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There is no higher vibrational frequency than what we are actually living. It is we who degrade the glorious frequencies of Presence through obsessive promulgation of what Buddha called "the three poisons", greed, hate and ignorance. Sanatana Dharma expresses the same notion thus, "Daily we dismember Brahman." The amazing thing is that the Awareness that every single one of us absolutely depends upon in order to experience anything at all, appears to be completely unaffected by our greed, hatred and ignorance. Even more amazing, this Awareness seems to render no judgements whatsoever either for or against what we are doing to ourselves. If I didn't know better, I'd swear we were making all this suffering shit up in misguided agonies of conceptual dream craft. Actually, I don't know better, but I do intuit that on the day when we finally recognize the Awareness that is the source of our downstream conscious lives, it will be tacitly obvious that this Awareness, like Silence, makes all things possible by being nothing at all Itself. Maybe that's how absolute love works. It gives its gifts so completely that the giver disappears. There is only the giving. The heart overflows with gratitude, but who to thank?
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“The ultimate cause of atheism", Newton asserted, is ‘this notion of bodies having, as it were, a complete, absolute and independent reality in themselves.’” -- Richard Westfall, Newton's biographer.
The revelation that quanta in current physics are more accurately to be viewed as bits of information than as bits of complete, absolute and independent 'matter' has changed all that, but not yet for atheists who still cling to the physics of three hundred years ago. See: http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf
Meanwhile, from the archives of memoria...
Ego is a muppet that thinks it is somehow going to survive death without even being aware of what (or Who) animates it in this life. God? Cosmic Intelligence? How would the ego know? But there is this 'thing' Buddhism calls Big Mind, which becomes tacitly obvious in a variety of meditative states. Big Mind transcends Ego by immeasurably vast orders of magnitude, a fact that Ego pretends to understand but refuses to accept as though its life depended on not noticing its utterly dependent, contingent status.
Ego cannot carry a consistent thought from the sofa to the corner store. How on earth does it expect to survive the far more profound transformation we call the death experience?
Descartes's 'I think therefor I am' is a grotesque inversion. Thinking, as we regularly employ it, is a tiny, superficial function. It holds up a candle and brags about illuminating the sun.
Physicist, David Bohm, commented that, in relation to direct insight and awakened perception, ordinary thinking 'is of no more interest than a rock rolling down a hill or a crystal growing by accretion.'
Okay. Gotta stop. The muppet wants to watch basketball.
Meanwhile, in the vale of clear light...
"There is one single essential point that encompasses view, meditation, conduct and fruition —one phrase I have now mentioned quite a few times: ‘undivided empty cognizance suffused with knowing’. This is of sole importance. This undivided empty cognizance is our basic nature, which is exactly the same whether we are a Buddha or a sentient being."
-- Tulku Urgyen
Colin Yardley: This teaching represents a kind of end point for a process that began for me many years ago. I started to notice that the less effort and energy I put into trying to make an impression on anyone, the better the communication that subsequently occurred. This happened so often and with such uncanny accuracy that I began to suspect there was something far wiser than "I" behind it, which seems to be an aspect of what Urgyen is pointing out.
The revelation that quanta in current physics are more accurately to be viewed as bits of information than as bits of complete, absolute and independent 'matter' has changed all that, but not yet for atheists who still cling to the physics of three hundred years ago. See: http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf
Meanwhile, from the archives of memoria...
Ego is a muppet that thinks it is somehow going to survive death without even being aware of what (or Who) animates it in this life. God? Cosmic Intelligence? How would the ego know? But there is this 'thing' Buddhism calls Big Mind, which becomes tacitly obvious in a variety of meditative states. Big Mind transcends Ego by immeasurably vast orders of magnitude, a fact that Ego pretends to understand but refuses to accept as though its life depended on not noticing its utterly dependent, contingent status.
Ego cannot carry a consistent thought from the sofa to the corner store. How on earth does it expect to survive the far more profound transformation we call the death experience?
Descartes's 'I think therefor I am' is a grotesque inversion. Thinking, as we regularly employ it, is a tiny, superficial function. It holds up a candle and brags about illuminating the sun.
