Seeking Realization

The Seeker

Realization is not an action somebody accomplishes. The idea of realizing the self implies a path from an unrealized self to a realized self. Realization of the self as a goal cannot be permanent. Something permanent has no beginning and no end. Hence the goal is already there, the self is always realized. The intention to realize the Self is itself a hindrance. Our nature is always free but we are making huge efforts to become free. Who is making these efforts and trying to realize the self? It is the I-thought that has wrongly identified itself with the mind that veils our happiness and makes realization of the self a goal. This implies two selves. A non realized self and a goal, a realized self. And here starts the whole process of searching. Going to a guru, performing rituals, reciting mantras, doing prostrations, meditating, reading books and taking all kinds of hardships upon us to walk firmly on the path towards realization hoping to reach our goal in this life. The irony in all this striving for realization is that we have never been separated from our true self. We falsely believe it to be found somewhere, to experience it, to realize it, because we search with our mind and the mind can only exist in duality. So, our task is to find the real nature of the mind. We will discover that there is no such thing as a mind. It is in understanding that we are not the body, neither the mind that we will unveil our true self and the I-thought will be transcended eventually. We already know this freedom. If we wouldn’t know it, why would we spend our lives searching for it? But we must take care not to use wrong tools. It lies in the palm of our hands. It is beauty and love in its purest essence. We are that, lets embrace it in silence and cut those chains that hold us prisoners.

Love,

Shanti

How much closer can we get?

Gulliver’s View

Going out in the world as an individual and visiting an abandoned house gives me the sensation that I am close to those objects outside of me. I can touch them, I can smell them, I can see them and I can hear the noises around me. But what does the perceiver really perceive. Are the perceptions and sensations my body and sense organs deliver, really the world that is there, outside of me? Where do these perceptions and sensations really appear? Where do they come from? What makes me perceive something as beautiful that somebody else perceives as ugly? Is it me that creates this world or am I only perceiving the world? Am I the world that I create? Who am I?

I am the screen and the film projected on it. As long as I know that I am the screen and the film, I know that I am the perceiver and the perceived, hence I don’t “know” anymore. As soon as I forget the screen and believe the manyfold appearances on the screen to be different from me, I start to name them, to like them or to dislike them. My vision gets veiled and I fall into the confusion called ignorance of the true self. With that ignorance rises all the suffering inherent to that wrong belief of a world outside of me, apart from me. At the same time the belief that I am a body or I am a mind comes into being. Both, the belief of an outside world and the belief that I am a body and/or a mind always come into being together bringing about all the thoughts and hence the suffering inherent to that illusion. This illusion brings about distance, it brings about suffering, it brings about all negative emotions like attachment, aversion, pride and jealousy. But, behind this illusion is a pristine unborn, unchanging consciousness that has never been affected neither by the illusionary outside world of thoughts, neither by the suffering the thoughts generate themselves. It is the ‘I’-thought that separates itself and creates this world of suffering because it has forgotten its true nature and believes itself to be the body and/or the mind. It has forgotten that it is the screen and the scenery playing so beautifully on it. And it is only in moments of beauty and love that the veil opens a little bit, like the clouds sometimes open up and make visible the ever present and pristine sky unaffected by them. Be-ing… is meditation, is awareness. It is not awareness of something. There is nothing to be aware of. As soon as there is something to be aware of, there is ignorance of the true self. The true self IS pure pristine awareness. It is the screen and the film. The screen has no limits. It is vast radiant space, unborn, limitless and indescribable. How can we find the screen? We can only find the screen if we do not search for it. If the mind searches it, it is damned to never find it. Because the mind is thought and always arises in duality. Atman, which is Brahman, is beyond duality and can never be found as something, as an object of perception or thought. It unveils in pure pristine awareness, which is meditation, oneness, which is love and beauty in its purest essence.

 (Please let me know if you find some errors or misinterpretations in my text. English is not my mother language and I do my best efforts to be clear, but I guess that sometimes I make mistakes or use words in wrong contexts. Thank you for reading my blog.)

Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore

It has been a long time since I have posted my last message here. But I will continue to keep the Blog up and, from time to time post some thoughts or as today something I have worked on for some time. It is one of my favorite poems from Rabindranath Tagore. I have combined the spoken text with the Piano Concerto N° 5 from Beethoven. The image is a wallpaper image I downloaded from http://www.mrwallpaper.com. I have put subtitles to give the watcher an easy and joyful experience. I hope you like it.

