buddhism

I’ve awakened to my voice: I’m grateful to be alive so that I can cultivate compassion for all beings without exception.  And now it’s 7AM; it’s been around an hour since I’ve texted my friend with the message, “Please sit with me.”  We sit together every morning and then I receive a text saying, for example, Page 147 please.  That was this morning’s text, which I will leave on her voice message.  What she means is page 147 of ‘I AM That,’ by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, whose Niasarga (natural) Yoga is commensurate with the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta.  Its injunction is simple: penetrate the mind and recognize not this or that, here or there, then or now, but just “timeless being,” what Buddhism calls Pure Awareness, the highest cognizance from which to truly understand the ultimate nature of reality, which is empty of inherent existence.

I chose this particular page because you can see the play between nondual and monistic perspectives, both within the advaitic mind.  however, in its deepest transmission, monist or nondual are irrelevant.  In fact, change the words around and I could be reading Nagarjuna. 

From the chapter `Mind is Restlessness Itself,’ the advaitic essence comes through as the questioner asks: In the ultimate state there can be no happiness?

Maharaj responds: Nor sorrow. Only freedom.  Happiness depends on something or other and can be lost; freedom from everything depends on nothing and cannot be lost.  Freedom from sorrow has no cause and, therefore, cannot be destroyed.  Realize that freedom.

Q: Am I not born to suffer as a result of my path?  Is freedom possible at all?  Was I born of my own will?  Am I not just a creature?

M: What is birth and death but the beginning and ending of a stream of events in consciousness?  Because of the idea of separation and limitation they are painful.  Momentary relief from pain we call pleasure – and we build castles in the air hoping for endless pleasure which we call happiness.  It is all misunderstanding and misuse.  Wake up, go beyond, live really.

Q: My knowledge is limited, my power negligible.

M: Being the source of both, the self is beyond both knowledge and power.  The observable is in the mind.  The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking.

Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved.  They exist because you believe yourself to be born to die.  Undeceive yourself and be free.  You are not a person.

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This last sentence is most important: “You are not a person.”  What Nisargadatta means is that you are only a person in name; person is the mental construct you designate for the psychophysical aggregates, one of the 12 limbs that represent an interconnected complex of the human being.  Importantly, though elaborated separately, the 12 limbs of the human complex cannot be properly understood if viewed as separate entities, for they represent features of a complete field.  And so, the person is the fourth limb, which is called, name and form.  Name identifies consciousness and its various aspects while form identifies matter and its various aspects.  The aggregates of perception, feelings, karmic formations and consciousness are included under “name.”

When viewed in this way, the ultimate nature of reality is revealed: that everything in the universe is interconnected through the web (“fusion”) of cause and effect so that the whole and the parts are mutually interdependent. The character and condition of entities at any given time are intimately connected with the character and condition of all other entities that ONLY superficially may appear to be unconnected or unrelated.

Noah will be in radio silence for a little while, so I'll muck up the front page in his absence. First: a new space for discussing Buddhism! And since Om asked me about "The Quantum and the Lotus" -- and since camila asked for something concrete like a text we all share, here is a brief excerpt from the book answering both queries! (and I DEFINITELY recommend it to everyone.)

Matthieu Ricard: When Buddhism states that emptiness is the ultimate nature of things, it means that the things we see around us, the phenomena of our world, lack any autonomous or permanent existence. But emptiness is not at all a void, or the absence of phenomena, as early Western commentators on Buddhism thought. Buddhism does not at all espouse any form of nihilism, or the belief in nothingness. Emptiness does not correspond to nonexistence. If you can't speak of real existence, you can't speak of nonexistence either. The Fundamental Treatise of the Perfection of Wisdom says, "Those who become fixed on emptiness are said to be incurable." Why incurable? Because while a belief in the real existence of phenomena is dissipated by meditation on emptiness, if you get attached to emptiness itself, making it an object of your belief, you fall into nihilism. The same text therefore goes on, "Consequently the wise abide neither in being nor nonbeing." (14)

James posted an exquisite reply to the photo of the Couple in the 2nd avenue Diner. I think it needs to be linked to on the front page. Click Below:

I was sitting in a restaurant above a square in Reykyavík, thinking about the tasty Icelandic lamb I was about to order, when a beautiful blue-eyed woman and her companion walked in and sat directly in front of me. When sitting at my table I thought for a moment, "This chair, or this one?" And I finally decided to take the chair that faced the window. When they walked in they headed straight to that window. She sat down, then stood up, switched seats; he sat down, and then she stood up again, and switched to the seat on my left. I could see her better there. He turned to me and we smiled with that, "silly girl!" expression on our faces. We weren't thinking in the same language, but our eyes understood each other well enough. She, on the other hand, wouldn't look directly at me...

Last night, the autumn arrived with the rain. Go out,
the leaves have turned up their palms. Oh, to breathe
deeply again, to feel expansive in the immense

space summer left behind! We can see ourselves
once more, buttoned and bustling. Crowded together,
we smile to each other, as if we have just noticed

for the first time. We are too high on cold oxygen.
Too full of freedom. For now change feels like no end,
even though the wind sends darkened leaves scurrying

through the streets, birds scattering from the trees.
We feel that winter's lonely hours are far from now.
We trust that the death of things is not, their dying only joy.