Home From Retreat

Omega Buddha
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Well I’m back from retreat and kind of wandering around the house and city.
What to say?

I was moved to see that people in all shapes and forms are awakening. How very hopeful for the world!

Adya gave a satsang on “Listening” which has inspired me to be more aware of how open or closed I am to the moment. It seems also the easiest, non-doing way to meditate as true listening is done with all the senses.

One theme running through the week was “stories” - recognizing how we spin simply “what is” into this whole drama. I was quite moved the last day when a woman stood to ask a question. She said she was a “literary agent.” She loved stories. She admitted that she actually “trafficked in stories” – and we all laughed for at that point she did seem somewhat akin to a drug dealer. … well, I have just realized I can’t tell her story here. But, she asked her question with such integrity – such integrity to the truth, that I was in tears.

Adya also spoke of a Zen master, Layman Pang. My interest aroused, I found and thought I’d share a Layman Pang story here. Stories, stories… enjoy them!

[Layman Pang] got the idea that a person needed solitude in order to meditate and ponder the Dharma, so he built himself a little one-room monastery near his family home. Every day he went there to study and practice.

His wife, son and daughter studied the Dharma, too; but they stayed in the family house, conducting their business and doing their chores, incorporating Buddhism into their daily lives.

Layman Pang had submerged himself in the sutras and one day he found that he, too, was in over his head. He hadn't learned to swim yet. On that day, he stormed out of his monastery-hut and, in abject frustration complained to his wife, "Difficult! Difficult! Difficult! Trying to grasp so many facts is like trying to store sesame seeds in the leaves of a tree top!"

His wife retorted, "Easy! Easy! Easy! You've been studying words, but I study the grass and find the Buddha Self reflected in every drop of dew."

Now, Layman Pang's daughter, Ling Zhao, was listening to this verbal splashing, so she went swimming by. "Two old people foolishly chattering!" she called.

"Just a minute!" shouted Layman Pang. "If you're so smart, tell us your method."

Ling Zhao returned to her parents and said gently, "It's not difficult, and it's not easy. When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm tired, I sleep "
Ling Zhao had mastered Natural Chan.

Layman Pang learned a lot that day. He understood so much that he put away his books, locked his little monastery-hut, and decided to visit different Chan masters to test his understanding. He still couldn't compete against his own daughter, but he was getting pretty good.

Eventually he wound up at Nan Yueh Mountain where Master Shi Tou had a monastic retreat. Layman Pang went directly to the master and asked, "Where can I find a man who's unattached to material things?" Master Shi Tou slowly raised his hand and closed Pang's mouth. In that one gesture, Pang's Chan really deepened. He stayed at Nan Yueh for many months.

All the monks there watched him and became quite curious about his Natural Chan, his perfect equanimity. Even Master Shi Tou was moved to ask him what his secret was. "Everyone marvels at your methods," said Shi Tou. "Tell me. Do you have any special powers?"

Layman Pang just smiled and said, "No, no special powers. My day is filled with humble activities and I just keep my mind in harmony with my tasks. I accept what comes without desire or aversion. When encountering other people, I maintain an uncritical attitude, never admiring, never condemning. To me, red is red and not crimson or scarlet. So, what marvelous method do I use? Well, when I chop wood, I chop wood; and when I carry water, I carry water."

And I am home from retreat.

Went to the farmer’s market this morning. Kept being surprised by the realization I no longer had to maintain silence.
Silence has become so natural.
The hardest part of retreat was when we were told to leave the meditation hall and that “silence is now ended.”
My heart felt like a spear pierced through it.
My stomach tightened and I tried to hide my tears.

There are some pictures that I took while at Omega.
You can find them here.

Silent Retreat

Fall petals
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I am off tomorrow for a five-day silent retreat with Adyashanti at the Omega Institute. That means today is full of house cleaning, last minute shopping, and packing - then off to the airport Sunday morning, 5 a.m.

Can’t say that I carry with me much of a conscious agenda. Though I am one unconscious bag of hopes and desires.
In practice, I’m just going to listen to the satsangs and do the meditations… I look forward to the silence.
Perhaps something in me will shift.
It’s time … I think.
But, maybe not, who knows?

There is one situation I would like resolved: duality.
Adya speaks about “The Container of Silence” at a retreat.
To me Silence is just another word for Unboundedness or Consciousness.
What I am uncomfortable with is how “I” seem to rattle about in this Unboundedness.
It really feels like a container – a vast, vast tin can of the universe in which I rattle about.
What could be more dual?

