Dear edji It's yoni again :) I hope you're not a busy man if you are tell me and I'll write less. Thank you for answering so quickly though. I have another question. How do you know when you are aware of consciousness with no object ? So you have the conviction that nothing exits outside of consciousness! what does it feel like ? how do you know ?


Ed:


The only time you have knowledge about is is when you see consciousness move. You are aware, that you are aware of consciousness, which is moving. It is the movement that allows the awareness.


That knowledge happens in consciousness though, and you are never aware who you are.


The 'I Am' is the message to the absolute that it exists in the final sense, when the I Am has become most pure. Before that, the 'I Am' is the individual's sense of presence. In the pure state, it is a reflection of the absolute.

JULY 9 SATSANG ON LOVE, KNOWLEDGE AND NISARGADATTA
(AND ROBERT ADAMS LACK OF PRESENCE)

Hi Edji, 

I found a poem that triggered a movement in me this morning.  It had a profound effect on me. I think it shows Rumi knew the absolute.

"In love...nothing is eternal, but drinking your wine. 
There is no reason for bringing my life to you, 
other than losing it.  I said, I just want to know you, 
and then disappear.  She said, knowing me does not mean dying."

 

~Rumi


"In love ... nothing is eternal, but drinking your wine." - only when I love deeply, in the authentic experience of Love, am I identified with the eternal aspect of Love that moves through a changing Consciousness from life to life. In that loving I know I Am, and I Am is eternal.

"There is no reason for bringing my life to you, other than losing it" - here I realized that in love all that was cherished and held dear in life is dropped.  The identity and life of the lover has disappeared and only the loving remains.


"I said, I just want to know you, and then disappear.  She said, knowing me does not mean dying." - when listening to this I asked myself who is the "I" and who is the "She," as a spontaneous self-inquiry. I saw both as spoken from the Absolute.  "I", the Absolute want to know all my attributes through you (all appearances).  And then the response from her being like an echo from the Absolute again reassuring us that this knowing doesn't mean death. 

In every moment I am loving you, I am eternal.  Through the experience of love we transcend death here in the phenomenal world.

Really really powerful.   

In deep gratitude and love,

Janet 


Edji: 


Janet, your depth is amazing. You challenge me. Through love you have come to know the absolute, or at least about the absolute, so intimately. No one knows the absolute directly through consciousness, only by consciousness' disappearance through the purification of devotion. The attributes of the lover disappear, leaving only the transparent I Am, through which the absolute shines.


You have brought Jnana and Bhakti together, so beautifully, combining Love, I Am and the witness in Rumi's poem, and as an embodiment of the truth of Nisargadatta's teachings--and mine--of arriving at the absolute through loving your I Amness, which was revealed when you loved me.


I am so glad God sent you to me, so that you could know and love your deepest self through me. What a  gift for both of us. You are beginning to articulate deep truths that will move many people.

FROM Jo Ann Chinnn, "Mother of Satsang"

EMERGENCY - YOUR HELP IS NEEDED!

Dear Sangha,

You are all aware that Edji’s top priority when it comes to teaching, is to become a good person, a kind and caring person, so that even if you don’t go free — and so far, five have gone free under Edji during the past 4 years — that you will still have had a profound effect in making the world a better place.

Edji’s specific charity/rescue work involves homeless cats living in Los Angeles. Personally he helps five colony managers who take care of over 600 cats in the San Fernando Valley. This involves buying food, medications, helping trap, neuter and return cats to their colonies, or getting them off the streets and into homes. In addition, the help consists of vet costs for ill cats, vaccinations, and spay/neuter costs.

All in all, Edji spends about $500-$700 a month right now for these expenses, and he used to spend more when he was able. 

However, for the past 5 months donations have dried up. Six months ago — just for his animal work — he was getting almost $1,500 a month in donations. For the past 4-5 months, donations have dropped to under $200 a month.

Edji and his project to help the cats of Los Angeles desperately need your donations

In addition, we now have International weekly Satsangs with the monthly expense of a video conferencing program and paying for hosting websites. Edji has refused to ask for donations to support Satsang before, but he feels the time is now right.

So please give, if you are at all able... donate through PayPal 

or contact Edji at satsang.online@gmail.com for an address to mail a check.  No donation is too small, it all helps!

