non-duality

I need to tell you this before it’s too late

 

Jean-Michel Meurice, Urgell 1, 2004

 

The knowing of Knowing

is the sweetest somatic intimacy, the ultimate G[od]-spot.

It’s no wonder poets pen passionate love-notes

to their beloved Beloved.

 

It’s more evident than any revelation,

more obvious than anything observed.

Yet this seamless saturation is neither an experience

nor anything that could be called an attainment.

 

It’s prior to consciousness,

to memory, to perception, to imagination.

(I say “prior to” but I don’t mean a-p-a-r-t from.

Perhaps precursory would be a better word.)

 

How mysterious that it’s completely overlooked, ignored,

while at the same time

hungered for/longed for/searched for/worked for/studied for/meditated for/practiced for/prayed for/paid for, in time, devotion and sacrifice . . .

 

What a joke! 

No GPS can locate it.

Yet it’s inescapable.

 

I don’t need a guru, method, scripture, sledgehammer

to wake up to the fact that whatever I am

is unarguably and precisely whatever I perceive, experience, feel.

I only have to look from a silent mind.

 

To acknowledge this Knowing –

to abide as it, to act as it –

restores me to the all-inclusive immensity

I knew all along.

 

All along.

 

Since breath #1 was gasped on a summer’s morning in 1944

and these innocent eyes first opened

onto the mindscape

before

words like suffering and salvation were sown there

sprouting addictive fantasies

about enlightenment, transcendence, escape

before

I was thought-washed to believe that

the embodiment of this Knowing

would erase every discomfort and dysfunction from my experience

before

the dark net of distinctions descended

before

I learned to be clever.

 

– miriam louisa

 

 

Artwork by Jean-Michel Meurice
Urgell 1, 2004
Acrylic on fabric, 215 x 215cm
More info HERE

I love the way this work portrays the richness of our circular existence, the dance of the dreamer around the still, silent core. It’s a wonderful example of contemporary Tantric art.

 

 

It’s been a year of farewells: a brother, an artist comrade, and now another old buddy from my peer-group has gone.
Again I meet the temporality, the impermanence of this experience of being alive.
Again something rises to state the actuality of my experience – not to comfort or console, but to remind myself that everything appearing is a window onto the everlastingly unaffected.
So what?
So that whatever life dishes up has some small chance of being met with honesty and presence. So that I might be sane enough to remember that my wishes – no matter how profound – have nothing to do with what-is. So that I might see directly, act appropriately.
I’m ok with old age. The need to change anything falls away. Candles in the wind.
Yet (occasionally) (rarely these days) I’m moved to share a confession. You never can tell, it might be the last one. And there are things I want to say before I go.
Thank you for reading.

 

pop goes the poseur

Three mid-winter haiku.

 

Rengetsu - Uji River Teapot Scroll ca1840

 

xxxv

winter in my hut

drafts shivering the rainbows

I sit with my tea

 

xxxvi

thoughts and thinker? wrong

thoughts-thinker-thinking: all one!

pop goes the poseur

 

xxxvii

zafu guru says

two thoughts cannot co-exist

I dive in the gap

 

Painting by Rengetsu – Uji River Teapot Scroll

Source – The Rengetsu Circle

‘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

self is an infinitely mutating mental virus

128

the notion that one is a dreamer within a dream
can be a subtle refuge for a self still seeking spiritual identification

self-as-dreamer is no different from self-as-‘real’-person:

still selfing
or not-selfing
self-dreaming
self-awakening
self-parodying
self-impersonating
self-remembering . . .

the entertainment never ends!

self is an infinitely mutating mental virus

but it’s also IT, and ‘I’ is IT to a T

(they don’t call this wisdom ‘crazy’ without good reason . . .)

~

the unarguable logic of non-duality

100

“Advaita adherents are mushrooming everywhere, because it is largely an intellectual philosophy that one can embrace without changing one’s life.”
(quote probably taken from internet … too long ago to remember)

understanding of the first word renders the remainder of the statement meaningless:
Advaita means non-duality

it contends that pure Awareness is all there is – a claim that’s easily verified for oneself

and once verified, one’s left in head-shaking bemusement –
where are all these ‘adherents’ to be found?
exactly who does all this ’embracing?’
and who could exist independently, to change ‘their’ life?

it might be more accurate to say that Advaita appeals to intelligence rather than the intellect
perhaps … but idle speculation nonetheless

for

what ‘appears’ to happen is that even one wideawake peek into the unarguable logic of non-duality changes everything

forever

without ‘you’ doing diddlysquat

~