Who

who is it that speaks,
what are the words,
here I am.

(A ≠ A) = (A = A)

A rose is not a rose,
that is why it is rightly a rose.

The conceived is not perceived,
that is why it is right conception.

The perceived is not conceived,
that is why it is right perception.

Weeds

Weeds are the blemish of cultivated fields,
lust of this human race.
Hence what is given to those free from lust
is productive of much fruit
in the shape of merit.

Weeds are the blemish of cultivated fields,
hatred of this human race.
Hence what is given to those free from hatred
is productive of much fruit
in the shape of merit.

Weeds are the blemish of cultivated fields,
delusion of this human race.
Hence what is given to those free from delusion
is productive of much fruit
in the shape of merit.

Weeds are the blemish of cultivated fields,
covetousness of this human race.
Hence what is given to those free from covetousness
is productive of much fruit
in the shape of merit.

-the Dhammapada

Today

All attributes of Brahman
are contiguous.
Delineation by mind
is the child of
the great cycle of eternity
born of intuition.
The subtle path
rests the intuitive voice.
The non-dual voice
contains every word.

Like a lamp sheltered from the wind

Visualize a ruler in your mind, wooden, flat with markings running along one side, small ticks, large ticks all leading to a sum of a foot. What if there was a ruler who's ticks were marked as a single breath. Breath in, breath out, one tick. This ruler has varying degrees of incremental delineation. How many breaths in a life-time? How often is each breath counted. How aware are we of the intervals in which cycles of breath occur. Is there a measure for slow breaths within deep sleep. Can a breath be divided? In...Out... The air coming in one breath, divided by the mass of it's particles. Each molecule enters our body. It offers nourishment to us and releases part of itself. The body takes that element and divides it up further, fusing it within the body's structure and then expels the elements back out. What is happening here? Our being is physically merging with the ether. Look deeper and you find you are looking into an infinite realm, like zooming in deeper into a fractal image regenerating itself from within itself with the design composed of the nature of the material. Pull back and find the point in the ruler in which you determine to be a unit of measure. At which point in perspective do you see a foot, a yard, a mile. At which point in your thought is this concept of the ruler conceivable as an entity. Is that entity you?

What is time? The apparent existence of time is generated through the fluctuation of directed perceptions outward to the objective empirical and then back to the introspective singularity. Like a sine wave fluttering in and out, consciousness generates ticks on a time line crossing the division of delineation of self and world. What is the frequency at which time moves when one smooths the curve of the sine wave as close as possible to the straight line of time. Reduce the fluctuation between the intervals. Reduce the discrimination between objective empirical reality and the internal self, and the apparent movement of time subsides. What does that time line represent? At what point do you start marking your time ruler? What is a significant point in living where you can see that something has occurred that reveals an elemental building block of reality? How many times must you form the arc of that sine wave by moving between perception and idea before you awake into the state where all reality reveals itself? How far apart are the ticks? How many ticks fit on the unit of measure? Find the point in your thoughts that contain the conceivable limit for the length of measurement, now pull back further. The energy that was strong enough to pull together the mass of your body is a tick. Just like a hand scoops up sand from a beach with the volume of sand it's ability can grasp, then grain by grain the sand pours through the fingers until it all returns to the ground—so the soul grasps the body and holds it's mass as each breath pours through it's fingers. Now as we look at our ruler again we see body after body as tick after tick on this ruler of delineation. Each body a larger increment divided by ticks of breath.

What if our ruler contained three dimensions? Imagine a ruler not as a long flat stick, but as a sphere, with a fixed center and all ticks are marked as movement in any direction away from that center point. Each tick a sphere within sphere. Each thought-breath is an incremental movement away from that point where we first marked our ruler. Each new movement outward is an abstraction of the preceding mark, it contains the entire space of the previous sphere but yet has an augmented continuation of that conception born of thought-breath. The essence is there but the larger mass of conception is not all in the space of the origin. Your body contains the essence of past bodies but is abstracted from the original tick, you see the increment as delineation. This is a means by which you can say "I" and "Not I". The true nature of reality is that "I" contains "Not I" and "Not I" is a part of "I".

