The Ripple Effect

Thoughts of the individual, its welfare, opinion and continuance hover like a low mist. The internal dialectic is persistent. Above the fields of the Pure Land is a vast blanket of vebiage and concepts, entangled and warring.

The beginning of freedom is the understanding of the nature of these thoughts. Vigilance and a hawk eye, coupled with sincerity and a burning passion for liberation are the catalysts for release. Yet the subtlety of thought co-opts all attempts and methods. It wishes to own any insight and progress made.

The breaks in identification reveal that the mist is in fact illusory. Understanding transmutes into Heart.

Rudra listened to a Tibetan teacher outlining the neccessity of altruism and the attention to the mechanics of Karma. Beside him a drip from the roof fell into a standing pool of water. The ripples, outgoing, spoke of a sublime beauty and simplicity far beyond the need for explanation. How simple life is then and how simple the complications are too.

When your eye is single.

When there is someone at home to receive the post it is inevitable that there will be good and bad news.

The Bottom Line

Life is simple. Who we take ourselves to be is not.

Phantasms

Peek behind the curtain. You may be atonished to see a busy laboratory. the technicians are evaluating new products which affect the brain and the organism. The research and development unit are evaluating the likes and dislikes of the client and working on strategies to keep the client satisfied. The task is open-ended. The work runs on a 24 hour schedule 365 days a year.

The cost of this is painfully exorbitant and takes its toll on the company owner, both physically and mentally.

Only in moments of Stillness is it seen that this whole scenario does not exist at all.

So much toil for nothing.

Through a glass darkly

Rudra and Roushka continue their adventures. They sat with Satyananda at The Sanctuary in Smithfield, Dublin which is a beautiful retreat centre in the heart of Dublin. Set up by Sister Stanislaus it comprises a small zen garden with shrubs, fountain and a circular sun garden. Indoors is a satsang hall, library and dining area along with offices etc.

Satyananda fielded and invited questions on all topics from the technical queries on the mechanics of self-realisation* to urgent personal conundrums. Needless to say the atmosphere was deep and the satsang revealing.

*Rudra doesn't understand this phrase. He is a simple fellow and most of the time is spent looking for his glasses even though he has a strong intuition that they are not really his at all. In fact he is doubtful if he even has a role in life. Something tells him that Life is the role.

Hands Up

The Kingdom of Heaven is not only in your hands, it is your hands. Josh Baran

Emptifull

Rudra and his twin Roushka spent 4 days at Aherlow Castle. Roushka is still misssing believed lost in the big oak wood. There are scratching sounds as if behind glass walls. At times he appears, bespactled and learned as if to show off his knowledge of the world and its ways. Truth be told he is a very convincing expert and wears the cloak of an engaged and engaging listener. However there is an insubstantial air to him that cannot be ignored.

Rudra remains bemused and absorbed with whatever plate is served up. He feels as light as the wind and describes his state as being similar to an excavated field.

All praise and salutations ring out to the compassionate teacher Stuart Schwartz. All praise and salutations ring out to the fellow students and the magnaminious hosts. The echoes and the perfume of that time appear in most unexpected places.

Blessed

"Blessed is the pathless path and the walk-less walker" Hans Laurentius

Residents Lounge?

Owner Occupier

Totally convinced of his ownership and 100 per cent identified with the property. He is convinced that his  house is to be maintained and defended against allcomers. He has the deeds and is aware of his rights. He will take up arms if needs be to repel outside threats (anagram of 'the rats') 

Tenant

Is aware that this is not his house but must act as if it is to be a good tenant. Will keep the space orderly and in good condition whilst relying on the owner to undertake major repairs. Is aware of his proprietary rights and tenancy obligations. Will defend the establishment up to a point but not as resolutely as the owner.

Squatter

Has arrived here by cunning and judicious observation. He does not recognise the owner's rights but lives evasively and often in fear. If challenged he may put up a fight but is more inclined to take to his heels.

Ghost

He is a peripatetic resident only revealing himself occasionally and seemingly at random. He obeys his own agenda and has no truck with rights and ownership. Being substantially invisible he has no business with  the world (in fact he does not subscribe to its existence). Yet he is here because there is a lingering longlost attraction to what was his world and is drawn back in some atavistic manner, much as a salmon is drawn to its place of birth.

The Space

Has no attributes, is utterly accomodating and belongs to no one. Is always there but is rarely even noticed. Without him the property would be unworkable. He has no colour, creed or philosophy. He has no ideals, opinions or boundaries. He doesn't do love or hate, yet due to his continuous generosity he can only be love.

The Challenge

Rudra was travelling behind enemy lines when challenged by a sentry with the textbook question "who goes there?'.

Unable to reply he was shot like a dog.

No Stance

Assuming a perch implies its maintainance and defence. 

Resistance

“There’s no better velcro for identification than opposition,” Pamela Wilson

Certainty, the smart bomb.

It's not what we don't know that hurts us, it's what we know for certain that just ain't so.

Mark Twain

The Divan Of Abandonment

Come sit without expectation
Without effort
Without agenda
Without judgement
Without prescription

Without method
Without goal

Outside the walls of your citadel
In the domain of utter emptiness

Lies Presence

Come bask
Where being, having no choice,

Talks the language Of being.

Unhappy? Moi?

"Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and everything you do, is for your self-and there isn't one". Wei Wu Wei

Santa Sailor

Is he fuelled by alchohol, drugs, hope or religion? Is he fuelled by sex, aesthetics, philosophy or family ties.

He is out of the loop and walking on air when fuelled by no thing.

Walking on air

It's wiser to see that everything is alright than to try to make everything alright..

The merits of astonishment

I doubt if compassion can be learned or 'practised'. True compassion springs out like a lion from a bush.

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.