion for each other.
They have no reason to believe that the life they’re preserving is better than the alternative they’re avoiding. It’s just that one is known and one is not. Fear of the unknown is what keeps everyone busily treading water.
All fear is fear of the unknown.
If someone in such a group of water-treaders betrays the group lie by speaking the truth of their situation, that person is called a heretic and society reserves its most awful punishments for heretics.
“The truth of the situation is that eventually, there’s nothing. Infinity. Eternity. The void. The abyss. Eventually, every water-treader has to deal with the fact that it’s just him, the infinite ocean and nothing in-between.”
Everything else is a lie. Basically, yes. The body is just a rental car and this planet is just a motel. This is nobody’s home, though some treat it like a permanent residence.
“The Tao says that the sage sees people as straw dogs, and that’s what it means; all exterior, no interior.
a damn spooky place. Busy, populated, yet strangely uninhabited.”
The First Step. It’s not the realization of what is, but of what’s not. It’s the grand disillusionment.
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”
People want all the goodies—the perfect knowledge and the freedom from suffering and all that—but no one wants to pay for it.
It is not chaos or death— it is form, union, plan— it is eternal life. It is Happiness. – Walt Whitman
Why Not
Spiritual enlightenment sits next to an empty milk carton on an orange lunch tray in a gradeschool cafeteria. It’s lying in the grass in a ditch beside a rusting hubcap. It’s on the button holding closed the left cuff of a somewhat important man’s shirt. Enlightenment can be found next to the elevator on the fourth level of the airport parking garage. You can ask your dog for it, but he may not give it to you. Look for it next to the pen in the pocket of the checkout girl’s red vest, But only on Wednesdays. Enlightenment is in the trunk, behind the jack. You can hear it in the squeak of a hinge on the door at the local library. It’s in the breeze blowing unheard through an unseen tree. It’s in the space after the exhale and before the inhale. You can find enlightenment in church, in that scratch on the back of the pew in front of you. You can find it in the desert, just before the wind picks up again. Enlightenment is nothing. Delusion is the greatest wonder. Enlightenment was in your coffee cup before you poured in the coffee. Now it’s in your coffee cup. Two point two billion years before your coffee cup was created, Enlightenment was in your coffee cup. An hour and fifteen minutes after time swallows the universe, Enlightenment will be in your coffee cup. You’ve always known where it is because it’s exactly where you left it. How can you not return to a place you never left? You are dreaming that you are unenlightened. You are dreaming that you are awake. The question is: Why? The answer is: Why not? – Jed McKenna
Epilogue
Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.
Truth is a uniquely challenging pursuit because the very thing that wants it is the only thing in the way of it. It’s a battle we will kill to lose and must die to win.
The great enemy is the very self that wages the war, so how can there be victory? When self is destroyed, who wins? Why would anyone, knowing the price of victory, undertake so senseless a battle?
Arjuna wouldn’t. He weighed the cost against the gains and set down his weapon rather than launch such a war. The Bhagavad Gita is the story about why he picked his weapon back up. It is summed up in these two lines: The unreal has no being; The real never ceases to be.
Think for yourself and figure out what’s true.
Ask yourself what’s true until you know.
It’s your show. It’s your universe. There’s no one else here, just you, and nothing is being withheld from you. You are completely on your own. Everything is available for direct knowing.
Recipe for Failure In the knowledge of the Atman, which is the dark night to the ignorant, the recollected mind is fully awake and aware. The ignorant are awake in their sense-life, which is darkness to the sage. Bhagavad Gita
While not-two is not exactly true, two is exactly not true, and therefore succinctly marks the endpoint of dualistic thought; you’d think.
Truth is always simple and never provides the basis for any philosophy,
You can’t build a philosophy of This on a foundation of Not-This,
Waking up is a stop-and-go journey.
Nonduality may not be the final destination new arrivals might suppose, but getting there is an impressive and challenging feat and the views are rewarding in all directions.
One minute you’re happy, the next minute you’re very dissatisfied. Extremely dissatisfied. This office is simply not an accurate outward representation of your inner professional. You’ve outgrown.
“Nobody acts from contentment. We need problems to solve or else we vegetate.
discontent sets in to let us know that it’s time to move on.”
The building has always been on fire, you were just repressing that knowledge until now.
Career, home, or family. Due to a change in your personal circumstances they’ve all been reduced to complete irrelevance. Beliefs and concepts disappear and even death is suddenly small. You’re very focused now. You’re in the moment, very present.
“The price. Of truth. Is everything.”
Interview with Jed McKenna
What is enlightenment? No-self. Okay, what is no-self? Abiding non-dual awareness.
