notrehta

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)

Image: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/tSFJYQLEaywl4wGgQ-EztLvFFUOmgu0WI9vkQIMqxaoZx9bZdcTm4GFWm5LlH6NxdkQUkGGxRILOrx5_XPmbKkrHPW3bpfneuiuVVgjuowav0EI-S5Df9D2nn7shTMLc3QYfyq2c

screenshot from a result of that search on Google Books

*a link – see a note on notes and links

Jacob Needleman (!? !* !*)*

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

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

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

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

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

the two truths

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

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

to see the relative as relative is to see the absolute;

to see the absolute is to see the relative as relative

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

notes and links

waste not, want not, be well

New research shows there are at least two trillion galaxies. This image is a closeup of one of them. Until Edwin Hubble published his work in the 1920s it was thought to be the only one. Specks of light are other galaxies.

living is wasted on getting and spending

waste no moment, want nothing, be well

* * *

in the paradigm shift following Galileo, our culture let go of the medieval picture of the solar system, but “surprisingly little hung on the matter,” says Daniel Quinn in The New Renaissance (archived) – a passionate call for another paradigm shift, one where we let go of the medieval view of humanity that we cling to in spite of the threat to so many species, including our own

after reading The New Renaissance – the prepared text of a 2002 talk that Daniel Quinn called a concise expression of the basic message of all his books – please take a look at the related notes and links under the horizontal rule below

* * *

live and let live
with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity,
wasting not a moment of being aware of being
and wanting nothing, not even this

be well

notes and links / see a note on notes and links

being and doing … and not doing

there is no higher purpose
than being in the here and now
with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity

no one need do more
than need be done to be and let be,
but people do – it’s the culture we live in

notes and links:

in the mind and beyond

entities are in the mind;
beyond the mind nothing is an entity – no one is

independence is in the mind;
beyond the mind nothing depends on nothing

permanence is in the mind;
beyond the mind nothing is unchanging

beyond the mind nothing exists as an entity,
nothing depends on nothing, and nothing doesn’t change

being beyond the mind is being beyond words,
so no one can say what is beyond the mind

words can only point the way to what is;
just let the mind be still and simply be

anything believed is also thought;
it’s in the mind

this may be hard to see at first

The four stages of acceptance:

1) This is worthless nonsense
2) This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view
3) This is true, but quite unimportant
4) I always said so

—J.B.S. Haldane (Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464) https://t.co/pzDLqpisB6 via @goodreads pic.twitter.com/uuljs3rz6W
— George Atherton (@notrehta) September 1, 2018

* * *

being well is being whole, being as in the mind
and beyond – as all that is – wanting nothing

being well is

being aware of being as what is – as all that is – wanting nothing
doing no more than need be done to be and let be
living with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity

may all be aware of being as what is – as all that is – wanting nothing

may all do no more than need be done to be and let be

may all live with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity

may all be well, in the mind and beyond

may all be well

notes and links: