There are only two afflictions in life…

A visitor to an insane asylum found one of the inmates rocking back and forth in a chair cooing repeatedly in a soft, contented manner, “Lulu, Lulu . . .”

“What's this man’s problem?” he asked the doctor. “Lulu. She was the woman who jilted him,” was the doctor’s reply.

As they proceeded on the tour, they came to a padded cell whose occupant was banging his head repeatedly against the wall and moaning, “Lulu, Lulu . . .” “Is Lulu this man’s problem too?” asked the visitor. “Yes,” said the doctor. “He is the one Lulu finally married.”

There are only two afflictions in life: not getting what you are attached to and getting what you are attached to. Anthony De Mello, SJ

You take your identity from…?

The mind…? What is that? Can you locate it anywhere? Can you control it?

So you can’t answer these questions, yet…

…You believe what it produces ?

“You listen,” said the Master, “not to discover… but to find something that confirms your own thoughts.

You argue, not to find the truth… but to vindicate your thinking.”

And he told of a king who, passing through a small town, saw indications of amazing marksmanship everywhere.

Trees and barns and fences had circles painted on them with a bullet hole in the exact center.

He asked to see this unusual marksman. It turned out to be a ten-year-old child.

“This is incredible,” said the king in wonder. “How in the world do you do it?”

“Easy as pie,” was the answer. “I shoot first and draw the circles later.”

“So you get your conclusions first and build your premises around them later,” said the Master.
“Isn't that the way you manage to hold on to your religion and to your ideology?”

Anthony De Mello, SJ

What is your next thought going to be?

It is a simple question, but the answer is profound. The answer carries with it ramifications that
will undo core beliefs about who you think you are. With just a little watching, you may discover

that the answer to the question is not known until the thought arises. If this is true, what does
that mean for who you think you are?

Because the next thought is not and cannot be known until it is already present, some questions may arise….

If I don’t know what the next thought is going to be, who comes up with it?

If I don’t know what the next thought is going to be, how can I know what
choices are going to be made?

If I don’t know what choices are going to be made, who does?

If I don’t know what choices are going to be made, am I making them at all?

If I didn’t make the choice, where did it come from?

Have I ever made a choice about anything?

If I have never made a choice, is there any responsibility?

John Greven

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How to Lose your "ME"

with the help of the Hsin Hsin Ming

Part One

¹ “The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised.

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 you have opinions about anything, you lose the awareness of ‘I’…

Only a ‘ME’ has opinions. The latter only exist (in Duality) because it’s them that create it.

Only a ‘ME’ has emotions and feelings, both of which originate from thoughts.

Be careful here, if you disagree… ask yourself which ones don’t?

All opinions originate from the acquisition of ‘Knowledge’. It is the latter that is responsible for creating them:

• Knowledge is force fed intro-aurally and intro-visually into you from the time you are born. You are expected to consume it continuously.
  
• It is actually just like any drug or alcohol addiction, only a lot more dangerous.
  
• It claims, tautologically, to be ‘good for you’ and therefore the more of it the better.
  
• It creates it’s own worth by declaring it’s Am-ness and being-ness.
  

This is just really good… ‘SPIN’ (I mean evil… not good)

Knowledge is good for building bridges and houses but not for understanding…‘I’

Knowledge is the language ‘WE’ all have in common, irrespective of creed, nation or religion.

‘WE’ don’t realise that ‘WE’ are just the dancers, not the dance, the musicians not the music, the brush strokes and not the painting etc etc.

This is the disease of the mind and we have learned to believe that this is what we want and that it is good for us.

¹The ancient Xin Xin Ming (Hsin Hsin Ming) verse attributed to the Third Chinese Chan (Zen) Patriarch
Seng-ts'an.

"Nothing is seen… yet it is seen"

I think this is a Buddhist text but can't seem to find it's origins,

other than Sailor Bob on the Advaita Show.

Never mind… or No mind :)

Have a nice day :-)

Thought for the Day :-)

"The moment your mouth engages gear…

All Non Duality disappears"

Words by the Nutter from Nottingham.

Inspiration from Tony Henrys

Everything And Nothing

Let’s start with Everything.

everything (pronoun)

1 all things, or all the things of a group or class.
2 the most important thing or aspect: money isn’t everything.
3 the current situation; life in general.

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English

‘Everything’ is ‘All’… excluding nothing. Therefore “Everything in the Universe” has to be a definition of;

‘All Things Great and Small’.

noun ( the universe)
1 all existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos.

The latter ‘by definition’ excludes nothing whatsoever… I’m struggling to get this point over because although we have used words for centuries, we seem to want them to fit our our preconceptions (caused by education aka… the acquisition of knowledge) rather than just their absolutely and clear obvious meaning. (See the King and the marksman story below:)

You can try to describe the Universe as whatever you want, but if it’s everything, then that is exactly what it is.

Breaking it down into bits and giving them different names is just semantics. (A Play with Words:)

The Reality of the Universe does exist. You can’t possibly deny awareness of that. The fact that you are reading this and having some sort of interaction with it means that awareness does exist.

