The Dalai Lama and Barack Obama

(long live z0tl):

"though attachment, aversion, dullness, pride, and envy may arise, fully understand their inner energy; recognize them in the very first moment, before karma has been accumulated.

in the second moment look nakedly at this state and relax in its present. then whichever of the five passions [lust, anger, stupidity, arrogance, and jealousy] arise becomes a pure presence, freed in its own place, without being eliminated.

it emerges as the pristine awareness that is pure, pleasurable, and not conditioned by thought."


Longchenpa

"There seems to be two kinds of searchers: those who seek to
make their ego something other than it is, i.e. holy, happy,
unselfish (as though you could make a fish unfish), and those
who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation
and play-acting, and there is only one thing that can be done,
which is to disidentify themselves with ego, by realising
its unreality, and by becoming aware of their eternal identity
with pure being."

Wei Wu Wei

Borrowed this back from Don:

"When you perceive the truth, you will become totally free from desire or hope. One who is endowed with supreme dispassion drives away the goblin of illusion. He is not pleased by pleasure, he is not troubled by troubles. The twin-forces of attraction and aversion do not even touch him. He looks upon all with equal vision.
“Free from the least attachment he enjoys whatever comes to him unsought, even as the eyes perceive their objects without desire or hate. Such experiences do not therefore produce either joy or sorrow in him. Even though he appears to be engaged in the performance of appropriate actions in this world, his consciousness is not disturbed in the least. Whatever may befall him in accordance with the laws of time, space and causation, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, he remains inwardly undisturbed.”

Yogavasistha

The comment box for the previous post is getting kinda full. So here's something new to chew on:

IT'S MIND OVER MATTER:

If you don't mind,
it doesn't matter.

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"Of the many earnest, and how earnest, people we may observe reading, attending lectures, studying and practicing disciplines, devoting their energies to the attainment of a liberation which is by definition unattainable, how many are not striving via the ego-concept which is itself the only barrier between what they think they are and that which they wish to become but always have been and always will be?"

Wei Wu Wei
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"Having many sorts of knowledge cannot compare with giving up SEEKING for anything, which is the best of all things."

Huang Po
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"The arising and the elimination of illusion are both illusory. Illusion is not something rooted in Reality; it exists because of your dualistic thinking. If you will only cease to indulge in opposed concepts such as 'ordinary' and 'Enlightened', illusion will cease of itself."

Huang Po
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"[Siddartha Gotama, the future Buddha] had already mastered the meditation systems of two contemporary teachers and found that although they led to extremely refined states of consciousness, those states didn't last. Having ascended to higher planes, so to speak, a descent to the normal plane of consciousness is inevitable, with no resolution to the fundamental problem of being: that we experience ourselves as semi-, but not completely, separate from experiences. Therefore we can neither ultimately unite with what is pleasant, nor can we be totally divorced from what is unpleasant, nor can we give up the search for happiness in one of these untenable positions:

Association with the disliked is dukkha, separation from the liked

is dukkha, not attaining one's wishes is dukkha.

In an attempt to snuff out the whole pleasure-pain mechanism, Gotama resorted to ferocious austerities in the company of five ascetics at Uruvela. Nearly killing himself in the process, he eventually had to admit that asceticism was not the answer either. In that moment of recognition, he remembered the ease and peacefulness of a time when he had been sitting in the shade of a tree watching his father at a ploughing festival. Shaded from the blazing sun, with no particular inclination toward this or that, his mind had by itself settled into a state of calm. Might that gratuitous, unforced calm be the basis for enlightenment?
The world was benevolent on that day in another valuable respect. A local woman called Sujata made him an offering of milk-rice, which he ate. Although the other ascetics walked off in disgust, he now had the physical strength and well-being and the mental ease and detachment to collect his highly trained attention and direct it to the roots of the problem of life: the creation of a self that is both alienated from life and besieged by it. Resolving to remain in that very spot until he had discovered an answer, he took up a seated position...

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On that night of Awakening, Siddhartha [saw] through the picture show of identity. In profound meditation, he had witnessed the long passage of his many births: now being this, now being that... and the road all those beings had travelled on... the self-perpetuating road of karma. What you do defines you; what you become determines how you see the world and yourself; how that world and self appears determines how you act. To reject the process, to think of getting off the road, is just another road, another becoming, another birth. Knowing there's no person on the road, that is Awakening.

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The Buddha described his night of Awakening in different ways. One striking account was his recognition of all the forms of doubt and greed and worry as members of a demon host led by the personification of delusion, Mara. ... A meditator is quickly introduced to this host, and generally gets panicked or defensive, or gets into battle with them --all of which activities to defend the self merely affirm its existence. Therefore one is something --a sight, a sound, an idea, an opinion, a future, a belief: an identity. There is the source of all the longing and the quarrelling, which sustains the tenacity of the habitual reactions of the mind."

Ajahn Sucitto
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If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.

Leonard Cohen
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Realization consists of getting rid of the
false idea that one is not already realized.

Ramana

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When the Buddha was dying, he said to his followers: "Just as the earth has hills and grass, healing herbs and nourishing grains for all beings to use, the truth that I have taught is also so. It produces the flavor of wonder and is the healing medicine for the ailments of humankind. I have brought you to abide peacefully in this great treasure. But if you have any doubts, you must ask about them now. Whatever your doubts are, I will try to answer them."

"Honored One, we understand the ideas of no self, of no permanent state, and of the suffering caused to the person by the belief that he has a self and is permanent. He is like one who is drunk and sees the hills and rivers, moon and stars wheeling dizzily about him. Such a one will never understand selflessness and will wander on endlessly in a miserable state. It is because of such a miserable state that we cultivate the idea of no self."


Then the Buddha was roused from the calm of coming death and said, "Listen closely! You have used the metaphor of a drunken person but you know only the words and not the meaning! The drunk believes the world is spinning when it is not. You still think the self is a something if you believe you should be selfless in order to save yourselves. You believe you should see the eternal as impermanent, the pure as impure, happiness as suffering. But these are concepts and you have not penetrated the meaning. The meaning is that the real self is truth. The eternal is existence. Happiness is nirvana, and the pure is things as they are.
"You should not practice ideas of impermanence, suffering, impurity, and selflessness as though they are real objects like stones or rocks but look instead for the meaning. You should use expedient means in every place and cultivate the ideas of permanence, happiness, and purity for the sake of all beings. If you do this, you will be like one who sees a gem in the muddied water among the stones and rocks and waits for the water to settle before he skillfully plucks it out. It is the same with cultivating the idea of the self as with permanence, happiness, and purity.

The followers were taken aback. They said, "Honored One, according to all you have taught and spoken, we have been asked to cultivate selflessness, leading to the dropping of the idea of a self. But now you tell us we should cultivate the idea of a self --what is the meaning of this?"

"Good," replied the Buddha. "You are now asking about meaning. You should know that, like a doctor, you should find the right medicine for an illness. It is as a doctor that I observed the ailments of the world. I saw that ordinary people believe they have a self and that whoever they meet has a self. They think of the self as within the body. But it is not like that. Because it is not like that, I have shown the fallacy of all the ideas of self and shown that the self is not there in the way it is thought to be. In everything I have said I have shown that the self is not as people think of it, for this is expedient means, the right medicine.
"But that does not mean that there is no self. What is the self? If something is true, is real, is constant, is a foundation of a nature that is unchanging, this can be called the self. For the sake of sentient beings, in all the truths I have taught, there is such a self. This is for you to cultivate."

Mahaparinirvana Sutra
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