LISTENING BEHIND US

We can learn a lot from our past lives.  "But wait," you say, "we can't get to my past lives."  Quite the contrary, our past lives are with us always, as is everyone we have ever known and everyone that those people have ever known.  This is Ji Ji Muge, the Zen term for the mutual interpenetration of all things and events, including people, and it spans all of time.  It is only our analytical minds that cannot get to our past lives.

SILENCE: A SHORT STORY

When he was growing up, he remembered that his house was never silent.  Always during the day the radio was on and during the evening the television. 

This was his mother's doing.  She was afraid to be alone with her thoughts, with herself, it seemed.  There must always be some distraction. 

One day, while his parents were out, he turned everything off.

What a revelation.  Silence.  He discovered silence. 

When his parents returned, the first thing his mother said was, "How can you stand it in here.  It's soooo quiet," his mind was so quiet.

A WALK IN THE SURF

Walking along the shore last evening I came upon a dying young pelican at the edge of the surf.  His eyes, in fear, followed me as I slowly circled him. 

Out of compassion, I wanted to tug him well up on shore so he wouldn't drown in the rapidly rising tide. 

But then it occurred to me that if I pulled him from danger, a coyote would pounce down from the bluff above, drag him into the bush, devour him, only to die himself of whatever the bird was afflicted with. 

I didn't know what to do.  All the while the eyes of the bird watched me.  All the while I stared into its eyes--just as I will stare into the eyes of my own death one day, and not know what to do.

COULD IT BE?

Our priority is our inside world where God is; we have this yearning to always be with God.  As a result we may isolate ourselves, becoming monks for all intents and  purposes.  As monks, though, we face the same dilemma as all other monks.  For our mental health, we must engage the outside world to some degree, even if it is only taking a walk among other people.

Taking a stroll among others, however, engages our egoic self.  Our egoic self is the outside world.  Suddenly we feel depressed.  Depression comes of frustration, which in this instance stems from our not being with God.  One solution to this is to see God in other people, hence in Vedanta for instance, the notion that the one Atman is in everyone.  Everyone is actually us.

Yet it doesn't feel this way to many of us.  Our experience of God is entirely interior, personal, intimate, the absence of which even briefly has us running back to the sanctity of our rooms.  Could it be that this is what other people are for?  We need others for our mental health, even as they drive us back to our spiritual health.

ZEN STORY FROM A TAOIST

Raymond Smullyan, Taoist philosopher, author, educator, mathematician, concert pianist, logician, and magician, offers this delightful Zen story:

This is the story of a man who was standing on top of a hill. Some people below were wondering why he was standing there. One of them suggested that he was looking for his dog. Another suggested that he was looking for a friend. Another suggested that maybe he was standing there just to enjoy the fresh air.

Well, they went up to him and one of them asked him whether he was looking for his dog. He replied that he wasn't. Another asked him whether he was looking for a friend. He replied, “No.” Another said, “Then I guess you are standing there just to enjoy the fresh air.” He replied, “No.” Finally, he was asked, “Then why are you standing there?” He replied, “I'm just standing here.”

SELF-ABNEGATION

Self-abnegation means relinquishing, surrendering oneself as a means of transcending the ego.  Also termed dying to oneself, it is necessary for spiritual advancement.  We cannot see God if all we see is ourselves.

FIRST STIRRINGS

When a person becomes interested in spiritual matters it is the first stirrings of the Atman in him; the Atman is waking up.  As a person spends more time in spiritual matters, cultivates them, begins a spiritual practice, the Atman gains its feet.

WHAT TO DO WITH IT: A SHORT STORY

Thirty years ago a Hare Krisha member stepped up to him outside the Los Angeles International Airport and with a friendly smile handed him a hard copy of a book entitled Bhagavad-Gita: As It Is, commentary by Swami Bhaktivedanta, whoever he was.  But then also whatever this Bhagavad-Gita was as well.  He'd never heard of it.  Today, as it happened, he knew much more about it.

Yet, looking back all those years ago he still wonder why, out of all those people at the airport, he was singled out to receive what after all was a beautifully published book on spirituality.  But then it was a rhetorical question, was it not?  He knew perfectly well why he was picked from the crowd.  He had been picked from many crowds.  His problem was what to do with it. 

When he was a kid he wanted to be a minister one day.  He then wanted to be a priest, then a monk, then a mystic.  Yes, definitely a mystic.  Where he ended up, though, and where he was now, was in a state just beyond mystic, in a condition that had no name, could not be named, much less described.  Still the problem, what to do with it.