Edji gives so much of his time to us through his Blog and the Satsangs (and even on Skype), can we not help him help the animals and make our International Satsang grow?

So PLEASE, if you can, make a donation

 at:  https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=10471709

Much Love and Gratitude for any and all help that you can offer Edji,

Jo-Ann

P.S.   Edji’s nonprofit corporation, “We Are Sentience” is now legally incorporated in the state of California, and the paperwork to file for federal 501c3 status has been completed. We are now awaiting for federal tax exemption, but Edji and the animals need your donations NOW.

JUNE 26 SATSANG

Edji Satsang – June 19, 2011

Knowledge and the I Am

When I first started practicing meditation back in late 1960’s, even before I went to Mt. Baldy, I had a job working in the library at Case Western Reserve University. My practice then was pretty intense.  Every afternoon around 2 or 3 o’clock I would go into involuntary withdrawals where Consciousness sucked me lower and lower into myself, until I saw a great white light that I was falling towards. It scared the hell out of me because I knew it was the death of me.

Off and on over the years that state comes back. It still takes me deep inside, deep down, way beyond Consciousness.  Today it took me very deep again, a tour of the beyond.  I saw once again the truth that my real nature is entirely beyond Consciousness, that anything said or experienced in Consciousness can’t possibly tell us anything about the prior-to-conscious state, the Absolute. 

If you imagine that you are at the center of the wheel that is turning, in the absolute center there is almost no movement. You just change direction: 0 degrees to 90, to 180, to 270. But there is no motion; you just rotate from the calm center. Then you start following Consciousness outwards; the words, the experiences.  Things go faster and faster, you become involved in it, the drama, the machination, the hurt feelings, love, hate, desire, compassion. All of these happen in Consciousness and happen to your sense of self. But in the center there i’s no movement.

You know awareness comes and goes, Consciousness comes and goes.  One year you are not born, then you’re born. A few years later you become self-aware and the I am is born.  But there is some principle to which all of this has occurred. There is some principle to which this knowingness and all these experiences have occurred.  And the utimate goal of traditional spirituality, Advaita, Zen, is to know this principle,  the unborn Self, that part of the totality that is not part of this world but which observes the world. 

Most of the time we have to go deep in meditation time after time after time to find this state.  At first it is like a knowledge or conviction that you are there prior to Consciousness. 

And then you have an experience of passing through Consciousness.  The entire world out there and the world inside that you see, Nisargadatta’s teacher called it the causal body, you pass through the causal body like Rajiv did a couple of years ago now. You realize in a way that which is beyond Consciousness, and apprehend that you are prior to Consciousness. You always were prior to Consciousness, and you always will be prior to Consciousness. And then Consciousness comes, and the I am is born. You realize you exist!

I am! I am! I am!

This overtakes us and we identify with the “I am,” and the I am identifies with the body, and the feelings, and the emotions, but mostly with the body, and we lose our identity as the Absolute.  As spiritual beings we struggle to get back to that identification, the principle beyond existence:  another dimension entirely beyond existence, beyond Consciousness. 

There are several ways to get to that absolute state.  There is a man by the name of Douglas Harding who wrote a book on “Having No Head.” It has lots of exercises that you can practice, that intuitively let you know a bit about that Absolute state. His exercises never worked for me. Wht worked for me was just to look within and find happiness resting in me.

You can practice Self-inquiry trying to find the location of the “I” and stare into the empty space, but then you think you are that empty space and that is a misidentification; that is only another phenomenon within Consciousness.  Or you can identify with the “I am,” that sense of Self, the sense that “I exist,” that “I am sentient,” that “I am perceiving,” that “I am feeling,” that “I am alive,” and gradually that sense of I am gels, purifies, becomes lighter, becomes more powerful, becomes more all-knowing and the I am begins to reveal to you the nature of Consciousness, and of your true self, and you have to love the I am. I Am! I Am!

Many people find the I am through love; for in loving, they find I Am.  In loving, they find I Am.  In loving, they find I Am.  You can, too.

