Diary of Random Thoughts

3-7-10

The understanding of who you are is knowledge, not a feeling. It is not a feeling state or an emotional state; it is knowledge alone. It is knowing that who you are is the space of present awareness.

You will have experiences of all kinds, even after you know who you are. You will have wonderful feeling states that validate this knowledge of yourself as space and beingness. As these experiences come and go, the knowledge becomes more and more validated, or confirmed. The knowledge grows and becomes a more deeply-held conviction, but it is never a feeling.

All feelings pass. While these validating feelings might be enjoyable, they are fleeting, nonetheless. Knowledge is not fleeting. The feeling passes, but the knowledge of who you are remains.

Knowledge is the elimination of ignorance, and the elimination of ignorance does not pass. It happens and is done. The knowledge of who you are happens and is done.

All feelings pass. All thoughts pass. All experiences pass. It does not matter if you are feeling painful feelings or having painful thoughts about a separate self. Once the ignorance is dispelled, these things can arise and there is no concern about it.

Who you are is the clear, present-just-now space of awareness. Don’t look to achieving any kind of feeling state within that awareness. Feelings and thoughts arise in the clear space of who you are. Just let them be.

2-18-10

People are nothing but conditioning. Conditioning can only invite into its life whatever it is conditioned to invite. There are no options for conditioning. You could say that conditioning always has exactly what it wants. And so there is no helping people, no possibility to change the world, and no reason to pity people. This includes the conditioning that makes up your own self.

And so, too, realize that when you are with people, you are not with their conditioning. The conditioning is all automatic, programmed, and nothing real is going on. Rather, when you are with people, you are joining and joined with the heart of all being – heart to heart – the heart of all being in you, joining the heart of all being in them. No need to pity, save, change, or teach them a single thing.

1-25-10

You are in direct contact with God all the time. This Divine Light that you know as your own ordinary awareness, or beingness, is no less than God. You have a personal relationship with God because you are one and the same, you seeming to be a separate part, in your mind, but not actually being a separate part.

God is not something outside of yourself, although to study religion, one would get that impression. That’s because the mind has misinterpreted the holy message. God is not in your mind; God is right here, already inside your direct knowingness of yourself. Directly in contact, all the time.

1-19-10

Whatever you’re thinking or planning this morning, whatever you are deciding to do today, whatever is bothering you, and however you feel, just take a moment to remember what’s really going on.

The planning and deciding and bothersome thoughts are flowing through the “space” of you.

If you are feeling dissatisfied with the knowledge that who you are is just ordinary beingness, and you expect that there is more, notice what’s really going on.

The thought “I am dissatisfied” has arisen and is flowing through you.
Is there any way dissatisfaction can be any more than that?

When you keep noticing, each time you take an honest look, that this flowing is all that’s every going on, words like “dissatisfaction” lose all meaning.

The space (consciousness) and the flow (contents) are two sides of the same coin. You are both and neither.

1-18-10

Your actual experience of life never really changes. Nothing makes it better or worse, if you’re focused on the right thing, which is the clear space within which all the changing arises. So if you are perceiving your experience of life changing – better and worse, happy and sad, health and illness – then you’re focusing on a separate self gaining and losing things all the time. But if you’re seeing what is real, the life experience will always be exactly the same, with simply the contents of it shifting.

I can move all the furniture around in my living room, paint all the walls different colors, put on loud music, and have a dance party, but none of that changes the fact that it’s my living room.

There is a total absence of change, movement, and activity in reality. If your experience is of change – any change at all – what you’re seeing is the contents. Look and see if you can find the fact of your living room.

1-14-09

All appearances, including yourself, are flowing THROUGH YOU.

1-12-10

Your ordinary state of awareness is ALL of the one Buddha-mind, not part of it. So your very common awareness that is present all the time is the Absolute, in its totality! There is no “part” of the Absolute that is outside your ordinary state of awareness. There are no little pieces of God of which you are one, excluded from the rest. God is not in pieces; you are all of the one God, the one Light, the one Brahman. This is YOU.

This simple sense of being here is the total miracle of all-pervading Divine Light. There is nothing else besides this. And it’s the only thing you know. This ordinary, day-to-day awareness you take for granted, this is all of the one Buddha-mind. It is all there is. YOU are your ordinary awareness, and that is Buddha-mind. YOU are all there is.

