Silent

One solution for our political, economic, and spiritual problems: more inner silence.

There is a silence imposed by the mind that is hard, dry, and fruitless. There is a silence between estranged lovers that is cruel as a steel blade. There is the silence of cowards who are afraid to speak out against injustice.

But there is a deeper kind of silence, the silence of the heart, that is fragrant with the Word of God, bearing fruit. From this silence spill countless worlds of beauty that cannot be conveyed by human speech.

The silence of the heart is our true home. Yet it is groundless, placeless. We fall forever inward - blessed to be without wings - until we become the abyss itself. Then the fall is perfect stillness.

The heart's silence cannot be imposed by thought or discipline. It is prior to thinking, prior to effort, flowering from the void as the bliss of emptiness, filling every particle of this body with the courage to love.

Good Friday

Liberation is not 'from' but 'through' the cross - the cross of opposites, the cross of duality.

Jesus passed through the center, through the bound into the boundless, to become a Western Buddha, our human model, our pattern of liberation.

He did not attempt to escape from the flesh. Every photon of his flesh, every particle of his sorrow, became a door to the infinite light.

A Meditation On Dissolving Conflict

"All conflict is a waste of energy." ~J. Krishnamurti

"If you are distressed by any external circumstance, the suffering is not due to the thing itself, but to your mind's interpretation of it, which you have the power to change at any moment." ~Marcus Aurelius

Today we are on the brink, not of one war, but billions of wars. Our minds are so addicted to conflict that a single word, a campaign slogan, a TV image or a Tweet, could set off an explosion. The truth is, our mind love conflict. But if we truly want to end it, we can.

We can handle our pain without turning it into suffering. We can handle our fear without turning it into anger. We can handle our past without turning it into a story.

How? Feel the conflict in the body, before it becomes a thought. Feel it as energy in the present moment, without a past or future. Feel it as pure sensation, without labeling or judging it.

Feel anxiety as a sensation in the body, grief as a sensation in the body, fear as a sensation in the body, happiness as a sensation in the body, God as a sensation in the body.

Bathe the body in crystalline thought-free awareness. This body, not this mind, is the alchemist's laboratory. 

Follow the conflict as sensation, right down to the spark of a dissolving photon, then beyond form, to the liberated space within the photon. Become boundless even in your flesh.

This liberated space is what the body is actually made of, whether contracting into pain or expanding into pleasure. It is pure awareness.

Both flesh and spirit are formed of ananda, the only difference being their density. This energy, which has no origin or purpose, no beginning or destination, is just a self-celebrating explosion of wonder.

We could meet here, and dance.

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But see how the mind loves conflict! The mind feeds on conflict, thirsts for conflict, generates conflict through words, images, beliefs. 99.9% of humanity's conflict begins in the mind. Then we project this conflict into the world and say, "See, it comes from out there!"

Our ego derives its identity from conflict, the way a dog derives pleasure from chewing on a dry bone, until it can taste the blood from its own gums.

But when we honestly grow tired of this conflict, we can dissolve it as sensation in the body. We don't need to label the conflict as a belief, an image, or a political slogan in the mind, then project it onto our beautiful vulnerable earth.

But again the question: do we really want to end the conflict, or is our sense of identity nourished by it?

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Where is your conflict right now? Look around you, wherever you are? Is the conflict to the left or the right? Is it above you or beneath you? Is it on the TV? The Twitter-feed?

Now close your eyes and feel this conflict inside your body. Can you not taste it in your nerves? Is this not where the sense of conflict is actually arising?

Taste the conflict as energy, without a label or belief. Do you really need to link the sensation to an image in the mind? Do you really need to create a story around it, with a past and future?

Perhaps repeating the story is just the ego's way of sustaining the conflict it loves to chew on. And what happens when this becomes a group story, a tribal story, the story of a whole nation? Does it not feed war?

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Now, what happens when you de-link the sensation from the mental image? What happens when you dissolve the story and simply feel the conflict in your body, at the present moment?

In the observation of sensation without thought, is the dissolution of conflict.

This practice is the beginning of peace-making. But minds that love conflict will find ten million arguments against it...

So just start over again.

Observe this mind arguing with itself.

Breathe gently and observe.

Is the observer the argument observed?

Is the observer not free from the argument?

Observing the argument, feel the underlying sensation in the body.

Let go of images and words for the conflict: rest as nameless sensation.

Don't resist the sensation that arises, blossoms, and dissolves in the vast blue sky of Awareness.

Jai Guru Dev
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Choose Your Fate

"No one else is responsible for your misery - it is just you who have forgotten how vast and beautiful you are." ~Sri Sri 

Bad things happen to everyone in this world. Good things happen too. They are just events. As they actually happen, they are temporary and momentary. How we string these events together into an Identity-card is up to us, and completely at our discretion.

Some people carry the victim card all life long, because some bad things happened to them in the past. Some people have endured horrible events yet don't identify themselves as victims at all: they become active, creative, and inspiring to others. They are not defined by their past.

And then there are those who have lived quite privileged lives, yet focus constantly on their problems, imagining themselves to be victims of a terrible fate.

What happens to us is not always in our control. But the identity we construct for ourselves is what really determines our "fate," and it is completely of our choosing.

I know a heroic man who is a Muslim American. As a soldier in the U.S. military he was wounded and his wounds permanently disabled him. He is bound to live in a wheel chair for the rest of his life. Since he has become a peace-activist, and is a Muslim, our government has been trying to expel him from this country. He has every reason to be bitter and feel victimized. Yet he is a bright light of inspiration, a tireless peace-maker, an energizer of hope.

We choose our fate, and we choose it constantly, Now.

Non-Non-Duality

The old artifice of searching, that flimsy bridge between the searcher and the sought, collapses now, an implosion of light into abysmal blackness, creating a simultaneous explosion of the vacuum into hosts of stars. The self and the world are a singular chaos of beauty. The imageless mirror reflects a furiously joyful dancer: yet there is only the reflection, and no one making it! The music of the dance reverberates in the heart of silence.

One who tastes the stillness of this dance, and the whirling of this stillness, would not in a thousand lifetimes invent such a dualistic word as 'non-duality,' or such a repressive concept as 'non-dualism.'

No Conflict

There is no conflict in the world that does not first arise in the mind. To end the strife out 'there,' dissolve the mind's discord in a breath of Silence. We don't need mass angry political rallies nearly so much as we need vast gentle group meditations. And when you invite your mind home to your heart, even in the quietness of your own back yard, or on a favorite forest trail, YOU are the group meditation. You have no circumference. Your softest exhalation is attended by multitudes on earth and in heaven.

Moon In A Spider's Web

Is there brilliance in the mind? Is the moon caught in the spider's web?

There is no such thing as a "brilliant intellect." To find brilliance, we need to transcend intellect. Brilliance comes from the Atman, the Self, who is far beyond and deeper than the web of thought. The hope of humanity no longer lies with intellectuals, but with intuitives, those who know how to transcend the mind, with all its belief systems. Music, poetry, art, the breakthrough in physics or technology, will come from a silence deeper inside than the intellect.

It is not that "I think, therefor I am," but that "I Am, therefor I think." The Am is self-luminous, illimitable, eternal, silent, free of thoughts, and unendurably blissful. Every thought perishes when awareness reposes in that ocean of light.

The art of transcending the intellect is meditation. But meditation is in no way "anti-intellectual." Meditation polishes the intellect and bathes the mind in light. Then, when we come out of meditation to engage in thought and activity, we may employ the intellect without getting stuck in it.

Om Namah Shivaya.