But the I am is only a vessel, it is not the end.  The involvement in the I am is not the end.  Purification of the I am is not the end. The love the I am feels is not the end, and one day, Consciousness takes you deep – takes you to a place where you watch the comings and goings of all states of Consciousness, and you’re there as a witness with no passion.  No emotions.  No love.  You watch the comings and goings of the states of Consciousness, and the objects in Consciousness, totally beyond. And you realize that none of this has to do with me - the real me, that which is totally beyond Consciousness. 

That’s the beginning of freedom, real freedom; and to be able to rest in that state, the Absolute and to know that you’re unborn, uncreated, you neither come nor go. The world comes and goes - you remain.  The body dies, and you remain.  All of Consciousness dies, and you remain.  Can you feel this now in yourself?  This truth,  that you are beyond the world, beyond Consciousness, beyond your body, beyond God, beyond love?  

Know that you were there unborn, no attributes, no desires, complete. 

Then you can stay here for a long time, absorbed in that which is beyond the world, your true self nature.  Like Ramana, you do not move for a year.  You sit on the floor of a cave and let insects eat your legs.  You are glued to the floor with blood and pus, and you’re totally beyond the world. They have to come and get your body and take it up to the temple and wash it, clean it, feed it, because you don’t care.  You don’t care.

You have seen your true nature and you see that Consciousness is a mistake, Consciousness is hell.  Consciousness is only sometimes bliss, for it contains all the horrors in this world.  You do not want to come back.  Why would I want to come back to that? Had I known when I was born, I would have refused Consciousness. I had no choice and I didn’t know. Gradually we come back, slowly we rejoin the world.  The I am becomes reborn, and our compassion is reborn, our love is reborn.  And we are different.  We no longer care about ourselves.  Because we have known the truth that we are nothing, a mystery not to be known directly. We only know we exist because of movement within the I am, but what we are beyond that can never be known. With this we rest, and with this we tend to the hurt of the world.

Robert was smarter than I. He refused to say anything in public about other teachers. I need to learn to do that. When I say anything negative about the neo Advaitins that infest the world, I am roundly criticized even by some of my own students.


On the other hand, in an entirely different realm, there is Nathan Winograd, the No-Kill guru who started the whole modern No-Kill movement when he brought the Itaca N.Y. shelter to No-Kill within 2 years.


In the post below he attacks two other prominent No-Kill gurus and points out they really are not no kill, but instead are hypocrites. Winograd has the fire and passion to really make America No-Kill and I respect his courage in being honest about posers.

Nathan Winograd

Wayne Pacelle of HSUS is many things: a dog killer such as when he lobbied the court to kill puppies and other dogs in Wilkes County, NC. He is an embracer of dog killers such as when he made Michael Vick, the most notorious animal abuser of our generation a spokesman for HSUS. He is an apologist for killing who has referred to No Kill as hoarding in Newsweek, attacked No Kill on the pages of USA Today, and steadfastly defended shelters that kill against reformers trying to save lives, as he did in San Francisco. He is a thief, stealing the money that belongs to other groups by fundraising off of their work and success and trying to pass it off as his own.

Ed Sayres of the ASPCA is also a dog killer, as when he killed Oreo who had a place to go. He is an embracer of animal killers, such as when he defeated Oreo’s Law, allowing “shelters” to continue killing roughly 25,000 animals a year who rescue groups were willing and able to save. He is an apologist for killing telling USA Today that killing is the moral equivalent of not killing. And he is also a thief, stealing the money that belongs to other groups by fundraising off their work.

Despite this, I recently received a comment from a self-described “animal lover” saying that questioning the commitment of HSUS and the ASPCA to saving lives is “counterproductive.”

In response, I asked the person if she thought it was ok that HSUS defeated a law that would have banned the gas chamber, would have made it illegal to kill animals based on breed, and would have made it illegal for all Texas shelters to kill animals rescue groups were willing to save? http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=5897

Is it ok that HSUS defended the most notorious dog abuser and dog killer of our generation, but lobbied to have his dog victims killed?http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=1174

Is it ok that when a LA shelter killed every single animal including every single cat because a couple of dogs got a very mild coronavirus that clears up on its own, HSUS defended them for doing so? http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=780

Is it ok that they called for the killing of 2-week old puppies, actually appeared in court urging the court to kill them, forcing a foster parent to bring them back after nursing them around the clock so they could be killed?http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=765

