A MATTER OF DESTINATION

A Buddhist has no destination, is not going anywhere.  He has nowhere to reach, therefore is not frustrated by not being able to get there.  He avoids dukka, suffering. 

A Vedantist, by contrast, has a destination, is going someplace.  He has somewhere he must reach, therefore is forever frustrated, always in a state of pain.  His destination is God. 

The Vedantist has a carrot-and-stick problem.  It is not a question of whether or not God exists, as He is visible quite clearly out there on the end of the stick; his mind’s eye sees Him plainly.  His dilemma is that the carrot, God, can never be gotten to.

An Advaita Vedantist, a nondualist, however, understands that God, the stick i.e. his distance from God, and himself are all the same thing, are all God.  In this way, he has no destination to attain, for he is already there.  He is at peace.

UNSATISFACTORINESS

One of the hallmarks of this life, the Buddha pointed out, is its unsatisfactoriness.

For example, a boy had a favorite style of shoe that he always bought.  “Desert boots” they were called.  One day he bought a pair that did not fit him well.  How could that be, he wondered.  He always bought that same shoe, and from the same store, and they always fit him fine.

He went on to buy more of them, but over and over again they no longer fit him.  He was frustrated beyond description--dukka, suffering in Buddhism
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But he did not return any of the shoes, figuring that it was just a fluke, that he would wake up one morning and one or all of the pairs would actually fit him.

He had no such luck, however.  The shoes just got tighter and tighter.  It must be the manufacturer’s fault, he concluded.  They were cutting corners, using a lesser grade of leather, trying to increase their profit margin.

Alas, It turned out that at age fifteen his feet simply were growing bigger.

At the heart of unsatisfactoriness is what Buddhism calls anicca, impermanence.  Everything in this life is forever changing, even feet.

BRAHMAN AND SYNCHRONICITY

When I was in college in the 1960s, I practiced raja, mental yoga.  There were concentration exercises that had the added benefit of keeping me focused in school, made me less prone to distraction.

Before long, however, I began experiencing what I later learned was called synchronicity, an example of which is the spotting of a familiar face in a crowd when the odds of it are astronomical.  A psychic phenomenon was my impression of it.

It seemed innocent enough, but when it began happening all the time, and beyond my control, I became worried.  I feared it was the occult.

My raja yoga exercises went on the back burner at that point, and I kept myself constantly in my analytical mind as best I could, blocking out my intuitive, spiritual mind.

Here in 2017 the synchronicity has returned, but it is the result this time of my giving myself fully to Brahman.  There is no more me now, only Brahman.

I attempted this in my raja yoga practice all those years ago, but was not successful at it.  When you are 21 years old you are too much your egoic self to relinquish it to anything else, although I did try.  When you are 71 years old, it is much easier to accomplish.

The synchronicity I have now I welcome.  I still sense it is a psychic phenomenon. It is not uncommon for spiritual people to have all kinds of paranormal experiences, or so I have subsequently learned.

MONACHOPSIS

Monachopsis is an obscure word meaning to feel out of place in the world.  Alas, everyone in his heart of hearts feels out of place here, because we ARE out of place here.  Everything is out of place here.

RECEPTIVENESS

In order to experience God’s grace I must be receptive to it.  Grace is not a passive thing where I am to just sit quietly and wait for it to happen to me.  I must work for it, pray for it, as doing so makes me receptive to it. 

“The breeze of God’s grace is always blowing; set your sails to catch this breeze,” Vedanta teaches. 

I may have the grace of my spiritual teacher, may have the grace of Christ and the Atman, for example, but if I do not have the grace of my own mind the others have nothing for me.  I must be open to grace.

Christ said: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you;” and the Upanishads say: “Whom the Atman chooses, by him is he attained.”  Still, I must be welcoming to grace.

NAMES

I dream in images.  There are no names in my dreams.  However, the instant I wake up, it is to a deluge of names.

Could it be that they are the names that would have appeared in the dream had my mind permitted them?  Instead, they were left to accumulate in the dream, to be liberated when I awake.

The trouble is, so torrential is this purging of the names from the dream that I find I have forgotten my own name.  I must dig down to the bottom of the pile to find it.  It is then that I see that all the names that have been raining down are my own name.

GOD NEEDS A MIRROR

God is both the subject and the object.  He is the “I” and the “you.”  He is the knower and the known.  Yet, He cannot know Himself.  Eyes cannot see themselves.  To know Himself He needs a mirror, and so He created the universe. 

MEANING OF LIFE

What is the meaning of life is a meaningless question.  It is meaningless because it has no answer.  Life just is.

Supposing, though, that there is a profoundly mystical meaning we stumble upon all of a sudden, would our limited minds be able to penetrate it?  And if we were able to grasp it, what would we do with it?

