| Time …….. I am tempted to repeat a story about a great disciple going to God and demanding to be taught truth. This poor God says, `My friend, it is such a hot day, please get me a glass of water.' So the disciple goes out and knocks on the door of the first house he comes to and a beautiful young lady opens the door. The disciple falls in love with her and they marry and have several children. Then one day it begins to rain, and keeps on raining, raining, raining - the torrents are swollen, the streets are full, the houses are being washed away. The disciple holds on to his wife and carries his children on his shoulders and as he is being swept away he calls out, 'Lord, please save me', and the Lord says, `Where is that glass of water I asked for?' It is rather a good story because most of us think in terms of time. Man lives by time. Inventing the future has been a favourite game of escape. We think that changes in ourselves can come about in time, which order in ourselves can be built up little by little, added to day by day. But time doesn't bring order or peace, so we must stop thinking in terms of gradualness. This means that there is no tomorrow for us to be peaceful in. We have to be orderly on the instant. When there is real danger time disappears, doesn't it? There is immediate action. But we do not see the danger of many of our problems and therefore we invent time as a means of overcoming them. Time is a deceiver as it doesn't do a thing to help us bring about a change in ourselves. Time is a movement which man has divided into past, present and future, and as long as he divides it he will always be in conflict. - Freedom from the known. (J. Krishnamurti) |
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The Country of the Blind; ………Nunez was a mountaineer from the country near Quito, a man who had been down to the sea and had seen the world, a reader of books in an original way, an acute and enterprising man, and he was taken on by a party of Englishmen who had come out to Ecuador to climb mountains, to replace one of their three Swiss guides who had fallen ill. …….The little party worked their difficult and almost vertical way up to the very foot of the last and greatest precipice, and how they built a night shelter amidst the snow upon a little shelf of rock, and, with a touch of real dramatic power, how presently they found Nunez had gone from them. They shouted, and there was no reply; shouted and whistled, and for the rest of that night they slept no more. As the morning broke they saw the traces of his fall. It seems impossible he could have uttered a sound. He had slipped eastward towards the unknown side of the mountain; far below he had struck a steep slope of snow, and ploughed his way down it in the midst of a snow avalanche. His track went straight to the edge of a frightful precipice, and beyond that everything was hidden. Far, far below, and hazy with distance, they could see trees rising out of a narrow, shut-in valley--the lost Country of the Blind. But they did not know it was the lost Country of the Blind, nor distinguish it in any way from any other narrow streak of upland valley. Unnerved by this disaster, they abandoned their attempt in the afternoon, and Pointer was called away to the war before he could make another attack. To this day Parascotopetl lifts an unconquered crest, and Pointer's shelter crumbles unvisited amidst the snows……. ……..About midday Nunez came at last out of the throat of the gorge into the plain and the sunlight. He was stiff and weary; he sat down in the shadow of a rock, filled up his flask with water from a spring and drank it down, and remained for a time, resting before he went on to the houses…….They were very strange to his eyes, and indeed the whole aspect of that valley became, as he regarded it, queerer and more unfamiliar……. He understood that he has come to the valley of blind. On the way he encountered three men from the valley of the blind. "I can see," Nunez said. "See?" said Correa. "Yes; see," said Nunez, turning towards him, and stumbled against Pedro's pail. "His senses are still imperfect," said the third blind man. "He stumbles, and talks unmeaning words. Lead him by the hand." "As you will," said Nunez, and was led along laughing. It seemed they knew nothing of sight. Well, all in good time he would teach them. He heard people shouting, and saw a number of figures gathering together in the middle roadway of the village. He found it tax his nerve and patience more than he had anticipated, that first encounter with the population of the Country of the Blind. The place seemed larger as he drew near to it, and the smeared plasterings queerer, and a crowd of children and men and women (the women and girls he was pleased to note had, some of them, quite sweet faces, for all that their eyes were shut and sunken) came about him, holding on to him, touching him with soft, sensitive hands, smelling at him, and listening at every word he spoke. Some of the maidens and children, however, kept aloof as if afraid, and indeed his voice seemed coarse and rude beside their softer notes. They mobbed him. His three guides kept close to him with an effect of proprietorship, and said again and again, "A wild man out of the rocks."