Enlightenment is absolute. It doesn’t come in varieties or degrees. It’s not open to interpretation.
Who is enlightened? Who is writing the book? Who is teaching? It’s very difficult to reconcile the appearance of self with the claim of no-self.
True self is no-self.
Anyone can verify for themselves the truth of non-duality; the fact that all is one.
From there, it’s a short step to no-self.
Once you have established in your own mind the truth of nonduality, then countless fictions, like the idea of a separate self, shall not long endure.
If the intent is in place, everything is in place.
Logic—mind—is the sword and intent—heart—is the will to use it.
A mind that is turned outward is turned away from the serious business of awakening.
The major religions have countless millions of intelligent, dedicated adherents, but viewed objectively, they are nothing more than childish fairy tales unworthy of serious consideration.
I’m not relevant to anyone’s search. I’m just a finger pointing at the moon. There’s nothing to be learned from the finger.
Once you remove the blinders of time and space and see the flow of things passing into and out of being, you get a much broader and less linear sense of the flow of things.
Seeking a teacher is just ego seeking a reprieve; a stay of execution.
The first rule in this business is that you are on your own.
Ego clings to a teacher like a drowning man clings to a log.
The First Noble Truth isn’t “Life is suffering,” it’s “Life is goofy.”
Awakening to your true nature is like dying; it’s a certainty, inevitable. You’re going to get there no matter what you do, so why rush? Enjoy your life, it’s free. Cosmic Consciousness and Altered States and Universal Mind are the names of rides in this vast and fascinating dualistic amusement park.
Enlightenment, though, is not another ride. Enlightenment means leaving the park altogether, but why leave the park? In the park you can be a saint or a yogi or a billionaire or a world leader or a warlord.
Context. I look at spiritual seekers and they seem, on the whole, pretty content. Maybe that’s because what they’re really seeking is contentment.
Truth is one’s personal domain, any time, any place.
I don’t point East or West; I point right back at the seeker.
Anyone who says there’s a shift coming and those who follow their teaching will ride the wave are in the sales business, more accurately, they’re in the business of selling something that’s not theirs to sell.
The Deficiency of Recorded Accounts
In the book, I made an effort to convey the daily reality, even banality, of my experience. I wanted to hold myself up as an awakened being and say “Look, this is it. This is what it’s really like.”
The goal of the genuine seeker is always to take the next step, to open the next door.
If your intent is in place, then the universe will act as your librarian and you’ll always have you what you need when you need it.
if U.G. Krishnamurti and others were saying that self cannot achieve no-self, then that’s perfectly correct. The end of the one marks the beginning of the other.
Think for yourself and figure out what’s true. You figure out what’s true through a process of elimination, by figuring out what’s not true.
The master key; follow the truth.
Impersonating Jed McKenna
NO MAN IS A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY.
Visiting your sister and having lunch shouldn’t be a confusing ordeal, but it is. Is she really my sister? What does that mean? We share some history and acquaintances, such as childhood and parents. Are my parents really my parents? Genetically they are related to my body, but the person who lived my childhood is no longer here.
The problem is that these people, my family, are all related to my shell, and I’m not.
There’s a chasm in this conversation across which there’s no point trying to communicate.
I can no longer impersonate myself and I am simply unable to formulate a reply to anything she has to say; I’ve forgotten my lines. We don’t share a common tongue and there’s no way I can make her see that.
Blues for Buddha
Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. – 1 Corinthians 13
Buddha means Awakened One, so Buddhism can be taken to mean Awake-ism. Awakism.
Buddhists, like everyone else, insist on reconciling the irreconcilable. They don’t just want to awaken to the true, they also want to make sense of the untrue.
We don’t want truth, we want a particular truth; one that doesn’t threaten ego; one that doesn’t exist.
We insist on a truth that makes sense given what we know, not knowing that we know nothing.
Nothing about Buddhism is more revealing than the Four Noble Truths which, not being true, are of dubious nobility.
Buddhism is a classic bait-and-switch operation. We’re attracted by the enlightenment in the window, but as soon as we’re in the door they start steering us over to the compassion aisle.
If they had just stopped when they had Anicca, impermanence, and Anatta, no-self, then they would have had a true and effective teaching they could be proud of,
This untruth-in-advertising is the kind of game you have to play if you want to stay successful in a business where the customer is always wrong.
To the outside observer, much of Buddhist knowledge and practice seems focused on spiritual self-improvement.
Self is ego and ego resides exclusively in the dreamstate. If you want to break free of the dreamstate, you must break free of self,
If there was a Buddha and he was enlightened, then it’s Buddhism that insults his memory, not healthy skepticism.
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