Where Love Conflicts

Agreeing to act upon Love is not the hardest thing to do. Harder though, is to know what acting upon love consists in. Love however, often seems to conflict in practice between love for one and love for the other. In some instances, some people love their (embodied) self so much, they dispossess others of that love, and vice versa. Does it really conflict though? Should it really conflict? Could it be that perhaps, the love we imagine to enact isn't really love if it takes part in conflicts? Could it be that the distinction between self and other misleads the understanding of love?

What We Know of the Universe

I've recently watched a documentary called "Everything and Nothing" which is a two-part video on cosmology, exploring the history of astrophysics and quantum physics.

However great and fascinating I find all this, there is an aspect of science that bothers me: cognition.

It's easy today to look back at people of the past and find them silly because they thought the world is flat and contained in a shell. But without my education and conditioning, would I really know better now? How do I know the earth really is round? How much of what I think is science, in fact, mere belief from my part?

So it's a great thing to be open to what science is telling us, but is what it is telling us true? Has science limits? Science, based on observation can tell a lot, when observing the sky, if looking into the details, one can find out not all stars are on a single plane, and therefore, the world is not contained into a shell. For long too people thought our galaxy was the only one, until Hubble could demonstrate there were other galaxies like Andromeda, laying much more afar. Those who believed in the single-galaxy theory were proven wrong. But here it comes: space is expanding exponentially and in time, light from other galaxies will not be fast enough to reach ours, they will therefore be invisible to us. There would be literally no way to know there are other galaxies. Had humanity come to existence at this stage, humans would think there is merely one galaxy, the Milky Way, and all other knowledge of the Universe that exists today would be unknown. Science would be powerless at explaining the existence of the Universe. If such situations are possible then, how much more today can we not know? Can we know outside of space, outside of time? Can we speak of truly knowing the quantum world too?

So do I need scientific knowledge and all its equipment in order to know the Universe? How much can one rely on science? How much of this science is mere belief? How can I know, naturally, all what science tells me? Is what science provides really enlightening about existence and being? Does it make sense to rely on the reality we try to apprehend, in order to understand it? Can we for instance measure dreams with things of dreams? Can we measure what we call reality with things of reality? If our cognition is wrapped into the fabric of reality, can it really understand this reality objectively?

The more I look at Life,
the less I can make sense of it.

Question

"I would really just press the button and make the entire world free of suffering and enlightened if I could" begs the question:

What makes me assume there is any of those things mentioned in this sentence?

You Always Will Be (Wrong)

If you believe there is a state called enlightenment,
in which life will come easy,
in which you will be in control of mind and emotions,
in which you will have answers for all situations,
you are wrong.
If you think there is an experience called awakening,
which will reveal truth beyond appearances,
which will take you out of your body,
which will bring for ever joy and happiness,
you are wrong.
If you imagine there is someone out there,
who knows the secrets of life,
who can show you the way,
who will make you whole,
you are wrong.

Why?

Because there is merely one state: the existing state;
Because the coming easy or hard is life;
Because there is no control over control;
Because there is no knowledge to confirm knowledge is true.
Because experience happens to the awakened;
Because there is only appearance;
Because the body is no in and out of the body;
Because joy and happiness are merely other experiences.
Because there is no one out there;
Because life has no secret and because life is a secret;
Because there is just this way;
Because you are the whole of it already.
Because whatever you believe, think or imagine, you always will be wrong.


In a Dream

If I were in a dream and if I were to find my way out of this dream, would I seek help from people in that dream?
If I were in a dream and if I thought of this dream as a dream because others in the dream said it was a dream, would that dream really be a dream?
If all I have ever known is that dream, if I have not known myself without the dream, nor the dream without myself, would the dream and myself be two things?