1-11-10

In what way is the subjective “you” not free?

You keep getting all upset that you still experience a “me,” or that you still sense your identity to be this false reference point. So what if you do? Is that false “me” bound? What is it bound by?

Find out if the false reference point is free. In what way is anything about the experienced reference point “you” not free?

Do you see that it doesn’t even matter if you see yourself as a separate entity? Go ahead and see yourself as that – it’s okay, because the separate entity is free. What you seem to want is freedom from the false self-center. Why? The wanting is the problem, not the false self-center.

Can you find anything that the “self-center” is bound by? So go ahead and live your life. You don’t have to strive after some “state” wherein you don’t have any experience of being a “person” at all. Instead, find out if that person is bound by anything. Then, it won’t matter what your experience is.

Go look for what you think you’re bound by. See for yourself that there are no fetters, no chains binding you.

12-20-09

The world takes on a different appearance when you see it for what it is. It could even be said to not appear at all, once your own fantasies about what you want from it have crumbled.

As long as your life is about you and your personal gain, the world will look like a collection of things you either can’t have or have too much of. But that speaks of who you are, not what the world is.

You will be so surprised to see what the world looks like when you no longer want anything from it. It looks like a dance of light and motion, animated by Divine Love.

Is there some sort of mystical vision, or super-sensory inner sight this is seen with? No – it’s exactly the same stuff. It’s what’s already here, nothing mystical about it. It’s the same exact world that is seen “before,” selfishly and fearfully; but once the fear and idea of personal self are removed, it is seen for what it is – Love.

Go for it – go find the root of the “personal self” and remove it, and your world will always be Love.

The World is Love.

12-19-09

Whatever it is that lets you know you exist, just acknowledge that for a moment. Maybe you can’t put it into words – that’s okay. But look at it anyway. Whatever it is that lets you know you exist – does it ever change? Is there ever any doubt about it? Has it ever felt any different? Has it ever not been there?

So there you go. This is the ground of your being. The ground of your being, and all you ever have. It’s unchanging, it’s always present, and it’s all you ever have. And since this is always present, there is never, ever, anything at all to worry about, or anything at all to gain, to fear, or to shun.

Do you understand that this is all you ever have?

You think you have anything else? Where? What? What happened to all those plans you made, those schemes you tried? Where are they now? What happened to that perfect relationship, that lucrative investment? That insight that was going to change your life, where is it now? Where are you? Even your “self” didn’t stay. 

But you still have simple being (or whatever words you want to use to describe it); simple being never left you, and that’s all you ever have. How can you lose? How can you fear? How can you worry or fret? How can you seek for more?

Maybe you say, “Well, I don’t know what is meant by ‘simple being’.” Don’t worry about my words. Use your own words or no words at all. The point is that you know you are here, and this is all you know. This is what is, without any words or concept at all. Even the concept of time is not needed.

This is the extent of the “realization” that is meant by the word. It’s not anything more complicated than that. It’s the simple realization that the life, the body, and the problems are all fleeting, fictional add-ons to this one basic, unchanging fact of my underlying being.

12-18-09

I see myself born in thoughts. And then I don't.

12-16-09

You say, I’m going to find my true nature that is being talked about! I will search for it and I will find it! Let’s see...it’s self-shining, it’s ever-present, closer than my breath, hmmmm....where could it be? Why can’t I see it?

Wait a minute. What’s illuminating this whole scene of me trying to find my true nature?

Now you can say this: My true nature is what is looking. I’ve been looking for what’s already looking at me.

12-15-09

All you really see of the world is your “interface,” the system your brain uses to make sense of the raw information that appears. That’s what you’re seeing, entirely. You see the interpreting system only – you’re not seeing reality at all.

And what’s watching while “you” see “your interface”? 

12-13-09

Every single movement of mind is your story. It doesn’t matter what that movement is, it’s part of your story and does not present a true picture of anything at all.

Your story is 100% desirous of changing things to suit you, or keeping things as they are to suit you. So how could your story be saying anything true about that which is always spontaneously resolving, and needs no changing or immobilizing?

