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Posted by josef on 4/11/2009, 8:01 am, in reply to "The Mystery of mysteries cannot be known, but it can be experienced."
24.32.223.X
--Previous Message--
: josef,
:
: I can see how someone might live in total
: silence. Someone so in tune with reality as
: it is as to find words pointless. We are
: told that the Buddha never wrote anything
: down himself. That the words of the Buddha
: that have been passed down to us were
: recorded by others. It is also said that Zen
: was born when the Buddha said nothing but
: smiled as he held up a lotus flower and a
: kindred spirit in the crowd smiled in
: return. Laughed even. Thus the transmission
: of that which cannot be said in words began.
: The transference of the key without
: scripture to the first key holder.
: Mahakashyap.
:
: The key to all the teachings, all the words
: that are pointing at the moon--be they the
: words of the Buddha, of Lao Tzu, or Jesus,
: cannot itself be communicated through words
: to the person that has not experienced
: reality as it is for themselves. Reality is
: not what we 'think' it is, or what we have
: been told it is. The key cannot be delivered
: through the ordinary mind, the conditioned
: mind, the egoistic mind. And with that said
: the more that is said the more difficult it
: becomes to be understood. Thus it is said
: that the Buddha spent the last forty years
: of his life talking about not talking.
:
: Two truly enlightened people, two sages,
: have nothing to say to each other. This
: though only a Buddha can understand what it
: is a Buddha is saying. Unenlightened people
: talk all of the time... Be nice. But such is
: the path of the Bodhicitta. The path of
: words. The path of pointing with words at
: the moon to those that have not seen the
: moon for themselves in the hope that
: something that is said might gestate an
: ephiphany in another. In one that has not
: directly experienced the unitive nature of
: existence for oneself. For the self that has
: experienced the Self that is not a self in
: the normative sense of a separate
: existential self. The selfless self.
:
: We are each a part of that which has no
: parts. Not one, but a unitive one. Not
: monolithic but manifold. More than one, but
: less than two. Undivided. Nondual. Whole. A
: reality greater than the sum of its parts. A
: Whole so full that it is even full of
: emptiness. An Emptiness that is empty of
: full and empty, of dualistic concepts. Of
: words. Of division.
:
: Thus the Zen masters speak of the
: transference of the key without scripture.
: Beyond scripture. Beyond words. Beyond
: discursive intellection. Beyond mind in the
: normative or conditioned sense.
:
: Talk to the trees, to the flowers, to the
: animals, for they will truly listen. And
: truly speak.
:
: We are not our thoughts for they come and go
: as do all things. We are not a thing. We are
: no thing. Pure awareness, spirit, is not a
: thing. Brain waves can be measured for they
: have a material reality. Spirit comes before
: thought. Mind over matter so to speak. We
: are not evolving nearly so much as we are
: unfolding.
:
: The conditioned mind has its rules. This is
: this, that is that. So on and so on and so
: forth. The mystic heart has only one rule.
: "From the first totality is a unitive
: one." Hui-Neng.
:
: Silence within, laughter without. The
: greatest joke being, "We are reality in
: search of reality." Ramana Maharshi.
:
: We are not alone. We are all-one. The game
: being played by existence is not Solitaire.
: It is a game of Hearts. Or in Christian
: vernacular the Kingdom of God is not a
: person, it is a family.
:
: I AM THAT I AM. Or you can just call me
: Popeye like my friend assinity likes to do.
:
: Namaste,
:
: Butcho
Butcho, words are symbols, we agree. Mistaking the concept symbolized for the reality is common and is illusion, I think we agree. Living in the thought/concept world is "sleepwalking", and seeing through this and experiencing reality directly is awakening, we agree.
All that you've written above I am in harmony and agreement with. Well said all. Until:
: We are not alone. We are all-one. The game
: being played by existence is not Solitaire.
: It is a game of Hearts. Or in Christian
: vernacular the Kingdom of God is not a
: person, it is a family.
Here you introduce something more than "from the first all is a unitive one". It seems you've added a reification association that leads away from simple unity to that mistaking the map for the territory thing. Unless I'm misunderstanding your words, which is possible. The "we" who are family are humans you're referring to, yes? The inference seems to put humans in a non-inclusive category, separated, not unitive one. Hearts adds a dimension of emotion. The Kingdom of God as a family. Humans, right? All this addition seems to me to veer away from the unitive one of all that is, where atoms and quarks and ducks and pharoahs are all of an indivisible whole: existence.
The inclusive "all is unitive one" and what seems to me the exclusive elevating of humans seems to be the divergence for me.
All in the spirit of true discussion,
josef
145
"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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