.JPG "Earthen Spirituality")
Living within a living, loving planet
Advaita Vedanta
We ARE the Planet
Aug 8th
“Professor Johan Rockström, a co-author of the new paper from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, told BBC News. ‘What we are saying is that when we reach 2C of warming, we may be at a point where we hand over the control mechanism to Planet Earth herself.’”
Carbon Brief Daily | 07/08/2018
I don’t seem to be on the same page here. When did anyone ever dare to think that (1) That we were ever “in control” of Earth’s survival mechanisms and (2) That we have anything to “hand over” to “Planet Earth.” We and all our brethren are first and foremost “Earthlings.” We are not “on” this planet, we ARE the planet – inseparable.
We have not “lost” our connection. That’s impossible. We have either lost consciousness of it or perhaps never were conscious of being part of the, so to speak, eyes, ears, nose and throat of our greater beingness, the marvellous planet Earth.
Who am I
Jun 18th
Who am I?
When we look for the self we cannot help but be looking for something which is out there different from what we think we are. When we look for the self we find ourselves using the only language permitted or even available. This is a huge problem and block to understanding. Why? Because that which we are is not an object for that which is doing the looking. We are what we are looking for so explaining it is only rhetoric. Such thinking may bring us to asking – who then is actually doing the looking? Then what follows is the question – where, what is that which is doing the looking? Me, you say. But then we remember that the looker, call it me if you like, cannot be found. Next, perhaps we ask, if I am the self and the self cannot be found then it seems that we have been taught falsehoods. There is not nor ever was a self in here looking out on a world out there. There is only the act or experience of looking. Yes, but the English language supposes that there is first a subject, second an action or verb and thirdly an object – at something. Unless we find other terminology, we are locked into the assumption that there is a me, inside the body doing.
Although modern science cannot and never will find the location of the “I,” an alternative word description has not been accepted. The prevailing attitude is always – If there is no “I” doing the looking, then something must be doing the looking that we wrongly attribute to me doing.
At around this point, most people just tune out.
One can readily see that we will get nowhere until we question the whole concept of separate objects. Only with separate objects can one look at another.
The dilemma I have just left us at is the trigger for the idea of non-duality. Monism, in one form or another thus enters and sows volumes of discussion. Several miles down the road and after several turnings, fits and restarts, many just accept that they are that which is aware of their experience. So there is only awareness and nobody being aware.
That’s enough for tonight. Run it back and forth, inside and out but please let me know when you find the exact location of the “I” that does stuff. OK?
18/06/2017
Being Understanding
Jul 23rd
Being Understanding
“We have come together to find out what we mean by truth, or our real nature, globality. This inquiry calls for a certain quality of attention, an attention free from any expectation. It is really a state of not-knowing, where we are simply open. It should also be clear that what we are looking for, we already are. It is completely objectless. Truth cannot be known by the mind and requires a different kind of perceiving than the mind uses. It is not a functional perceiving which is in duality—“I perceive this”—but a being the perceiving, where there is only perceiving without any perceiver or thing perceived. In other words, where we are the perceiving.
All that can be obtained, perceived, thought, is an object, but we are the subject of all objects. So if we remain in a state of trying to achieve understanding, we will only find an object and not the objectless truth. This object may be a subtle state, but what we are fundamentally is not a state. In trying to obtain ourselves, we go away from ourselves. When this is understood, our mind is automatically brought to a stop where all the energy used in projecting and attaining is no longer directed, and we find ourselves in non-directionless openness, waiting without waiting. This is really the most profoundly relaxed state of the body and the mind. We are simply open, open to the all-possible, open to the unknown. We can never go to it, because there is no one to go and nowhere to go. We can never take it. We can only be taken by it. So we must allow it.
We are accustomed to using the mind to understand, so we must go until the end of the mind, until it comes to the point of being completely exhausted. In other words, the mind must know its limits. This brings an absolutely relaxed state. The mind functions in space and time, but what we are, profoundly, is out of time. So time, the mind, can never understand what is beyond time. When the mind is exhausted, we are at the threshold of our real being. This threshold is a global feeling, free from any conceptualization. What is important is that when we say, “I have understood,” we feel how the understanding has acted on us. Intellectual understanding dissolves in silence, and this silence is our real being. We may have a clear geometrical understanding in our mind, but this understanding is still objective; the geometrical understanding must dissolve in being understanding, which is a global feeling. It is really this global feeling that is meant when we speak of being the understanding.
