Magic Carpet

' Try being nobody. Let go of the branches.' Francis Lucille

On the wings of a dove

"There's no doing to it at all". Stuart Schwartz

Rudra in the Vale of Aherlow

Rudra spent three inspiring days in the Vale of Aherlow with Stuart Schwartz. The edge of the seat was inhabited at times as well as the deep comfort of the sofa and the hard support of the wooden floor. The Vale became the Veil and back again. When asked what 'did it all add up' to Rudra only pitched his head from side to side in a quizzical fashion. It only adds up when the discursive mind wants to solidify the past. Then concepts become set in aspic and the living thread is not seen. But you can take it from a bystander that the living thread was blazing in silence.

Following the mouintain stream

Staying on the path through the jungle neccesitates scratches and scrapes as well as the discovery of surprise clearings. As Stuart Schwartz says "Suffering, used well. is a gift"

Anatta

"God is when you are not". Meister Eckhardt
"What you are looking for is that which is looking". St Francis

Badminton and evensong

Rudra’s approach to religion is the same as that to sports. If you enjoy a good game of badminton fire ahead and play. When you play badminton you don’t look for the meaning of life or enlightenment in it. Religious practice without those demands might be enjoyable too.

Donagh Bird Flies

Rudra attended the wake of Donagh Maguire at his home in Cork yesterday. The brave Donagh had left this cheepy fellow, pickled in grappa, for him. It reminded Rudra of one of his last meetings with Donagh, Jacinta and himself as they laughed like drains at this site. Donagh had promised to contribute and these enigmatic fruits are here to behold.

The place of Donagh's mahasamadhi was both joyful, tearful and above all permeated with the perfume of deep peace. One of his last poems, an ode to the cancer that he endured, was read out and was striking in its honesty, wit and awareness of all the levels that the disease could be interpreted on. Here passed a man of great understanding and fulfilment. His beautiful wife Jacinta was the embodiment of love as were their children and the close knit family around.

Words can only sully the preciousness of those moments, filled as they were with the human contents of a life well lived. The undercurrent that is prescence became palpable in that room. Light and love danced hand in hand reminding Rudra of the book title 'Emptiness Dancing'.

DEATH

Death is not Protestant, Catholic, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu or Buddhist, although often hijacked by these. Neither can it be explained by theories or philosophies. It belongs to none of these. If anything Death belongs to life. It cannot be solved by the mind. This is its beauty and its enigma. Only silence can express the 'Power That Knows the Way' and this statement is of course a concept too.

The fake self that wants to stake a claim for itself in ever more subtle ways would love the consolation and boost of a solution. Of course the real relief comes when the person is found out to be a fabrication and the river flows unimpeded.

Over the rainbow?

Here we are; picking assiduously over the entrails of our lives with such intent and such serious expectation, hoping to amend and fix the details so everything will work out perfectly. This effort is the very antithesis of freedom. Freedom is pre-existent and all these forays are excursions away from it. We can’t work out our lives but life can work through our lives.

Jettison the false.

Less ballast more lift. No ballast no limit

Less cargo more buoyancy. No cargo no problems.

Dreams and boats

Dream therapists tell us that every character in a dream is an aspect of ourselves. Rudra considers that the same could be true of the waking dream.

The Self , upstream of the self, plays every part in the play.

The cargo boat must unload so as to skim the ocean waves. The self is seen as a phantom antagonist wrestling with the master of the boat. It was just a trick of the light. So it is 'up with the paws' and relax from the best seats in the house.

Forged Papers

Rudra is not who he thinks he is.
You are not who you might think you are.

The future is now

To write something and leave it behind us,
It is but a dream.
When we awake we know
There is not even anyone to read it.

Ikkyu 1394-1481

The Crunch

Being a person is so tiring and sometimes painful; so much effort required. (Those that sit on a red hot stove arise promptly).

Just being is effortless and demands no one to do it.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Freedom Freedom

You can't think your way to freedom. It is already there before you think.

Teatime for lambs

The founding premise of Western, and increasingly global, civilization is the cult of the individual; the encouragement from an early age to manufacture a distinct identity which can be referred to as the ‘unique me’. The paradox lies in the fact that each of us is already unique and needs not a scrap of effort to make it so. This is analogous to continuing to pour the tea when the cup is full.