Physicist, David Bohm, commented that, in relation to direct insight and awakened perception, ordinary thinking 'is of no more interest than a rock rolling down a hill or a crystal growing by accretion.'
Okay. Gotta stop. The muppet wants to watch basketball.
Meanwhile, in the vale of clear light...
"There is one single essential point that encompasses view, meditation, conduct and fruition —one phrase I have now mentioned quite a few times: ‘undivided empty cognizance suffused with knowing’. This is of sole importance. This undivided empty cognizance is our basic nature, which is exactly the same whether we are a Buddha or a sentient being."
-- Tulku Urgyen
Colin Yardley: This teaching represents a kind of end point for a process that began for me many years ago. I started to notice that the less effort and energy I put into trying to make an impression on anyone, the better the communication that subsequently occurred. This happened so often and with such uncanny accuracy that I began to suspect there was something far wiser than "I" behind it, which seems to be an aspect of what Urgyen is pointing out.
The no longer new Emperor's Clothes
Dressing up in costumes that signal AUTHORITY and flashing a grandiose title is one of the ego's oldest tricks for making a big splash in the frog pond of space-time. It's one of the oldest tricks because it works to fool most of the people most of the time. We put so much emphasis on authority external to ourselves that we constantly mistake the Emperor's New Clothes for intelligence, moral rectitude and the 'right stuff.' Sometimes the medal bedecked suit is filled with a bonafide leader. Most times it's a crap shoot.
Question authority. Question it daily. Far more often than not, authority is but cunning and power mongering masquerading as wisdom and state craft . Shine inquiring light on it. The shadow cast by sham authority is far deeper than its substance.
"In all civilized as well as barbarous countries, a few rich and intelligent men have built up nobility systems by which, under some name and by some contrivance, a few are enabled to live upon the labor of the many. These ruling classes have had many names -- kings, lords, priests, fund holders, bankers -- but all are founded on deception, and maintained by power."
-- Amos Kendall (1833)
The same applies in spiritual matters as well. Titles like Avatar, Guru, High Priest, Swami, Buddha, Rinpoche and Master are all fine and there are genuine examples of same, but guess what? The Awakened One could be the guy sitting next to you in a bar. Heck, she could be you! Once, the head of a large religious order in India visited the sage, Nisargadatta Maharaj. He opened with a lengthy statement that was generally about how auspicious an occasion it was for two such spiritual giants as themselves to meet and confer. When he was finished, Nisargadatta's first question to the man was, "Does it make you feel special to wear those orange robes?"
Question authority. Question it daily. Far more often than not, authority is but cunning and power mongering masquerading as wisdom and state craft . Shine inquiring light on it. The shadow cast by sham authority is far deeper than its substance.
"In all civilized as well as barbarous countries, a few rich and intelligent men have built up nobility systems by which, under some name and by some contrivance, a few are enabled to live upon the labor of the many. These ruling classes have had many names -- kings, lords, priests, fund holders, bankers -- but all are founded on deception, and maintained by power."
-- Amos Kendall (1833)
The same applies in spiritual matters as well. Titles like Avatar, Guru, High Priest, Swami, Buddha, Rinpoche and Master are all fine and there are genuine examples of same, but guess what? The Awakened One could be the guy sitting next to you in a bar. Heck, she could be you! Once, the head of a large religious order in India visited the sage, Nisargadatta Maharaj. He opened with a lengthy statement that was generally about how auspicious an occasion it was for two such spiritual giants as themselves to meet and confer. When he was finished, Nisargadatta's first question to the man was, "Does it make you feel special to wear those orange robes?"
Interesting observation... as soon as I identify with my anger, I cannot observe it. Author Jack Schwarz, founder of the Alethea Foundation, once wrote, "Anything you identify with will eventually dominate you."
Panting After Gruel
The human mind is innately greedy. However, viewed from a wide, sane perspective, that greed is both understandable and forgivable. We didn't knowingly create our body-minds the way they are. Not even gleeful New Age solipsists who insist that we create our own reality could claim that we consciously designed this world polluting jihad carnage fest. If we're honest, we have to admit we mostly don't have a clue as to how or why we've turned out the way we have. The mind that characterizes interactive me in an interactive world is the result of a whole lot of interaction that hardly ever asked my permission with respect to any of it.