Is it ok that they defended a shelter’s “right” to kill animals, even though they could easily have been saved in San Francisco? http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=879

Is it ok that they literally steal money from local shelters and rescue groups by claiming that what those groups are doing is what they are doing?http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=2318

Is it ok that the ASPCA killed an abused dog who had a place to go?http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=3187

Is it ok that the ASPCA killed a law which would have saved 25,000 animals a year at no cost? http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=3137

Is it ok that the ASPCA defended a shelter director who killed 100,000 animals and who refused to do simple, common sense things to save them like foster care?http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=3504

Is it ok that the ASPCA raises over $100 million a year by promising to help animals in need but sends sick kittens to an abusive pound to be killed?http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=3729

Of course, I did not receive a reply. Because to her and those who suggest "we all get along" even when those we are supposed to get along with our fighting our efforts to save lives, killing animals is not “counterproductive,” lying is not “counterproductive,” fighting No Kill is not “counterproductive.” The problem, according to them, is pointing those things out.

Wall Photos

about an hour ago · 

I have a theory. If you have enough pets, and are American or British, one of them will be named "Buddy." I'll bet every rescuer has a  Buddy. This is real, hard science.

Nathan Winograd

On June 12, I wrote an article on the killing of Lilly’s 12 full-term puppies at the Maricopa County AZ pound: http://bit.ly/ivhb7z

 

. 

Here they go again. Mama dog came into the “shelter” full term. She was spayed and her puppies were individually killed by overdose injection. They were not counted in statistics. They were not report as “healthy” deaths. Rescue groups were not given the ability to save them. And Maddie’s Fund will continue to peddle the fiction that Maricopa County is saving ALL healthy animals despite a 50% rate of killing, no better than the national average. 

On the right is mama dog, no longer pregnant. Her puppies are all dead, in the freezer waiting to be discarded like so much trash. To add the ultimate insult to her injury, the mom is now scheduled to be killed. This is YOUR animal shelter. The one that blames YOU for the killing.

Wall Photos

The Mother of Satsang Says this is the best Satsang yet, from last Saturday. It is pure Advaita.


http://www.mediafire.com/?md5cpk5lomjb9lz

I can't remember if I asked you already about this.
You say you teach self-enquiry in the light of Robert and Ramana.
But I wonder what Robert might say to your comment about doing
"sesshin" at mount baldy - and only taking a week to
attain samadhi? (not sure which samadhi you're refering to)
How does that jive with Robert and Ramana exactly?

Thanks for your time,
Seeker

Where is the inconsistency you appear to see?

I teach self-abidance as opposed to self-inquiry.

Zen and Advaita are different paths with different experiences and understandings.

Zen is more into perception and immediacy, while traditional Advaita has a theory associated with it, sometimes emphasizing Consciousness and oneness, sometimes the primacy of Turyatta, the state prior to all states, or the stateless states.

All paths are not equal, and many experiences and understandings are mutually exclusive if you hold onto either a Zen understanding or an Advaita understanding.

I was a Buddhist monk many years before I met Robert, and was at Mt. Baldy 17 years before I met Robert. Did you want me to forget my Zen experiences before I met Robert in order to make my life's understanding and experiences consistent over a period of 40 years? Is that what you prize, consistent knowledge and experiences?

That is all the time it takes to attain many states during an intense Zen retreat, a few days. There is really nothing like the intensity of a retreat as at Mt. Baldy, with people beating you with sticks in near sub zero temperatures in a Zendo if you nod off to sleep.

Actually, you can't compare the states between various disciplines. They are not identical across the conceptual lines created by the differing methods and epistemology.

Do not be captured by your understanding of spirituality, but let go, otherwise you will always see problems.

Back At Me:

Just seems like you're diverging from what Ramana and Robert taught here.

Firstly, what good is there to speak of various states of samadhi - when they are not the ultimate unchanging Reality?

Both obviously spoke on them, but only to explain them conceptually - and to remind that they are not the Goal.

And certainly not to claim it can be attained (by a select few? anyone?) doing a few days of meditation?
And further to suggest a retreat of that nature?

It just seems odd and out of line with your teacher and his - and the non dual tradition as a whole.

