05 June 2011

Excerpts from June 4 Satsang:

Most who practice Advaita do so to escape from life. A smaller number practice to find truth. Few persist to realization.


But I want to tell you a little secret. Almost every master that has gone beyond and has found the absolute, wants to come back to the world, to the body, to the marketplace.

Sasaki Roshi, one morning in Taesho at Mt. Baldy in 1972,  said enlightenment can become boring and talked about the need for involvement in life.
Maezumi Roshi spoke one time to a class I was teaching at the UCLA Extension. When asked about enlightenment, he said the most exhilarating part of Zen life was participating in life. When asked to define Zen, he opened his arms wide and said loudly, "Breathing."
Seung Sahn Soen Sa taught that emptiness, and the absolute, being the ultimate “not this, not this” experiences, was only half way, or 180 degrees on a circle of spiritual development that ended at 360 degrees, or back again to ordinary mind, but now acted in having seen the infinite.
Rajneesh during his last two years settled on Zen Buddhism as his vehicle and changed his name to Osho, a title for Zen master, and began preaching his doctrine of the new man, which is not a man who wanted to transcend his, but a man who transcended through meeting life however it came to him or her. That is, putting it in my terms, the new man transcended by immersing in the I am, his sense of presence, and meeting the external from his heart and guts, from his whole being.
But many of you are probably saying to yourself, I came to you because I wanted to escape from the world, the world is a horror.
I agree, but you don't have to be a horror.
When you find your own sense of presence, and the energy in that presence, you will feel joy and bliss, which will captivate you, and take you all the way to the absolute, without leaving the world.
This joy, this bliss, will allow you to carry both sides of the paradox of love and hate, of acceptance and violence, of nurturing and killing simultaneously. The world cannot be accepted in its totality by the mind. The mind is too small. Even the heart is too small, because it seeks only love and acceptance. You must allow all your sense of presence to expand everywhere, to accept all things and all happenings and to react appropriately however that is for you.
This requires your whole being to be open, not your mind, not just your heart, but also your guts, your muscular activity and your sexuality. It must recognize your own violence and anger, give it acceptance and let the energies play through you and energize you. You must own everything and bring it within you and thereby gain mastery.
This is the easy way, the rich way, the way of personal intensity. However, there is one great difficulty with this way, and that is getting totally involved as an individual in the world again thereby missing absolute, the infinite, the God in you, the consciousness of you, and God in others. Instead you can get lost in the personal once again, so this practice definitely has a weakness.
This is why I think meditation is important for anyone practicing this way of immediacy, as you can learn to rest in your own sense of presence, and in the void if you can find it. This gives you a resting place from the intensity of involvement. However it is the intensity of the involvement that lead you to the I am in the first place.

8 comments:

  1. "Sasaki Roshi, one morning in Taesho at Mt. Baldy in 1972, said enlightenment can become boring and talked about the need for involvement in life."

    Not much of an endorsement is it?

    Meditation is also boring, but I persevere because I've been led to believe the destination is worth the journey.

    Now I'm wondering why, or anyone bothers - apart from hoping to find escape from the world.

    It's beginning to sound like a rip-off. God's final kick in the balls, perhaps.

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  2. The point is not to get caught in concepts. Find the I Am and stay there. Trust the I Am wherever it takes you. The I Am contains all illusion and itself is illusion. But if you love it, rather than just dive deeply into the Void, it will show you everything.

    And, meditation is far from boring if you feel your own existence. The I Am. Until then you can get lost in nothingness, darkness, or even the vastness of the clear lighted Void.

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  3. All that exists, exists in Awareness, it is itself Love. Voids or no voids, bliss or no bliss, consciousness or no consciousness it all happens in Awareness. And we are THAT.
    A man comes to forest, he sees an animal, suddenly he tries to pet him, to control him, he can't help it, he was trained like that, he was taught Love can be pursued and directed. What a joke. Animal flees away when man is seen. Why? Simply because animal recognizes that the man is disconnected from Spirit.
    But when man just stands there and just loves that animal, just LOVES it, does not direct Love anywhere, does not try to heal anything, but just LOVES, i.e. recognizes That which is in him, the same is in animal, thus humbles himself before animal, suddenly a miracle happens... animal starts to interact, it does not go away, it is not afraid anymore of a man, because now it feels that man, just by BEING=LOVING, accepts that animal as the same.
    Thus, opening up to this Love, letting the mind to just rest in it, one starts gradually (or not) to see that this mystery interacts and teaches man through various ways: through people, animals, situations, patterns... and one stands in awe, it is like a veil has been lifted, like to a diseased eye glasses have been given... suddenly man starts to understand what LIFE is really. It is fully organic and moving non-boring mystery. Now nature is seen through different eyes...

    And all of it happens in Awareness.

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  4. The Path to Enlightenment boring? Zen Bollocks.

    Anonymous I feel your vibe because I have exactly been there.
    For me Advaita Vedanta and the likes of Soto Zen are truly helpful for Final Realisation, but if you do not have the method to cultivate, transform, redirect and use the earth’s nurturing ground energy, food energy, sexual energy, primal fight or flight energy, emotional energy, mind energy, voice energy, the cosmic energy taken in through the breath and the pure nurturing energy from the mysterious art of sleep, rest, relaxation and meditation, to create a multi-dimensional expansion of consciousness, which reveals the Truth of what you really are, then life is indeed boring.

    But when you realise this body has multi-dimensional functions and that you have the ability to enter and exit the conditioned temporal state and the unconditioned primordial state at will, incarnation is truly multi-dimensional and awe inspiring.

    True meditation methods are dynamic, active and passive and when this is found to be so, the body, its animating energy, heart-mind, intention-power, awakened Intelligence and the all-immersing void that interpenetrates and transcends all matter, energy and Intelligence unite and all action comes from emptiness, your true stateless state.

    Death, deep dreamless sleep and meditation are exactly the same door and people spend years in useless meditations that do not take them to the door, not realising there are many other dynamic and active methods that lead to the passive stages and if through a dynamic method you go to the point of death consciously and scientifically, guided by your own Unconditioned Intelligence that is with you moment to moment, you will find in one session you cannot die; will not die and that you have incredible dormant internal power in this body for all action in this temporal dimension, including the ability to leave it like a shell at will.

    Exciting stuff for the bored.

    Take a leap of faith; trust your 'I Amness' and find your true nature, because once you find your method to unlock your internal power - and as stated by Edji there are many, you will surely find the Path to the ultimate convergence in Oneself is anything but boring and there is no kick in the balls and no need to escape the world, because in this very body is the Buddha and you are That.
    No Zen Bollocks!
    Lord Sam Ram

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  5. Edji,

    This was the best Satsang ever. I haven't seen such a good synthesis. Re-reading it left me enchanted by your clarity. Your depth and openness have been my greatest teacher. I am in owe!

    Love you always,
    Janet

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  6. Sam,

    Your comments make me shiver. I just love you for that. To feel as intensely, to be as profoundly in the now. More than alive, exploding, expanding, getting reborn every instant.

    Dancing with you,
    Janet

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  7. Thanks Janet,
    If U2 are feeling more than alive, exploding, expanding, getting reborn every instant, then this is certainly the best cosmic dance ever.

    Keep Whirling!
    Sam Dizzy

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  8. Many thanks Ed, and to you Sam.

    I think I need to get this tattooed on my eyeballs:

    "GO BEYOND ALL CONCEPTS"

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