Knowledge and Religion

Oneness is Your Natural State

Now let’s continue with Verses on The Faith Mind,by The 3rd Chinese Zen Patriarch, Sengstau.

       Live neither in the entanglements of outer things nor in inner feelings of emptiness.

        Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

Oneness is your natural state. That means that the world, people and everything you see is just you, not separate things. Now you may wonder how oneness could be your natural state. After all it seems as if we are separate beings, doesn’t it? The reason that separation seems normal is that you live with a partial view of your mind. Instead of just remaining as you are in your natural state, you assume that you are separate, and then you attempt to impersonate the thing that you naturally are anyway. If you think that this is convoluted, I agree. It is much easier to simply be what you naturally are.

You find this oneness when you find the depth of your Mind. When you notice that the thing you call me is just a small part of what you really are. This means that in reality you are the One Mind sometimes called the Buddha Mind. Discovering this, you will be in the perfect position to become fully what you are anyway. The great discovery is that nothing is capable of limiting the all encompassing Buddha Mind. When you see your mind fully, you will see for sure how you are one. In fact there is nothing other than the One Mind.

An experiment so that you can experience the meaning of these words
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Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.
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If you want to know the nature of your mind, here is an experiment that will help you to experience your mind fully. When you take this experiment though, you will see where you actually experience the world. Be ready for a surprise. The normal assumption is that I am over here and the world is over there. But is this really the case; let’s take a look and see.

Your Mind is Whole

In the first few verses we learned how to view our Mind so that we could look into its depth. But now let’s get right to the meat of these verses on the Nature of Mind.

The next two verses of Faith Mind by Senstau

The Way is perfect like vast space when nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things.  

The First Verse:
The Way is perfect like vast space when nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.

Notice that in this verse Way is capitalized. Usually way is a path; that means that you start at one place and end up somewhere else. Here however Way means that you are already there. You may wonder what kind of Way this could be, if you are already there.

This is the path that takes you to what you experience even now and just overlook. Now you may take your thoughts to be the limits of your mind. In other words, you might look right past the vast space where nothing is lacking and take your mind to be limited to a few thoughts running though your head. This is like a cat swatting at a mouse and overlooking the space that the mouse runs through. Like the cat, we see the motion of our thoughts, but miss the stillness that supports them.

When you feel suffering and attempt to adjust your thoughts, it is like substituting a gray mouse for a white one. Fundamentally, nothing changes. The only thing that happens is that you get to struggle with your thoughts. The way to make real change is to know your mind fully, for what it is. Otherwise you are always reacting to the motion of the waves and missing the vast and silent depth that supports them.

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Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.
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Is your mind really divided into subject and object?
Here is an exercise that will help you to get a fuller view of your mind. Did you know that the “you” who attempts to quiet your mind, or adjust your thinking in other ways, is just another thought? Without realizing it, you split your mind in half, the thoughts on one side and the one dealing with these thoughts, sometimes called the “I” thought on the other. But both the subject “I” and the object are just objects that you see. Neither is really you. So when you attempt to quiet your mind it is a thought attempting to quiet other thoughts. No wonder you have so much trouble with your mind!

Ramana Maharshi called this a thief dressing up as a policeman and then attempting to catch the thief. Will he ever succeed? The reason I am reaching into another tradition here is as long as you overlook this “I” thought, you will end up with a partial view of your mind. You will never get to see Mind as it really is: Perfect like vast space when nothing is lacking. Further along in these verses we will see some of the disguises that this “I” thoughts takes.

Who chooses anyway?
But for now this leads into the next verse: Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things.

When you say, “I choose,” both the subject “I” and the object “accept or reject” are really just thoughts. All of these elements are just objects that you see. Neither side is a description of what you really are.

Moreover accepting and rejecting are just opposites that arise as a product of your thinking. Neither is a real description of what you are experiencing. Of course as long as you are alive you will continue to make choices. It’s just that you will realize that the choices that you make, whether they are right or wrong, do not affect you on the deepest level.

Here you have an opportunity to find your real home
As for the essence of our mind, we can only know that it is choice-less. The whole process of choosing, including the one who apparently chooses, is just a charade going on at the surface. We know our essence of mind as the thing that supports all of our experiences, not as the choices of some thought that we mislabel “I”. Recognizing this, we will get a fuller view of what Mind really is as perfect like vast space when nothing is lacking. Another way of saying this is that our mind is whole, not a bunch of moving parts called thoughts. It is in this wholeness called the Essence of Mind that we can rest free from the ups and downs that life seems to bring us.

So for now continue to contemplate that thoughts, no matter how you divide them up: subject or object, good or bad, right or wrong etc., cannot think up your essence. You have to know your essence of mind directly. That’s because your essence of mind is more immediate and assessable than thoughts can tell. Moreover, your essence of mind is the stillness that is free from opposites. Discovering this you will then be in a perfect position to gaze into the essence of your mind. Not as a separate object but as your very essence. You will then get to see the true nature of things. More on this surprise in the next few blogs as we continue to explore Verses on Faith Mind.

Asking Question
Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants to can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

 

On the Nature of Your Mind

Occasionally I like to take the verses of various scriptures and comment on them. These comments are meant so that these scriptures can once again come alive, just like they did when then were first spoken. In this short sermon, Verses on the faith Mind, Sengcan, the third Patriarch of the Chan Buddhist sect in China, takes the Buddha Mind and shows how it is not faith.  Rather Sengcan points to the thing that you experience directly.

