being: a living flame – and every form of being a burning candle

image credit: Jimmy Chang*

being is a living flame,
and every form of being,
a candle burning*

living flame (!gb)

a light* …  no external refuge (!?) / words of the Buddha in his last days

Stephen Batchelor, on the last word spoken by the Buddha:
clearly appamāda, both for the Buddha and for the tradition that immediately followed him, … somehow synthesizes everything he taught (!?)

appamāda, this kind of careful, conscious awareness, is the very opposite of that loss of attention that allows us to be forgetful, carried away, or lost

one interpretation:
appamāda is being awake to what is or seems to be, carefully observing
without evaluating or judging as good or bad, in choiceless awareness* *

and, backing up to see how this “somehow synthesizes everything he taught,”
nothing is unchanging, nothing depends on nothing,
and nothing can explain this – no one can

believe no one, not even Buddhas*

keep on keeping on with appamāda


*a link; see a note on notes and links; see also a disclaimer
Posted

believing in nothing, in choiceless awareness

image credit: art by Ray Fenwick for helpful Lion’s Roar staff article “What are the three marks of existence?”*

nothing is as it seems:
nothing doesn’t change

nothing isn’t dukkha

nothing depends on nothing

“things are not as they are seen, nor are they otherwise” / Lankavatara Sutra (!gb)*

“it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing” (!gb)

to believe in nothing is to believe in being that is
empty of everything but the potential for anything

unless you are asleep, unconscious, or dead,
you are aware of being

you are aware of being, like it or not,
if you are alive, conscious, and awake

Aldous Huxley, in his foreword to The First and Last Freedom by Jiddu Krishnamurti:
Ama et fac quod vis. If you love, you may do what you will. But if you start by doing what you will, or by doing what you don't will in obedience to some traditional system or notions, ideals and prohibitions, you will never love. The liberating process must begin with the choiceless awareness of what you will and of your reactions to the symbol-system which tells you that you ought, or ought not, to will it. Through this choiceless awareness, as it penetrates the successive layers of the ego and its associated subconscious, will come love and understanding, but of another order than that with which we are ordinarily familiar. This choiceless awareness – at every moment and in all the circumstances of life – is the only effective meditation.*

if you are alive, conscious, and awake,
you need do no more than need be done
to be and let be, to live and let live
in this and every moment
with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity,
without comparing or judging,
in choiceless awareness**

“awareness of form, feelings, perceptions, and thoughts” (!?)

appreciation of the miracle of one’s own awareness – always present, requiring no conjuring up – has been “scribbled over with false images” (!?) / Robert Saltzman* 2020-09-01 17:40 (citing Q and A from February, 2018)*

choiceless awareness at every moment and in all circumstances is the only effective meditation (!?)

enjoy what you may, endure what you must (!?)

choiceless awareness is key to experiencing “dukkha with equanimity” (!?)

love, compassion, joy, and equanimity (!?)


*a link – see a note on notes and links




Posted

being: implicate and explicate

image credit: NIAID on Flickr*

being is all that is,
implicate and explicate (!?)

whatever is thought of as something
cannot be as it is
without being thought of as not that*

whoever is thought of as someone
cannot be as they are
without being thought of as not them*

and so it is for any being

no being is not this being

implicate and explicate,
this being is all that is


*a link – see a note on notes and links
Posted

all we know is stories

“You can have the feeling that you totally know what’s true or you can have a humble devotion to trying to learn the truth as best you can from moment to moment. You can’t have both.” —Caitlin Johnstone*


you either think you know the truth
or see that it’s beyond the mind*

relative truth is what is thought to be
and depends on what else is thought

absolute truth is simply what is
and depends on nothing else*

* * *

absolute truth is eternal, timeless, imperishable – and so is being;
in some sense they “are ultimately two names for the same thing” (!gb)

screenshot from a result of that search on Google Books

*a link – see a note on notes and links


Posted

on the one hand, nothing, on the other, all that is – or seems to be

NGC 4605, located around 16 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear)*

nothing doesn’t change, and nothing depends on nothing

believing in nothing is believing in what is empty of everything but the potential for anything

Shunryu Suzuki: “I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing.”

