People generally believe

that everything is moved by the laws of nature.

Everything.

Except for us.

We think we move our lives.


--- Darryl Bailey

we attempt to impose form where no form exists

Here we find the basic agony of life.


We believe there are stable forms

when, in fact,

there is merely unstoppable,

unpredictable,

motion.


--- from"dismantling the fantasy" by Darryl Bailey

All troubles are conceptual

and are rooted in the assumed reality of the separate self

(that is, that 'I' stand apart from reality).

But the notion is patently false.

In fact, no separate self has ever been present,

except as concept.


--- John Wheeler

who has what?

There is no "one" separate from what are called the "preferences" of the organism to then be attached to them or not.

who cares....

about what?

Perceiving is happening,

but when you give it a point

and say I'M PERCEIVING,

you've created a pseudo subject.


--- Sailor Bob

there's no THING to choose

WHAT is good or bad for WHOM?

Awareness is what we are.

But we block it with self-centered thinking, with dreaming, with fantasizing, with whatever it is we want to do.

Trying to be aware is just ordinary thinking, not awareness.
All we have to do is to be aware of our self-centered thoughts.

Finally they drift away, and we're just here.


--- from "Nothing Special" by Charlotte Joko Beck

There's "just what's happening"

With no one (separate)
To know "it".

no one to suffer any thing

In direct perceiving, there is no separation.

No perceiver, no perceived,

Only perceiv-ING.

You ARE the Aware-ing which IS

Your real being is the 'I'-less, timeless, ever-present radiance of non-conceptual being-awareness---completely evident and inescapable.


--- John Wheeler

Your true nature is to be acknowledged non-conceptually, without reference to thought or anything else.

Q: Aren't I supposed to always know the truth of my being?

A: You are present and aware. This is undeniable. It is not to be known or sought as if it is some special object or state. It is the ever-present basis of all experiences. How many thoughts can you have without the presence of awareness? It is so evident that it does not even need to be known, really. It is pointed out and simply acknowledged. Without thinking, seeking, or finding, you are that.


--- title and dialogue from "clear in your heart" by John Wheeler

all there is

Awareness cannot be known objectively

because it is not an object,

but neither can it be unknown---

for the same reason.


--- John Wheeler

We try to grasp something in a story that cannot be found in a story.

I look for the form of awareness---the thought, perception, sensation, etc.---that will liberate me,

but liberation is FROM attachment to any particular form, so that no form that is grasped can provide what I seek from it:

a non-dwelling awareness that does not grasp [cling].


--- from "the world is made of stories" by David R. Loy

no thing has any self-being of its own

The most important matter in Zen practice

is to come to a clear and unmistakable EXPERIENCE

of the fact that all things of the phenomenal world,

myself included,

are totally void....


This is Satori.


--- Koun Yamada (David R. Loy's late Zen teacher)

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