Currently I am studying Vedanta scriptures, the Upanishads and more precisely the Advaita Vedanta. Reading does not bring enlightenment as we are already enlightened. It is through awareness and by giving attention to the experience of perception rather than to the object that is perceived that we will discover oneness, love… But these ancient texts, the Vedas, are of tremendous beauty if your heart is open. The Vedanta, or Upanishads, are the latest text of the Vedas. Vedanta is composed by the two words Veda and Anta. Anta means “the end”. Vedanta can be translated as the End of the Vedas. The Vedas are the most ancient texts known by mankind composed more than 5000 years ago by several sages over a period of time. The four Vedas talk a lot about rituals and ethics, the worldly religious knowledge, and as soon as self inquiry and self introspection comes into play we speak about the Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta speaks about non-duality and the most famous sage was Shankara, who commented and developed the Advaita Vedanta philosophy further. There is a lot more to say about these texts but the mere knowledge about them is not helpful. They are the finger that points to the moon. Some spend their lives analysing the finger, chewing and sucking on it and intellectualizing everything and the others simply look to where the finger is pointing… the moon.

Metta,

Shanti

That

That is Love when it is all and that is nothing when it is understanding. That is not perceivable, not graspable, beyond intellect and knowledge. For it is not different from the perceiver, the perception and the perceived. It is beyond these and it is all. Knowledge can not understand it because it is not an object of understanding. The eyes cannot see it because it is not visible through the senses. And hence it is omnipresent and permeates all. It has no dimension because it is beyond dimensions. It has not been created because all creation happens through it. It is beginningless and endless. Realizing That is dying to the Self. That is revealed by Self-Knowledge although it cannot be known. If it is known, it is not That. If it is experienced, it is not That. If it is perceived, it is not That. If it is described, it is not That because it is beyond words, beyond perception, beyond experience and beyond intellectual knowledge. Being in the state of Self-Knowledge reveals that which is beyond all concepts, that which is beyond duality. Talking about Oneness is wrong, because the label is never That. Nobody can teach you That but it is understood through listening. It is understood by devotion. It is understood in Love because it is Love and it is all. That is all and That is nothing.

Where has the dream gone?

What am I? I am the screen and the image projected on the screen. There is no image separate from the screen. The image is the screen, there is no independent image on the screen. “The world is Other, the body is Me and the Mind is Me!”, thinks the I-thought that has fooled himself. All is One, all is perfect in Love. As life happens to Me the movie goes on in all its beauty and love in its continual flow in the Now. There is no ‘I’ and there is no ‘Other’. The past is gone and the future is an illusion. There is nothing witnessing the ‘I’ and the ‘Other’ because the ‘Witness’, the ‘I’ and the ‘Other’ are all one in the ultimate present Now. What and where is the world, the body and the mind without Me? Where has the dream gone when I woke up?

Love

Amma (Mata Amritanandamayi Devi)

The common expression is ‘I love you.’ But instead of ‘I love you,’ it would be better to say, ‘I am love — I am the embodiment of pure love.’ Remove the I and you, and you will find that there is only love. It is as if love is imprisoned between the I and you. Remove the I and you, for they are unreal; they are self-imposed walls that don’t exist. The gulf between I and you is the ego. When the ego is removed the distance disappears and the I and you also disappear. They merge to become one — and that is love. You lend the I and you their reality. Withdraw your support and they will disappear. Then you will realise, not that ‘I love you,’ but that ‘I am that all-embracing love.’

— Amma (Mata Amritanandamayi Devi)

(image source: hinter-den-schlagzeilen.de)

The All-Embracing Love

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov

(image source: penzu.com)

Let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth

Thich Nhat Hanh

Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds.
Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.

Let us be aware of the source of being,
common to us all and to all living things.

Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion,
let us fill our hearts with our own compassion—
towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be
the cause of suffering to each other.

With humility, with awareness of the existence of life,
and of the suffering that are going on around us,
let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.

— Thich Nhat Hanh – in Singing The Living Tradition – #505

(image source: viewonbuddhism.org)

Make the interests of others your own

Sri Anandamayi Ma

Widen your shriveled heart, make the interests of others your own and serve them as much as you can by sympathy, kindness, presents and so forth. So long as one enjoys the things of this world and has needs and wants, it is necessary to minister to the needs of one’s fellow men. Otherwise one cannot be called a human being. Whenever you have the opportunity, give to the poor, feed the hungry, nurse the sick – do service as a religious duty and you will come to know by direct perception that the person served, the one who serves and the act of service are separate only in appearance.

— Sri Anandamayi Ma

(image source: unknown – I am sorry but I don’t remember where I found this picture on the Internet)

By God, you are not that!

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

Oh you who have devoted yourself to strife,
you have not discerned yourself from others!
Whenever you come upon a form,
you stop and say, “I am this.”
By God, you are not that! . . .
How can you be that?
You are that unique one, happy, beautiful,
and intoxicated with yourself.
You are your own bird, prey, and snare,
your  own seat of honor, carpet, and roof.
“Substance” subsists in itself,
those things that derive from it are accidents.
If you are born of Adam,
sit like him and behold his progeny within yourself.
What does the vat contain that is not in the river?
What does the room encompass that is not in the city?
This world is the vat, and the heart the running stream,
this world the room, and the heart the city of wonders.

— Jalalud’din Rumi – Mathnawi IV: 803-811 – “The Sufi Path of Love” (transl. William C. Chittick)

(image source: rumibook.info)