Let the House be Overturned

Through many a birth
I wandered in samsara,
seeking, but not finding
the builder of this house*.
Sorrowful is it to be born again and again.

O house-builder! Thou art seen.
Thou shalt build no house again.
All thy rafters are broken.
Thy ridge-pole is shattered.
My mind has attained the unconditioned.
Achieved is the end of craving.

– The Buddha

samsara: cyclic birth and death
* Builder of this house: (craving = tanha)
 House: body; Rafters: passion; Ridge pole: ignorance.

* * *

Yeshua said:
I will overturn this house
and none will be able to rebuild it.

– The Gospel of Thomas

Existence and the world are synonymous. Though it may seems the world is “out there” and existence is “in here”, both are pointing at the same thing, albeit a different perspective. What is the same thing that both existence and the world are pointing at? Lies – a fabricated illusion that I, unawarely had made it real. Like a house of walls that I have built around myself for safety – that very house that gives me security is the very place that imprisons me – a self imposed prison that I deceived myself into. How insane can that be? I am a prisoner, a prison warden and also the prison itself. And who is the one who puts me there in the first place? Myself. I am the victim, the defendant, the jury, and also the judge in the courtroom of my own creation – prosecuting myself all the way into doom.

I named existence a house of lies – lying, deceiving, fabricating, cheating, an impostor – over and over again in my life. I am not referring to a conscious liar but rather, you and me, no matter how good or kind we think we are, are merely an unconscious lie we tell ourselves.

Every nook and corner of my activities, I find myself lying, albeit an unconscious one. To be accurate, it is not me lying since I am totally unaware of it. Yet it is the very system I put into myself that activates the process to run in me. It is an ancient program running on its own, having a life of its own. It is the conditioned I put myself into; from the past; that propels the liar in me to still run rampage at this moment.

If I were to trace back the very source of my own action that is occurring in the now, I will find the victim in me. Doesn’t matter whether my action is deemed wholesome or unwholesome, the mere fact that “I” am happy or sad is already pointing to a victim mentality in me. I have never got out from myself. I am imprisoned in my own thoughts and views that colored me from seeing the world as separate from me. The meaning of separation could only occur where walls are put up to give a definition of inside and outside.

To escape from this illusion, I have to do what Yeshua has proclaimed in the Gospel of Thomas:

I have sown fire upon the world,
and now I tend it to a blaze.

The program I run, is no longer necessary, but I am totally ignorant to it – simply because the built-in system disallows questioning – not that the system stops me from inquiring but rather for the simple reason that I took the system as a gospel truth that I created upon myself to protect the illusionary victimization I am in. The victim mentality that is going on in me is strengthening the system, the aged old program.

So long as there is an “I” idea, I am already a victim by default. Do I experience inferiority? Oh yes, as a victim. Do I experience superiority – definitely, as a judge. Do I experience equality? All the time, consistently comparing with another for approval and security. Be it superior, inferior or in between, as equal – I am playing the role of a victim – for I am the worst judge, jury, persecutor, warden – right till the end where I doomed myself to imprisonment. I am the player of the whole game, my own game.

To keep inquiring each moment is the beginning of setting the fire upon the world, the release of the victim in me. And it is not a one time off job. It is life itself – tending the blaze by bringing inquiry to the forefront of my thoughts, speech and action – where I will be consistently directed back to the system – the motivation behind each veil, the source of the program that is still in me NOW.

An unquestioned inquiry is a lie of the highest order. Where I don’t question my motivation, I am making the world the subject of responsibility, that I, myself, am not the source of misery. For too long I have fooled myself by questioning the world albeit at mind level, living a life totally devoid of inner questioning. Look not far and you will see how much judgment arises in the mind at each moment – that is the result of questioning the world, instead of coming back to the source itself – our own mind. It is a comfort zone that I have mastered throughout my life. To exchange it for a new way of living is scary as it gives a meaning that I have to live life all over again – more than that, I am being given the impression that who I am in the past were merely lies, lies, and lies, and nothing less. Who of a sane mind would do that – stirring mud in still, clear water?

But yet, so long as there is mud in the water, the water cannot be considered clear, except stale and in stagnation, amidst an illusionary peacefulness. That is truly a serious lie, an insanity looming at the background of the so-called sanity, like you and me. We are all walking ghosts, moving aimlessly in the sand of time; until we are awaken from it.

Further reading: Journaling Truth