No part of your mind is clear enough to judge what is real and what is not. How can it? Even that with which we look at our own conditioning is, itself, conditioning!

What you are is clear and still, reflecting the images of the story like a mirror, but not being touched by those images. Even the effort of conditioning trying to see through conditioning is reflected in what you are, without touching what you are.

Right here, right now, there is no story, and here now is the truth of what you are. Without effort, and without having to see through conditioning, you are.

12-12-09

Awareness doesn’t do anything. It is ever-present and witnessing, merely reflecting the apparent phenomena and mental activity that pass by.

The fact that awareness doesn’t do anything is kind of amazing, since awareness is all there is. Nothing is done. Nothing is produced, nothing is active. All the activity is strictly in your mind. In awareness, there is no activity, no creating, and no doing. “Doingness” is solely an invention of the mind. “Happening” is solely an invention of the mind.

Don’t you think of the world – of appearances – as “happening”? That’s only the mind moving. The mind sees phenomena as “happening,” but all is actually still, empty, and already resolved to finality. Every movement in appearance is already resolved in this basic space.

Right now, let the noticing of this non-creative basic space be acknowledged. You don’t have to “do” the noticing – the noticing does you. It’s a passive noticing. Acknowledge it.

The mind – which begins its life forgetting its true, unborn Buddha nature by being spoon-fed the conditioning that turns it into a suffering self – is the only entity here making activity appear to happen. Before the mind learned ignorance, it never saw activity. When it unlearns the ignorance, it will no longer see activity. No activity actually exists.

Two monks were watching a flag waving in the wind, and they were arguing about what was moving it. One monk was saying, “The flag is moving by itself!” and the other monk was saying, “No, the wind is moving the flag!”

They argued until the Master happened along. They asked the Master, “Master, can you resolve this argument for us? Is the flag moving by itself, or is the wind moving the flag?”

The Master replied, “Neither. The flag is not moving; only your minds are moving.”

– Traditional story about Hui-Neng, Sixth Patriarch of Zen in China

12-11-09

Maybe you are expecting the Absolute to be something positive, a tangible state that will come to be known by you, which you don’t already know or have.

But actually, the Absolute is what is already known by you. It’s known by you as your ordinary, everyday state of mind. When you first wake up in the morning, it lets you know you’ve become conscious. You can’t deny you know this, this which lets you know you are conscious – can you?

Just your ordinary living state. Nothing is going to be added to this – nothing more special than the ordinary living state. You don’t recognize your ordinary living state as blissful and complete because that aspect is veiled by thoughts and ideas insisting there is something wrong.

So it’s a dropping of false ideas that occurs, not the acquisition of something new. But even "dropping of false ideas" makes it sound like something different will be seen. It won’t. Nothing but this, which you already see, will be seen. You look at the world as suffering, when the very same world can be seen for what it is, bliss.

But the Absolute is not seen in terms of mental experience, because the Absolute is not defined by anything mental. You see the Absolute in your spiritual or supramental experience, which is not governed by thought.

Spiritual experience is your experience. That’s the kind of experience you have, among others. You also have relative, conditional kinds of experience that have to do with your mind and body. But spiritual experience, or experience not touched by thought, is yours as well.

And your spiritual experience shows you the Absolute, while your relative, conditioned experience shows you a world of illusion and dualities, all trying to divide and control that which it has nothing to do with.

How can you tell which is which?

It’s all the same.

12-10-09

There is just joy naturally occurring in your natural state of being.

Don’t try and go to your thoughts to manufacture some kind of joy of your own making. It doesn’t work that way.

Without thought, joy is natural.

12-9-09

No thought is required to notice the shining presence of your Pure Essence right now. Here it is, illuminating everything! But, the slightest amount of thought about your Essence instantly obscures it. Why? Because your Essence, by its very nature, is Indivisibility and Namelessness, and what thought does is divide that which is Indivisible and name that which is Nameless. What Essence is, by its very nature, can’t be viewed through our arbitrary filters of dividing and naming.

We split things up into parts, and then we name the parts. That’s the natural work of the mind. But it’s not reality. Reality, or your Essence, is neither split into parts nor named. It is Indivisible and Nameless; it is also Formless and Timeless.

