God…
The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they know what they are talking about… .. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoist delusions such as “My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false,” Or Nietzsche’s famous statement “God is dead”.
Joy…
So in the unenlightened, mind-identified condition, what is sometimes wrongly called joy is the usually short-lived pleasure side of the continuously alternating pain-pleasure cycle. Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.
Buddha…
So don’t seek to become free of desire or “achieve” enlightenment. Become present. Be there as the observer of the mind. Instead of quoting the Buddha, be the Buddha, be the “awakened one”, which is what the word Buddha means.
Pain…
The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.
The power of NOW…
Imagine the earth devoid of human life, inhabited only by plants and animals. Would it still have a past and a future? Could we still speak of time in any meaningful way? … … The oak tree of the eagle would be bemused by such a question. “What time?” they would ask. “Well, of course, it’s now. The time is now, what else is there?”
Dealing with challenges…
The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life’s challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep… … … … then certainly you won’t be able to stay conscious when something “goes wrong” or you are faced with difficult people or situations, with loss or the threat of loss. You will be taken over by a reaction.
Pain and identification with it…
As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it.
Silence…
Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but un-manifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, every word. The un-manifested is present in this world as silence. This is why it has been said tat nothing in this world is so like God as silence.
Space…
Space has no “existence”. “To exist” literally means “to stand out”. You cannot understand space because it doesn’t stand out. Although in itself it has no existence, it enables everything else to exist. Silence has no existence either, nor does the Un-manifested.
Death…
Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life of to “die before you die” – and find that there is no death.