I often view this in two dimensions, as a cross section of the ocean.
On the surface amidst the waves “I” exist as thoughts and activity. A little deeper, just below the surface swirl my emotions.
In these regions of waves and currents run all the stories my mind creates. Over time I’ve come to take all that less seriously.
The moment you realize that Stories are just that – stories, there is something of a disconnect. Entertaining, distracting, dramatic, painful – or not. Some are even useful to a point… but, none of them are Ultimately Real.

With the disconnect it’s as if the mental content’s volume gets dialed down. That doesn’t mean the stories stop – all the chatter action keeps on going – but the words aren’t really listened to.
Now, I’ve come to notice there’s an actual physical buffeting that supports the mental agitation.
I hadn’t expected this. It’s like being tossed in rowboat on the waves of the ocean –thoughts no longer matter – there’s just the buffeting. And this buffeting (is this actually what “karma” is?) exists not only in my head but is broadcast from every single person’s mind. The room at any given moment is this swirl of desires, fears, plans, laser bullets of conflicting emotions zipping all about. It’s physically uncomfortable and I have trouble hearing my own self think.

The other day at work I suddenly realized I felt so weird I stopped working and sat down quietly at my desk over in the corner…
“What is going on?”
I felt the waves - a cacophony of to-do’s.
I noticed the ocean – it’s depths, solitude, and silence. And then to my utter surprise I saw that ordinarily, between the surface activity and ocean depths there’d always been this “me” - this ego – swimming.
And for the briefest, clearest moment I saw that there was “no-one” there.
The swimmer had disappeared.
I no longer had a center.
It was as if I had nowhere from which to establish a point of view - and that was the physical discomfort that I felt.

I felt the physical discomfort.
Realized how logically impossible the situation was.
Shook it off and went back to work.

It makes no sense when put into words, beyond perhaps duality is inherently uncomfortable.
The waves are actually the ocean. Philosophically – I know I am the ocean, the One.
But philosophy doesn’t cut it when it comes to actually living life.

For now, mostly I feel like a person straddling two rowboats, one foot in each, acutely aware of the instability of the situation.
Either be totally identified with the story of the waves, or melt deliciously into the ocean – but straddling the two can only lead to a groin injury.

So much for spiritual metaphors!

Better to clean the house and pack my bags.
Chop wood, carry water.

Fabric of the Univerise

Fabric of the Univerise, detail
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

She wanted to ask him if horses understood the wind.
His glass eyes looked at nothing. His mane was stiff, glued by the knacker to sit perfectly smooth in wind and stillness. She knew he was gone, that what she heard was only an echo.

But that echo reminded her how to listen deeper than her bones, to listen for what no one else heard.
And as the days passed, and she learned how to listen, when the wind touched her skin she began to hear much more than just her name.
The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale

Those were the words I opened to in the book. Just like that, in the library last Saturday. I’d loved the cover art, and so, judging by the cover, had taken up the book.
Something transformed me as I read. Silence pervaded everything.
I sat there for some moments simply trembling. Looking about the room. Hand stroking the pages of the book.
What was That?
What had these words done to me?

I have read other words this week – emails that have also stayed with me.
Like these words from a young woman I have never met, but with whom I correspond:

I woke up an hour after I'd gone to sleep last night and I didn't know who or what or where I was, or if I was dreaming or awake.
I just was.
It was the most vivid and scary thing, and then I sort of settled back into my story.

I'm not sure how to feel about it but I know I couldn't understand it in any way until I came back to myself.
I do know that earlier in the day I had sort of made a statement to the effect I may not be cut out for any great wonderful Buddha-like experience of enlightenment, and realizing I could just accept that…

Or these words are from a dear friend, a mother mourning her son on her own birthday:

Peter brought me flowers and a composter
(I tried a “pile” before and mostly we got rats).
I have been asking Charlie to “come to me” in meditation and at bedtime for several days now.
Last night I had a convoluted dream in which he called me on a cell phone that I couldn’t figure out in time to pick up…
He sang a few bars of happy birthday. It makes me weepy now.

Simply little snippets: a retelling of the Brothers Grimm, my friends just checking in.
In the fairy tale the young princess will one day learn the language of the wind.
As for my friends, they don’t seem that different to me. Our stories will unfold.

On the way to work today, proceeding at a crawl, at some point I had the thought,
“I am lost in traffic.”
But, I had accepted my fate and so I was at peace.
Except, perhaps, for the fact I could not find a single station that I liked on the radio.
I kept trying a new button, cycling through all six selections until I switched to an entirely new “page.”

There I found Eye in the Sky. And was delighted.
Alan Parsons Project, 1982, my original hieroglyphic calligraphy.
I turned up the volume.
Was the instrumental intro particularly long?
It was beautiful, and the words- the words were once my anthem.

I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind…

Bitter days. Was I really once like that?
Now it seems just another love song.
Is it not about God after all? But those words…
“I am the eye in the sky…”

I am lost in traffic going nowhere fast, singing
"I am the eye in the sky."
I think of the painting I did this past weekend, “Fabric of the Universe.”
I think of the wind. What language might it speak?
I think of what my teacher told us last time I was with him:
“Enjoy the little things. Learn to enjoy and notice little things.”

And so I look. I turn my head.

It’s all there: grain of sand, or in the little green sprouts opening by the roadside.
There is a fabric to this Universe – we are connected.
Fairy tales, Love stories, of course the rats are in the compost.
We are dear fools dealing with it.
Debris is everywhere.
The traffic all a snarl as power crews are called out to clean up.
It seems the wind has spoken:
“Slow down, the Light will come back on.”

What the Light Was Like

Eye of the Storm
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book II, Chapter 20, sited in the notes for “August Darks” a poem in What the Light was Like by Amy Clampitt.

The “August darks” what is that, and are we not in April now?
I don’t know.
I am in week three of vertigo and dizziness unassuagible by any drug or Epley maneuver.
And I realize now that Nothingness – one version of that clear perception of Infinity or Silence – can arise from simply a dizzy brain, a troubled middle ear.
I think of Scrooge telling Marley's ghost, “You’re nothing but a bit of undigested meat.”
So, much for spiritual pursuits.

I am not at all clear anymore as to causes or effects,
and was thinking it was to to give up on trying to explain or understand
when I came across this Nisargadatta quote that seemed to only emphasize the point:

Your needs are unreal and your efforts are meaningless.

What a swift kick.

It seems enough to get through the day when most steps shake the floor a good six inches.
I seemed to have lost all sense of shock absorbers.

When nothing stays in focus,
when your world arrives through the wrong end of binoculars,
when gratitude finds inspiration in the fact there is no nausea,
what wonderful support for the practice of letting go.
Let Go.

Nothing can make you happier than you are.
All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery.
The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.
Nisargadatta

Conscious Being...
Beyond the Silence there can be a crushing roar of dissolution.
Or having settled into That, there is the opposite, the outward stroke - the roaring of that March lion, Creation, springing forth.
Did George Eliot realize this? Or do I misconstrue?

Anyway, this poem and these quotations caught my eye,
middle March, middle ear.
I also completed this version of a painting this past weekend.
It’s done upon a photo I took of my bathtub drain and shadows on the water.
It doesn’t seem your usual bathtub. Not at first – but, every child knows just such a tub exists and has explored these waters.

The August Darks

Stealth of the flood tide, the moon dark
but still at work, the herring shoals
somewhere offshore, looked for
but not infallible, as the tide is,
as the August darks are –
…
sanguine with labor, but effortless:
as is the image, far out, illusory
at the dark’s edge, of a cruise ship
moving, seemingly unscathed by effort,
bright as a stage set…

out where the herring wait, beyond
the surf-roar on the other side of silence…
Many
have already died…
Amy Clampitt

And I try to keep the faith that everything is as it should be even as I maintain the delicate dance of playing my part with best efforts, even while I accept
this is how things are.

Winter Silence

Fall bounce 2
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I have become very quiet on these pages, I know.
Maybe it's the winter days now, grey, silent.... marvelous.

I have managed to make some visual art - this little leaf and acorn caught my eye the other morning and brought everything to an immediate halt. I bent over and looked closely, then ran and got the camera.

If you want to read more, go here and visit with Jeanette Winterson.

Or, I found these words of watching and silence yesterday as I inspected a Christmas book:

To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bench of shadow to have watched
those scattered lights
that my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the note of water
in the cistern
known the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle,
the silence of the sleeping bird,
the arch of the entrance, the damp
these things perhaps are the poem.