But then it didn't ask that he do anything with it.  It was not something that needed to be done anything with.  It was not the beginning of something but the completion of it.

REFLECTIONS

Jars of water reflect equally and completely the sun, the many reflecting the one.  In the same way, all living things reflect equally and completely the Brahman.  The reflection is called the Atman. 

THE POSSIBILITY

We have to at least acknowledge the possibility that more is going on here than meets the eye, literally meets the eye.  Our senses are limited, i.e. there is only so much that we can detect.  In other dimensions present with us, there may be activities of all kinds influencing us, for better or for ill, just as things that we do here may affect what is happening over there, also for ill or for better.  It would explain a lot.

LOOKING

Both philosopher Alan Watts and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle have remarked that when something is looked at, it changes. 

Watts used the example of a thing being viewed through a microscope, as a result of which the thing is no longer the same.  Tolle says that a flower notices being noticed and changes.

Vedanta offers this explanation:  It is through all the eyes in the world that the Brahman sees itself.  The Brahman is both the observer and the observed.  When what is observed changes, it means that the Brahman has changed.

GOD'S CENTER

"God, whose center is everywhere but whose circumference is nowhere."--St. Augustine.

PURPOSE OF TIME

We lament time, where this moment is not the same as the previous moment.  Everything is always changing.  The fact is, we need time for spiritual growth, individually and collectively.  Were there no time, there would be spiritual suspended animation.

WHATEVER THIS IS

Writer, lecturer, and Vedantist Gerald Heard used the expression "this thing" when referring to his experience of the mystical.  He wanted above all to avoid such loaded terms as Brahman and Atman because his sense of them and what he meant by them quite possibly was not what other people meant by them.  They would not, in other words, be talking about the same thing were he to bring up the matter among them. 

What's more the words Brahman and Atman, as with all words in spirituality, are limiting.  The words mean so much more than their scant few letters would suggest.  It is for this reason that I myself use the expression "whatever this is" in meditation and in my personal writings in this area.  I know what I mean when I say "whatever this is," I know what feeling I'm referring to.  I rarely put "whatever this is" in this blog because no one would know what I am talking about, not exactly, whereas they do know what I mean by Brahman and Atman.

Such words as Brahman and Atman, after all, are mere pointers.  They point to the truth but are not the truth themselves.

SUNDAY CHILD

In August Strindberg's play Ghost Sonata the character identified only as the Student is described as a Sunday Child, which, according to Swedish folklore, means that he had supernatural powers.  In religion, a Sunday Child is one who is spiritually gifted, "with spirit," one of God's own.  In Vedanta, everyone is a Sunday Child.

INTO A CORNER

When we use our analytical minds to understand spirituality we often think ourselves into a corner, with the result that we no longer trust spirituality and abandon it.

SPACIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS

One of spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle's favorite sayings is "Do I have the space for this?" i.e. does he have room in his consciousness for the event, person, or idea that he is currently facing?  

Consciousness being spacious is an unfamiliar idea until one begins to experience it this way.  Suddenly consciousness is like a vast horizon stretching as far as the eye, the mind, can see, where there are no boundaries.

This is called the superconscious in Vedanta and is described both negatively and positively.  Negatively, it is neither subjective not objective experience, neither consciousness nor unconsciousness, neither knowledge of the senses, nor relative knowledge, nor inferential knowledge.  Positively, it is pure unitary consciousness, ineffable peace, the Atman.

The broader, so-called background consciousness onto which, like a movie screen, one's life plays out, feels to some of us more like the Brahman, whereas the consciousness of the Atman feels close in, focused, intense, personal.  The Brahman is spacious, the Atman concentrated, even as they are both the same thing.

IMPOSSIBLE TO DIE

The moon suddenly stands up in the darkness, and I see that it is impossible to die.--poet James Wright.  The line could just as easily read, "The Atman suddenly stands up in the darkness, and I see that it is impossible to die."  The Atman is eternal.

SHADOWS

The Atman is your shadow.  Once the Atman has awakened, you are his shadow.

LONELY FOR GOD

The yearning, the loneliness for God is always there.  It is the yearning of the awakening Atman. 

ALICE'S RESTAURANT

In his song "Alice's Restaurant," Arlo Guthrie sings, "You can have anything you want at Alice's Restaurant."  We always took Alice's Restaurant to mean the world, which likely Arlo meant too, ultimately. 

He also meant that indeed we can get anything here in the world, but we can also get a lot of what we don't want.

We see that we got plenty of both, when we look back on our lives, but more of what we wanted, most of us, than what we didn't want. 