…….. They agreed to allow him to live with them. ………….People of the valley of the blind led a simple, laborious life, these people, with all the elements of virtue and happiness as these things can be understood by men. They toiled, but not oppressively; they had food and clothing sufficient for their needs; they had days and seasons of rest; they made much of music and singing, and there was love among them and little children. It was marvellous with what confidence and precision they went about their ordered world. Everything, you see, had been made to fit their needs; ……..all their methods and procedure arose naturally from their special needs. Their senses had become marvellously acute; they could hear and judge the slightest gesture of a man a dozen paces away--could hear the very beating of his heart. Intonation had long replaced expression with them, and touches gesture, and their work with hoe and spade and fork was as free and confident as garden work can be. Their sense of smell was extraordinarily fine; they could distinguish individual differences as readily as a dog can, and they went about the tending of llamas, who lived among the rocks above and came to the wall for food and shelter, with ease and confidence. It was only when at last Nunez sought to assert himself that he found how easy and confident their movements could be……. While living in the valley of the blind he fell in love with Medina- Sarote. …….Medina-sarote, was the youngest daughter of Yacob. She was little esteemed in the world of the blind, because she had a clear-cut face and lacked that satisfying, glossy smoothness that is the blind man's ideal of feminine beauty, but Nunez thought her beautiful at first, and presently the most beautiful thing in the whole creation…….. ……Sight seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her own sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence. She did not believe, she could only half understand, but she was mysteriously delighted, and it seemed to him that she completely understood…….. Yacob thought Nunez was sick and he must be cured before the marriage to his daughter. The doctor diagnosed the following. ……….THIS," said the doctor, answering his own question. "Those queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Nunez, in such a way as to affect his brain. They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction." "Yes?" said old Yacob. "Yes?" "And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him complete, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation--namely, to remove these irritant bodies."……………… So it was decided to remove the eyes of Nunez to cure him. The day before the operation Nunez met Medina Sarote; ……………."To-morrow," he said, "I shall see no more." "Dear heart!" she answered, and pressed his hands with all her strength. "They will hurt you but little," she said; "and you are going through this pain, you are going through it, dear lover, for ME... . Dear, if a woman's heart and life can do it, I will repay you. My dearest one, my dearest with the tender voice, I will repay." He was drenched in pity for himself and her. He held her in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers and looked on her sweet face for the last time. "Good-bye!" he whispered to that dear sight, "good-bye!" And then in silence he turned away from her. She could hear his slow retreating footsteps, and something in the rhythm of them threw her into a passion of weeping. Nunez decided to get out of the village back to his country instead of losing the sight. He walked away……… ……..He glanced back at the village, then turned right round and regarded it with folded arms. He thought of Medina-sarote, and she had become small and remote. He turned again towards the mountain wall down which the day had come to him. Then very circumspectly he began his climb. When sunset came he was not longer climbing, but he was far and high. His clothes were torn, his limbs were bloodstained, he was bruised in many places, but he lay as if he were at his ease, and there was a smile on his face. From where he rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pit and nearly a mile below. Already it was dim with haze and shadow, though the mountain summits around him were things of light and fire. The mountain summits around him were things of light and fire, and the little things in the rocks near at hand were drenched with light and beauty, a vein of green mineral piercing the grey, a flash of small crystal here and there, a minute, minutely-beautiful orange lichen close beside his face. There were deep, mysterious shadows in the gorge, blue deepening into purple, and purple into a luminous darkness, and overhead was the illimitable vastness of the sky. But he heeded these things no longer, but lay quite still there, smiling as if he were content now merely to have escaped from the valley of the Blind, in which he had thought to be King. And the glow of the sunset passed, and the night came, and still he lay there, under the cold, clear stars. ---- Country of Blind by H.G. Wells Do not lose clarity of consciousness for the blindness of the senses. Reference: 1. Cover courtesy - http://jtkninja.deviantart.com/art/Country-of-the-Blind-Book-Cover-302308840 2. Book - http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/hgwells/country-blind.pdf Share Personality “Personality and ego are two aspects of the same coin, just as individuality and self are two aspects of the same coin. The personality has a centre -- that centre is called the ego. Because personality itself is false, the centre is also false, because a false circumference cannot have a real centre and a real centre cannot have a false circumference. Personality is unreal. Personality is that which you pretend to be, but you are not. Personality is that which you show, but you are not. Personality is your exhibition, not your reality. Personality is that which you create around yourself -- a fiction to deceive -- but you are not. This personality has a false centre, as false as it is itself. That false centre is the ego. When you drop personality, ego disappears. Or you drop the ego and the personality collapses to the ground, to the dust. Remember not to pretend that which you are not, otherwise you will never be able to drop the ego. Then you go on feeding the ego. Never try to look in any way different than you are. Whatsoever the cost, be true to yourself. Don't try to decorate it, to clothe it in manners, etiquettes, a thousand and one falsities. Be naked as you