What are you? You are not the hair that just fell from your head. You are not the legs that brought you to where you sit. You are not the lungs that breaths the air that holds your mind awake. You are not the mind that processed the information your senses delivered. You are not the thoughts strung together in the language your world has presented you with. You can not have a thought without using words to construct your concepts. Language is the means by which the mind continually churns and uses the senses to construct the image of you. On it goes, talking all the time. That is not you, that is the veil of maya. You experience the world through your mind. It is an organ no different than a kidney purifying blood. It has its function—to distill the data from the sense organs and cognize a system by which you can experience the forces in the apparent universe outside of your subatomic existence. "Mind precedes experience"... is the basis of the Buddha's Dhammapada. What is meaning? The instantiation of conceptual meaning is brought about through mental organization. The sense object is the medium, but the internal representation is the point of contact for consciousness. Every moment the mind is developing neural pathways for storing structure.

Like the branches of a tree reach for the sun and forms it's shape from the cause and effect relationship between the trees’ seed and the sun in the sky, so is your body an attribute of material nature, subject to the inter-existence it shares with the formulation of attraction, repulsion and balance. Think of a stream of electrons giving up it's attachment to one formulation jumping to other atoms to reconstitute that structure into a different apparently new manifestation. Continually all matter is subject to the underlying force that cycles through this process of attraction, repulsion and balance. What is it that charges and discharges elements continually evolving the substance of the universe? We see it as time. Like ticks running along the edge of a ruler, we use the apparent transformation of material perceptions from one form into another as signposts to the end of one form and the beginning of another. The water in the ocean swells up and a wave moves across the surface. The elements that went together to form the wave dissipate and the wave is gone. When conditions are sufficient for the manifestation of the body, it comes in to being. The body is like that wave temporarily held together by all the elements it touches.

From the Upanishads, "Man does not live by breath alone, but by in whom is the power of breath". When the mind is calmed and consciousness is freed from the binding nature of thought, there is a lucidity that allows the soul to transcend the tasks of sustaining the body. Appearances are transitory and the energy animating realty is eternally without attribute. It has no form. It is un-manifest—that which cannot be given name and form, for it is without quality and beyond consciousness. You may say it is a point in consciousness, which is beyond consciousness. Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of paper. Everything with attributes will eventually be transformed into another configuration. We define the fabric of reality by the attributes we identify as sense data that streams into the neural paths we develop in the mind. As the mind refines these categorizations, it begins to request data from the sense organs to reinforce and strengthen the notions of an ego. So powerful is the passive submission of the mind to these notions that eventually what we are perceiving is really what the ego is constructing for itself by feeding on targeted sensations. It builds a reality like a film editor removing parts that don't support a predetermined story-line. Concepts and ideas concerning the state of matter will always dissipate. But the un-manifest force in and of its self is eternal. It is outside of time for its being is neither born nor unborn without attributes it cannot be modified, thus making it immune to time. The more we focus our consciousness on the subtle nature of this eternity, we find that we are ourselves the origin of that tone sustained throughout the universe. We are not the being the ego has theorized to exist. Beyond the mechanism of the body the soul resides in this eternal timeless state. In our ignorance, maya says we are this body moving and manifesting as the attributes revealed through sense organs. We are eternity peering into manifest nature as an offering of the absolute into the relative. In particle physics, the scientist delves deeper into the subtle structure of the energy of the universe only to find that the deeper he looks the more the apparatus he uses in his work (itself) becomes the object of the study. Here deeper is synonymous with subtler. The concept of the tool assembled from the very substance with which it is designed to detect is the paradox of the current state of the science. Through science, soon all reality will be reduced to a single "unified field". This subtle force without shape or form, eternal through it's nature of being nonmaterial (un-manifest) is the nature of our existence, the ground of all being. Consciousness of the nature of existence is what is called self-realization. In chapter 13 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna about the nature of reality:

"This body, is called the field. One who knows it is called the knower of the field. Know Me as the Knower of the field in all the fields. True knowledge about the field and the Knower of the field is what I call wisdom. His hands and feet are on every side of us, his heads and eyes and faces are those innumerable visages which we see wherever we turn, his ear is everywhere, he immeasurably fills and surrounds all this world with himself, he is the universal Being in whose embrace we live. All the senses and their qualities reflect him but he is without any senses; he is unattached, yet all-supporting; he is enjoyer of the gunas (qualities of nature), though not limited by them. That which is in us is he and all that we experience outside ourselves is he."