What we found, however, many of us, was that once we had what we wanted, it wasn't worth having.  Wanting it was more satisfying than getting it. 

And this was for one simple reason.  None of what we wanted and got and didn't want but got anyway, was us.  Like the song goes, "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant--exceptin' Alice."

MAHAYANISTS AND HUMAN NATURE

In Buddhism, Hinayana is translated as the "Lesser Vehicle," while Mahayana means the "Greater Vehicle."  Hinayanists did not like being thought of as lesser, so they changed their name to Theravada, meaning Buddhism "Of the Elders."

Hinayana is original Buddhism, the Buddhism of the Buddha, so-called, the Buddhism of monks.  The ideal of Hinayana is the arahant, or saint, one who has attained buddhahood for himself. 

Mahayana is Buddhism of the masses.  The ideal of Mahyana is the bodhisattva, a person who has postponed his entry into full buddhahood so that he may teach others the Buddha's message. 

According to Mahayanists, everyone suffers, not just those who become monks and join a monastery.  Everyone is qualified to be taught the Buddha's Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.

Are Mahayanists just nicer people for wanting to include everyone in their Buddhism, or is there something else at work here, something having to do with human nature? 

When one feels passionately about something, his natural urge is to share it with other people, the more the better.  Similarly, when one is especially proficient at something, he is more inclined to show others how to do it than to keep it to himself.  Mahayana Buddhists are both passionate about and proficient at their Buddhism.

The step from the Lesser Vehicle to the Greater Vehicle may therefore have less to do with who are the more compassionate Buddhists, or what is morally the right thing to do, and more to do with human nature.

DISPATCHES

We leave ourselves important messages all the time but rarely pay attention to them.

These messages are such things as "Did you see that?" "Did you hear that?" "Did you get that?" moments of realization, "ah-ha" moments, which while fleeting are often profound.

It's not that we are unaware of these dispatches, but just that we are impatient.  We want to get on to the next thing and then the next thing after that. 

Then again, maybe we just don't want to know.  We are happier not knowing.  Why rock the boat with profundity?

SOMEBODY ELSE

A friend of mine showed me a picture of herself as a little girl and said, "Isn't she pretty?" as though it were somebody else.  It then occurred to me that it was somebody else.  We are always somebody else.

PREDESTINATION IN VEDANTA

In Vedanta, predestination is called Vidhi or Vidhi niyama.

While a person's future is dependent on karma, Vidhi has predestined what karma the person will do. Thus one's decision to do good or to do ill is set in advance.  It is said that even God cannot alter the flow of Vidhi.

This invites the view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do.  Free will only appears to be free will.

It is Vidhi, furthermore, that determines in whom and when an Atman will awaken.  Once this is determined, nothing a person does or does not do will alter the inevitability of the awakening.

So if you ever get the feeling that your life is living itself, that no matter what you do, it is going to go its own way, this is why.

PRESENT MOMENT

This moment is the beginning, middle, and end of time.  It's all there ever is.

A WALK AMONG VOICES

Walking along a crowded street, it occurred to me that everyone's brain is talking to them, just as mine is talking to me.  It's a veritable beehive of mental voices. 

They are private voices, of course, and silent for the most part, although occasionally I see someone's lips moving, or I notice a raised or furrowed brow, registering an emotion that the voice in the head has elicited.

What becomes of these voices?  They are dust in the wind, naturally, which, considering all the mental voices that there are in the world, is an awful lot of dust.

THE INTENTION

Our thoughts are scattered all over the mental field.  Our task is to collect them again and to direct them toward a single goal--knowledge of the Atman.

This knowledge, however, is not intellectual knowledge but spiritual knowledge, which comes only from one-pointed concentration and meditation on the Atman. 

Here, our minds are not laden with ideas about the Atman and our assessment of those ideas, but rather, by comparison, are infused with stillness.  All that is present is attention, focus, awareness, what the Atman itself is.

We must remind ourselves that the Atman, like its source the Brahman, is not up in the sky somewhere, which it takes a great effort to get to.  We need not dance and shout and work ourselves into a frenzy to get to it.  It is a short step to get to.

But the step must be deliberate and certain, with no doubt as to its intention.

SPIRITUAL TRACE

We leave a trail, spiritually, as we go through life, a kind of spiritual echo.  It is not unlike the figure in Duchamp's painting, Nude Descending a Staircase, who leaves a trace of him/herself the whole way down.  We all leave this trace the entire way, a spiritual trace.