Jorge Luis Borges

Form and the Formless

Feather in water
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I am having a quiet day at work. It seems no one else bothered to show up or even call.
My experiment is in the centrifuge and I have a moment free to polish up what I’d planned for my next entry here.
Some notes are in a spiral notebook which I’ve pulled out of my bag to reference.

It’s just this notebook I picked up before I went to the Garrison Retreat. It seemed to have some empty pages. I didn’t know, or care, what else was in there.

So, I was flipping through the pages just now when my eyes happened upon what follows.
I’m interjecting it here since it comes so closely on the heels of Eddie's passing.
Also, I spent last weekend with my Taoist teacher, Wong Loh Sin See, and these words fit with that experience also.

The Teacher and I hadn’t seen or spoken to each other for six months, yet he opened the workshop with these words, “Patty, life and death, what is the difference?”
The question took me by surprise, but after some reflection, I replied, “A form is either here or gone.”
He asked me to say more, and our whole exchange seemed an exercise to re-enforcing a moment I’d experienced with Eddie.
As I'd sat with him, I noticed that the Silence within me was also within Eddie. And, I knew that Silence would continue even after Eddie’s form was gone.

Apparently, The Teacher wanted me to see this once again.
And apparently, The Teacher also wanted to show me that there is a formless Consciousness “out there” that personally listens in upon my thoughts and musings. (He does that every workshop.)

So, this passage in the notebook has caught my eye.
I don’t remember ever writing any of this down.
It begins with a quote. My guess is that this is Eckhart Tolle speaking:

Death means a form is dissolving.
It dissolves and then what’s left is formless Consciousness…

When you observe how your breath moves out,
the end of that breath is also a little death,
and there is a moment of stillness…

Any ending is helpful in that way.
Because any ending is the end of a form
and it is always some kind of death.

When you accept it fully, it is an opening
into the formless…
And you want to hold onto the form,
(a recipe for unhappiness)
not realizing that the very reason why this [moment] is meaningful
is that it takes you beyond form.

So the more you welcome all the endings in your life,
“Good-bye! Ah, a form is going,”
the more formlessness there is in life.

The egoic entity works the opposite way.
It hates this. It thinks, “Oh, no! I want to keep this.”
But, it’s going, going, going. Everything.
If you are old enough and can see the death of this physical form approaching
that can be very beautiful too…
Let it push you into being present.

Just that.

I can remember that the last few years of my father’s life
he grew quieter and quieter at family functions.
I see him seated there at the head of our table.
Watching, smiling, sometimes somewhere else, and then back to offer a brief comment,
he was no longer the central presence, no longer “The Rock,” as we had called him.

I got a call from Peggy last night. She was in New York having just spent a one-day Thanksgiving upstate visiting her mother.
I could feel the tears brimming in her eyes as she described,
“Ninety-one. Her health is good. They do all these things… but, she’s turned inside.”
I said, “The actress no longer speaks to the back of the room.”
“No.”
Nor does she pay her children all that much attention.
But, she has discovered Nature.
Now, she’ll stop to look closely at a bud and comment to her daughter, “I never knew!”

But, we all know, somewhere deep inside.
We know about the formless and the form, and the play between the two.

It’s just that
Being awake requires such a light touch.
Being awake requires letting the treasured dissolve away.

Silence, Part 3: a recommendation

Coi smokin'
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Silence is great in theory.
It is even better when experienced.

In keeping with my recent efforts to explain consciousness (or spirituality) via an individual’s creativity, I recommend you visit Beth Adam’s post.

I’m finding that when someone observes a moment closely and are talented enough to capture it in words, they can pass the Silence on to you.

What a blessing.

Silence, Part 2: in many guises

Japanese Feather
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

The Unmanifested is not separate from the manifested. It pervades this world, but it is so well disguised that almost everybody misses it completely…
Do you hear that dog barking in the distance? Or that car passing by? Listen carefully. Can you feel the presence of the Unmanifested in that?
... 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…
The Unmanifested is present in this world as silence… All you have to do is pay attention to it…
You cannot pay attention to silence without simultaneously becoming still within. Silence without, stillness within. You have entered the Unmanifested.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 7, “Portals into the Unmanifested”

It is curious to me that Tolle doesn’t capitalize Silence, yet he does capitalize Unmanifested. I have always equated the two. Perhaps, I am wrong in this.