Furthermore, we are biologically hard wired to be selfish and greedy. We come equipped with mouths that need feeding ALL THE TIME. Good luck being generous and altruistic when you've got that to deal with every freaking day. Our smart phone fixated minds are the product of vast evolutionary eons of be bold or be breakfast survival adaptation. Success at directing food into one's alimentary canal on a daily basis has been the daily basis of everything, like daily forever. Dear God, if you didn't want us to be selfish, me-first pricks, why on earth did you assemble us as nourishment dependent food tubes?
It's not easy to dwell on these raw aspects of how we are wrought, and since there doesn't seem to be any Divine apology forthcoming for creating us as voracious self-centered worms, it would seem the very least we can do is to cut each other some slack. Let's be a little more forgiving around this horrendous bugbear of our biological imperatives driving us to colonialism and genocide in order to ensure a vice grip on oil-slash-food-slash-rare earth metals supplies.
On the other hand, have you checked the world's population figures lately? The innate greed that once served us is becoming extremely counter-productive. That greed has painted itself into a little corner called the one percent, far too tiny a percentage to be biologically viable unless hefty portions of the other 99% die off. Hey, that's the plan say New World Order conspiracy theorists: the gaping maw of Ouroburos about to take another devastating chomp on his own tail.
Forgive me, dear gentle reader if all this seems to paint too grim a picture of the human condition, but what chance do we have to do anything about the massive, unconscionable suffering we generate daily in this world unless we first own up to it? I recall years ago someone telling a friend about a swami in India who could materialize ash and flowers out of thin air. My friend said, "That's great. How good is he at materializing food for hungry people?"
Furthermore, we are biologically hard wired to be selfish and greedy. We come equipped with mouths that need feeding ALL THE TIME. Good luck being generous and altruistic when you've got that to deal with every freaking day. Our smart phone fixated minds are the product of vast evolutionary eons of be bold or be breakfast survival adaptation. Success at directing food into one's alimentary canal on a daily basis has been the daily basis of everything, like daily forever. Dear God, if you didn't want us to be selfish, me-first pricks, why on earth did you assemble us as nourishment dependent food tubes?
It's not easy to dwell on these raw aspects of how we are wrought, and since there doesn't seem to be any Divine apology forthcoming for creating us as voracious self-centered worms, it would seem the very least we can do is to cut each other some slack. Let's be a little more forgiving around this horrendous bugbear of our biological imperatives driving us to colonialism and genocide in order to ensure a vice grip on oil-slash-food-slash-rare earth metals supplies.
On the other hand, have you checked the world's population figures lately? The innate greed that once served us is becoming extremely counter-productive. That greed has painted itself into a little corner called the one percent, far too tiny a percentage to be biologically viable unless hefty portions of the other 99% die off. Hey, that's the plan say New World Order conspiracy theorists: the gaping maw of Ouroburos about to take another devastating chomp on his own tail.
Forgive me, dear gentle reader if all this seems to paint too grim a picture of the human condition, but what chance do we have to do anything about the massive, unconscionable suffering we generate daily in this world unless we first own up to it? I recall years ago someone telling a friend about a swami in India who could materialize ash and flowers out of thin air. My friend said, "That's great. How good is he at materializing food for hungry people?"
The Meyers-Briggs-Maharaj Impersonality Indicator
Agree or disagree with each of the following statements based on instantaneous gut feeling alone. No marks will be given, no bell curve power pointed on the wall.
* A famous guru regularly molests his female devotees. There is no blame since it is only his body-mind chasing women, not him.
* That which does not kill us increases our insurance premiums.
* Keep your friends close to you, your enemies closer and your debt collectors chasing your alias.
* Do good unto those who misuse you. They'll relax their guard, then you can make your move.
* The same God who created billions of large carnivorous animals ripping each other apart with tooth and claw for hundreds of millions of years will send you to Hell for stealing a loaf of bread.
