Here you cannot forget or remember

Useless Guys

“The very idea that you need to be something different that you are, the idea that there is something you can get, all that was placed into you!” ......UG Krishnamurti .

A reflection appearing confused

Morning walk

Sometimes I can wake up in the morning and feel like I have had enough. Enough of the whole thing in the sense that I have to do something to make something of myself. It is like a confused message maybe a mild depression , yet not like the one Lord Ram had (as depicted in the Yoga Vasistha). That you have to show the world that you are doing right and good and on the other hand here is another world, another layer which is secret and in a lot of ways ,unspoken. It is the intimate side of seeing without having all this commentary and expectations from society or the mind. It is the silent and immediate

ordinariness of just being where you are which is contented. The people I meet and friends tell me this story one way or another or they convey some secret life in bits and pieces just enough to hear before I jump in my van and go home. Either they can say 'so what!’, and in so doing, reveal some ordinariness to me . Otherwise they ride the wave of wonder and see in delight .Some great experience which arrives in this silent and never ending self. This experience then disappears to absolve everything including the experience. How this is known I have no idea, but can only see the path and invisible line which runs there or here.

From itself to itself

What am I writing about? You may ask .Well it’s about what happens to us everyday, either you have a good day or you have a bad day or you have some underlying unsatisfactory feeling that lurks just there in the back ground while your having a good day :) or neither . Meanwhile I will get on with the job of being sucessful in this world. So something is missing in that ,and we have to look and see what the missing one is all about. Where is the gap gone that we have to fill? Now when we have a chance and really see.

See Ying Yang

And that means having a really good direct look at yourself, we will see or experience a place where our mouth is shut and our senses will be still and listening will be muted. Then nothing is missing and all is without words or understanding. Instead we are just as we are without any understanding. Passing all understanding as the biblical saying goes ‘the peace that passeth understanding ’.Here you cannot forget or remember anything, and your memory is not needed. So this raises another curious question can an Alzheimer patient forget themselves?

Sunrays

Yet aside from this you may ask how does this happen? How and what are you talking about?.......... “Of course I am happy; I’m not having midlife crisis like you are. I 'm not waiting for the love of my life. I’m just cruising along singing my song and people are very loving all the time, or I am or if I’m not I’m trying to be” ……………. "Consider the lilies of the fields" …………….I hear a voice drop into the quiet pool of my mind. I certainly have to let you know that I am not going to tell you something that you do not know. That you do know the answer is something that most teachers and masters will tell you blatantly. For example one wild and wise friend of mine has said “You are asking questions to which you already have the answers. If you did not have the answer, you could not have the question.” Or just go to any Satsang now a days and you will hear the same message that has been told thousands of years before Christ, any good Vedantin will tell you “You are whole and complete as you are” already.



In the fullness is the fullness.

Why just look at the mantra that begins in the Ishavasyo Upanishad:

Om pUrNamadah pUrNamidam pUrNAt pUrNamudachyate pUrNasya pUrNamAdAyapUrNamevAvashiShyateOm shAntih, shAntih, shAntihi

[Completeness is that, completeness is this,from completeness, completeness comes forth.Completeness from completeness taken away,completeness to completeness added,completeness alone remains.Peace, peace, peace!]

Om
So, you are complete, whole and action less. Yet you can have a house full of books and still try to get something, to acquire; that state of unending perfect happiness. And this can never be a state you can have permanently. Yet you are already the something that you are missing, not only that, you are NOT this some thing (you are NOT separate) and this you have to find out for yourself:) To sit quietly and see is what matters and to see without seeing with a wandering mind that wants to fix and understand. To understand this you have to feel deeper than your thoughts. By feel I do not mean emotionally but to look directly at existence and plunge to where this comes from.

Going to the Roots

Do you see the infinity of yourself? Is it not unending? You cannot take away or add anything to the nature that is you. Does this mean I know more than you or that you know more than me? What am I understanding? Or is it beyond understanding.

You cannot take away or add anything

Looking and not looking happen within this unending nature. Expectation, unsatisfactory feelings arise in this unending vision. The appearance of coming and going can hypnotize us into believing that we are not complete .As one good friend advised me when I told him about a relationship that was not going right , “ Don’t let this ruin your holiday!” Well is this complete? It certainly looks unfinished but I can't continue further than this .

All of the Above

The sea this morning .