– Jean Klein”
Are we Guardians of the Planet?
May 9th
Are we Guardians of the Planet?
guardian
n
- one who looks after, protects, or defends: the guardian of public morals.
Darkening of the Light
Witnessing the End of an Era
by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
In the Introduction to Darkening of the Light by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, we find:
“But this gift of light was also a test for humanity…and has forgotten our ancient purpose as guardians of the planet.”
Not only do I have no idea who or what religion, spirituality or movement decided that we have this ancient purpose. It certainly was not Jewish or Christian. According to Genesis, God has given us the planet to have dominion over. I am aware of my ignorance and will try to find out.
We just cannot have it both ways. Either we see the oneness, the non-dual in our beingness as the Earth, or we see the duality as we, creatures of the Earth protecting the other that we choose to call Earth. The bark is the tree, there is not the bark and the tree as a duality. Yes, our language allows us to split and divide, carve up things so that we can speak of the tree roots, the tree bark, tree limbs, tree leaves, but still without these what we call parts, what we observe wouldn’t be a tree. It is our thinking function that gets hung up on dichotomys. Our science rips living things apart and then pronounces on what “it is.”
Guardianship may have ancient beginnings, but our science supports a non-dual understanding of how we are in the world. Even to see ourselves as IN a world out there is to err.
There is no duality, no “out there” and “in here.” As Vadim Zeland has said, the world is a mirror of your attitude towards it. The Gnostic text The Gospel of St. Thomas that didn’t make the cut by the early “holy” fathers of the church, remarks something like: When the inner becomes as the outer, there is the Kingdom of God. Another biblical source says that the Kingdom of God is within you. [Luke 17:21] So, we may see that actually, the world is also within you, not “out there.” So, if there is no “out there” and “out there” is really within us and we are “within” the planet both physically and spirituality, then what we have is oneness, true oneness. From the perspective of planets, stars and galaxies, they are not “out there” either, so they are a oneness. From here it is not too far out for those who speak of oneness with the Universe.
Now this is my thinking function rattling on. How do I feel? Can I sense oneness in my everyday interaction with what I think of as out there? Well, since I cannot and do not want to part with my mate and buddy, the thinking function, I’ll just call it a both/and and leave it for now as I set forth for my daily bread walking among the birds, insects, grass, trees, bushes, clouds and feeling joyful knowing that I know and I am known.
Ashtavakra Gita (8.1-4)
Apr 14th
The mind desires this,
And grieves for that.
It embraces one thing,
And spurns another.
Now it feels anger,
Now happiness.
In this way you are bound.
But when the mind desires nothing
And grieves for nothing,
When it is without joy or anger
And, grasping nothing,
Turns nothing away. . .
Then you are free.
When the mind is attracted
To anything it senses,
You are bound.
When there is no attraction,
You are free.
Where there is no I,
You are free.
Where there is I,
You are bound.
Consider this.
It is easy.
Embrace nothing,
Turn nothing away.
~ Ashtavakra Gita (8.1-4)
This is really the essence of Advaita. Another beautiful expression is within the Hsin Hsin Ming. You can find a copy on the WWW. I understand that this sounds like a plea to be joyless; however, perhaps joy and pleasure are not the same. Also, perhaps the word “mind” may not accurately capture the non-duality message. It is the thinking function that discriminates and fuels the judgement that in the end results in pain and suffering. The message is based on the fact that there are NO dualities, just the Dao, just the moment.