A foreword by Aldous Huxley to The First and Last Freedom, a 1954 book by Jiddu Krishnamurti, ends with this:
Choiceless self-awareness will bring us to the creative Reality which underlies all our destructive make-believes, to the tranquil wisdom which is always there, in spite of ignorance, in spite of the knowledge which is merely ignorance in another form. Knowledge is an affair of symbols and is, all too often, a hindrance to wisdom, to the uncovering of the self from moment to moment. A mind that has come to the stillness of wisdom “shall know being, shall know what it is to love. Love is neither personal nor impersonal. Love is love, not to be defined or described by the mind as exclusive or inclusive. Love is its own eternity; it is the real, the supreme, the immeasurable.”*


*a link – see a note on notes and links
Posted

seeing, believing, and the two truths




relative truth and absolute truth are two sides of the same coin*

to see the two truths as what is and what is thought to be
is to believe in nothing as the absolute truth of what is

to see ‘I am’ as the first thought, the source of all others,
is to believe in being as the relative truth of what is

nothing depends on nothing, and believing in being is no exception

nothing doesn’t change

be aware of being with choiceless awareness – not wanting the sense of ‘I am’
to be or not to be other than it is – simply see it as nothing other than what is

Judgment and comparison commit us irrevocably to duality. Only choiceless awareness can lead to nonduality, to the reconciliation of opposites in a total understanding and a total love. … Through this choiceless awareness, as it penetrates the successive layers of the ego and its associated subconscious, will come love and understanding, but of another order than that with which we are ordinarily familiar. This choiceless awareness – at every moment and in all the circumstances of life – is the only effective meditation.

—Aldous Huxley*

enlightened being is believing in nothing and delighting in being,
in feeling, and in doing well no more than need be done to be and let be,
to live and let live with nonjudgmental, choiceless awareness
in boundless love, compassion, joy, and equanimity

enlightened being is seeing deep and dreamless sleep
as consciousness returning to its origin, the eternal void:
empty of everything but the potential for anything


*a link – see a note on notes and links as well as notes and links below

Read more »

Posted

dharma transmission

The monk Bodhidharma took the Lankavatara Sutra from India to China in the seventh century. In China, it took root as a foundational text of Chan Buddhism. And in Japan – four centuries later – of Zen Buddhism


“… things are not as they are seen, nor are they otherwise.” —Lankavatara Sutra*

things are not as they seem; and yet they are – in the mind

people are not as they seem; and yet they are – in the mind

nothing is only as it is thought to be

no one is only as they are thought to be

nothing depends on nothing, and nothing doesn’t change

no one depends on no one, and no one doesn’t change

nothing is other than what is

no one is


*a link – see a note on notes and links as well as notes and links below

Read more »

Posted

may all be well


nothing depends on nothing
and nothing doesn’t change

no being is a being
apart from the whole

except in the mind

and there is no mind
apart from the whole

being well is being whole, being aware of being,
and doing no more than need be done
to be and let be

may all be well

notes and links

Read more »

Posted

consider the lilies …

Consider the lilies of  the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

consider the lilies …

consider any being:
no being need do more
than need be done
to be and let be

no one need do more
than need be done
to live and let live
with love …

love is being delighted
with the present,
just as it is,
flawed as it may seem

love is being delighted
with all things,
not as they are seen,
nor otherwise

love is being delighted
with being as a whole,
as direct experience,
as mystery and wonder

consider being as a whole:
nothing depends on nothing,
and nothing doesn’t change

only in the mind is anyone or anything an entity,
and to imagine otherwise is to be deluded,
is to be where we are today

whatever may be thought,
nothing is, other than the whole,
and imagining otherwise is delusion

nothing is other than the whole

no one is

if all that is thought of as you
cannot exist as it is without
all that is thought of as not you,
how are you not that too?

no one exists apart from
the interdependent web
of all existence

nothing exists apart from
the interdependent web
of all existence

consider any being

consider the lilies …



notes and links
Posted