When you think about your Essence, it’s still there, but it’s obscured from view by the attempt to think about it. Essence remains hidden, to thought. You can’t analyze or own it even to the tiniest degree. It will not be analyzed. It will not be owned. And yet, here it is! Without any thought at all, this is all that is, passively noticed. Shining, in plain view.

No effort is required to move from the currently arising thought to passively noticing the shining of Pure Essence. Effort does not reveal it, because it does not recognize effort. But without any effort at all, Pure Essence is all that is here – everywhere, without end!

You can’t try and notice Essence. Can you try not to try? Can you think about not thinking? No. But right now, with whatever else is going on, Essence makes its presence known. It can’t be escaped!

All attempt to own, analyze, or “effort” a glimpse of Pure Essence will fail.  Notice how the smallest movement of wanting hides it. There is no wanting possible in your Essence, and so when wanting, effort, or thinking arise, your Essence is hidden. Not because you did a bad thing, but because this is the very definition of Essence. It is empty of all wanting, so how could wanting get you here?

Stop now, and without any effort, just notice what remains. The noticing is passive: let the noticing happen to you, not by you. Before the next thought arises, just welcome this noticing of what was already here. Welcome this ever-present noticing that is given to you as a gift.

Undivided by the names invented by a mind, ungraspable by the effort invented by a mind, unchangeable by the thought invented by a mind. Essence is beyond all these things, and yet it’s right here, the most noticeable thing! Like the space in this room, you are not used to remembering that it’s here, but without it, what would the experience of this room be? Impossible. This is like Essence. Without Essence to illuminate all of this, what would the experience be? Impossible.

It’s a little tricky, because we’re so used to thinking about things. Essence – your True Nature – is not what is thought about, it is what is thought with. Try thinking about something else: picture yourself lying on a warm beach in the tropics, or think about a current problem you have. It doesn’t have to be a good thing, just anything. Now, while you’re thinking about something else, what was there, not being thought about?

This Essence is not something separate from you. It is YOU, and YOU are it. So here it is, without effort. Pure Essence – YOU! – shines without any effort on your part. Isn’t that amazing?

12-8-09

"Abide in the Unborn Buddha Mind." – Bankei

He's talking about Pure Essence. Same thing. Bankei says: Abide in it and don't exchange it for thought.

12-7-09

Relax in this, just what is here. It's all the Absolute, it's all you, and nothing in it can ever be wrong. No thought, deed, or event can ever take you outside the Absolute. Everything is this.

12-6-09

How do you know you exist?

How do you know you are alive?

Is it the overall awareness in your sense organs? Some sensations – good, bad, or neutral – in your body, your skin? An awareness of your temperature? Some thought? The fact that you see things and there is a registering of that? The fact that you think things and there is a registering of that? Is there an effervescence of simple aliveness? A newness, a “Wow, here I am” feeling? Or is it impossible for you to describe, and you just have to say, “I just know that I am”?

Now here’s the twist: You don’t even have to worry about whether your existence is “real” or not. It doesn’t matter, and you’ll never know, anyway. Maybe you are a thought experiment in a huge galaxy-sized computer. Maybe you are a character with self-awareness in a video game, unaware of what you are. Maybe this is all a dream. It doesn’t matter. There is something that has a sense of existence. It matters not one whit what it is, or if it’s real or not.

What matters is that you don’t spend half your life trying to get somewhere, and the other half fearful that you’re not going to stay where you are, when you never actually go anywhere, get anything, or change anything. There’s just this sense of beingness, and that’s all.

Maybe you are a character in a video game. Would it help you to know that? Maybe you are in a dream. Would it help you to know that? No, it wouldn’t, because you would still strive to wake up or be happy or whatever it is you want. So don’t worry about whether life is an illusion or not – it won’t stop your striving. The only thing that stops the striving is looking at whatever it is that says “Here I am” and realizing the totally constant, neutral, ever-present nature of that “whatever.”

Is anything else needed? Right now, or any time you can imagine in the future, is anything else needed?

What about awakening?

If someone is awakened, do they have any more than this?

12-5-09

The appearance is nothing but writing on a blackboard that gets erased over and over again. Thoughts, feelings, sensations, knowledge, activities, world affairs, and cosmic events are written on the blackboard, and then they are erased. You notice them while they appear on the blackboard, and then they are gone, leaving the blackboard blank again.

