Suresh,
You post many important questions at once in your posts, but the matter of life
is what I'll respond about, ...but not point by point according to your
questions. Thanks for your post!
Your post merely spurs me to speak, due to a resonance.
I am impressed that life is so OLD. And yet, we all are able to feel young,
and new! This has always impressed me. It is amazing, and wonderful.
None of us springs up freshly, we are all growths upon older growths, being
forced forward in time. It's like the way an icicle grows, in one way. Or
like the way that underwater lava formations grow under the water in the ocean
at the shore of Hawai'i.
Even the oldest living individual things on earth, some trees, I think, and
rings of expanding Desert Creosote Bush, are no older than 5 or ten thousand
years, a tiny fraction of the age of the earth even after it had cooled
following the collision that formed the moon.
I look at my cats, and realize that they go 'way back, representing an ancestor
who lived in the desert, where conditions are dry and water is precious, and
that this is why all cats's poops are dry; the cats bodies drain most of the
water from any food. And before that ancestor, there were others who led to
it, and before that, others, still, etc., etc.
They are all standing upon the karma and wisdom of the past.
Our own lineage is similar.
Cats can live by instinct; their behavior seems to be perfect, and in accord
with their circumstances. This behavior is enabled by what we call "Instinct".
But, calling it Instinct is JUST our of way of saying -- and is a cover for the
fact -- that we do not know WHY they behave as they do.
Our own human lineage carries with it instinct, too. What IS it? Let's not
say. But there is a way to be clear what our instinct is by settling into it.
Remove distractions, and it can be discovered, uncovered, and allowed to reign.
Families and Culture have continuously covered or squelched our instinct and
our original wisdom.
This original wisdom is Human, and re-appears when we awaken. There is
technology to allow and *enable* us to reawaken to it. It will not happen
accidentally: one must make oneself susceptible to it to happen. this usually
takes some help, to keep us from going wrong. A teacher is needed to help us
persist the right way(s).
If we quiet the memory, disengage the intellect, and let mind and body rest,
all mud settles, the water clears, and what is left, suddenly, is our original
nature. If there is a mind, then, it's what is called the original mind.
Buddhists call it the Buddha mind: This naming is a game the intellect plays
when people want to communicate. But, to first re-discover it, it is best to
have no ideas about it.
The key thing of value is to carry out the practice to enable all intellection
to cease, and then feel what it feels like to have the nature we have. Later,
on top of this, feel what it feels like to allow intellection to operate again,
and never, ever allow it to again cover entirely the original nature, otherwise
you will never again feel or operate from that original nature.
This called "Using everything freely", and "Abiding nowhere, let the Mind work".
Your great Yogi Patanjali wrote, in his first aphorism, that:
"Yoga is the cessation of currents in the mind."
Zen takes a different view, but the "cessation" is what Zen honors as a "Gate",
an entry, to a realization of our true nature.
I suppose you have various practices, such as what Ramana Maharshi taught. In
Zen practice, we have zazen, formless meditation. It is easy to learn, but not
easy to teach (see below).
The late Robert Aitken Roshi, a famous American Zen teacher (one of the first),
used to say:
"ZAZEN teaches Zazen."
As a fellow practitioner, of course I urge you to practice whatever practice is
your own; and, if that is zazen, then I wish you strong practice!
--Joe
> SURESH JAGADEESAN <varamtha@...> wrote:
>
> I am sometimes feeling we are very artificial, not authentic. Why we
> spend so much of time in thinking, [snip]
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