anatta
The belief in separation
It is the belief in separation
That allows for the belief in doership.
Otherwise all there is is One-Movement.
There is not even one movement:
If we go by the evidence presented to us by experience,
There is only movement happening.
No evidence for a doer-entity,
No evidence for an entity with ultimate responsibility.
Instead there is just life happening,
From the point of view of a person,
A body operating and functioning,
Seemingly by itself,
With all the workings and humanity of the organism manifesting,
However it manifests.
As truth is seen,
Layers of deception and wrong thinking fall away,
And the Freedom that always was and is,
Is revealed.
Like the sun when the clouds parts,
Nothing needs to be attained,
Only the obscuring clouds of wrong notions,
Need to be seen through.
Integrating the understanding of no-doer
This post follows on from my previous post: Why seeing/understanding alone may not be enough
This understanding of no doer may initially take time to become embedded, and you may have to ‘practice’ it to start with. It’s just like many other forms of knowledge:
Take the example of a child learning his (or her) name. At first he doesn’t know his name. Upon his parents repeating his name to him multiple times, he finally starts to realise that his name is ‘Tom’. Maybe at first he forgets his name a few times and doesn’t respond when someone calls him. After sometime it becomes ingrained and embedded into his mind and he no longer has to think about it.
Eventually he can’t help but know his name. When someone calls out ‘Tom’, he automatically knows someone is calling him, whether he like it or not.
It’s the same with the understanding ‘there is no doer’. Initially the understanding may be a bit shaky, but after sometime, after repeated practice, after going through the logic behind it a few times and seeing the truth of it, it becomes more ingrained. Eventually it becomes effortless as knowing your name.
To be continued in my next post: Problems with utilising conceptual tools
The sense of being a doer vs. no doer
When the doer* is seen to be an illusion, an imagined fiction, the sense/feeling of being a doer may still continue. The sense/feeling of being a doer can arise like any other phenomena arises.
And notice – it arises spontaneously, meaning there is no doer there doing it. You see! It can be seen that even the sense of being a doer is something that has no doer behind it – it just happens, by itself.
So, in my daily life I often feel like I’m doing things, but there is an understanding there that there is no doer-entity doing it. It is all just happening.
This is the difference between experience and knowledge/understanding: I may feel like a doer, but I know/understand I am not a doer.
It is similar to realising the sun does not orbit a stationary earth, even though the appearance of the sun rising and setting each day continues. Or if you realise that a mirage is an illusion, the illusion persists even when not believed in. The sense of doership can continue even when the understanding ‘there is no evidence for a doer’ is present.
*By doer I mean the notion of being a separate entity which creates or authors thoughts and actions
Jiddu Krishnamurti: We are talking of something entirely different
‘We are talking of something entirely different, not of self-improvement, but of the cessation of the self’
Jiddu Krishnamurti
❤
Tom’s Comments:
Seeing there is no self (ie. no doer, no independent entity that is the author of thoughts and actions) is ‘cessation of the self’.
It is not something you have to do – that would be more self-improvement.
With this insight suffering falls away by itself, as a side-effect. Not that it matters, for there is no choice, just spontaneous happening.
❤
No ego
If you say “spiritual enlightenment does not exist”,
You have denied yourself, and anyone who believes you, a route to end suffering:
“Suffering can end”, thus the wise ones have proclaimed.
If you say “you can be enlightened”, “your suffering can end”
Then by saying ‘you’, you are perpetuating the false concept of self.
Suffering can end, but your suffering cannot end.
Continue reading
Bulldozer spirituality
To verbally espouse and preach spiritual things can be deeply inappropriate:
Do you tell someone who is suicidal,
That their problems are due to a false notion of self?
Or that all phenomena are insubstantial, formless and everchanging?
Or that like the desert mirage, life and its problems are a dream?
It would be like telling someone who is choking that ‘ALL IS ONE‘. Continue reading
There is no you
You have never done a thing.
Why?
Because you do not exist.
You did not chose your gender (at birth),
the colour of your eyes, Continue reading
Tom Das 