All this is clearly expressed in the wonderful treasure which is the Hsin Hsin Ming. It may take you years of pondering, re-reading, looking at again, asking the universe for understanding – all that before you begin to “get it.” Then perhaps you’ll lose it again and at one and the same time know and despair that you don’t know, don’t understand. What might help or maybe put you over the edge of being able to relate is that you cannot “know” yourself, the Dao simply because it does not exist as an object. You cannot separate it – you- out in an effort to “know” it because you are it. You are a person looking for eyes to see. I must put in a word for the late Jean Klein. If you can obtain any of his books of dialogues, you may find that his clarity may tip you over the edge with the “oh, now I get it” moment. Oh there is so much that lies around the fringe of Advaita. Some say that you “get it” when you quit looking. Others, like The Maharshi tell us that our impediment is thinking that we can’t find “it” when actually we are what we seek.
Lastly, you will never know why you either care about these ideas or just can’t be bothered. “It” either calls you relentlessly until you don’t feel the need to “be bothered” or will always sound just too weird and you will never “be bothered.” Either way, you may rest assured, in my not so humble opinion, that there is no separate “you” inside your head looking out onto a separate world.
Comment on non-duality
Jul 30th
Comment on non-duality taken from:
THE MYSTIQUE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
U.G. Krishnamurti
“We are all living in a ‘thought sphere’. Your thoughts are not your own; they belong to everybody. There are only thoughts, but you create a counter-thought, the thinker, with which you read every thought. Your effort to control life has created a secondary movement of thought within you, which you call the ‘I’. This movement of thought within you is parallel to the movement of life, but isolated from it; it can never touch life. You are a living creature, yet you lead your entire life within the realm of this isolated, parallel movement of thought. You cut yourself off from life — that is something very unnatural.
The natural state is not a ‘thoughtless state’ — that is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated for thousands of years on poor, helpless Hindus. You will never be without thought until the body is a corpse, a very dead corpse. Being able to think is necessary to survive. But in this state thought stops choking you; it falls into its natural rhythm. There is no longer a ‘you’ who reads the thoughts and thinks that they are ‘his’.
Have you ever looked at that parallel movement of thought? The books on English grammar will tell you that ‘I’ is a first person singular pronoun, subjective case; but that is not what you want to know. Can you look at that thing you call ‘I’? It is very elusive. Look at it now, feel it, touch it, and tell me. How do you look at it? And what is the thing that is looking at what you call ‘I’? This is the crux of the whole problem: the one that is looking at what you call ‘I’ is the ‘I’. It is creating an illusory division of itself into subject and object, and through this division it is continuing. This is the divisive nature that is operating in you, in your consciousness. Continuity of its existence is all that interests it. As long as you want to understand that ‘you’ or to change that ‘you’ into something spiritual, into something holy, beautiful or marvelous, that ‘you’ will continue. If you do not want to do anything about it, it is not there, it’s gone.
How do you understand this? I have for all practical purposes made a statement: “What you are looking at is not different from the one who is looking.” What do you do with a statement like this? What instrument do you have at your disposal for understanding a meaningless, illogical, irrational statement? You begin to think. Through thinking, you cannot understand a thing. You are translating what I am saying, in terms of the knowledge you already have, just as you translate everything else, because you want to get something out of it. When you stop doing that, what is there is what I am describing. The absence of what you are doing — trying to understand, or trying to change yourself — is the state of being that I am describing.”
Who are you?
Jul 19th
“The thinker, the non-existent thinker, comes into being only when you use your
thought to achieve your goals. It doesn’t matter what the goal is, or whether
it is material or spiritual. When once you use thoughts to achieve a goal, we
create a non-existent thinker. But actually there is no thinker. There is
nobody who is talking now. There is only `talking’, there is only `seeing’,
there is only `listening’. But the moment you translate that listening,
interpret it in terms of the framework of your reference point, you have
created a problem. Its [thought’s] interest is to interpret and translate. It
helps only to strengthen and fortify the very thing which you are trying to
free yourself from.”
U.G. “No Way Out”
The above is a very clear statement on the subject of non-duality. For those who cannot relate at all to this
and think somehow that there may be some “truth” – whatever that is, to It, you might want to try “No Boundary” by Ken
Wilber
Jean Klein
Aug 2nd
Jean Klein is a key figure, a galaxy, in my past. I have written a chronicle; reflections on my experience around my relationship with him. See below.