Advaita

‘me + world’ or ‘me = world’?

'me + world' or 'me = world'? You get to decide your stand in the great Game of life.

 

everything
is either ‘for’ or ‘against’
your being free

one of my teachers sagely pointed out
that everything is definitely ‘against’

then along came another who shook
her curls and laughed:

it’s all set up for your delight!
how could you bear to miss one morsel?

they were both right of course –
it all depends on whether one’s view
is from the look-out of ‘me + world’

or ‘me = world’

in their compassion and kindness
both gave me the key
to the secret of secrets:

you get to decide which look-out you’ll accept
and which version of the Game you’ll play

you get to decide

yes

you!

 

[That’s the Game in a nutshell. Which version are you playing?]

Image source

this mysterious morphing me

 

Echoes from Emptiness: this mysterious morphing me

 

‘me’ is a mystery
to myself and to the world
of teeming memies

it morphs on-demand
to become … whatever is
projected-then-perceived

it’s a shape-shifter
expert nanodrama artist
in cunning disguise

 

but no such mystery
shrouds the changeless One called ‘I’
right here, always ON

Creation’s unblinking eye

 

image source

if there’s no ‘there’ out there…

Meditating Woman - sculpture by Dorothy Frankel

 

I keep on checking
but I always fail to find
a ‘within’ or ‘out there’
apart from thoughts in mind

 

so how can I ‘go within’
to ‘nurture’ the Immeasurable
or ‘cultivate’ it in the world
when ‘world’ and ‘me’ are inseparable?

 

if there’s no ‘there’ out there
(and this isn’t hard to see)
the buck stops right here
in this matrix called ‘me’

 

with nowhere to go
and nowhere to hide
no inner, outer, higher or lower
the heart can open wide

 

can kiss each wondrous moment
with a love that can’t be taught
the only way you’ll stop it
is to entertain a thought

 

~

Sculpture: Meditating Woman by Dorothy Frankel

 

proving nonduality

 

Echoes from Emptiness: Painting by Kazuaki Tanahashi

 

machine-mind (programmed for conclusions and certitude) asks:

how can you prove oneness, wholeness, nonduality?

 

fully defragged matrix-mind replies:

simply by failing to find proof of separation

 

[your ultimate and assured defeat in this quest
cancels all the questions
and leaves you blinking
in wonderment:
 
O M G
O N L Y
T H I S !
 

Painting by Kazuaki Tanahashi, at ‘the awakened eye’

without ever arriving, it’s always here

 

Echoes from Emptiness: emptiness loves emptying

 

emptiness loves emptying
that’s it’s nature
its forms are endless; beyond mind’s conjecture

you can’t arrive
at an apperception of its infinite beingness
by any practice or prayer

it is too ever-present
too intimate
without ever arriving, it’s always here

~

 

there’s no closet mystic here

a friend who knew me as a child
tells me I was  – in spite of a tendency for promiscuity
and contrariness – always a closet mystic

he’s wrong, you know

I’ve never shared the mystic’s striving for union
with the One

I simply wanted to know whether the notion of One
was true, and if so, to prove it to myself
for myself by myself

I walked the neti-neti highway from horizon to horizon
until I fell off the edge of the world
and into the heart of here, where
‘I’ was the only eye and ear and all the senses shouted:
t h u s!

there’s no mystic here striving for union
with the One

this is what’s here, my old friend:
an unknowable, yet inescapable
cosmic narcissist, naked and guileless
playing with itself
– its One and only self –
in every conceivable form and fashion

(did I mention a tendency
towards promiscuity?)

~

life’s ultimate brain-numbing paradox

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Is Advaita* philosophy fatalistic? Escapist? Depressing? Negative?

Perhaps, if you’re asking from the perspective of an assumed independent entity, one who claims personal responsibility and purpose and is driven by either the carrot dangling from the stick in front, or the pressure of the ‘thou shalts’ from the rear. Perhaps, if you believe in goodness and evil, right and wrong, and that it’s ‘you’ that exercises the power to choose between them.

Perhaps not, if you’ve looked deeply and discovered that the independent person you took yourself to be is (gulp) a construction built up from thoughtstuff. Perhaps not, if, having profoundly understood this, you see that beliefs aren’t something you have but what the imaginary person is.

In the world of appearances, it always depends on where you’re looking from.

Looking from the absolute impossibility of independent person-hood, to whom could it matter? Looking from the relative reality of a daily life however – the one we apparently inhabit – it matters all right. Damn right it matters.

But there’s something about the weird knowing (weird in that there’s no knower) that ‘I’ is the ball of thoughts bouncing back and forth in an infinite rally creating the illusion of separation, as well as their very source, that bestows the freedom to be fully and fantastically human.

This is life’s ultimate brain-numbing and head-shaking paradox.

~

*Advaita = not two.  Actually, not even one.  Indivisible thusness.