If, moreover, a grand meaning to life makes itself known to us, do we really want to know it?  Discovering it, we surely would want to communicate it to others, but would we have the words to do so?

Then again were we actually able to communicate it to others, who knows what effect it would have on them.

If the meaning was negative, it could drive them to suicide.  If the meaning was positive, it could give them false hope.

No, leaving the meaning of life alone is best.

CENTRAL TASK

A disciple asked the Buddha what happens when an enlightened person dies, does he continue to exist, or does he not continue to exist.

The Buddha’s reply was don’t worry about it.  The central task of Buddhism, he reminded the disciple, is alleviating dukka, suffering, which trying to answer unanswerable questions will result in. 

ON NOT BEING A BEING

As everything in existence is constantly changing there are no beings, only becomings.  And since a completion of becoming is never attained, being is never reached.

REVELATION AT A STREAM

Sitting in a patch of grass alongside a mountain stream, I became acutely aware all of a sudden of how everything there was changing.  The stream was flowing steadily, the sun was descending into the trees, the air was hot one moment and then cool.

The one thought that I kept coming back to, however, was that nothing there, the stream, the sun, the air, but then also the birds and insects, nothing was aware of all the changing.  Nothing else realized that every moment it was becoming something else.

PANPSYCHISM VS. VEDANTA

Panpsychism is one of the oldest philosophical theories.  A panpsychist sees himself as a mind in a world of mind.

Vedanta has a view much like this, but it uses the word consciousness rather than mind.  A Vedantist, therefore, regards himself as a consciousness in a world of consciousness.

In Vedanta, individual consciousness is the Atman, while the world of consciousness is Brahman.  But here, too, the word world is not right.  Universe is better, i.e. all that exists and all that potentially exists.

But now what happens to consciousness when a person dies?  The average person who passes away no longer exists and therefore no longer has consciousness.  However, when he reincarnates, his consciousness resumes, although he is a different person now.

An enlightened, illumined person who dies, on the other hand, is absorbed into the consciousness of Brahman where, like Brahman, he is conscious forever.

RESTLESSNESS

Our leg jiggles.  We can’t sit still.  We get up, pace back and forth.  We check our cellphones for the fortieth time in the hour. 

Why so agitated?  It is because we are not doing what we are here to do.  And what is that? We know perfectly well what that is.  Instead, we are doing what is expected of us, acquiring wealth, power, and prestige, or trying to. 

As a result, our leg jiggles, we can’t sit still, we pace constantly, and we check our cellphones from one end of our lives to the other.

WHAT IT IS NOT

It is not what it is but what it is not that makes life interesting.

WAITING FOR MYSELF

I keep waiting for myself.

CONSTANT CALLING

There is this constant calling, but from whom?

There is no whom, only the calling.

THE TRACKS I AM FOLLOWING

The tracks I am following are my own.  I have lived before.

WHY THERE IS DEATH

We are born missing something that only when we die will we obtain.

TIME

Time is a long time.

DESPITE US

Our lives live themselves.

PREPARATION

Nothing prepares us for ourselves.

SPIRITUAL TERRITORIALITY

All the major religions of the world claim God as their own, but they all can’t have Him.  God would be spread too thinly.  Practically speaking, He would have to allocate portions of Himself to the various religions, based on the size of the religion, i.e. the number of adherents, the number of churches, mosques, temples, their wealth, and how many places around the world the religion is practiced.

The religions, meanwhile, would be elbowing each other, prodding, shoving, if not outright fighting for more God-territory.  Some would attempt to bribe God, or blackmail Him.

God could, of course, rotate the portions of Himself so that, over time, everyone would possess the same amount of Him.  He would create a schedule, taking into consideration the religious holidays of each which were certain to overlap.

Meanwhile, this religion would need to celebrate in the morning, that one in the afternoon, leaving the evening for those that remained, so everyone would have time for prayers.

God could settle it all, naturally, by simply declaring that He did not exist.

FINDING GOD’S EYES

Nowhere to look.

UTTER SILENCE

On a narrow dirt road alongside a vast corn field, I experienced total silence, utter silence, for the first time.  I was on that road by myself, an old guy ambling along, minus a friend who had accompanied me who was now nowhere to be seen.  We had agreed to explore this place separately, as not to distract each other, and so evidently we were doing.

A short green fly darted over from the tall green stalks, and, as if it knew where it was going, headed straight for my head.  Its sudden loud passing by me caused me to stumble, even as its departure left an even denser lack of sound.  I myself was not there anymore, was how it felt to me, as though the fly had taken me with it.

I would never experience such a thing, such a silence again I knew, only approximations of it, even if I returned to this same spot.  I did not want to leave there because of it.  And so I didn’t.