Truth is not a mosaic, but a spring -- Sokei-an

... the sense of self is actually a manifestation of something that cannot be grasped or understood and therefore can only be experienced as a NOTHING.

Our consciousness is a spring bubbling up from an unfathomable source.

Awakening happens when the bottom of the bucket drops out,
to use the Zen metaphor.


--- David R. Loy

For the sage, there has never yet begun to be things. --- Chuang-tzu

In contrast to the everyday world of differentiated objects,

the Tao is not an otherworldly denial of things nor their transcendence,

but their no-thingness,

which enables their interpenetration and incessant transformation into one another.


--- David R. Loy

we understand ourselves as special instances of self-existing things that are nonetheless subject to the ravages of time and change

If I self-exist, how can I change?

How could I die?

For that matter, how could I have been born?


This is the simple contradiction that Nagarjuna uses to deconstruct self-being. That all phenomena appear and disappear according to conditions means that our usual way of perceiving the world as a collection of separately existing things is a delusion.


--- from "Awareness Bound and Unbound" by David R. Loy

no thing to get

We want

to meet God face-to face,

or gain enlightenment,

but the fact that everything is SHUNYA

means

that we can never attain that.


--- David R. Loy

where can you stand?

[You] cannot stand aside as an independent observer of this world,

because you, the observer, are what you're observing.

You're inseparable from it [and vice-versa].


--- Alan Watts

there IS nothing ELSE

When I say that, "[something] is okay," it's like saying, "Well that's it, too."

It's this constant "flowing with" --- only to discover that you ARE the stream.

And therefore there is no problem about flowing with it [or not].

You can't do anything else.

---from "Out of the Trap" by Alan Watts

there is nowhere else to be

If you insist that you're trapped by the present, by the existing flow of thought, or the existing flow of experience, then of course you will resent it.

When you discover that you ARE it, and the reason that you can't get away from it is that it IS you---this is a very different state of affairs.

There is no trap. It's not happening TO you. It IS you. You are the process.

So then, instead of asking,"How shall I get out of it," the question simply disappears.


---from "Out of the Trap" by Alan Watts

fixation

If getting stuck is the basic issue,

neither desires nor concepts are problematical

in themselves.


--- from "Awareness Bound and Unbound" by David R. Loy

Let your mind come forth without fixing it anywhere! -- the Diamond Sutra

According to the Platform Sutra of Hui-neng,

this verse precipitated his great awakening.

--- David R. Loy

One thing I teach, and one thing only...

Dukkha and how to end it.

--- the Buddha

Is a wave trapped by the Ocean?

If there isn't any difference between you and the trap,

then you are not trapped.


--- from "Out of the Trap" by Alan Watts

If by eternity we mean timelessness,

then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.


--- Ludwig Wittgenstein

the NOW that I AM

The NOW that I HAVE immediately fades away into the past,
moment by moment,

but the NOW that I AM never falls away to become the past,
and is therefore the same as eternity.


--- from "money sex war karma" by David R. Loy

on 'being-time'

Time is not something I have; it's what I am...

(lack of) time was never the problem, but rather the false sense
of a distinction between ME and "MY" TIME...

My being and my time are not distinguishable...Instead of me being IN space and time,
it's more accurate to say that I am what space and time are doing, right here and now.


from "money sex war karma" by David R. Loy

undivided knowing is existence itself

Remember that the separate self can never discover the Truth.

In the end, the Truth just awakens to itself through you.


--- Stephan Bodian

direct apperception of being itself

...in spiritual illumination,

the apparent separation between knower and known

dissolves into pure, undivided knowing,

which is simply existence itself.


--- Stephan Bodian

buddha nature

Only come to know the nature of your own mind,

in which there is no self and no other,

and you will in fact be a Buddha.


--- Huang Po

witnessing without a witness

All are endowed with the wisdom and virtue of the Tathagata,

yet simply because of delusions and preoccupations,

cannot bear witness to their endowment.


--- attributed to the Buddha

what else is there ?

You say, "I am ignorant of my true nature,"

but how can this be? What else is there besides

this infinite, eternal, non-dual field of

Consciousness-and-form which is already present,

right here and now...and now...and now...


--- Joel Morwood