Vacancy

O What a happy house!

Innate Intelligence

Who you are, knows.

What you think, doesn't.

The Big Bang

Meanwhile, Professor Carroll urged cosmologists to broaden their horizons: "We're trained to say there was no time before the Big Bang, when we should say that we don't know whether there was anything - or if there was, what it was."

Too simple

As long as there is someone to do it, there is something to be done.
When there is no one to do it, something gets done.

Sanctuary

'As soon as you become an empty room, you are a sanctuary.'

Francis Lucille

Effortless

'It is truth that frees, not your effort to be free.'

J Krishnamurti

Rudra knows nothing

Rudra knows nothing of liberation or enlightenment. If anything he stands in their light.
He never did or ever can 'achieve' such a so-called state. The best he can do , as long as there is no purpose to it, is to pack his bags.

Look no hands!

There is no comfort to be found for the individual, as the individual gets in the light of expansiveness. There is nothing you can ever get about liberation because it entails the death of you. It is subtraction rather than addition.

There are no degress of emptiness.

The nature of mind is to acquire, to have and to hold. How dear it is to us to accumulate or 'own' understanding. The egocentric nature finds identity in its armory of knowledge.

No one can do it for you.

The last words of Gautama Buddha, as fresh now as when they were uttered 2,555 years ago:

"Behold, O monks, this is my last advice to you. All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation."

Trading Places

Would I trade my adherence to my story, the story of my life so far with its preferences, opinions and experiences, for Serenity (for want of a better word)? That seems to Rudra to be the burning question. Equally, can I drop my belief in other's stories too. By adherence and belief I mean the deadly serious identification we have with our histories. In extremes we actually kill each other over these identifications.

You might say 'what is left?' There is no answer to that question as it cannot be answered on the level of thought. Scrabbling for words one can come up with transparency, hollowness and the attendant freedom these bring but words stop there.

All is not lost, surprisingly, because the stories remain. My history is as it was; my preferences and tendencies remain too, not mention the emotions.

A subtle shift away from the seriousness of 'me' leads to clarity and immense compassion. To see this in action is a wonder indeed.

Feather the nest?

"....to be secure is to be insensitive. The desire to be secure creates fear.." Jiddhu Krishnamurti

The oasis within has no colour shape or fixture , it is so small that it fits into all space, includes all scenarios. Transparent and hollow it is very wonderful. Like quicksilver it cannot be grasped

The poor concocted self

That familiar creature, ever wriggling, wastes(?) so much time looking for strategies to achieve the 'shining peace' that lies beneath its nose. It fights and blames itself (and herein lies the mistaken identity), ever convinced that the next moment will bring something this one lacks. In fact dis-ease so well defines the state. Those old rascals (Ramana Maharshi and Zen master Bankei) undermine this turbulence well in a few well-aimed words:

"Be as you are".
"Abide in the Unborn".

If elephants could fly

It struck Rudra from an early age that if Buddha, Jesus and the myriad of 'enlightened beings' were able to achieve that understanding why not him and all his friends down the gym. The extraordinary notion that there are these exceptional beings , who forever live on pedestals*, is a powerful barrier to ever 'finding ' Liberation. In fact it becomes an excuse. On this subject one need only refer to Farid Ud-Din Attar's 12th century classic book of excuses 'The Conference of the Birds'.

You; right here right now.

Of course, to be more accurate, 'not you'.

* We call them the Pedestal Boys

King for a day

Self improvement; what a notion. The Self needs no improvement.

Self discovery; what a notion. It was never lost.

Donkeys?

Me, us, them: the poison of mankind.

The One (one stone)

"...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."

Albert Einstein

Ever Present

What put it together will take it apart.

In a state of flush

"Everything will change of it's own accord. Nothing is constant, everything is in a state of flux"

Judith Glover. (In a zen garden)

There is a secret in the universe.
There are no problems!

