Month: June 2010

I find the mind intriguing, and yet, baffling. Nothing has come near to comparing the capability of the mind, its weirdness and its potentiality. When I refer to the mind, I am referring to a nature rather than something that I am learning to comprehend. In terms of nature – it is not something that belongs to me and yet it is something that I can’t separate from except to experience it. I am using the word “nature” to denote an experience that is universal by observation and has a specific order or pattern that can be understood by anyone who examined it.

At the individual level, each of us has a specific interest and priority in life, be it money, career, status, hobby, relationship, health or even solitude. Underlying each interest is our need to feel complete, as food for satiating our inner need. There is something within each and every one of us that needs to be continuously fed, to feel complete. Seldom do we try to probe or understand why is there such a specific need tailored to each different individual. This uniqueness propels us to judge our neighbour or help us find common grounds for friendship. The proverb birds of the same feather flocks together points to the effect of this peculiar need.

Our observation of cliques, tribes, fellowships, societies, organisations or even individualisations are all based from this specific need ingrained in each of us. It is from this need, specialness is motivated. Where there is specialness, separation inevitably arises. Separation is not something we consciously create and thus it is impossible to have a non separate entity or a common ground of understanding for us to be together – simply for the reason that lodged within each of us is this unquestioned need that propels us to be different from others. No matter how well we jive with others that resonates with our inner need, somewhere along the friendship there is prone to be disharmony or splits, or on a lesser degree, adjustment to fit into each other’s need; which ironically becomes another form of our own inner need. For us to feel belong we either move away to find another grouping that we can subscribe to or make inner adjustment to escape our fear of rejection.

Our entire life is practically on this unconscious motion – changing courses to satiate our needs or making adjustments to feel belong. Seldom are we authority of our own mind. The mind’s need is subjugating us to live a life of misery and slavery – albeit an unconscious choice – imprisoning us to keep satiating its need. Where there are moments of choice, each choice is made according to this mind’s need. Is there then truly a choice or merely a conditioning brought forward from the blindness or ignorance of this need?

A secular life does not invoke such questioning and thus practically gives away a life in vain to the vanity of the mind’s desire. To the uninitiated, material gains and status is the yardstick of a successful life whereas to an inner seeker, a seeker who wish to understand and transcend the meaning of existence; all gains are merely a camouflage of an incessant addiction found at the deepest core of the mind – the need. Spiritual gains, or as Chogyam Truangpa bluntly refer to as material spiritualism, are no different from those of material pursuit. Spiritual ecstasies, calmness, joy or any uplifting experiences becomes a trapping for the need when we identify them as the ultimate experience of oneness or God, or even enlightenment. Where there is a need, there exists the ego, the opposite to what sacredness of God or enlightenment is.

In short, God or enlightenment has nothing to do with the world. It is entirely exclusive and beyond the mind, not to mention the body. To match what is beyond the mind as mind experiences makes a mockery of the sanctity of what a mind has the potential of achieving – its own destruction – the destruction of “I-ness” which is the cause of all the need. Here lies the fallacy of the mind – its weirdness of the unquestioned need due to ignorance and its potential of ‘self’-destruction, arising from self-inquiry – wisdom.

What then is this need, in reality? An idea. Plainly an idea – arising from delusion and along with it is the world born.

An idea is all it takes to start a dramatic soap opera, be it a nightmare or a happy dream. Not just one idea, to be exact, but rather the first idea that sets the motion of a series of other connected ideas along with it – the entire retinue of cast, so to speak. If the first idea is about brutality, the whole cast of the opera must be brutal, ugly, revengeful etc – don’t expect the cast to be lovey-dovey or cartoonish by nature. If the idea of betrayal comes to mind, we can be sure it is about victimhood, persecutor-ship, jealousy and all its relatives of “poor-me” mentality. We have to take into account how our ideas are churning out more stuff – it all begins from our mind and ends itself there too – never will it end somewhere “out there”. If we think it is out there that we need to make us feel whole again, we can be sure we will never see Peace except revenge; and all revenge has guilt as its result, not peace.

Birds of the same feather flocks together – one wrong mad idea is sufficient to bring in a retinue of wrong ideas along with it. The mind works in accordance with the law of attraction, or, law of causal relationship. One moment of idea is connected to an immediate past and results in the next idea. In short, each idea we have is constantly connected to the immediate past and future.

In other words, when the mind is ignorant, we can be sure the idea that springs up from it is wrong by nature, seeking further evidences to support the idea. One can experience this in their daily lives – when something goes “wrong” the mind will play out its drama by making others wrong. Similarly, when one falls in love with another, passionately, one will not see any wrongness except all the “goodness” about another, irrelevant whether that person exhibit certain unattractive characteristics. But when love finally wanes, usually after a wedding, everything becomes apparently clear! Love blinds! In truth there is no love except ignorance!

Ideas constantly appear in our perception, in the way we look at things. It also arises in our attitude. Thus we are the maker of our reality. What we perceive is what we see as truth. Be careful with what we have in our minds. Whatever we already have will bring forth views that support our beliefs. When we are not able to see whether what we have is right perception or wrong perception (right view or wrong view) we are doom into further suffering or freedom. Do we have the wisdom to break the cycle when wrong ideas are already in our system? Would we be able to know whether the perception we have is right or wrong – that lead us to bondage or freedom? That requires unwavering self-inquiry and good spiritual friends – not that kind of friends that support our poor-me stories, but friends that allow us to see our mistakes. Not many would love to have friends who point out our errors. Only the wise.

That reminds me what Yeshua had said – When you bring forth that within you, then that will save you. If you do not, then that will kill you.

Another beautiful piece from him –
Recognize what is in front of you,
and what is hidden from you will be revealed.
There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

The journey to total Freedom is to continuously probe ideas that are detriment to our peace, to our freedom. And this can only be done when we turn the radar inwards, not outwards. Thus integrity and self-responsibility of what occurs in the mind is one’s highest priority.  The world is merely a mirage, bringing up the worst and best of us. The stories and dramas are all irrelevant, if we wish to see our way out from the entire maya of existence.

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