*To an optimist, the glass is half full; to a pessimist, it is half empty; to a physicist, Zeno's paradox makes determination of the exact halfway point disappear into Buddhist emptiness.
*It feels better not to know than to be burdened with passing judgment on everything.
*If we weren't so totally infatuated with the roller coaster dramas of lust, greed and power, this entire Matrix would vanish into light in a second.
* Consciousness cannot be separate from its objects for it has no other means of interpreting itself to itself but via these self same objects.
Who is this guy?
The Cray Super Computers in a basement in Langley, Virginia, keep turning up this man's POV as a possible remedy for the mountain of fear that comes of knowing.
Hello Ignorance My Old Friend
The way through the world is more difficult than the way beyond it.
-- Wallace Stevens
Like many of us who've lived in this world long enough to get a feel for what connects one day to another, I am impressed by the huge, nay, the towering role ignorance plays in our lives. I would go so far as to suggest that without ignorance, life as we know it would be impossible.
Check out a few basics. If we weren't ignorant, we would live in total congruence with what we knew to be best for ourselves and others. We wouldn't be conflicted in any way about doing so because we would be therapeutically aware of everything that contradicted, inhibited or undermined living to our highest and healthiest potential. We'd eat healthy, organic, mostly raw food suited to our million year long DNA bio-adaptation. We'd exercise regularly and amplify conductivity of the life force through Yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong and the like. We'd practice genuine altruism, mutual support, reverence for all life and would generally raise the global human vibe to such sublime, compassionate heights that death itself would start feeling like a scumbag for intruding.
But most of us don't live that way at all. Worse, it seems most of us have no interest in living that way.
You've got to hand it to ignorance, though. Without it, our world would exhibit but a small fraction of the chaotic misery it presently perpetuates: bigotry, fundamentalism, racism, sociopathy, homophobia, prescription drugs with horrid side effects, GMO foods, addictions, compulsions, delusions, pimpery, human slave trades, the monetary system, elite controlled 'democratic' processes, dictatorships, arms dealers, torture centers, drones that take out innocent children, dying bees, commercial television -- what an embarrassment of riches. And we owe them all to ignorance in one form or another. Okay, greed, hatred and envy play roles, too, but ignorance appears to be the hidden-in-plain-sight king pin of our suffering.
Can you even imagine a Hollywood film industry without stories based on characters riddled with the forms of ignorance listed in the previous paragraph -- a list that doth but scratch the surface of our unreachable itch?
I don't think we have a snow ball's chance in hell of growing up until we have outgrown our desires to experience whatever the hell we want regardless of the consequences. I mean, take a look. That's precisely what we're doing every day, anyway, flogging the desire donkey until the planet itself starts to frack beneath our feet.
-- Wallace Stevens
Like many of us who've lived in this world long enough to get a feel for what connects one day to another, I am impressed by the huge, nay, the towering role ignorance plays in our lives. I would go so far as to suggest that without ignorance, life as we know it would be impossible.
Check out a few basics. If we weren't ignorant, we would live in total congruence with what we knew to be best for ourselves and others. We wouldn't be conflicted in any way about doing so because we would be therapeutically aware of everything that contradicted, inhibited or undermined living to our highest and healthiest potential. We'd eat healthy, organic, mostly raw food suited to our million year long DNA bio-adaptation. We'd exercise regularly and amplify conductivity of the life force through Yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong and the like. We'd practice genuine altruism, mutual support, reverence for all life and would generally raise the global human vibe to such sublime, compassionate heights that death itself would start feeling like a scumbag for intruding.
But most of us don't live that way at all. Worse, it seems most of us have no interest in living that way.
You've got to hand it to ignorance, though. Without it, our world would exhibit but a small fraction of the chaotic misery it presently perpetuates: bigotry, fundamentalism, racism, sociopathy, homophobia, prescription drugs with horrid side effects, GMO foods, addictions, compulsions, delusions, pimpery, human slave trades, the monetary system, elite controlled 'democratic' processes, dictatorships, arms dealers, torture centers, drones that take out innocent children, dying bees, commercial television -- what an embarrassment of riches. And we owe them all to ignorance in one form or another. Okay, greed, hatred and envy play roles, too, but ignorance appears to be the hidden-in-plain-sight king pin of our suffering.