THE TRACKS WE ARE FOLLOWING

The tracks we are following are our own.  We have lived before.  The only question is, where do these tracks lead us?  Did we learn anything the last time we were here?  If yes, the tracks will end.  If no, the tracks will also end, only back at the beginning.

MISSING YOURSELF

A man wrote on Facebook, "I miss myself," to which he got a response from a friend, "I miss me, too." 

As it happens, these were members of a 1960s rock band, and who they were missing was who and what they were back then.  Those were the good ole days, and those were their good ole selves.

If you say to a Vedantist "I miss myself," he knows at once what you are referring to.  A better way you might put it, he will say, is, "I miss my true self."  Our true self is the Atman.

We miss the Atman because of everything else going on around us, family, career, friends, thinking, talking.  We are blinded by all this.

It's called "ignorance" in Vedanta, that is ignore-ance.  We ignore the Atman because we believe that all the other stuff we've got going is more important. 

But, alas, all those other things are relative, transient, impermanent, whereas the Atman is ultimate, eternal, abiding.  The former is like trying to hold water in your hand.  It just runs out.  The later is unchanging and the source of our liberation.  It's a matter of priorities.

FOURTH DOOR: A SHORT STORY

He was a Pratyekabuddha for many years.  A Pratyekabuddha is one who is in it for himself.  This is original Buddhism, the Buddhism of the Buddha, so-called.  Hinayana Buddhism.  "Be a lamp unto yourself."  "Seek out your own salvation with diligence." 

A Pratyekabuddha does not gain his wisdom by the teachings of others but rather by his meditating on, for example, dependent origination, "if this is, that comes to be; from the arising of this, that arises."  Nor does he teach others once he has realizes his salvation. 

The best description of a Pratyekabuddha is "a lone rhino on the plain."  Being a Pratyekabuddha perfectly suited his solitary nature.  But there was a problem.  This original Buddhism, the Buddhism of the Buddha, was atheistic.

Mahayana Buddhism might be better he decided, whereupon he became interested in Zen.  There were levels of consciousness there that were all but divine.  He was encouraged. 

But he had long had a grudge against Mahayana Buddhism; he considered it a sell out.  With all its different schools, it was, well, popularized institutional religion again, too much of a good thing.  He still preferred the secret society of Hinayana Buddhism with its monks and monasteries.

No, Mahayana Buddhism was the wrong direction for him.  This left Vedanta.  In the past, he had balked at Vedanta.  With it's odd gods and grinning gurus, he thought it too weird.  Something in him, though, saw through all that peculiarity.  To this day, Vedanta resonates with him.

He had been through three doors now, Hinayana Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Vedanta.  Alas, though, there came a fourth door.  It had no name on it, suggesting that there was nothing within?  But when he turned the doorknob, it was turning at the same time as him, as though he were expected.  Sometimes you don't know what's missing in your life until it's staring you in the face, until God is staring you in the face.  He was home.

BEHIND THE SCENES

I was born behind the scenes and have spent my whole life trying to get back there.  I finally concluded that it wasn't until I died to the world that I could get back, but I have since discovered that I need only die to myself.

COINCIDENCES

He had had an abundance of coincidences in his life that he regarded as just that, coincidences.  Yet, in hindsight he saw that they were not coincidences at all, but pointers, blaze marks on the trees which in their totality had brought him to where he was now, where he was meant to be, despite himself. 

WALLS

There is a wall here that separates my inner self, "me," from my outer self, the world.  My eyes are this wall. 

But there is yet another wall, this one between the manifested world and the unmanifested world, the world of form and the formless world, this universe and other universes. 

When I raise my hands and move them from side to side, like the mime Marcel Marceau in his imaginary room, I can feel this wall.

I want in.

A MEDITATION

Whatever this is. 

It is the awakened state in any case.  God's presence in me. 

It is also the portal through which the Atman awakens into Brahman.  The Atman is wide awake now.  This is the Atman.  May he grow ever more present in me, continue to unfold, to blossom, to deepen, to widen. 

After all, this is his life not mine.  His many lifetimes, his many journeys, including the current 67 years-and-counting journey, have been that he may realize his destiny, which is this awakening. 

I am proud to have been his vehicle, and, as it happens, his final vehicle. 

I will die one day but he will not.  Nor will he ever be born again into this world of form.  His task is complete, the mission accomplished, the deed done. 

I surrender to the Atman.  I yield to him.  He is the captain of this ship now, although he has always been the captain, only now he is up on deck and at the helm.  I trust his command, his guidance, his judgement. 

He is me.