When Vivekananda uses the word "God", he uses it as a courtesy to the western frame of reference. Some books containing his words are taken from speeches and talks he gave in the West. To eastern audiences he could have used Brahman or Ishvara. Hindus speak of "many paths. one goal". Think of a dog which you just threw a ball for him to fetch—you point to the ball motioning with your hand. You say "fetch" and the dog stares at your pointing finger. The dog becomes transfixed on the pointing hand, never understanding. To him “fetch” is a hand waving before his face. So here Vivekananda says "God" and confused people look to the word. The word is like the pointing hand. The word is a way, once you arrive at the destination the map is no longer necessary. The hand is not pointing to an old man in the sky. The hand is not the finger of God touching Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. God is not the potter sitting before a wheel shaping matter with his hand. He is within the clay itself and is the very nature of the pot. Your body is the pot and you are the force animating it. "Thou art that." Understanding this and the nature of what is eternal is a door with which consciousness can focus on and enter into. The wheel of samsara is spinning and we are riding it. There is a way off. When the time comes and the conditions are right for the thoughts to present themselves, they will. The path you take is your own, but the destination is universal. The idea is divinity in itself. You have to find the path which allows your being as a body in this world to think the thought, and this is faith. The consciousness that is you will let go of the body and move into that un-manifest non-being. When the conditions are sufficient for the thought to manifest itself, it will. Letting go of the individual and embracing the universal is the path.

“A man made of salt wanted to measure the depth of the ocean, but the deeper he walked the more his body dissolved, eventually immersed in the water, his being merged with the vast ocean.”
-Ramakrishna

What are the resulting consequences of direct involvement in the world? We see everything we do. We know the thought that bubbled up to the surface prior to the action our body took. Then reflecting back, empirical reality takes our efforts and embodies them in a resultant effect. The effect manifests as delineated entities outside of our selves defined by the back and forth interaction of mind and matter. All reality is flavored by our inner being seeing itself reflected in the world. In spite of its apparent division into the seer and the seen, the subject and the object, true reality is one continuous manifestation. Thus, behind the diversity of experience, there is the unity of a transcendental principle which persists in spite of the apparent multiplicity and the duality of existence. The different levels of involvement your conscious being has in the world are the manifold levels through which the one Supreme Being manifests Itself by different densities of descent, becoming grosser and grosser, coming further and further down, for the purpose of maintaining the relationship between the subject and the object. We all believe we can direct this point of convergence by the power of will. Ignorant is the passenger who thinks he is driving the bus while only gazing out the window. All perceived causes are in truth just attributes of the one reality. Our bodies act in the sphere of their nature.

Gather your bearings, build a compass that points to bliss. Nothing is ever lost, no effort is ever wasted. Even the smallest amount of efforts will gather together within you. Anytime you find a free moment... stop and take three slow deep breaths as deep as your lungs are comfortable. At the end of the third breath notice what it is like to be in your body when it is calm and not concerned with anything other than the last breath you just took. There you will stand in a moment of eternity. One moment is in all eternity as eternity partakes of every moment. Take note of that experience and make it as important an event in your day as any appointment on your calendar. Mentally thank yourself for the moment. That moment is now a memory. Each time you do this, the memories will call up one another. Let the neural tree grow and forge a comfortable frame within which all eternity can begin to express itself. After a while you will find that you associate that calmness with compassion for yourself, and you become grateful, and this gives you strength. This is a seed whose germination should be thoughtfully undertaken. The subtle path is difficult to see, the self is the guide that you must nurture to find the unfolding knowledge. Knowledge begets knowledge.

