𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 ... 𝐉. 𝐊𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐢

"Meditation is one of the most extraordinary things, and if you do not know what it is you are like a blind person in a world of bright color, shadows, and moving light.

"It is not an intellectual affair; when the heart enters into the mind, the mind has quite a different quality: it is then really limitless, not only in its capacity to think, to act efficiently; but also in its sense of living in a vast space where you are part of everything.

"Meditation is the movement of love...

"This meditation cannot be learned from another. You must begin without knowing anything about it, and move from innocence to innocence.

"The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life; the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly ... 

"You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is."

J. Krishnamurti
Excerpt from Meditations, 1969

𝐑𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐚𝐯𝐫𝐨𝐯 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲 ... 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐄

 

𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝. 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞? 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐲 𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐬?

To listen to this in a video ... CLICK: 

Never let your government tell you 

who your enemies are. 

From Caitlin Johnstone

It’s not the fault of middle eastern people that they live on top of a bunch of oil near crucial trade routes in a region which bridges three continents. And that’s all this has ever been about. Not fighting “terrorism”. Not spreading freedom and democracy. Not even protecting Israel. It’s ultimately about controlling what happens in a geostrategically crucial and resource-rich stretch of land.

The people who live in that part of the world never did you any harm. They pose no threat to you. You’re only being told to hate them because the world’s most powerful people need to dominate west Asia in order to dominate the planet, and they need to inflict immense amounts of violence in order to do so. That’s all this is.

Our rulers use all kinds of narratives from all around the world and across the political spectrum to justify their actions. They’ll use Zionism, Christian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalism, liberalism, conservatism, nationalism or woke identity politics to manufacture consent for their agendas wherever needed. They’ll feed you whatever lines you need to hear in order to dupe you into thinking that disobedient populations in the middle east need military explosives dropped on them. That’s all they care about.

Our rulers use their propagandists in the mainstream news media and their narrative managers in Silicon Valley to manipulate public perception toward these murderous agendas using half-truths, lies by omission, distortions, misleading headlines, reversing the victim and the aggressor, starting the timeline of events at convenient points, and uncritically repeating unproven allegations from untrustworthy sources. These manipulators are as critical to the operation of the imperial war machine as the actual people who drop the bombs.

What kind of groveling, slobbering bootlicker would play along with this? What kind of power-worshipping empire simp would consent to murder and abuse at mass scale against people who pose no threat to them whatsoever, just because the people in charge told them to feel that way? What a pathetic, profoundly undignified way to exist.

They work so hard to manufacture our consent for these atrocities because they absolutely require our consent. So don’t give it to them. When all is said and done our rulers are at all times acutely aware of the fact that there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and that we could very easily turn around and eat them all if we got it into our heads that that would be a good thing to do. Hold fast to your power, refuse to be taken in by their manipulations, and help wake everyone up to the fact that we are being continuously deceived into compliance, confusion and powerlessness by murderous psychopaths who want to rule the world.

Our real enemies are not in Iran.

Our real enemies are not in Lebanon.

Our real enemies are not in Gaza or the West Bank.

Our real enemies are not in Yemen, Syria, or Iraq.

Our real enemies are in Washington and London and Tel Aviv. In Berlin and Paris and Canberra. In secretive government agencies in the state of Virginia, and in imperial propaganda institutions in New York and Hollywood.

Our real enemies are not the Arabs and the Iranians, they’re the managers of empire who are ruining our world, destroying our biosphere, siphoning our wealth and our resources, threatening us with nuclear brinkmanship, and making sure we stay too poor, sick, busy and brainwashed to figure out what’s going on and take a stand against them.

Don’t let them dupe you into believing otherwise. Fight against their manipulations, and oppose their abuses. We healthy human beings can absolutely win this thing, but even if we don’t, at the very least we can prevent them from stealing our dignity and manipulating us into cheering for their depravity.

𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 .... 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡, 𝐟𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲.

 

When people become acquainted with the unconscious they often get into an extraordinary state—they flare up, they explode, old buried emotions come up, they begin to weep about things which happened forty years ago.

That simply means that they were prematurely detached from that stage of life; they have forgotten that there are buried fires still burning. Then they were unconscious, but when they touch the lower centers, they get back into that world and become aware that it is still hot, like a fire that has been left forgotten under the ashes.

But take away the ashes and there are still the glowing embers underneath, as it is said of pilgrims going to Mecca: they leave their fires buried under the ashes, and when they return the following year the embers are still glowing.

— Carl Jung

And, from Lance Kelly ...

The Surrender of Self

The self, which is the mind and emotional body, is a mass of psychic force until transformed through living as a more conscious being in the world. In the normal mode of living, the self doesn’t need to exert unnecessary energy beyond its vital needs, which it extracts from its host body – the person. This it does through the fluctuating emotional reactions that are typical symptoms of unconscious living. But when someone begins to take command of their inner kingdom (which is when the focus of intelligence turns inward), the self no longer has things its own way as before. Startled by the sudden intrusion from the light of consciousness on its dark underworld, the self withdraws a little deeper from conscious scrutiny. In this temporary vacuum there is then an inrush of enlightened energy, which is characteristic of a spiritual awakening. But it’s not long before the self returns to regain its lost ground within the subconscious space of the psyche.