When my consciousness first shifted, back in 1975, the shift (my awakening?) began with a sudden thundering of Silence. I was leaning over to whisper a joke to a friend, as we sat watching a video tape of Maharishi, played to a roomful of TM teachers in the midst of a six week retreat. I was midway through my lean, when Silence cracked so abruptly I jerked straight up in my chair.

I never finished my lean, nor did I ever deliver my snide comment.
Instead, I looked around the room absorbed by this all pervading Silence.
At that moment my life was changed forever.
Then, I got up and walked out.

I no longer recall why I felt so compelled to leave. It was night. We were in the country and being out under a brilliant canopy of stars, rather than in the confines of a crowded room, was probably my motivation.

By the time I was done walking, it was long past lights-out, and my new found friend (the course leader who’d accompanied me when I fled the meeting) was pretty much holding me up. My legs had grown wobbly. I’d become quite drunk on my new reality. Eventually, she dumped me upon my bed to spend the night totally Awake.
I slept one hour every other night for the next two weeks. It made little difference whether my eyes were shut or open, whether my body moved, sat still, or slept.
I was always Awake. … How I managed to go back to sleep is a story for another time.

Since then, Silence has broken in upon my ordinary awareness time and time again during the most mundane behavior.
It strikes suddenly, without preamble.
It always seems precipitated by some other simple sound: a fly pinging against a lamp shade, a dog barking in the distance.
It can be electrifyingly intense or have the strangest subtlety.

I’ve had Silence spin me almost off my chair while sitting in a coffee shop.
I’ve watched Silence roll across the room just as a wave rolls to shore, buckling my knees and felling those around me also, in something of a silent tsunami.
It feels as if I’m going to faint, but I never have. I simply lose thought and muscular control for some few moments.
This has even happened while working at the computer in the lab. I was startled to watch computer monitor go black in perfect synchrony with Silence descent upon me.
We had to reboot the system. After the third time, the monitor was dead.
I never mentioned my involvement to the others and the Department covered costs.

Silence is not simply about sound.
It is also about space and form, which is just a way of saying it is also about Nothingness.

Just as no sound can exist without silence, nothing can exist without no-thing, without the empty space that enables it to be. Every physical object or body has come out of nothing, is surrounded by nothing, and will eventually return to nothing…. The Unmanifested is not only present in this world as silence; it also pervades the entire physical universe as space - from within and from without. …Nothing – space – is the appearance of the Unmanifested as an externalized phenomenon in a sense-perceived world. That’s about all one can say about it, and even that is kind of a paradox. …Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing, the same nothing.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter Seven.

Silence is also about Love.
When Maharishi “made me a teacher,” I sat alone with him for sometime and we talked. As a final gesture, he gave me a picture of his teacher, Guru Dev, then said, “Now, you keep him happy.”
With those words, a wave of Silence, some “carpet flap” in an Ocean of Nothingness started at the far wall of the room. I knew it to be Maharishi’s love for Guru Dev and I watched it roll towards us. Even though I’d seen it coming, its splashiness of Love was beyond any expectation. Speechless and wide-eyed, I reached out with both my hands, clamped them hard upon the lithograph, bowed and backed out of there.

My Penguin paperback edition of the Bhagavad Gita is old and very fragile now.
But, I had it with me back when my consciousness first submerged into Silence.
These are the words that I underlined then.
I’m sorry that Adyashanti doesn’t speak about God more. Perhaps it is the Zen in him.
And I’m sorry that I couldn’t stay Awake. Perhaps it is the ego in me.

In cosmic consciousness silence and activity co-exist at the same level; whereas the level of God-consciousness is completely free of all duality; it is the living silence of eternal life, and Unity pervades all activity as water every wave…. When the awareness of the Self in cosmic consciousness develops into the awareness of God in God-consciousness, it develops on the level of silence; the whole process is one of the transformation of silence. At every step the quality of silence changes.… In transcendental consciousness, silence is devoid of any activity. In cosmic consciousness, the silence of Self-awareness co-exists with activity. In God-consciousness, the co-existence of activity and silence is transformed into oneness of awareness with God. This silence of God-consciousness is the most highly developed state of silence. It is all life on the almighty level of existence. It is the omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient silence of Godhead. It is a completely different state of silence, which has nothing in common with the silence of cosmic consciousness or transcendental consciousness.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, On the Bhagavad Gita, A New Translation and Commentary, Chapter 6, verse 3.