All the world becomes quiet, all senses slowly fade into the background as consciousness moves inward to wide open space. The space within matter that is more voluminous than matter itself pushes aside the reflective vision of material existence. As space pushes outward, consciousness pulls back evermore to extend the bounds of the self. One, appearing as two, expands consciousness into the universe which opens up within the soul. The source of material reality is found to be the mind generating streams of thought constructed from raw stimuli, like the ever present stream of background radiation within the Universe. As a mirror of maya acting in its own nature, it sits as an aspect of consciousness, not as the entire being. Seeing the mind reeling in its efforts to distinguish the separateness of entities, one steps back and observes it as it fades into the distance. Now that a larger whole is experienced, concentration is no longer transfixed on distinctions of form. Deep within the calm of meditation all perceived matter dissolves into transparent shells as mental projections of dream-like surfaces. There is a sight within that perceives reality as coming from without. You can observe that world as though it were your own being, but the source is not the mind, it comes from a unity born from without. Look at the words here, you read them by perceiving the shape of the black letters as separate entities. Now try to read them by analyzing the shape of the white space between each letter, the counter-space within each shape as well as the white of the page. In that respect all of the words are one shape, the shape of the white area. From this example take the representation of empirically perceived matter within your consciousness and focus on the space between all atomic structure just as the white space of this page. See everything as one entity. As the cloud of material reality dissipates, the divine eye will see the self appearing as a column of light radiating up infinitely from the back of the neck. Find the body as a tool for climbing upward into the vast emptiness. Become aware that the process of breathing can be experienced through its entirety. Concentrate on the steps of breathing and follow the process of the body as oxygen is pulled into the lungs and then within seconds the mind expands as blood delivers fresh clarity to the mind. Repeating this process and observing it as a soul inhabiting the body makes consciousness aware of the relationship of matter to spirit. As calmness rises and lucidity gains strength, one wakes up like waking from sleep to find they have just witnessed the experience where in God flows into material reality and at the same time material existence reaching into the spirit becomes soul. Breathing as a sacrificial offering to that which is without form brings oxygen and clarity to the vision. It is a divine experience that embraces infinite being seeing itself for the first time. Greet eternity by offering breath to its divinity as a means for the absolute to experience the relative. The process unfolds of itself. It is the universe itself expanding as details become more focused. Clarity of the perception of this process seems at first like dreams, but as the unfolding being overtakes the individual sense realities, perception becomes bliss. Bliss becomes the agent in disclosing your true being. Bliss intensifies like thinning air continually becoming lighter. Know the self as the bliss, this moves the awareness itself into the column of light. Like a leaf drifting upward in the wind, consciousness opens up like a thousand suns in the sky at once. The lotus of the universe grows within that which has no name–that which is formless in the senseless image blacker than night. It is stars expanding, every part a whole. Infinite detail present in one form continually repeating itself as structure. Look down at your arm and follow it to your hand, clutch your hand and feel the mind observing the action while at the same time controlling the impulse to move. Now stand conscious deep within the Universe. Pervading the entire Universe is that which can be entered into. Look down at your hand and clutch. Here what you observe are galaxies spinning and stars forming worlds. Billions of beings form and dissipate, entire generations come and go in fractions of a thought as you pull your arm forward and marvel at the being of your body.

So where will you go when your body ceases to function? Will you have the awareness of the entity you detect within you now? The faculty by which you detect that entity is the entity in itself. Continuous is the being that always was and is.

“I stand sustaining this entire world with a fragment of my being.”
-Krishna

ENO

Ten Penetrations

Quote from Avatamsaka Sutra

"All worlds penetrate a single pore,
a single pore penetrates all worlds.

All living beings penetrate one body,
one body penetrates all living beings.

Infinite time penetrates one second,
one second penetrates infinite time.

All Buddhist teaching penetrates one teaching,
one teaching penetrates all Buddhist teaching.

Innumerable spheres enter one sphere,
one sphere enters innumerable spheres.

All sense organs penetrate one organ,
one organ penetrates all sense organs.

All sense organs penetrate non-sense organs,
non-sense organs penetrate all sense organs.

One penetration penetrates all penetrations,
all penetrations penetrate one penetration.

Every sound penetrates one sound,
one sound penetrates every sound.

All times penetrate one time,
one time penetrates all times."

Parable of the Ferryboat

Joseph Campbell tells a story...

Svetasvatara Upanishad

Listen to the Svetasvatara Upanishad - 5000 to 1500 BC:

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 13

Listen to Chapter 13 of the Bhagavad Gita
The Field and the Knower of the Field

Thich Nhat Hanh

This is a long video, but well worth hanging on for a while to see what he has to say. Fast forward to 9 minutes into the video:

Alan Watts Theater

More fun ways to use your brain here.