The funny thing is, there’s only one blackboard. All of appearance has only one background. Just one.

12-4-09

A Quiz: How Well Do You Know Your Mind?

1. When a memory arises, do you realize that it’s only the mind’s label you remember? You’re not remembering an actual thing. All that is ever going on is awareness, nothing else. So it’s only the labels you remember, not something that happened. Did any event actually happen?

2. Do you feel a feeling? Or are you simply aware of a feeling? What does it mean to “feel” something? What’s the difference between feeling a feeling and being aware of it? Is there any such thing as “feeling” something?

3. What do you want, and what do you think you’ll have when you get it? And then, what do you think you’ll have when you get that? And so on. Have you ever tried to figure out what you really think you’ll have, at the end of all this searching?

4. Thoughts arise and pass, like clouds. What is it that finds meaning in these thoughts? Is there anything outside of thoughts that finds meaning in thoughts? Isn’t it just the thoughts themselves that find meaning in the thoughts? Can clouds find meaning in clouds?

5. Ask yourself: What in the hell am I talking about? Define the terms of your desires, like “peace,” “happiness,” “freedom,” “certainty.” It’s harder than you think. Maybe you’re not talking about anything at all.

12-3-09

The way to understand that nothing has any existence is not to look at time-bound objects (including the self) and try to see them as non-existent in time. It is instead to look and see that there is no actual “time” for objects to exist in. There is only right now. How can you exist if you don’t exist over time?

12-2-09

You have to look at yourself, not “teachings.” Yourself only. Only your own mind should be thought about, not anything anyone else said.

You see the world because of your mind. It is the mind which you see. Reality is always present, but because of your mind – the filters of delusion – you think you see separate parts, struggling against each other. So when you know your mind, and how it does this deluding, you will know that the mind’s version is false. Then it is possible to see reality.

What’s the point of seeing reality? Who you are is real, and yet you have lived your whole life as a false, mistaken identity. Seeing reality, you live the peace and light that you are, instead of living a painful falsehood.

Understand that this is using the mind for two different things, in two completely different ways. The useless way is using your mind to try and understand the concepts that are meant only as pointers, and the useful way is to try and understand what your own mind does to filter the truth and deliver it to your thoughts in a distorted form.

12-1-09

There is no part of you in the appearance. The appearance contains nothing real. You’re not in it at all. That means bodies, minds, plans, ideas, actions – you’re not in that stuff at all.

In case you forgot that the brain is part of the appearance, remember that there is no part of you in the brain, either. The brain contains neural actions and reactions only. It moves a body around, and nothing comes of any of it. It’s not “conscious” on its own. It’s only “active.”

And you, meanwhile, are the consciousness. Believe it or not, the consciousness is not in the brain. Consciousness is not in the brain. You are not in the brain. The “I” sense does not come from the brain. Go look for yourself if you don’t believe me.

Consciousness is here, now, present, pure. This is all there is. You. It. No difference. “I am That” has an equal sign, and equal signs go both ways: “I = That” is also “That = I”.

You are THAT; THAT is You.

THAT is ALL that you are. Nothing else.

11-30-09

Just do it right now.
What are you waiting for?
Hurry!
Drop the entire appearance.
There is nothing in it that you need anymore.
There is no part of you that is in the appearance.

11-28-09

There is no dualism in the freedom that you are. You think you are in bondage, and you want freedom from bondage, but both are imagined – they create each other. True freedom has no opposite, no bondage – it is not part of the appearance of the world of dualities. The bondage you feel yourself to be in is imagined, and the freedom you want is imagined. Only fake freedom can be gotten from fake bondage.

11-27-09

The freedom is only now.
You can’t even try to think about the fact that freedom is now.
It won’t be pinned down.

11-25-09

All appearances are dualities, and all dualities spring from a state where no duality exists. What appears as a world is just arising dualities. And so everything you find in the appearance, in your story, in your mind, is simply the opposite of something else, and they arose together. One is in existence because its opposite is in existence. Nothing at all can arise unless its opposite arises at the same time. So if you are imagining freedom, you are also imagining bondage. Imagine neither.