Chan is the forerunner of Zen.  Chan was brought to China by the first Patriarch Bodhidharma. Huike was the second patriarch and Sengcan was the third. Here is a record of a conversation that the third Patriarch had with the second:

Sengcan: My mind is riddled with pain. Please relieve me of my pain.
Huike: Bring me your mind and I will relieve it for you.
Sengcan (after a long pause): When I look for my mind, I cannot find it.
Huike: Then I have relived it.

That’s when Sengcan woke up.

Now I have a question for you: when you look for your mind, what do you find? Is there really things called thoughts that make up a mind? The reason I bring this up is because these verses only make sense if you know the nature of your mind.

What is the meaning of Mind
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Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.
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Without knowing the meaning of mind, these verses are no more than a lullaby helping you to calm your thoughts. But with a little exploration you will find that your mind is different than it’s supposed to be. In fact you will see that the purpose of these verses is to help you explore and discover the real expanse of your mind.

You will go on an adventure to a country that you didn’t even know was there. That country has various names: the Buddha Mind, The Essence of Mind, and The One Mind are just a few.  But whatever you call it, you should know that we are talking about your mind, not the mind of someone who lived hundreds of yours ago.

With that introduction, let’s get started.
Verses On the Faith Mind, by The 3rd Zen Patriarch, Sengcan.

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and unified. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.

When the deep meaning of things is not understood the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

First for the good news: The Great Way is not difficult. Nevertheless when you first read these verses you may think that the master is asking you to banish your emotions. That sounds really boring, doesn’t it? But I think you will agree that the absence of emotion is the prescription for depression, not for clarity and oneness. What he is really saying is that without preferences you get to live in the present, which is not constrained by your thoughts.

So what could he possibly mean by: When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and unified? Categories are limited; they don’t really describe what you are experiencing. But your thinking process work by opposites. After all you wouldn’t know short if you didn’t know long. You know joy by relating it to sorrow, and love as related to hate.

Our thinking does not tell what we really experience
If we fall in love with and believe that our thinking defines our experience, the world appears as a series of opposites. These opposites create a gap that can never be bridged. But little exploration in the form of an unbiased look into the nature of the Mind, will show that what your experience is much richer than your thoughts can capture.

So if you want to explore your mind and see its vast nature, the first thing you have to do is give up the labels which only describe the opposites that your thoughts know. That will allow you to get to a deeper layer of experience that you may not have realized was there.

Is the minds essential peace really disturbed?
Ok, so now what does the author mean by: When the deep meaning of things is not understood the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail? You will be glad to know that this is a misnomer. Your minds essential peace can never be disturbed by a thing on the surface called the thinking process. That would be like the depths of the ocean being disturbed by the waves crashing on the surface.

But what’s even more important to know is if you believe the labels that you think up, your mind’s essential nature will appear to be obscured and you will appear to suffer. When you notice that what you think does not describe or capture reality, which cannot be defined by opposites, you will be in a perfect position to delve into the depths of your mind. Then you will discover what this amazing thing called mind really is.

So stay tuned for the next verse from On the Faith Mind and be ready to dive deeper into your mind than you ever dreamed possible.

Asking Question
Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants to can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

On Returning to our Origin

We just got back from our trip to Philadelphia where my wife and I visited our family. In their nineties, my parents are moving towards the end of their lives. So what spiritual instructions could we give to someone of that age? Would you like to be a fly on the wall and listen to the instructions that will take them beyond birth and death? This is your opportunity. If you can catch the meaning of these words, you too will not taste death. And even in life you will live in peace.

Certainly a long and drawn out practice will not work for my parents. And, how are they going to focus on a difficult practice as if it were the razor's edge? Moreover if they depended on using their breath or taking drugs to calm their mind, the first thing they should know is when the body and lungs disappear, these techniques will no longer work. And if they think that meditation is a matter of controlling the mind and body they will also be in for a surprise. At the time of death the sense of I, as the one who controls is the first thing to drop out. That’s when they will come face to face with the things that they really take to be true.

You are the seer of thoughts; not the one caught in them
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.
_____________________________________________________________________

But my parents should also know that at the time of death, no matter how strange their thinking becomes, they are the seer of their thoughts, not the one caught in them. If they simply stand as the Consciousness that they really are, things will come to perfect balance. They will return to the harmony that was there all along and just got overlooked. It is the harmony that comes right from their self-nature. And they will not have to worry one little bit.

The only quality that they need for the meditation that transcends life and death is freedom from self judgment. After all, it is judgment that takes us out of our natural state of awareness and draws us in until we mistake a state of mind for reality. By giving up self judgment we are free to return to our natural state.

You are the one thing that remains
So here’s it what I told my parents:

Just abide in your original nature as all seeing Awareness. Everything else comes and goes. That includes the body, mother, father, doer and enjoyer, the world, any state of mind, no matter how strange it may seem, and even the thought I, which attempts to impersonate you.

Although everything disappears, the thing that makes the world seem so real remains. That’s because reality comes from you, not from the world. In relation to the world your identity, Awareness, is the witnessing Consciousness. But in reality you are the all seeing eye of God. Remain here as you always were, always are, and always shall be and you will rest in peace.

And with those parting words we boarded our flight back to California.

Asking Question
Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants to can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman