Yoga Zen

09/13/2020

09/12/2020

Here's a Zen story about mindfulness and living in the moment:

A Zen master asked a seeker if he would like to stay for dinner. After dinner, the seeker went to the do the dishes, but the master intervened. The guest said, "Don't you think I know how to do the dishes?" The master responded, "I have no doubt you know how to do the dishes in order to get the dishes clean. But do you know how to do the dishes in order to simply do the dishes?"

09/11/2020

MYSTIC MANIFESTO

I am Christ and Buddha, Krishna and the boy riding past my window on his bike. I am Arjuna in his chariot fearful of starting a war and then afraid of never getting out of one. I am both mystic and cynic, saint and sinner. I am Life and Love and nothing at all. I am Vast, Infinite, and Forever. I AM. And as such, I am nothing special because it is true of us all.

Such an assertion is neither foolish nor arrogant. For regardless of your belief system, this is the bare and simple truth. It is what every avatar and sage has tried to teach us throughout the ages. And why many of them were martyred.

Such absolute humility is the access point to the inner SILENCE of the heart.

09/07/2020

"Just as water can be solid, liquid, or gaseous, consciousness can be seen to be frozen as physical matter, liquid as mind and thought, or formless as pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is life before it comes into manifestation and that life looks at the world of form through your eyes because consciousness is who you are. When you know yourself as that, then you recognize yourself in everything. It is a state of complete clarity of perception. You are no longer an entity with a heavy past that becomes a screen of concepts through which every experience is interpreted. When you perceive without interpretation, you can then sense what it is that is perceiving. The most we can say in language is that there is a field of alert stillness in which the perception happens. Through you, formless consciousness has become aware of itself."

~ Eckhart Tolle

****************
I often enjoy the thought experiments of E. Tolle ~ thought I’d break this one down a bit.

“Just as water can be solid, liquid, or gaseous, consciousness can be seen to be frozen as physical matter, liquid as mind and thought, or formless as pure consciousness.”

Sorta Kinda. Water in each of these 3 physical states is still H2O. The same molecular structure. From what I have experienced thoughts change in form, in our conceptual understanding of what they represent as they pass through our unconscious state, bubble into consciousness and later into pure awareness.

“Pure consciousness is life before it comes into manifestation and that life looks at the world of form through your eyes because consciousness is who you are.”

Again sorta kinda. Pure consciousness is absolute awareness without a conceptual framework on which to place prejudicial notions or bias. This is who we innately are.

Consciousness is who we think we are in the false reality of “I” or “me” and “mine,” the artifacts of consciousness. With such consciousness we crystallize the chaotic stream of perceptual events into citta-vrtta which endows our perception with a false sense of reality that moves us away from dissolve into pure awareness.

“When you know yourself as that, then you recognize yourself in everything.”

Here E. Tolle must be referring to pure awareness and not consciousness.

“It (pure awareness) is a state of complete clarity of perception (knowing). You are no longer an entity with a heavy past that becomes a screen of concepts through which every experience is interpreted (consciousness). When you perceive without interpretation, you can then sense what it is that is perceiving.”

The most we can say in language is that there is a field of alert stillness in which the perception (of pure awareness) happens. Through you, (a) formless consciousness has (formed) and become (pure)aware(ness) (is made manifest to the observer without the aid of citta.”

*******************
Patanjali states that pure awareness is overshadowed by the modulations of consciousness. This characteristic of mind requires deliberate, consistent and intensive inner work, or yoking, if one is to awaken from its false authority and automaticity and see through its incessant, limiting definitions of reality.

09/06/2020

"I think you’re all enlightened, until you open your mouths. As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.

Leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don't serve them tea.
How much ‘ego’ do you need? Just enough so that you don’t step in front of a bus."

~ Shunryu Suzuki

09/06/2020

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It’s so plain and obvious and yet, everybody rushes around in a panic as it it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

09/06/2020

It's easy for the mind to obscure its relationship with pure awareness as it wrestles with the movements of nature. The result is a mind that has little understanding of its purpose, which when settled, is simply to serve pure awareness.

~ Horse Head Nebula and the Pillars of Creation
Hubble