are. Let people feel your real pulse, and you will not be at loss. In the beginning you may see that you are getting into trouble, but soon you will find that you are never at a loss. With reality nobody ever loses. With unreality you only think you are gaining, you go on losing. That's how many people destroy their whole life – by being unreal -- and then they say that they are not happy. How can an unreal person be happy? It is as if you have put stones in the soil instead of seeds and you are waiting, you are waiting for them to sprout and bloom and fill your life with flowers and fruits. It is impossible -- those stones cannot grow. Those stones are not seeds of something, they don't have any potentiality. They may look like seeds, you may have coloured them in such a way, you may have painted them in such a way that they look like seeds, but they are not seeds, they cannot grow. The ego cannot grow. It is dead, a false entity. It is not alive. You can go on and on living with it, but your whole life will become like a desert... empty. No fulfilment, no contentment, no bliss will ever knock at your door. You can wait for eternity, nobody will ever come. Because in the very beginning you missed something - something very essential and basic. Only you can grow, not the pretensions. I told you the word 'personality' comes from 'persona'. If you have a mask, the mask will not grow. You will grow. You may have put the mask on your face when you were a child, now you may be a young man -- but the mask will remain the same... a dirty old thing, rotten. It will simply rot, it cannot grow. You will be growing behind it, and it will give you many pains because it will be a confinement. It cannot grow and you are growing. It is as if you are still wearing your childhood clothes. You are growing and those clothes are not growing, so they have become bondage. They don't give you freedom, they confine you, and they crush you. You feel continuously a pressure, a tension, anguish.” --- The Discipline of Transcendence – Vol.1 – Osho. Share
Share Insight Jill Bolte Taylor (/ˈbɒlti/; born May 15, 1959) is an American neuroanatomist, author, and public speaker. Her training is in the postmortem investigation of the human brain as it relates to schizophrenia and the severe mental illnesses. On December 10, 1996, Bolte Taylor was experiencing a stroke. The cause was bleeding from a vein in the left hemisphere of her brain. Three weeks later, on December 27, 1996, she underwent major brain surgery to remove a golf ball-sized clot that was placing pressure on the language centers in the left hemisphere of her brain. Following her experience with stroke, Bolte Taylor wrote the best-selling book ‘My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey’, about her recovery from the stroke and the insights she has gained into the workings of her brain because of it. “It was 7:00 am on December 10, 1996 I awoke…….. I sluggishly awoke to a sharp pain piercing my brain directly behind my left eye. I closed the bedroom window blind to block the incoming stream of light stinging my eyes. I decided that exercise might get my blood flowing and perhaps help dissipate the pain. Within moments, I hopped on to my "cardio-glider" (a full body exercise machine)…………… Immediately, I felt a powerful and unusual sense of dissociation roll over me. I felt so peculiar that I questioned my well-being. Even though my thoughts seemed lucid, my body felt irregular. As I watched my hands and arms rocking forward and back, forward and back, in opposing synchrony with my torso, I felt strangely detached from my normal cognitive functions. It was as if the integrity of my mind/body connection had somehow become compromised. Feeling detached from normal reality, I seemed to be witnessing my activity as opposed to feeling like the active participant performing the action. I felt as though I was observing myself in motion, as in the playback of a memory. My fingers, as they grasped onto the handrail, looked like primitive claws………..My perception of these automatic body responses was no longer an exercise in intellectual conceptualization. Instead, I was momentarily privy to a precise and experiential understanding of how hard the fifty trillion cells in my brain and body were working in perfect unison to maintain the flexibility and integrity of my physical form. Through the eyes of an avid enthusiast of the magnificence of the human design, I witnessed with awe the autonomic functioning of my nervous system as it calculated and recalculated every joint angle……………As the language centers in my left hemisphere grew increasingly silent and I became detached from the memories of my life, I was comforted by an expanding sense of grace. In this void of higher cognition and details pertaining to my normal life, my consciousness soared into an all-knowingness, a "being at one" with the universe, if you will. In a compelling sort of way, it felt like the good road home and I liked it. By this point I had lost touch with much of the physical three-dimensional reality that surrounded me. I sensed the composition of my being as that of a fluid rather than that of a solid. I no longer perceived myself as a whole object separate from everything. Instead, I now blended in with the space and flow around me………..” Reference: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Bolte_Taylor 2. http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html 4. My Stroke of Insight - Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor Eat when hungry- sleep when tiered. Layman Pang lived during the latter half of the Eighth Century, a golden age for Chan. He was an educated family man - he had a wife and a son and daughter - and was well-enough off financially to be able to devote his time to Buddhist studies. He got the idea that a person needed solitude in order to meditate and ponder the Dharma, so he built himself a little one-room monastery near his family home. Every day he went there to study and practice. His wife, son and daughter studied the Dharma, too; but they stayed in the family house, conducting their business and doing their chores, incorporating Buddhism into their daily lives. Layman Pang had submerged himself in the sutras and one day he found that he, too, was in over his head. He hadn't learned to swim yet. On that day, he stormed out of his monastery-hut and, in abject frustration, complained to his wife, "Difficult! Difficult! Difficult! Trying to grasp so many facts is like trying to store sesame seeds in the leaves of a tree top!" His wife retorted, "Easy! Easy! Easy! You've been studying words, but I study the grass and find the Buddha Self reflected in every drop of dew." Now, Layman Pang's daughter, Ling Zhao, was listening to this verbal splashing, so she went swimming by. "Two old people foolishly chattering!" she called. "Just a minute!" shouted Layman Pang. "If you're so smart, tell us your method." Ling Zhao returned to her parents and said gently, "It's not difficult, and it's not easy. When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm tired, I sleep." Ling Zhao had mastered Natural Chan. Layman Pang learned a lot that day. He understood so much that he put away his books, locked his little monastery-hut, and decided to visit different Chan masters to test his understanding. He still couldn't compete against his own daughter, but he was getting pretty good. Eventually he wound up at Nan Yue Mountain where Master Shi Tou had a monastic retreat. Layman Pang went directly to the master and asked, "Where can I find a man who's unattached to material things?" Master Shi Tou slowly raised his hand and closed Pang's mouth. In that one gesture, Pang's Chan really deepened. He stayed at Nan Yueh for many months. All the monks there watched him and became quite curious about his Natural Chan, his perfect equanimity. Even Master Shi Tou was moved to ask him what his secret was. "Everyone marvels at your methods," said Shi Tou. "Tell me. Do you have any special powers?" Layman Pang just smiled and said, "No, no special powers. My day is filled with humble activities and I just keep my mind in harmony with my tasks. I accept what comes without desire or aversion. When encountering other people, I maintain an uncritical attitude, never admiring, never condemning. To me, red is red and not crimson or scarlet. So, what marvelous method do I use? Well, when I chop wood, I chop wood; and when I carry water, I carry water." Master Shi Tou was understandably impressed by this response. He wanted Pang to join his Sangha. "A fellow like you shouldn't remain a layman," said Shi Tou. "Why don't you shave your head and become a monk?" The proposition signaled the end of Pang's sojourn with Shi Tou. Clearly, he could learn no more from this master. Pang responded with a simple remark. "I'll do what I'll do," and what he did was leave. He next showed up at the doorstep of the formidable Master Ma Zu. Again he asked the master, "Where can I find a man who's unattached to material things?" Ma Tzu frowned and replied, "I'll tell you after you've swallowed West River in one gulp." In grasping that one remark, Pang was able to complete his enlightenment. He saw that Uncritical Mind was not enough. His mind had to become as immense as Buddha Mind; it had to encompass all Samsara and Nirvana, to expand into Infinity's Void. Such a mind could swallow the Pacific. Layman Pang stayed with Master Ma Zu until he discovered one day that he had no more to learn from him, either. On that particular occasion, Pang approached Ma Zu and, standing over him, said, "An enlightened fellow asks you to look up." Ma Zu deliberately looked straight down. Layman Pang sighed, "How beautifully you play the stringless lute!" At this point, Ma Zu had confirmed that there was no difference between human beings, that they were truly one and the same individual. As Pang had looked down, Ma Zu would look down. There was no one else to look up. But then, unaccountably, Ma Zu looked straight up and broke the spell, so to speak. So Layman Pang bowed low and remained in that obeisance of finality as Ma Zu rose and began to walk away. As the Master brushed past him, the Layman whispered, "Bungled it, didn't you... trying to be clever." One day, as he listened to a man who was trying to explain the Diamond Sutra, he noticed that the fellow was struggling with the meaning of a line that dealt with the nonexistence of the ego personality. "Perhaps I can help you," Pang said. "Do you understand that that which is conditional and changing is not real and that which is unconditional and immutable is real?" "Yes," replied the commentator. "Then is it not true that egos are conditional and changing, that no ego is the same from one minute to the next? Is it not true that with each passing minute, depending on circumstances and conditions, we acquire new information and new experiences just as we forget old information and experiences? "Yes," agreed the commentator. "But what is there about us that is unconditional and unchanging? Asked Pang. "Our common Buddha Nature!" replied the commentator, suddenly smiling, suddenly understanding. "That alone is real! The rest is mere illusion!" He was so happy that he inspired Pang to write him a poem: Since there is neither ego nor personality Who is distant and who is close? Take my advice and quit talking about reality. Experience it directly, for yourself. The nature of the Diamond Wisdom Is truth in all its singular purity. Fictitious egos can't divide or soil it. The expressions, "I hear," "I believe," "I understand," Are simply expedient expressions Tools in the diamond-cutter's hands. When the work's done, he puts them down. - EMPTY CLOUD - THE TEACHINGS OF XU YUN Share
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