Can you even imagine a Hollywood film industry without stories based on characters riddled with the forms of ignorance listed in the previous paragraph -- a list that doth but scratch the surface of our unreachable itch?
I don't think we have a snow ball's chance in hell of growing up until we have outgrown our desires to experience whatever the hell we want regardless of the consequences. I mean, take a look. That's precisely what we're doing every day, anyway, flogging the desire donkey until the planet itself starts to frack beneath our feet.
Three additional vectors on the ignorance issue...
Do what you will, this world's a fiction and is made up of contradiction.
-- William Blake.
However great and complete is your world, it is self-contradictory and transitory and altogether illusory.
-- Nisargadatta Maharaj
The exquisite truth is to know that what you believe in is a fiction and
to believe in it willingly.
-- Wallace Stevens
We Are The Hurdle
Commentators on the Pali Canon focus attention on what they view as the principal aim of the Buddha's teachings -- to end suffering. They point out that when asked about life after death or other worlds, heavenly, hellish or otherwise, the Buddha's customary response was silence.
Yet, it's interesting that in the works of other revered Buddhist teachers -- Vimalakiirti comes to mind, mention is made of worlds, universes even, much higher and profoundly more free of suffering than ours. Imagine a universe populated by 90 million Bodhisattvas (advanced, loving, highly disciplined beings) each of whose light bodies emits an intoxicating perfume that characterizes his/her level of realization.
Here on earth, loving humans excepted, things are a tad different. As we are reminded daily by garish reality TV shows dubbed 'News', our world is rife with beings who are greedy, violent, selfish, deluded, addicted, power mad, deceitful, conniving, vindictive and hand me that Thesaurus. It just could be that, assessing our condition accurately, the Buddha had a Karl Marx kind of insight. It was Marx, among others, who noted that if a man is starving, it's pointless to talk to him about higher stuff like spirituality and philosophy. First you have to fill his belly. Maybe suffering, the whole monstrous spectrum of it that plays out here, was seen by the Buddha as our global empty stomach. Pointless even to hint about higher worlds and being states before doing something about not enough calories to make it through the day.
When the Awakened Nazarene said "Whatsoever you do unto these the least of my children, you do unto me also", he wasn't speaking figuratively, nor as an ego identified human. At the level where true higher consciousness dawns, there is one body of beingness, lit up like light itself. Those of us who are out for ourselves only are rogue cells in need of healing. Deep down, we know this. Heck, not even deep down. The suffering begins right at the contracted surface.
Yet, it's interesting that in the works of other revered Buddhist teachers -- Vimalakiirti comes to mind, mention is made of worlds, universes even, much higher and profoundly more free of suffering than ours. Imagine a universe populated by 90 million Bodhisattvas (advanced, loving, highly disciplined beings) each of whose light bodies emits an intoxicating perfume that characterizes his/her level of realization.
Here on earth, loving humans excepted, things are a tad different. As we are reminded daily by garish reality TV shows dubbed 'News', our world is rife with beings who are greedy, violent, selfish, deluded, addicted, power mad, deceitful, conniving, vindictive and hand me that Thesaurus. It just could be that, assessing our condition accurately, the Buddha had a Karl Marx kind of insight. It was Marx, among others, who noted that if a man is starving, it's pointless to talk to him about higher stuff like spirituality and philosophy. First you have to fill his belly. Maybe suffering, the whole monstrous spectrum of it that plays out here, was seen by the Buddha as our global empty stomach. Pointless even to hint about higher worlds and being states before doing something about not enough calories to make it through the day.
When the Awakened Nazarene said "Whatsoever you do unto these the least of my children, you do unto me also", he wasn't speaking figuratively, nor as an ego identified human. At the level where true higher consciousness dawns, there is one body of beingness, lit up like light itself. Those of us who are out for ourselves only are rogue cells in need of healing. Deep down, we know this. Heck, not even deep down. The suffering begins right at the contracted surface.