Your interaction is very probably totally natural, from your point of view… like, dislike, don’t care etc.

All or any of the above are thoughts… and they come from mind (programmed education). We all think we know what a brain is but where the mind exists is not… and has not ever been known.

~

And so, on to Nothing…

nothing (pronoun)

1 not anything.
2 something of no importance or concern.
3 nought.

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English

Nothing is here defined in another bunch of words. No… Thing has to be something that doesn’t exist, because if it did it would be something.

I know I bang on about this semantics stuff (which is the only way I can play with this Knowledge) BUT… this shows why we get so confused.

‘Not anything’… is a concept: because the reality of Nothing is inexpressible.
‘something of no importance or concern’… just turned from nothing to something :)
and
‘nought’ is right up there with my friend ‘zero’(see Infinity and Zero)

~

Why these definitions Don’t Work

All this stuff hinges on just one thing… the Ego accepting that Knowledge (as defined by Society) is a good thing. Not just a good thing, but everything worthwhile. I have tried to explain before that knowledge is just another language and the latter only exists as expressions of Duality.

To understand beingness, is-ness and all the other expressions of this, one has to see the fallacy of holding onto concepts, knowledge from education and all forms of duality.

Knowledge is good for building bridges etc but is totally irrelevant to Reality.

Accepting this as a starting point in awareness is the first step. While you use and hold onto concepts as the definitive ‘rhyme and reason’ for everything, there will always be suffering.

Suffering exists, only because We define it. We have been taught to trust our thoughts and feelings. Why?

We believe that We are important and that We matter and what We think matters…

We have filled ourselves up with propaganda that We ourselves have created. We denounced Hitler and Mao Tse Tung for exactly the same reasons and called them bad, evil etc, but because of the tribal nature We have been taught to believe in, We see right and wrong and good and bad everywhere.

Everything is the only thing… and Nothing Matters!

There’s the story of the Baby bear playing outside it’s cave when it becomes aware of a huge tiger approaching it…

It decides to follow it’s instincts and stand on it’s hind legs and growls at the tiger.

The tiger changes it’s attack into retreat and the baby bear smiles a huge smug smile, goes back onto all fours and continues playing.

During this time, what the baby bear didn’t notice was that right behind him, his 12ft mother had raised herself up onto her hind legs to face the tiger as well.

The question from this story is… what are you and what is the Universe?

Are you the baby or the mother?

The corollary of this is… who ‘I’ is, is Everything (God if you like)

I am not and cannot possibly be separate from Everything, and neither can you. Believing that is why we suffer.

NB. I know this can’t explain it for you… and I’m sorry but a good place to start is still… not to believe your thoughts.(And certainly not mine:)

It’s your ego that wants you to. Why trust something that comes from all the propaganda you were brought up on?

Just Be at peace with what you Is… (er…R:-)

~

“You listen,” said the Master, ”not to discover… but to find something that confirms your own thoughts.

You argue, not to find the truth… but to vindicate your thinking.”

And he told of a king who, passing through a small town, saw indications of amazing marksmanship everywhere. Trees and barns and fences had circles painted on them with a bullet hole in the exact center. He asked to see this unusual marksman. It turned out to be a ten-year-old child.

“This is incredible,” said the king in wonder. “How in the world do you do it?”

“Easy as pie,” was the answer. “I shoot first and draw the circles later.”

“So you get your conclusions first and build your premises around them later,” said the Master. “Isn't that the way you manage to hold on to your religion and to your ideology?”

Anthony De Mello, SJ

Knowledge is just another Language

The Problem with Knowledge is…

_____________________________________________________

Defined by The Compact Oxford English Dictionary as…

knowledge

• noun

1 information and skills acquired through experience or education.

2 the sum of what is known.

3 awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

_____________________________________________________

It’s the World’s greatest language of the mind and is held in the highest esteem.

That’s it’s problem.

Very soon after birth, the story begins… “mummy”… “daddy” and so on and so on and on.

Welcome to the global world of duality :)

And as ‘They’ say… “The rest, of this story, is history”

After ‘mummy and daddy’… language (and I mean all of them) is then used to force feed intro-aurally and intro-visually into human beings that great stuff… ‘Knowledge’.

A lot of us find it’s acquisition pleasant, challenging, rewarding and even ‘totally addictive’.

The latter claims, tautologically, to be good for us and therefore the more of it we acquire the better :)

A game of Chess has a limited number of pieces and a definite set of rules. So too with all the languages of the globe.

You can develop all sorts of moves and plays in Chess but their number is ultimately finite.

So too with language. It’s a game that is limited, but we pretend that it’s not.

Players of the ‘language game’ are everywhere and always have been.

It is employed to help them learn right from wrong etc etc… and ultimately how to be better than the other contestants :)

Knowledge too, is limited because of the words used which is why it is only… another language.

‘Knowledge’ has been the language in the civilised world for centuries. But as we know there have been sages during all this time that have actually doubted it’s worth and have resorted to poems, tales and stories that look to rattle the home of ‘Knowledge’ i.e. the Mind. The latter, as we all know, is just a fantasy because even though we give it a name… no-one has ever found one.