Knowledge and Religion

Where is enlightenment?

Now to continue with stanzas from Verses on The Faith Mind, by The 3rd Chinese Zen Patriarch, Sengstau:

Emptiness here, Emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes.

Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen.

The reason that it is hard to understand enlightenment is because it defies all definitions. Call it large and it’s the smallest thing imaginable. Call it fullness and it is empty of any concept. With this as an introduction you may wonder why I insist that enlightenment is easy to understand.

Your actual experience is simpler than a thought
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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 go by the thoughts in your mind, enlightenment will seem incredibly complicated. But if you go by your direct experience, enlightenment becomes immediate and very simple. It is the feeling of coming home. What makes it seem so difficult is that we overlook the thing that is closest to us and attempt to define enlightenment by things that are at a distance.

Emptiness here, Emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes.

As an example in the first verse some people consider enlightenment to be a state of emptiness. This, depending on the person, could mean no thoughts, no objects, or both. If this is your definition of enlightenment, then the appearance of an infinite universe seems like a contradiction, doesn’t it? If enlightenment means cutting this infinite and amazing universe out of your experience then you are defining enlightenment as only part of your experience. When you only consider part of your experience you are positing two states; an enlightened state without the world and an ignorant or defiled state with it.

When the world appears does enlightenment disappear?
When there are two states your enlightenment will seem to come and go, and that’s not enlightenment at all. So the purpose of this verse is to direct you away from your concepts of enlightenment, and to the thing that you actually experience. Standing as you really are, you will see things the way they really are, and that’s what enlightenment is really about. In other words you will find the thing that supports any state that you experience.

Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen.

Once again enlightenment is not a state of mind. That means that thoughts do not support enlightenment and thoughts do not take it away. Some people conceive of enlightenment as larger than the largest or smaller than the smallest. But if you define enlightenment in these terms, how will you ever get to the thing that you experience even now.

As long as you are aiming for a definition created in your mind, you will feel bound by that definition. When you let go of all definitions you will find that which was never bound. This is the freedom that you really are.

If you feel confused by these verses, just find the place where these words point. That is your real home. Standing here, read these verses again. In amazement you might think, “How could I ever have overlooked this?”

Asking Question
As always feel free to ask questions. It is only when you don’t ask that you get to live in assumed limitations. When you can ask you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering.

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

You are already qualified for Enlightenment

Do you remember that we were commenting on Verses on The Faith Mind, by The 3rd Chinese Zen Patriarch, Sengstau? Then we got distracted by lots of great questions. Now that we cleared up your questions we can get back to this great poem with these two verses:

No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth.

And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it a single thought is ten thousand years.

Enlightenment is entering into the truth of things. You find this truth by looking into the nature of your mind. Of course the when and where of enlightenment is irrelevant. If you attempt to find the truth of things in the objects that you see, you will miss the profound nature of the universe. That’s because when you examine the waking state, you are only looking at part of your experience. After all when you dream, the waking world disappears completely, and a whole new world appears. In deep sleep all of the worlds disappear. When you look deeply, you will find that these worlds play on the fabric of your mind, sometimes called Consciousness. Waking up is discovering what was going on the whole time and you just over looked it.

Although we can’t conceive this truth with the limitations of our thinking process, reminders that life is about returning to your own being, are set out before us.  For instance, the universe is so large that we cannot imagine where its boundaries could possibly lie. And as the power of our instruments increase, we find whole universes in the smallest particles. When we look at these tiny universes, we even wonder if some particles are slipping into dimensions that we can’t even conceive of. I think you can see that when you examine the universe in all of its glorious dimensions, the when and where become irrelevant.

And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it a single thought is ten thousand years.

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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.

 ___________________________________________________________________ 

With this verse it is worth mentioning that sometimes teachers conceive of enlightenment as happening in steps or stages. Usually these teachers put themselves at the highest level and you are at least four or five levels behind them.

On the other hand some people feel that they were enlightened and now they lost it. You should know that both of these are descriptions of a state of mind, not a state of being. Here in enlightenment we are all equal, as single one. There is no growing or decaying, higher or lower, motion or stillness. Those who tell you otherwise are still caught by the boundaries of their mind and stuck in conceptual frameworks.

The reality of things comes from you
In enlightenment you find that you are the stillness that time and space pass through; you are not the one caught in their grasp. When you start to dream, the time and space that you enter appears to always have been there.  To the dream characters, it seems as if the dream was always there. That’s why in your dream you can have parents, grandparents and great grandparents; hundreds of years can elapse. Then even if it seemed as if ten thousand years went by, when you wake up the whole dream disappears as if it never came into being. You look at your clock and see that only ten minutes passed by. The thing that made your dream seem so real was your mind, not the things that seemed to be there.  

Although the dream came into existence and then went away, nothing happened to your mind. Before the dream your mind was there, when the dream seemed to arise your mind was just the same. And when the dream disappears, back to the place where it comes from, your mind is still there. If you can get a sense how the mind is the reality behind the dream, you will be in a perfect position to notice what you are experiencing even now in the waking state.

Objects change, Reality doesn’t
In order to discover what happens in the waking state you have to go by what you actually experience, not by what you are supposed to experience. After all to the character in your dream, the dream world is the waking state and there is not another waking state. Then when you are in deep dreamless sleep all the worlds go away; but it doesn’t feel as if reality is missing. In other words objects go away, reality doesn’t. It is you who provides the sense of reality that the word seems to have. And when your mind changes states, it is not the world that remains, it is you that remains.  

