Nothing is the Matter

On a tough day when it seems things would be great if something was different or better or cheaper or here or there or whatever condition you have placed upon your happiness remember, freedom is an illusion, because loss, lack and limitation are illusions, because these are determined by values and expectations which change with each individual, which means they are not universally true, just personal stories.  Then it is much easier to see how you can adapt a personal story to thoroughly enjoy the happiness you were postponing, without need for a "real" cause, be-cause there aren't any and you don't need one.  Just Be.

namaste ;)

Not That

When you take away everything, all the perceived problems, deficits, hardships, faults, slights, abuse, attachments, core issues, analysis, charity, loss, lack, limitation and abundance, love, hate, reasons for war, peace, anger, jealousy, avarice, devotion, desire, need, philanthropy, politics, religion, sunrise, sunset, the oceans, beaches, weather, trees, all animals, insects, fish, birds, humans of course; when you see these are but notions and as such unreal, and suspend the notion that they are necessary, inevitable, important, and most importantly part of the whole, then you will know the truth.

Facebook Friends

If you don't know the fun and laughs Facebook quizzes can offer you might want to give them a try. Most quizzes ask a few questions to ascertain one's beliefs about a particular subject and then assign a symbol or series of symbols which are explained as to how they represent the person who took the quiz. My Facebook profile is filled everyday with news from friends who took one quiz or another. I now know the favorite bottled beverages, leading men, most disliked foods, and 25 random things about several dozen Facebook friends. It seems Facebook was just made for seekers.

If self-inquiry isn't the organic alternative to Facebook, maybe Facebook is the digital alternative to self-inquiry. After all, it's filled with the lists, likes and dislikes, and daily thoughts for each person who shows up. Maybe the ancient gurus and masters who coined the phrase never dreamed of Facebook. If they did, they might have thought it would lead to bondage more than liberation and enlightenment. But maybe the kid in the cartoon has a point.

Where Facebook quizes might seem like fun, and self-inquiry might seem like serious business, maybe they're actually very similar. No matter which course of action you take, the more you know the less you believe you are the things you thought you were. You find you're not your thoughts, nor even what thinks, and yet you include these in your friends list. If you don't know the fun and laughs of self-inquiry then maybe you might want to give it a try. It's not as serious as you might think.

Koans: Thoughtus Interruptis

What’s the sound of one hand clapping is the second koan noted in Enlightenment, a song by Van Morrison. The complete koan is “two hands clapping makes a sound. What is the sound of one hand clapping?” While the little meditation dude in my ‘toon apparently has spent a lot of time contemplating this koan, I have spent the last 17 years of my life appreciating the song.

Most of what I know about enlightenment can be summed up in the verse “Enlightenment, don’t know what it is”. A great koan all by itself, I have considered at various times whether it is saying I don’t know what it is or don’t try to know or enlightenment IS not knowing.

Koans, as puzzle statements create thought diversions and are the remedy for thought-us interupt-IS which is blocking what would otherwise come to us effortlessly by trying to control things with too much thought. To me the unconditional flow of life, or illumination, is the IS that thinking tries to rearrange and improve upon. To not know is to allow what IS to be known. Want to know more? (smiling now) Don’t think about it.

In the Blink of an Eye

I think the ‘toon perfection makes practice (last week) was hard on the eyes. So I'm making the type a little bigger...but that's not what I'm really talking about. I just couldn’t stand to leave those two characters suffering like that, so I’m settling their karma and revising their look with an additional insight into their suffering …which is trying too hard and thinking too much.

A couple weeks ago I started reading Blink! which will take quite a few months of the 5 minutes a day I give myself for reading. Considering the subject matter, it’s almost silly to keep reading. The whole book is a koan as there are almost 300 pages included in this book on “thinking without thinking”. (to be clear, by koan I mean a "story, dialogue, question, or statement in the history and lore of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet may be accessible to intuition." –Wikipedia)

In Blink!, Gladwell reports the findings of one scientific research study after another to prove that all the knowledge we can amass about “X” over time (even a lifetime) may not be as accurate and certainly not as easy to compile as spending just 15 minutes or less observing “X”. Of course, the concept of “thin-slicing” is not new. In the compilation of the Zen master Huang Po’s teachings on enlightenment there is the persistent message that enlightenment is not something we acquire through conceptual thinking over time, but in an instant by not thinking.

What may take time on the way to enlightenment, is what I seem to do most often (and not surprisingly my cartoon characters) and that is endure the outcomes of my bungled efforts to think better than (that is, fix and problem-solve) rather than accept and appreciate what IS natural and true in the moment. When we (I and my characters) stop amassing and carrying the full load of our thinking we can enlighten up in the blink of an eye. Whew!