It could be that I am stuck on a conception of advaita in their lineage/style - but ask yourself this;

Would Robert, Ramana, Nisargadatta, or other Masters in this line ever have spoken those words?
I seriously doubt it.



RESPONSE:


You are stuck on your understanding of Robert and Ramana based on books. Robert, in life, was much different from his teachings. I am different from Robert, I do not teach his Satsang teachings because generally they were for beginners interested in theory and basic techniques.


You should concern yourself less with your apprehension of apparent contradictions between how you perceive Robert's teachings versus mine, and be more concerned about your own teachings, which means your own sense of I Am and self. 


You have to understand this. It does not matter what you think Robert or Ramana would or would not have said. That is all thinking on your part. You need to get out of concepts and perceive the sense of presence, the I Am, then you would not be so concerned with words. There is no truth in words.

I knew Joko Beck back in the 70s while she an I both studied with Maezumi Roshi, who did have an alcoholism and womanizing problem, but actually accepted it as a defect.


It is interesting to look at her perspective as it is truly new age, in the moment. Traditional Zen had a teaching, a body of wisdom that became the Zen way of being, which itself depended on the teacher's background and moods.


Personally, I think there is much more to spirituality than just being in the moment.

Charlotte Joko Beck dies at 94; American Zen pioneer By Adam Tebbe June 15, 2011     Charlotte Joko Beck   , Zen teacher, author and founder of the Ordinary Mind Zen School, has died peacefully today, June 15, 2011 at 7:30 a.m., at age 94. Born on March 27, 1917 in New Jersey, Beck studied at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and taught piano for a time. She married and raised four children before separating from her husband and working as a teacher, secretary and assistant in a university department. She came to Zen practice in her forties and studied with the late Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi    roshi. For many years she commuted between San Diego and Los Angeles to practice with the roshi. Of her experiences, Beck said in an interview with Shambhala SunSpace (http://www.shambhalasun.com/   ), “I meet all sorts of people who’ve had all sorts of experiences and they’re still confused and not doing very well in their life. Experiences are not enough. My students learn that if they have so-called experiences, I really don’t care much about hearing about them. I just tell them, “Yeah, that’s O.K. Don’t hold onto it. And how are you getting along with your mother?” Otherwise, they get stuck there. It’s not the important thing in practice.” Asked what is the important thing in practice, she replied, “Learning how to deal with one’s personal, egotistic self. That’s the work. Very, very difficult.” Joko Beck also studied with both Haku’un Yasutani    roshi and Soen Nakagawa    roshi. She became one of Maezumi’s twelve Dharma successors in 1978 and went on to establish the Zen Center of San Diego in 1983 (where she served as head teacher until July, 2006). She is the founder of the Ordinary Mind Zen School, a loose fit organization of her Dharma successors which is non-hierarchical. As a teacher of Zen, Joko Beck was free from the patriarchal trappings of Japanese Zen. Joko’s approach to Zen teaching was greatly informed by Western culture, and she discontinued shaving her head, seldom wore robes and seldom used titles. Joko was the author of two very important books that are frequently recommended by interviewees at Sweeping Zen— Everyday Zen (1989) and Nothing Special (1993). Her first book,  Everyday Zen, is a book in which she described what meditation is and, more importantly, what it is not. Author Ruthann Russo writes, “…she says it is not about producing psychological change, achieving some blissful state, cultivating special powers or personal power, or having nice or happy feelings. She does say that meditation practice is simple, and it’s about ourselves. To practice effectively, we need to remove ourselves from all external stimuli. Then we experience reality, which is challenging for most of us.” Her second book, Nothing Special, is, as Maezumi himself once remarked, very special. In it Joko expresses what is the original essence of Zen—unencumbered by some of the formal practices and activities we’ve come to associate with Zen practice over the years. For Joko, Zen is simply being right here in the moment, with nothing extra. Zen practice will yield us nothing other than this moment. In the book she answers her students questions and helps highlight, again, what Zen practice is really about. She says, “Practice has to be a process of endless disappointment. We have to see that everything we demand (and even get) eventually disappoints us. This discovery is our teacher.” In 2011 Joko began eating less and was rapidly losing weight. Her family placed her under the care of hospice. She is survived by her four children: Eric, Helen, Greg (Dharma name Tando) and Brenda (Dharma name Chiko). Dharma successor Barry Magid    says, “One of her great virtues as a teacher was that she did not try to clone herself. She let us digest her teaching and grow in our own different directions. Her Dharma seeds are scattered far and wide. They will go on sprouting in ways we cannot predict and cross-fertilize with other lineages. The Ordinary Mind School may grow or wither, but her influence is now everywhere.”   