This morning I walked outside and saw a kestrel hovering over the dune , the sea is calm and a lone trawler drifts near the shore , a light sparkling like a luminous beacon . Within my heart is an open space which reflects the world and I feel like I am kissing this open mirror which is reflecting everything . It is moments like this where I can see the easyness of this direct reflection of Self , and that the mind can be like a restless ocean waving up and down with the images of people and events that have taken place recently .

A true friend.

These impressions can stir up the thoughts that are gross in that they depict the stories of 'you' and 'other' . I wander, how it is happening , and the mirror has no say in it . The pure reflection just is and the mind in its nature is waving in images and pictures which I can grab hold of or just let pass .People say "Oh let it go ! it's just the past " and yet I cannot ignore it . I can also choose not to place too much attention on these images which invest in holding .

Honesty.

Honesty is one of the qualities that I like to have with others and I have been finding lately that certain people (certainly most people that I have befriended) have not been clear with this , I find that I can not help but read their faces and their actions . Like a mirror can reflect ,it can also reveal the lines in the image of the other.Once I sat in a peaceful park a few years ago and an old man came up to me and looked into my eyes , he smiled and I smiled back , not wanting anything . Then he suddenly grabed me and started to pull me up . I had to push him away because I could not see what he was seeing . Obviously he wanted to possess what was'nt in his warped mind , the space of quietness.If you see from an innocent space you cannot imagine what others are saying or thinking , but as someone said to me lately maybe I am abit 'naieve'. This pure screen of mirrorness is not involved at all and yet there is like a need for me to be aware of situations like this . It is similar to seeing a truck tearing down the road towards a little puppy which I can reach out and remove . If I ignore the puppy it will be pulverised , yet I can reach out and pick it up and take it back to the mother under the tree .

Seeing Mirrorlike

One of the early teachings I received was from a Tantric master who was teaching about honesty , and I have been reminded of that way when I see this situation . The mind is dishonest because it is perverted in its way and emotionalism can rule in place of honesty .Also the mind is not the enemy because we cannot kill the mind with the mind . It can be used as a tool , but it can also wander like an aimless dreamer and it can shift and move like a good manipulator . With this is the dishonesty and it manifests in different shapes and forms .Being polite but not saying really what's going on is a way that it plays it's game . It is then that the classic analogy about the mind in the masters household comes up , and that is why meditators have been meditating ;in order to replace that disorder and show the mind that the master is present also . Like a teacher entering

Sri Yantra

a classroom full of rowdy students the prescence of the master or teacher makes them sit still . I see how this mind can play like this when some days it is turbulantly wandering aimlessly . Wandering aimlessly is not the problem but letting it get to you is . Once again I wandered into the Sauna and observed a ghost appearing before my eyes and this ghost tried to convince me of its reality .Seeing clearly that there is no body to control all of this, definitely destroys the idea that you are the choppy mind and it's contents , yet the habit to grab hold of thoughts can still be there in its habit form . A ghostly habit form which makes up the feeling of your individuality , if you keep looking at the ghost the ghostliness is seen .Could you be a ghost?? I have observed this a thousand times in a thousand ways and some times a spark of 'aha!' comes and other times it's so quiet, it's a feather floating. This is seeing the same spark floating up in a thousandth way .As the Zen saying goes , " This , This aThousand times This!!!".

The crystal is you, who is looking.

"Just as a transparent crystal takes on the lines of it's Background, but is in no way changed thereby,and just as the unchanging moon on being reflected on undulating (wavelike)surfaces appears agitated, so is it with You, the all prevading."

Hastamalaka Stotra

Which leads me to the topic of the mirror like space which is one of my portals. The closest depiction of this is a picture a friend in Tiruvannamalai showed me painted by M C Escher , I was very pleased to be shown this picture .It demonstrates this portal closely , but you must see from behind Escher's eyes to become Escher .Someone told me once "But what about the space between the crystal and the eyes of the holder? " some people over analyse! I can see from a mirror like space , the body in this space , including space itself and others are included.This sensation is very similar to gazing into a mirror and finding that you are no longer the observer or the observed but rather an undefined prescence.There is a joy when seeing this infinite clear openess. Because it ( and clearly it is not an object; because it is who you are) includes ALL OF THE ABOVE !

To The Gentle

Silent footfalls surround you
In the morning light your beauty
Shines it's light upon golden green.

An unmoving sign of beauty
An unmoving silent beauty
Touches me and you.

Resting Quietly
The space
Around us is touched
By the Untouched.
Gently a song arises ,
A joy, a flower, a jewel
Comes from listening
To the gentle.

The gentle
So gently
Meets
So it dances.

copyright m.m.