Silence, Part 1: A Body from the Absolute

the genius
Originally uploaded by yves.harnois

In my last post, I mentioned the discomfort I was wrestling with. I described it as “shredding the Silence.” I’d like to try to explain that experience more closely, for it bears upon how it is we live in Silence.

Since 1975, Silence has descended upon me, sprung up around me, washed over in a splashing wave, or simply tickled my spine. Silence is the most direct approach I have to the transcendent Absolute. And lately, it has presented itself with such intensity there’s simply no way my body can absorb it, relax into it, or simply “adjust.”

It’s like trying to sit still and relax into a sustained jolt of electricity – except its utter Silence. My reaction is immediate and totally reflexive. I shut down tight and the whole jolt passes in a few seconds.

The curious thing about last week’s “shredding of the Silence” was that it seemed to be an opportunity for Silence to come into me without being immediately rejected.
More precisely - the Silence merged into one side of me.
There it met the resistance of my own body, a body formed from “Ether” rather than the usual flesh and bone or even molecules or energy and light.
Ether is the best label I can give it.
I see it as crystal clear, without even molecular or vaporous content.
It’s like heat waves rising mirage-like above the highway. Except this Ether is not hot, nor are there any waves.
But, it was there, taking up space, forming my body, and abutting with the Silence right along the midline of my physical body.
The Silence was something distinctly different from Ether. Lacking the crystal clarity of the latter, Silence was an unbounded, immaterial presence.
It was also not my body. But, it was ready to move in.
My insistence upon moving, upon thinking, upon doing anything of much consequence caused a shredding of the Ether spreading out from where it abutted with the Silence.
It was a most physical lesson on Wholeness breaking into individuality.
Wholeness became separated, even as it permeated.

It was a hard and curious lesson.
It’s a lesson that I’m kind of left to figure for myself.
The only text I can refer to are these words from Maharishi, notes I took the winter of 1974, from a video tape shown at a TM teacher retreat.
(Maharishi was actually discussing the possibility of physical immortality, but I’ve edited it for an emphasis towards my own situation.)
Where Maharishi speaks of Absolute, you can just as easily substitute the word Silence.

What ages? Certainly not consciousness. One thing that is ever the same is the field of consciousness. What ages is a product of consciousness – energy or matter, that which is the home of consciousness…that which is not changing is only the Absolute and from this it’s apparent [that] if there is a body made of Absolute, then it couldn’t change. If we can mould a form of that, then we’ll have a body structured out of that which knows no change. Whether it’s possible to have such a body – the real answer is if… we can locate a body made from the finest Relative, then we can conceive of a formless form…

Prior to transcendental experience is matter of [the] finest state of [the] physical. Physical values of life are found in finer and finer values, we know from experience. Physics say[s] “ground state”… These theories are structured through direct experience through instruments. And at each of these levels it’s possible to structure a body. If there is that matter existing, then the bodies can be molded out of that…

[The] time value of gross [level of Creation] is different from the time value of the subtle. But, we’re so habituated to feel the passage of time we feel some factor of time when we transcend. We may feel five minutes has past while meditating and we come out and thirty minutes are gone. So, the quality of life is different when bodies are structured in finer matter. On the finest level we have a word for it – celestial - where bodies are glowing with light, bodies made of light…

Biological immortality will be on the same level as the abstract immortality of consciousness. Only consciousness is non-changing. Unless one can understand that there is a material that is non-material, so concrete yet so abstract, a man cannot comprehend that until he has the experience…

Bodies made of light. Light is finer than sound. Sound is finer than waves. Consciousness is finer [than everything]. So there is that level of substance that is so refined. And as that experience becomes more and more clear, then we can conceive of a body made of the Absolute.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, LaAntilla, Spain, 1973.

It’s nice to find such passages.
It helps me trust my own experience.
(And I apologize how my editing and Maharishi’s spontaneous speech make it read a bit jumpily.)
I don’t feel nuts. But, I do feel a bit outlandish.
However, there is some very interesting biology here.
And Silence is important too…

As is comic relief.
Maharishi went on to speak of Tapas – purification of the body to refine its elements into the celestial.
During this past week, I have spontaneously become the simplest of vegetarians. No more meat for now. So, it seems some Tapas begins solely intuitively.
However, I fine it difficult to believe that my blend of decafe and regular coffee, beta blockers and calcium channel agonists is really the stuff of traditional regimens.
Which brings us back to the interesting biology of all this.