In Memoriam: Charlotte Joko Beck   It is not too much to say that Joko Beck transformed the nature of Zen in America. At a time when a focus on kensho experiences and becoming enlightened after the manner in which we imagined our Japanese masters led to a dismissive attitude to problems that were “merely” psychological, Joko restored a sense of emotional reality to a scene increasingly plagued by scandal and misconduct by our allegedly enlightened role models. She had the courage to say that her own teacher’s training had done little to curb his own alcoholism or deal with his character problems. Furthermore, his wasn’t merely an unfortunate exception but that it pointed to a deeply ingrained tendency to enshrine emotional bypassing into the very heart of traditional Zen training. She put dealing with anger, anxiety, pride and the self centered sexual exploitation of students into the center of what we must deal with in practice. Joko does not leave behind a institutional legacy. There is no central Ordinary Mind training center. There is no hierarchy among her Dharma heirs, no single voice that clearly continues her message. Her legacy is broad and cultural, a sea-change in how our generation thinks about the nature of practice and its relationship to our personal psychological make-up. Even back when her Dharma successors still attempted to get together for an annual Ordinary Mind School meeting, they seemed designed to prove Wittgenstein’s dictum that members of a group could bear a certain family resemblance to one another without necessarily having having any single thing in common. One of her great virtues as a teacher was that she did not try to clone herself. She let us digest her teaching and grow in our own different directions. Her Dharma seeds are scattered far and wide. They will go on sprouting in ways we cannot predict and cross-fertilize with other lineages. The Ordinary Mind School may grow or wither, but her influence is now everywhere. Barry Magid Ordinary Mind New York ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________   I first met Charlotte Joko Beck in 1972. In April the ice plant bloom along the highways in San Diego. I passed many fields of vibrant  purple and violet blossoms on my way to the small sitting group in the home of Ray Jordan, where I came face-to-face with another vibrant flower. Joko’s page boy haircut, her dark cat’s eye glasses and her rather large breasts would be enough to make her stand out. There was also the  fact that she was the only middle aged woman in the sitting group. We became fast friends. Joko drove every Saturday for two hours to the  Zen Center of Los Angeles to have dokusan with Maezumi Roshi and then she drove two hours back to San Diego. Together we would drive every  month to sesshin and laugh all the way home on  the two hour drive. That was her routine until she moved to ZCLA in 1977 when she retired as the  administrator in the chemistry department at  University of California San Diego. Since I also worked at UCSD, Joko and I would regularly meet for a sack lunch and walk around the campus talking about Zen. She would often comment on  how unreal everything seemed. She had recently had an awakening experience at a sesshin with Yasutani Roshi. She would stick her finger out  and say that she felt that she could poke right through everything to another realm. Joko and I arranged to have Maezumi Roshi come to San Diego for a weekend sesshin at a house I was  renting in La Jolla. He brought two young  monks, Joshin and Tesshin. Joko and I arranged  everything from the meals to procuring all the  implements. When it came time for chanting  service, we only had a bell. I still smile when  I think of Joko beating out the rhythms on a  thick phone book using a large wooden spoon as  our make-shift mukugyo. The umpan was a pot lid  which we struck with a large metal spoon. When  the toilet gave out from over use, we all  scurried down to the corner gas station to use the bathroom. Joko was my best Dharma friend. Her dedication as a student of Zen was inspiring. Her devotion as a teacher of Zen is awesome. I feel fortunate to have known her in her formative years and to have witnessed how she matured into one of the most influential Zen teachers of our time. It is  amazing that she started on the Zen path at an age when most people think of retiring and that  she has accomplished so much in the second half  of her life and touched the lives of so many people. Gerry Shishin Wick   Great Mountain Zen Center Colorado ---From http://sweepingzen.com/2011/06/15/charlotte-joko-beck-dies-at-94-american-zen-pioneer/   Photos: http://www.prairiezen.org/Members/comings_and_goings.html

Beloved Edji,

Reintegrating back into the world after a meditation sabbatical was very challenging, everyday was a battle for me. A little like the silly cartoon character that is trying to stop the leaking of a damn using his various body parts and chewing gum all in vain because the cracks in the damn continue to grow bigger and bigger.