Individuality

The assumption of individuality may be false; but it feels real. How to shed this stubborn assumption?
Part of his answer was:
So all you know is what you've always known - only you call it individuality [but] it is actually HOW THE WHOLE FEELS.
This is just blasting! :D

We feel something, define it and confirm our definitions with the feeling as a proof.
"I am the individual", "I am the body", that feels so strong indeed, but we made these definitions up in the first place, accepted them as true, and pinned them on the sensations.
Then, one day, we hear new definitions: "I am the whole", "I am not the body" and we break our heads up trying to understand what the heck they mean.
So we turn towards the feelings and shout "go away you stupid sense of individuality, go away you so bloody solid body!"
And instead of letting false ideas go, we take on new ones and look down on the only thing we know to be true: experience.
After all, the only thing we know for a fact is the feeling at the root of "I am the individual", "I am the body" and so forth, i.e. the sense of "me". We don't know what it really means, we don't know if that really is a proof of individuality, of corporeality. No. We just know it is, we know it as "me" whatever that means.
So often we can feel this "me" and there is the latent idea that there is a "whole" somewhere around that "me", in which we are. But have we ever felt that whole-other-than-the-me? No. We only have labels pouring over our experience claiming this is the "real me" and this is the "world".
It is not surprising then, that as we hear some who say "I am all", we feel somehow stuck in this bubble of individuality. But it is not a real bubble, we only imagined a greater whole that has never been here.

Because the whole is already this.

On Confusion

The following are after thoughts on a conversation with Mike, who was trying to explain that doubt in no way could convince me as experience-and-experiencer that I am not that.

Ultimately all thoughts, whether insight or confusion, are experience-in-awareness, hence they are what I am: experience-and-experiencer. Whereas insight carries the message "I am all that arises and that which sees what arises", confusion carries the message "The body hurts, so I am the body and must save myself from the rest".

To Mike, the latter cannot confuse the self, because it is part of the experience and therefore it is a confirmation that I am the experience-and-experiencer. But I do not agree, because the insight "this confusion is part of what I am and the proof ect." is also another thought arising in this experience-and-experiencer.

So yes, confusion cannot confuse the sense of self IF there is another insight to counterbalance it. But what if the insight does not arise? Awareness alone simply is aware of confusion, it doesn't take part in it. But awareness is brought in evidence in the experience only thanks to insight. If that insight does not arise, and if confusion does, then awareness remains invisible.

The switch between confusion and insight, is a change of experience, of mind. So I see only two possibilities: either there is no guarantee of "full and final" insight, or all insight and confusion is equally invalid and irrelevant to knowing what the self is.

I Am the Body

From experience thought arises and from thought, experience interpreted. And there is a belief that interpretation of experience is experience itself.

So do I believe that I am the body and mind: but that is merely interpretation of experience. On closer observation, "I am the body and mind" is a circular argument:

  1. There is the observation nuances in experience in the first place. 
  2. Part of this experience is cognised and associated to the thought "body".
  3. Then the criteria of body, which are drawn from experience, are used to recognise body and determine its existence.

In other words: what tells me that the statement "the laptop is know by proxy of the body, therefore the body is what I am" is correct? What / who has made this rule? Is there any part of direct experience which provides this rule? How is this rule more valid than "there is sight of laptop, therefore laptop is what I am?".

So understanding of experience is not so much drawn from experience as it is projected on experience. But again, because thought is experience too, this (false) understanding is experience as well.

So am I the body? There is no more evidence that I am the body than the laptop, if I am to leave the "rules" to which I consent without prior scrutiny.

You don't need belief,
if you take a moment
to see how uncanny the existence of the universe
is.

What Am I?

What am I?

So many time I ask this question.

And here's precisely the point: it is I who asks the question. Can I ask this question without underlying assumptions as to what I am? Is there really an answer to this question? (Most probably not, it would be mere verbose).

Most questions (philosophical or spiritual) are queried with the underlying intent to find answers satisfying to the sense of being a person. But who is ready to face death through knowledge?

More truthful it seems is the expression "I AM", known as awareness-and-senses, which shines as the entire Universe.