As the spiritual process unfolds and the individual perseveres in overcoming the insidious nature of the self, more ground is made through the purification of the inner space. The consequences for the self, in no longer having the freedom as before to influence the life, is that it becomes more troublesome than before. The entity of pain must now exert more forceful energy to sustain its presence in existence. Unbeknown to the self (since it has no knowledge beyond what’s been experienced in time) its body has now been reduced in mass, amplifying its presence as extreme discomfort and pain. In a desperate attempt for attention to experience itself, the core of self begins to consume its energetic body; the intense pressure being registered is the self dying and not the purity of the man or woman.

The suffering must be borne without self-judgement or trying to understand why it’s happening. This is spiritual humility and a selfless offering to the Most High. It’s to be valiant and one-pointed in the devotion to a higher love. The self is being made to capitulate but will resist all the way when it feels its power is being weakened. With perseverance, the self eventually yields and kneels before the altar of the Lord: the absence of all knowing that is the reality of God. This obliterates the final taint of self as the total surrender to the Divine Being that sustains life everlasting.

Finally the self, having been eroded by the unrelenting light of the spirit, has been transformed of its defiant nature. This coincides with the realisation of the state of immortality. The self has not died but is now aligned with the one good and serves life at the behest of the Divine Will. The task is then to bring the knowledge of the spiritual realisation into the world through the living life. Only in the harsh material environment of the western global society can the truth of existence be validated as a completion of a particular phase of the spiritual process.

‘𝐈𝐂𝐇𝐈 𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐈’ 𝐏𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐄 - 𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐍 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐀 𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐇𝐈

- TANGEN HARADA ROSHI

‘ICHI TANTEI’ PRACTICE

Perhaps you wonder if we do zazen in pursuit of that which we most want. No, we do not. Doing zazen is Buddha. Doing zazen is already the full expression of buddha nature.

We are quickly caught up in the form of things, readily pulled in by what others have to say. This is such that if you are told, “Hey, doing zazen is Buddha”, you might readily respond, “Yes, doing zazen is Buddha, isn’t it?”
In that case, I will have to say, “No, you are wrong.”

It is interesting to observe what a great discrepancy there is between theoretical understanding and truth itself. Take a dumpling, for example. Without actually sampling it, any explanation, regardless of how thorough, would give only a rough idea of the flavor of that dumpling, but never its essential taste. Without actually chewing it, you cannot know its actual flavor. Depending on what we are eating, our individual way of tasting it may differ, I suppose, but the fact of having really experienced the taste is the same with everyone, isn’t it?

The reality of really tasting that dumpling is about the same regardless of whether you are eating it for the first time or if you are an old hand at eating dumplings. Zen is just like this. From the first time you sit, you can fully experience the flavor of Zen.

We have the expression, ‘ichi tantei’. NOW. NOW. This is ‘ichi tantei’. A teacher is one who clearly reveals this to the student. “Reality is not off someplace else, away from right now and here. NOW. HERE. Don’t be careless. Don’t be off guard.” The teacher points out the path, the direct route, in the way most appropriate to each student. With this direction, the student can truly practice the most treasured, straight path.

To maintain this spirit of practice, the student single-mindedly works to make the ‘tantei’ constant so that everything is his daily life becomes this practice, this research into his true identity; everything becomes zazen. This is truly being alive.

When one settles into this ‘ichi tantei’, regardless of the job he has to do in this world, his efficiency increases manifold. This is because his practice becomes doing solely whatever he is doing, so that distractions do not arise. Therefore, in whatever circumstance he may find himself, his efficiency is increased.

It is such that he even comes to wonder how it is this world is taking such good care of him. Living in truth like this is wonderful!

Big mind, joyful mind, parental mind.

Completely enveloped in and succored by the whole universe, you are like the mountains, like the seas, like the great sky which knows no limits. This great, big boundlessness is your own mind, ‘Big Mind’. To awaken to this Big Mind, just do whatever it is you are doing right this moment with your whole heart. If you do with all your might, this world will, without fail, reveal itself to you. This hard little lump of ‘self’ will dissolve, and you will inevitably awaken to Big Mind.

‘Joyful Mind’ is the mind that cannot help but feel gratitude. It is not that you feel thankful because you are supposed to feel thankful, but rather that you cannot help but feel thankful. You feel so much gratitude that it spills over as joy.

And then from that boundless joy, kindness arises, kindness which is born from thoroughly exhausting all of one’s small self and merging to become one with others. This is ‘Parental Mind’.

When Big Mind, Joyful Mind, and Parental Mind come together as one body, just this in itself is Bodhisattva Mind.

No matter how much you study, how many books you read or how much theory you learn, this kind of knowledge can only be an aid, but never the driving force, toward peace of mind. And actually, if one is not careful, theoretical exercise can even be an obstacle. The important thing is to let go of mind and body and take refuge in truth itself. It is a matter of permitting yourself, all you can, to recognize truth, to sincerely live in the now, here which IS your life.

If you see only the differences between yourself and others, you feel easily irritated, overly sensitive. If you’re out to take care of just your own little self, guard your own little castle, protect your own separate existence in whatever way you can, it’ll all eventually just go under anyway, won’t it? So go back to the starting point, return to your true home, the home which is the same for every single being in this world. I want to see you awaken to your true self.

When Big Mind, Joyful Mind, and Parental Mind come together as one body, just this in itself is Bodhisattva Mind.