You are not your experiences, mystical included
Mystical experience, profoundly life changing as it can be, is not necessarily synonymous with genuine awakening. Lots of people have seen angels, aliens or George Carlin on the other side and are still mean to their pets. Countless yogis have experienced endless varieties of Kundalini experiences (kriyas, visions, out of body experiences) only to remain ego centered and hankering to be spiritual somebodies. Many Christians are born again without having died in the first place. Others stake hopes of liberation on: the recently anti-climactic Mayan 2012 Prophecy; the coming 'Energy Shift', contact with alien super intelligences, cosmic Ascended Masters, 'Greys' from another galaxy, channeled messages from higher planes, Shamanic Soul Travel, a ludicrous deity who demands that you behead infidels, on and on.
It's not that there's anything wrong with such practices (well, except the last one). Shamanic pursuits, for example, are far preferable to an unexamined life spent chasing fashion, fortune and fornication. It's just that, once you've visited enough tents on the spiritual circuit, sizing up the teachings, the practices and the people engaged in them, it becomes clear that the ratio of perennial seekers to realized adepts is disappointingly low. Almost no one ever demonstrates any kind of convincing awakened disposition. Man, are we chanting up the wrong tree.
Worse, it doesn't take long to notice that there's something tacky about any spiritual trip that seeks to convince people that the Big Enchilada of Enlightenment can be found only through a mystical orientation that takes one out of the Present Moment into some magical new 'vibrational level', 'ascendant rapture' or 'paradigm shift' which, despite all currently coined New Age metaphors, sound about as interesting as playing a harp forever on a cotton candy cloud.
I humbly propose there's a good reason for the aura of tackiness that taints the lavender luster, the astral glamor, of these teachings. It has to do with what is going on right now. Direct experience is a miracle that mystical belief systems turn into mind mediated mediocrity. This miracle is so ordinary that we overlook it. We become bored, disenchanted or obsessed with getting somewhere better in our state of conceptual dissociation from the NOW and start making shit up.
All this said, yes, of course, there are mystical experiences that are real. But, it's like the Christian said to the Zen Monk, "You don't have the truth. If you do, let's see you turn water into wine or walk on water." And the monk replied, "My miracle is that when I'm hungry I eat and when I'm tired I go to bed."
Corruption - it kind of has to do with rotting
150 thousand protesting government corruption today in Brazil.
Tens of thousands protesting government manipulation in Turkey.
Corrupt ideologues holding back everything the people in Egypt fought for.
Pesticidal Monsantosaurus corruption of our environment, bees disappearing, Indian farmers committing suicide because they cannot pay Monsanto's greedy fees.
Retrograde tribalism and religious fanaticism taking all the spring out of the Arab spring.
Corrupt cancer charities that bring in millions and spend almost nothing where it matters.
Corrupt monetary structure wherein the FED (a private corporation paying its shareholders annual dividends) is allowed to print money out of thin air and loan it out at interest.
Corrupt super rich hiding vast excesses of wealth in tax exempt locations all over the globe while millions go hungry.
Corruption of old ways of thinking, taking and exploiting refusing to die.
All over the world our young people smell rotting.
They want to live.
Stray Poem
If there's no god and no devil
who's responsible for suffering?
if we're responsible all by our
quad core atheistic selves
why can't we wrest free
of war, disease and poverty
and forge even one convincing
sensible or scientific solution?
If there's no god or devil
what's in our way?
are we too distracted? violent? deluded?
stoned? corporate? tribal?
Is the truth too terrible to face --
that we have invented
both religion and corporation
financed political rhetoric
to distract ourselves from
noticing that it is we alone who create
that which terrorizes us most?
Despite our techno advances,
we're not good for ourselves
nor for this earth that shines
brighter far than anything
phony holy we conceive
in the name of crowd control.
Blinded by a science
brilliantly fixated
on the quantitative
and by beliefs that ground
salvation in imaginary friends,
we wield atom splitting insanities
and jihad Jehovahs to scare ourselves
into semblances of good behavior.
Exchange! the Wall Street bell
rings to call the faithful to
another day's natty grinned
plundering in the bowels of hell
to make sure that in our rich quest
we get our slice of ironic pie.
Colin Yardley Sept 2014