What does it take to physiologically support enlightenment?
Take a look at this video of Ramana Maharishi before you answer.

A Promise (of dubious worth)

Canvas 6
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I have sat down with the promise to myself of “just write” and post whatever.
Whatever. It was been a quiet (strange?) whatever kind of week. My difficulty with writing has continued.

For one thing, I’ve kind of given up on thinking – though my mind is filled with thoughts. I find “intellectual activity” (and yes, that is actually behind most of these post) – intellectual activity in the form of thought after thought has become at times unbearable.

Why? Because I cannot stand how all the thoughts seem to pull me out of myself and away from the knowing discovery that “feeling” can provide. Driving into work the other morning (just about the only morning I made it into work last week) I saw quite clearly how thinking pulls me up and out of myself. I didn’t like that and was looking at the phenomenon closely. Then, I realized, “Well, at least that makes it very clear – You are not your thoughts.” Of course, this s a philosophical belief of mine, but just that moment, belief gave way to direct experience.

Thoughts are like these skyrockets I send up from the Silence of myself. Skyrockets are great fun and colorful delights. But, they are no more “me” than my body is. Though I (whoever that may be) do live in close proximity to both thoughts and physiology. In fact, we intermix.

I didn’t stay at work for long that day. My body has had its own struggles. Last Saturday a bunch of old friends and I went for a kayak float down a river in north Georgia. It was a perfect day. The river carried us along and required little work. We linked kayaks up in continually shifting combinations and caught up on each other’s lives. We picnicked on a gravel bank, floated pass turtles sunning by the dozen, gazed up into the blue, blue sky and inhaled the greenness of the trees. After seven miles of these delights we got out, dried off, and regrouped at Pod’s house overlooking a lake just outside Atlanta. I haven’t had such a good time in months.

The next morning I woke up with a migraine; too many nitrates in the potato salad? I don’t know. (Well, yes, in part it was the nitrates.)

But, I was also suffused with Silence, apparently absorbed from all that Nature and enlivened by all the happiness and laughter. The Silence sickened me as much as any migraine. For below all the muscle, blood, skin, and bones, my body was also composed of Silence and my insistance upon moving, thinking, focusing on task painfully torn into it and ripped the Silence into shreds. “One layer up” my inner body energetically became a silence scream. A layer up from that was a “migraine” of sorts.

I called in Monday with the migraine excuse. Though none of the drugs I took relieved the symptoms: low grade headache, nausea, trembling, poor balance, eyes not working. It was enough of a migraine to use as a somewhat honest excuse. But, it was something else too. My consciousness was wide open. I spent a lot of time sitting on the back deck, watching two robins tend their nest. I also caught up on cleaning and laundry, with naps freely interspersed. When I slept, there was pure wakefulness. When I went to work, I couldn’t understand my protocols – the instructions for my experiment. I would reread each sentence, moving my finger along below the words for emphasis, but nothing would compute. I couldn’t figure how to do things I have done several times before. Meanwhile, continually shredding Silence became a roar of jangled, chaotic energy. I soon had to return to my bed.

As long as mind is associated with the object, so long as is it experiencing mind; but when the object of experience has diminished to the point where it has disappeared, the mind ceases to be experiencing mind. Conscious mind becomes consciousness. But during this process of transformation, it first gains the state of its own individuality…
The verse does not speak of the mind but of “thought” as being steady. The Sanskrit word is chitta, which signifies that aspect of mind which is a quiet and silent collection of impressions or seeds of desire. Chitta is like water without ripples. It is called manas, or mind, when ripples arise.

When the mind gains the state of chitta… It holds its individuality in the void – the abstract fullness around it – because there is nothing for it to experience. It remains undisturbed, awake in itself.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, On the Bhadgavad Gita, a New translation and Commentary. Chapter 6, verse 19.

I think that physiologically my body/mind was ready to sit quietly. However, I live in the world. I have a 9 to 5 job. And so that which would melt silently … “Imagine a silent wave on a silent ocean, ready to merge into the silence of the deep” (MMY) – imagine taking a stick to that water and whipping it into a frenzy. That’s what moving in the world felt like all week. That’s what forming thoughts coherently into writing feels like just now. It nauseates my body and sets everything to trembling.