Sampava

Oh Jean

"The idea of being the doer of your actions is the one and only pitfall preventing you from really living". Jean Klein

Hot Air

Jean Klein once said: " the mind is a cage, but there is no prisoner inside"

Identitkit

Know who you are not.

Q.E.D

"When you've lost all fear for existence, love automatically takes over". Robert Adams

A Challenge

"Your challenge is to be the sanity in a mad world". Eckhart Tolle

Nothing past your nose

Do nothing past your nose. Your body is going to do whatever it has to do, but you are not your body. Robert Adams

Beyond Simple

"The mind doesn't like anything too simple". Ramesh Balsekar

Belief divides.

I am a Buddhist, a yellow hat Tibetan Buddhist actually. Interesting, I am a Zen Buddhist so we will have to agree to differ so take that, that and that (the sound of one hand clapping). Now do you see the Truth? I am a Christian, a Protestant actually, and we believe in the same risen Christ as you Catholics but we don't go in for Marian worship and all that idolatary. We consider The Bible to be the word of God. But we are ecumenical. I am a Muslim, Allah is Great and Mohammed is His one true prophet. That's interesting, I am an aetheist and I think your ideas are an aberration and a disgrace to common sense and sanity. Ans so on.....

The most dangerous idea in the above absurdities is the idea 'I am a ....' The identification with body, personality, occupation, belief, religion, country and ethnic group, apart from being an ultimately false one, leads to the most extraordinary amount of mental and physical conflict.

When you take your last breath which of these identifications will be of any use? Could you close your eyes and take your last breath now and see what you need in that moment? More to the point who is it who is doing the breathing? Who is it who crashes the breakers against the rocks and claps the thunder. Who circulates 'your' blood'. Who waters 'your' eyes?

Holy Communion

When awake, that is when not living in thought, every breath is Holy Communion.

When living in thought every breath is Holy Communion but not experienced as such.

The idea the I can connect to a Higher Power through some conscious effort or practice suggests that the two are seperate. Yet that sense of seperation is what causes the desire to be other than what I am*. If there is any practice it might be more in the line of seeing what is false; subtraction rather than addition.

When free of any yearning to be 'other' any practice might happen all the same; it can equally well be attendance at Mass, Mosque or brothel. What is appropriate will happen.

* 'What I am is' the portal to the understanding of unity. Am I really Laura Fuga, Agostini Bianchetti, L.Zafalon or Roberto Zafalon?

The Great Game

The great game is watching from moment to moment as people, places, thoughts, emotions and physical sensations pass through. Taking heed of all and letting all pass without signing the delivery chit and adding to the load of identity. Sometimes these entities are adhesive and stay awhile sometimes they pass like greased lightning but always allowing the feeling of aliveness to quietly glow. The current ploy is to allow all, including the stickiness and so-called negative qualities. The portal is open.

So little to do and yet the discoursive mind is so fond of searching. As Sailor Bob often says "It can't be solved by the mind". Or as Einstein pointed out 'a problem can't be solved on the same level it was created on '.

The Wandering Mind

Rudra asked his friend Alex "where does your mind go when it wanders?". Quick as a flash Alex-san replied "to places where it shouldn't."

A hint of a tint

There's a hint of blue in the grey sky today. Rudra says 'there's a hint of the unmanifest in the tint of the manifest'.

The Great Diogenes

"Why is it, Diogenes, that pupils leave you to go to other teachers, but rarely do they leave them to come to you?"

"Because," replied Diogenes, "one can make eunuchs out of men, but no one can make a man out of eunuchs".

A passenger above his station

The ever discoursive mind wants to take the pilot's seat, or more subtly the chief steward. He is even happy to be the air traffic controller. Whatever his role he wants to be involved, not least a commentator. Let's face it he is definately on the trip but what a blessed relief it is to allow him to be a humble passenger. What a relief it is to see that he has nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the flight.

Self Discovery My Foot

Rudra has burnt all his self discovery books and prefers to sit down to a feed of crisps and ginger ale. He finds nourishment in the most unlikely places. Long ago, almost his first step in fact, he threw out all belief, philosophy and ideas of spirit. A wicked leer spreads across his face when Masters and Gurus are mentioned. I wouldn't want to be one of those old frauds when he is around.