The past few months, the hyper-masculine work and self-discipline have faded. On some level the tremendous effort to maintain purity of abidance, constantly and consciously, got the best of me.
On some other level, however, this shift felt natural and organic as an expansion into my humanness. Almost as if there is a healing between the two seeming opposites of relative and absolute.

Meditation is still a very important part of my day as is resting in being and will continue to be so...

Identification with that impersonal, absolute, oblivious aspect of our nature has faded as a result.  The result of this surrender was however increased joy and feeling more alive. Feeling more connected to all. Prior to that, there was a feeling of deadness. The "I AM" zombie.

There seem to be a growing number of individuals who seem to be making the shift not through negation but through radical embracing of all arising phenomena. This seems to be much more conducive of living in the west. I'm speculating that Deeya's transition may have been of this nature.

Noticed that your satsangs, your teachings, and your presence are also shifting.

Perhaps, these are merely projections of the shifting of my perspective...

Suppose i write you because there still is some uncertainty on part. Whether to continue with where this is pulling me are whether to lace up the boot straps and get my ass back in gear...

One of the other reasons for the softening of my sadhana was that i work as a counselor. Clients would come to me with stories of woe and i would sit and stare, totally impersonal, totally oblivious to the dimension of suffering. There seemed to be little choice but to meet the client where they were.

Knowing that you have had some experience in the counseling profession, i wondered how your interaction with the clients was?

Any recommendations on how one can utilize this relationship to further unfold and grow into reality? Intuitively it feels there must be a great opportunity for client and counselor alike.

My apologies for the rather superficial and autobiographical nature of this email. Looking for perspective, looking for guidance.

With heart splitting gratitude for your teaching,

love you edji,

RESPONSE:

XXXX, you speak in such abstractions such that I don't know what you're talking about. I don't understand the metaphor about the cracks in the dam being related to coming back into the world after retreat. I don't know what you mean by hyper masculine work and self-discipline, if you are talking about your retreat or something else. And I don't know what you mean by the effort to maintain the purity of abidance in the self or the I am. The part about something was felt organic, I don't know what you're talking about.

I am not in your skin, and yet you you address me as if I know what you're talking about without being specific.

Personally, I know my true nature is beyond this world, beyond phenomena, beyond life and death, and beyond love and loving. I know the current trend, the New Age, is to be in the moment and to change with the moment, and I see no contradiction with being in the moment if one has attained the former. The emptiness of the void easily contain everything that the world has to offer wrapped in the silence of the infinite. I see no contradiction in being in either or both places. Many people run towards the absolute or to silence when the world gets too much for them; but after one knows the absolute, knows silence, knows the void, they really should have no problem going back into the world.

If you're having a problem of personal versus impersonal, this is not a real problem, because ultimately, if you own everything, everything is personal. If the infinite love of God flows through your heart, then it's personal. If you feel the void everywhere, and it interpenetrates your being, that void is personal. It is only when you don't feel something close to your heart or to your center, that it feels impersonal. In a sense, you need to own everything and make it part of you, take it into yourself and make it yours. In a sense even the world becomes your family, your responsibility, everyone your brothers and sisters.

Does not the Bible say that even a small bird does not fall to the ground without being known by God? For him, all is personal, as it is for me.

Love, 

Ed

Try feeling nothing after reading this. This is happening all over America every day to the tune of 11,000 cats and dogs and kittens a day. If you have an open heart, this will break it.

Nathan Winograd

This is a tiny kitten allowed to suffer and die within the New York City pound system, which the ASPCA, Mayor's Alliance, and Maddie's Fund defend as a "national model." This was under the "care" of a medical director who helped write the "five freedoms" of shelter animals through the Association of Shelter Veterinarians.

The five fre...See More

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