So, OK. Enough for now. I’ve kept my promise.
I have this one thought, RE: Why bother doing this?
I hope that this chronicle might be of use to someone, somewhere, someday.

Adya says if the question is occurring to you, then you also know the answer. So, when I ask myself, “What is going on?” I look to see.
And, I think I see. I think I understand. And so might someone else. But, the answers often seem so outlandish that doubt arises. Doubt is weakening and we don’t need that. So, from time to time it helps to discover that someone else has passed this way. And perhaps, this is the path... and then thorns and brambles don’t matter quite so much.

One Day

Marigold and Crane
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Two white, a blue, and brown
one day I’ll forget the combination
exchange the brown for blue.
Even now my mind becomes confused.

I do not know that it matters.
A blue pill
A brown pill, the white
I am reminded of a painting
a white bird in a bubble
floating under a petal by the rocks

Layer within layer

Always something
until Silence insists on Nothing

taking my medicine.


P Bralley.

Rameshvaram

So, recently I was trying to figure out,
“How did I ever get myself into this situation?”

My situation?
Well, the tether broke some time ago. (see, here, I say.)
And I have been swept up in forces Way Beyond my control.
Or perhaps, was it a conscious choice…
Yes.

I let go about the time I recalled
A story Maharishi told us many years ago.
He told us how once he had been bothered by a reoccurring thought.
Finally he had been told,
“It’s time you get rid of this thought.”

So, I thought it might be nice to share the story.
An illustration of the second kind of “I don’t know.”
A thought that comes from the Silence deep inside.


In 1953, when Maharishi’s master died, “it was if a magnet had been turned off.” So he retired to the silent caves of Uttar Kashi in the Valley of the Saints, deep in the Himalayas.
After two years, he began to have a faint idea, a thought of going to Rameshvaram a temple in the extreme south of India.

"I quite remember, there was absolutely no purpose attached to this thought of Rameshvaram. I didn't know myself why this thought was coming up."

But the thought kept coming to his mind — go to Rameshvaram, go to Rameshvaram. And this was not a polite thought to be harboring.
For, to the yogis dwelling in the Valley of the Saints, merely mentioning the south of India was somewhat akin to speaking in obscenities.

But, acceptable or not, the thought kept coming.

Finally, another yogi of his acquaintance offered an opinion.
He said, “It’s time you get rid of this thought.”

So, Maharishi (he was simply Mahesh, then) did the only thing he could.
Mahesh made the long journey from the Himalayas to the southern tip of India.
After three weeks at Rameshvaram a new idea began to take form in his mind:

"Coming from the Himalayas, I had the thought—it was very fresh in my mind—that it is not necessary for man to suffer. The Vedas say, ‘All this is bliss. I am bliss, infinite, unbounded, eternal, non-changing.’ But where is the reality of this in the day-to-day life of the people? The natural feeling that was deep in my mind was that something should be done so that people don't suffer, because there is no reason to suffer."

This too was just a thought.
Then, just as he was preparing to return to the Himalayas, Mahesh was approached by a man in the streets.
The man asked him, "Do you speak?" Or had he taken a vow of silence?
Mahesh said, "I do, but do you mean lecturing? I don't."
The man said, "You seem to be from the north. Where are you staying?"
Mahesh told him, and about three o'clock that afternoon the man knocked on Mahesh’s door.

"The knock at the door surprised me. Who can that be? And here was that man. I opened the door. He said, 'Seven lectures have been prepared for you.' I had absolutely no idea of lecturing or lectures or anything. Then he wouldn't wait for my reaction. He continued to say, 'Now I have to give them the seven titles on which you'll be speaking. And this will be a one-week program.' It was strange. Absolutely strange, completely out of the blue it came. It just came like a very natural flow, one step after the other. I dictated to him seven topics, not knowing what I was going to speak on the topics. He started to go, and I said, 'Leave a copy with me.'

"So I went and sat there and talked to the people. The press caught the whole thing up. Every day the audience doubled. I was completely unaffected by anything, because this was sort of passing time before I was to go. The whole thing was so gentle and gradual and automatic, completely automatic—just as the river flows, and it doesn't have to make an effort to flow because the slope is already available to the flow. It flows just like that, effortless flow of life."

And this is how Maharishi started teaching meditation
Over fifty years ago.
There never was any grand plan.

If was more like a river flowing...
It was simply time to “get rid of a thought.”

If you'd like to read about the prayer flags go here.