The closest thing to death
we know
is before-birth,
and that wasn't too bad,
was it?

There is a never-ending truth for me to discover.

Children

We often forget adults and children are one and the same. If there is any difference between the two, then perhaps it is that children naturally allow the world to shape them, whilst adults believe they know what is better for the world.

Idam

विश्वदर्शे विश्वशब्दे चेदं
विश्वगंधे विश्वरसे चेदं
विश्वस्पृशे विश्वमते चेदं
सर्वो हीदं

*

viÅ›vadarÅ›e viÅ›vaÅ›abde cedaṃ 
viśvagandhe viśvarase cedaṃ
viÅ›vaspṛśe viÅ›vamate cedaṃ 
sarve hÄ«daṃ 

*

Every sight and every sound is This
Every smell and every taste is This
Every feeling and every thought is This
All indeed is This

I am burning as the fire of Being.

Senses

What is felt, heard, seen, smelled, tasted and thought is the Universe. Have I ever known myself without any of these senses? Is there really a "me" receiving any of their inputs?

Turn away from gurus,
freedom is the other way around.

Assumptions

I look at the stars, thinking there are mysteries about the Universe, yet to be uncovered, some knowledge that will make me stronger. But how much of this isn't an assumption? There is no reason to believe there is anything to know about the Universe, that I do not already know. If knowledge is to vanish with the dead and with rotten books, then is that knowledge necessary? How much more discomfort should there be, believing there is ignorance?

I am covered with the blood of a thousand buddhas.

Sometime I believe to be enlightened,
later to find out
I just had too much coffee.

I Am A Prism

Beware of those who claim, implicitly or explicitly, knowledge of the world or of what is beyond the world. They fool others and fool themselves. My word is not enough for it, simple logic will tell that no one can understand IT (the universe, being, the source, whatever one may call it). There is no lasting knowledge, no lasting insight, because what seems to be grasped, when one believes one is enlightened, is the ungraspable. Even this pure state of ever-fresh understanding can fall away, like all other things, and one falls back upon memory, which is as revealing as a corpse. I know myself to have been there, I have been on the high mountains of enlightenment, I kissed the divine and have known myself as pure love, nurturing the source within and without. But all this, however enriching, is elusive.
Awakening is knowing oneself as a blank page. But as a blank page one knows oneself as the recipient of existence, and there is no other path than to give in into its drama. The white page is filling with new stories and the stories seem to hide the page with their meaning. The self is lost again, and it wants to find its true and pure identity again. Those who believe to be the blank page know nothing of the real, those who are lost in meanings know nothing of the true. They don't, I don't, no one does. Do you really think it would be so easy? Come on Benjamin: do you really think you could have been the divine? Its cherished son?
Those who believe so fill the worlds with their noise, all prophets, teachers or masters, all these Benjamins I once was. They and their followers are aberrations, they have no choice, nor have I. Truly I am an unsolvable puzzle, I am life and death entwined. What escape is there from this?
Today as I stand, I am lost, I always was, but today I know I am. Some will think this statement, seemingly pessimist is an indicator that I do not know. Let them think so: let them seek answers that please them, let them find comfort in the belief of a Nirvana of eternal joy. 
Today as I stand, I am lost, I find myself on a schizophrenic path of choices without final substance. What choices are there? On what ground and what for? Who choses what is chosen? I could settle here and not play the game of choices. But would not that be a choice too? And why play dead? Yes, I am the suffering of my own existence and yes, I am the remedy. I am ignorance and I am knowledge. I am a prism and through myself I know I am.

I will slay
every single doubt
and all certainty.
Thus is the glory
of my being.

Sure?

Looking for special sensation? Looking for a confirmation that the Universe is on your side? Sure you've found it this time? Sure there is no "going back"? Sure you are free of illusions? So you finally got hold of freedom, didn't you?

How much more lies will you tell yourself, how many more opportunities will you waste, running away?

Q: Are you
[fill in religion name here]?