Now wrap your mind around this if you can: you actually experience the world in your mind, not out there. The senses seem to perceive information which is transmitted through your nerves to your brain, from your brain to your mind, and you see your mind. So like in the dream, you do not perceive a world, you perceive your own mind. If you can get a sense of this, you will have discovered one of the greatest secrets in the universe and you will be well on your way to waking up.

The meaning hidden under the surface of these verses
When you begin to experience the place that this explanation points to, you will discover the meaning hidden under the surface of these verses. Enlightenment is what you are even now. Since it is here now, you can wake up at any time and place; no pre-qualifications are necessary.

Furthermore there is no coming and going in enlightenment. That’s because enlightenment is not a state of mind. It is your state of being. Once you find your true home, you remain as the stillness that motion passes through. It no longer matters if your thoughts are pure or impure, if everyone beholds you as the king of the universe, or if you are left homeless and in the streets. Even death is irrelevant. After all, you are the changeless reality that lights up the universe.

Asking Question
As always feel free to ask questions. It is only when you don’t ask that you get to live in assumed limitations. When you can ask you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering.

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

How to find real success

Occasionally I like to include a series of questions in my blog, each question clarifying the last. In our conversation we discuss what makes your life a successful one?

This is a question from Sabir:

Thank you Michael,

Your answers were really great and provided the necessary base to make the person free from all sorts of suffering.

Michael, I have circle of friends where I discuss your suggestion for knowing and meditating on your self-nature. I do believe in every single word that you have pointed out as you clearly state that these are the teachings of sages of old and you didn't discover anything new.  But my friends raise the point that if the stillness and oneness are the only thing to concentrate on then what's the point living life in this world? Since you believe that happiness comes from the place where you actually experience it and not from the opportunities that life brings you, then if you obtain oneness you wouldn't be excited by the opportunities for success that come into your life.

Likewise sorrow or grief shouldn't hurt you, but in the actual world you cannot isolate yourself from these emotions because that would be unnatural.

I tried hard but couldn't make my point clear to them. What would you say in this regard, Michael? Here I must mention that as success is the main motive of my friends they said that this wisdom meditation doesn't support success. One of my friends has attended Richard Bandler famous NLP Neuro-linguistic program in Karachi Branch and other found Paul Mckenna success programs series and they believe that they get certain benefits from those programs. I saw Paul Mckenna books and listen to CDs at my friend place; those have some impact because it based on stimulating imagination which is quiet contrary to meditations

Here was our reply to Sabir's question:
Hi Sabir,

Could ask your friends exactly how they define success? For instance Steve Jobs, since I mentioned him, died with a net worth of around 30 billion dollars U.S. My wife calculated that even if he spent a million dollars a day for eighty years he would have money left over. But he was only 56 years old when he died and was sick for the last eight years of his life. Is that success?

Bernie Madoff is another example. He made lots of money too, but he made it by deception and will spend the rest of his life in jail. Is that the way they would define success? Or Mother Teresa spent her life serving the poor. Is that success? And Kabir of whom you will read about in my newly revised book wrote poetry that is beautiful even in English. (You may be able to read Kabir in his original language.) Is that success?

If your friends have metrics I would like to know them too. For instance they may define X amount of money, or Y amount of years living in good health or Z amount of children as success. Once I have a good idea of what they mean by success, I will be able to give them a precise and complete answer as to how Self-Knowledge will or won't help them with their goals.

Best Wishes,

Then Sabir wrote:

Michael

I have had contact with you since 2006, even before that I always felt amazing states whenever I thought of myself, the world, my surroundings and this universe.

I always felt there is something beneath your suggested meditations and they show me that beneath path, whenever I used it at the times of difficulties and miseries I found great benefits.

I agree with your advice in the last paragraph of your second to last email that at this time of comfort, I should practice rigorously and I will do it with the help of your book and then I will ask for any clarifications.

I think my friend’s idea of success is status and money. But as you mentioned in the examples of Steve Jobs & Bernie, money and status do not necessarily bring happiness and peace. But because we all live in this materialistic world where everybody thinks objectively instead of subjectively, it is hard for them to digest the concept of meditation.

My friends argue that if all you want is stillness and oneness why live in this world at all.  If you gain this oneness then you wouldn’t be excited by any opportunity for any success comes your way in life. After all you believe that happiness doesn't come from opportunities; it comes from the place where you actually experience it. Likewise given this belief sorrow or grief shouldn't hurt you. But in the world you can’t isolate yourself from these emotions, coming from a changing world. That would be unnatural. Could you shed some light on these arguments, Michael?
Thanks & Regards

Sabir

We replied to this second question as follows:
Hi Sabir,

Of course it is hard to imagine what it is like to wake up. Most people think that in life you either are busy running after goals and objectives, or dull where you just sleep all day. They can hardly conceive of a state where life becomes fascinating just because of what it is, without the need to gain anything from it. But the feeling is amazing. It is like you have everything because you are everything.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

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

___________________________________________________________________

 

Traditionally they say that there are no rules for a sage. A sage can run a country, run a business, fight in the army, or just sit all day and meditate. If a sage appears to have desires his or her desires are like a burnt rope. Although it appears to be a rope, when you touch it the rope falls apart; desires have no ability to bind the sage.

And when the sage passes away he returns to that which he is already, always was and always shall be. That's because for a sage the thing that dies has already passed away. But one thing I can tell you for sure, a sage is not dull. A sage is as awake as you can possibly be, without even trying.

The peace that even supports sorrow