A: No, I'm fine thanks.

I will not take sides,
between believers
and unbelievers.

Truth speaks for itself,
it does not need
ambassadors.

I Finally Got It!

Of course I didn't!
What is there to get? What final insight could there be? Insights, like all other thing ever witnessed, rise and fall. What end is there? Why would I want to come to an end? How boring would that be? So what, it's "game over" after? How arrogant, how naive would this belief be? Should I cling to an insight? Or spin a religion with a no-religion discourse? Write this blog with paternalistic tones? Teach while denying being a teacher (yes nowadays teachers don't teach, they "give pointers")?
Any thought about the Universe is merely a thought of the Universe, it is insignificant, it is powerless in its vainglory.
Bring me your school and i will burn it down, bring me your apprenticeship and i will slap your face.
The glory of Being already prevails, your knowing or seemingly understanding is irrelevant.
There is no insight that isn't confusion, there is no waking that is not dreaming, there is no non-self that is not self.

Insights about the Universe
are not as relevant
as the Universe
in which they take place.

That said, the "in the Universe" part could be doubted, perhaps Universe is insight and insight Universe, there is no way to understand.

Memory

Memory plays such a subtle and yet predominant role in my life. In fact it is all what I seem to have in order to speak of myself. And yet, how much can I trust memory? Memory, supposedly is a impression of the past, a snap-shot, which works as a land-mark, a point de repère, in time. Assuming it does what it claims: why do I so much need the past and its memory? If memory works like a thread in the labyrinth of time, there would be no going back anyway. But really how much can I rely on memory? As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with the past, it is born now and dies now, nothing guarantees it has come from this place called "the past". Is memory not just spontaneous? Isn't it a product of the present rather than the past? Is it not imagination in fact?
Memory, it seems, is merely a story about what cannot be seen, an impression on the world of things marking them with stigmas of what they should have been, or should be. What would this world be without memory? How many wars would cease together with it? How much sorrow, suffering, habits and how much spontaneity, trust and opportunities would rise? What would I be without memory? Unborn, eternal, without memory I would not relate to the other, because in the present moment there are no relationships. Relationships cannot live outside of time, cannot survive without memory, because the other then would always remain a stranger, fresh and new.
Memory in fact is central to the answer to "who am I" a question which lies beneath all of our actions, bred by a continuous flow of memory. Without memory, there would be no "who" at all indeed, because the "who" cannot exist alone, it needs to relate.
No who, no when, no how nor why.

It is hard to tell
whether the present
is eternal
or ephemeral.

What Am I Running Away From?

What am i running away from? Seriously, what is this mysterious danger casting its invisible shadow on life, that i should continuously try to escape? What could i achieve which death won't take away? What could i achieve which would enhance my being?
Perhaps, that wonderful achievement is a simple, subtle gesture. Perhaps it is ceasing to work for my own elusive salvation and give a moment of my own, to that life which has given me this 'me'. A moment of simple openness to what is, of vulnerable honesty, of love indeed, which the death of all words could not undo, which truly would perfect my being.

You cannot see reality
until you are willing
to see things
as they are

We Care

Our care of others is often selfish. We care for them in the way we'd like them to care for us. We play the play, lest we would face the truth of our insignificance.

Are you running away from Death
Or embracing Life?

Instrumental Existence

Our perception of the world and of the self are instrumental only. All what we think to know has no meaning in and of itself. Every "thing" is part of a larger process the working of which is beyond any possible understanding.
In effect, it means that the honor of the dead (caring for a corpse which we knew alive) or survival instinct for instance, are not meaningful outside of this larger process in which we are instantiated. These human functions are not more meaningful than the "walking" function.
The Universe has no need for us to survive, by this i mean survival is not an end in itself, it is a function within the Universe, which merely contributes to its workings. The idea of end or purpose itself is yet another such human function which carves our path.
It may seem that the above considerations make the world purposeless and dead, but in fact it only brings light on the freedom and beauty of its existence.