happiness

Be as you are

~ Tom Das ~ 2 Comments

When you take yourself to be real, the world also seems real. Then problems too seem to exist, and with it suffering.

Please know this directly: all this is empty, all this is zero. Just like a dream, there is only You, so there is nothing to fear.

God, guru, and the apparent world – all these are You.

Your nature is peace, love and happiness. You need nothing. You are ever-whole, ever-complete, ever-undefiled.

Your nature is naturally unattached, without desire, unchanging and at peace.

So don’t take this body-mind-world to be real (they will take care of themselves). Instead be what you are: be at peace, be happy and rest naturally, ever-unchanging and unattached.

Namaste

🙏🙏🙏

Q. Does liberation even exist? If it’s here and now, why don’t I experience it?

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

Q. Hey Tom. I had one question to ask, if you don’t mind. Is Mukti (liberation) even there? Is there something called Liberation? If it’s there here and now, why don’t I feel it? And when it should be the most obvious thing, that is my own existence, why don’t I experience it, or rather recognize it? And what is the purpose of the world if it exists but doesn’t exist. A complete paradox, isn’t it?

Tom: Liberation just means removal of wrong ideas/what is false. Nothing is gained, mistakes are lost. Make sense?

Q. Yes. I’m on the same page. But if it’s so evident, why am I missing it?

Tom: Who says you are missing it? The mind?

Q. Yes

Tom. Why believe the mind? Be still my friend ❤

Q. So belief is the reason for all misery, isn’t it?

Tom: Bondage is an illusion of the mind only. Bondage = suffering.

Q. Be still and know that I’m God. But I know this well, I experience it, sometimes. But when problems arise, I’m carried away with it. How to recollect the Self always?

Tom: Practice.

Q. What is the best way of practicing this? Apart from Self-enquiry?

Tom: See here:

https://tomdas.com/2018/06/24/spiritual-liberation-some-essential-instructions/

Or here:

https://tomdas.com/2018/06/13/letting-go-of-liberation/

Or here:

https://tomdas.com/2018/05/05/the-natural-path-to-the-natural-state/

Q. Okay. I will read it. But liberation itself is an idea that I have to let go to completely enjoy bliss, isn’t it?

Tom: Have a read 🙂

<Sometime later>

Q. Thanks. It was a great read. 🙂🙏🏻

 

 

3 stories of awakening: no path vs sudden path vs gradual paths to enlightenment. Is practice required for liberation?

~ Tom Das ~ 14 Comments

Here are 3 stories for you:

Story 1

One morning God wakes up. She realises, non-verbally, intuitively, that she is whole-complete and lives happily ever after.

Story 2

One morning God wakes up. God thinks he is small, separate and vulnerable. This leads him to fear for his survival and desire security and relief from his fear (pleasure).

He meets a friend of his called Spiritual Seeker. Spiritual Seeker tells him to visit Guru.

God visits Guru and Guru says all is well, you are already whole and complete. Separation and the ‘small me’ are illusions.

God resonates with this teaching, intuitively sees what is being pointed at is already the present-reality, and the sense of inadequacy associated with the belief in separation dissolves. God realises that the separation between God, Guru and Life are themselves illusory. There is no teacher or teaching.

He lives happily ever after

Story 3

It is the same as story 2, except for the last line:

Once God’s meeting with Guru ends, due to the force of the momentum of past beliefs which have been so deeply ingrained over a lifetime, God quickly starts to re-believe that she is a separate ‘me’.

Every time she meets Guru, the ‘me’ temporarily collapses and great relief is experienced, but after sometime the false beliefs keep on rising up. The belief in the false me seems to have a mind of its own, rising up choicelessly, seemingly wreaking havoc and destruction.

Guru gives God some practices for her to do: chanting, devotion, meditation, being still, letting go, relaxing, mindfulness. Guru says pretend everything is an illusion, pretend everything is consciousness, pretend everything is God, have gratitude for everything that comes your way. Be still. Follow your heart and let your heart guide you Home, to Love and Peace.

Over time God’s mind becomes peaceful, happier and less interested in and addicted to thoughts and beliefs. The habitual tendency to believe in a ‘me’ is lessened.

Guru has also all the time has been saying all is well, you are already whole and complete. Separation and the ‘small me’ are illusions.

Now when God is away from Guru, the old beliefs in ‘me’ no longer arise. God sees that all practices are for the illusory ‘me’ and they perpetuate the illusory ‘me’, but they were still part of her apparent journey.

The sense of inadequacy associated with the belief in separation dissolves. God realises that the separation between God, Guru and Life are themselves illusory. There is no teacher or teaching.

She lives happily ever after.

“The Sage tells us that disciples are of four grades,
comparable to gun-powder, dry charcoal, ordinary fuel, and wet fuel.
 
The first kind of disciple needs only a word, like a spark, to consume his ignorance at once.
 
The second kind needs some teaching and personal effort.
 
The third kind needs a long course of teaching, training and practice.
 
The fourth kind needs to be made fit for discipleship by practices suitable to his condition.”
 
Maha Yoga, Chapter 11

The importance of suffering and seeking

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

Most people stop short of the goal

So many people cling to beliefs, either knowingly or unknowingly, caught up in confusion, sometimes teaching it to others.

If you really want truth, would you accept a belief, a concept, an idea? Would you accept second-hand words, teachings and phrases uttered by others? Would you worry about what others think and get preoccupied in puerile semantic debate?

Or would you continue to seek, genuinely investigate, until you have genuinely found, in your own direct experience, the end to your suffering, an end to your seeking?

J. Krishnamurti: The beauty of listening

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

krishnamurti

‘The beauty of listening lies in being highly sensitive to everything about you: to the ugliness, to the dirt, to the squalor, to the poverty about you, and also to the dirt, to the disorder, to the poverty of one’s own being.
When you are aware of both, then there is no effort, that is, when there is an awareness which is without choice, then there is no effort.’
Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Collected Works, Vol. XV, page 61 ‘Choiceless Awareness’

Tom’s Comments:
Not trying to avoid the bad and ugly, not striving to reach the good and beautiful, the ego is no longer at play. We come into contact with things as they are, reality, the living truth. We are no longer afraid of what is, we are no longer trying to escape ourselves.

Then we can see that which already is, and always has been. How can this be put into words? Try it and see for yourself, then you too will be beyond the need for these pathetic words.

Tibetan Buddhism: Free and Easy by Gendun Rinpoche

~ Tom Das ~ 7 Comments

Gendun Rinpoche.jpg

This is a beautiful and profound ‘vajra poem’. It was given spontaneously by Gendun Rinpoche, a late Tibetan Buddhist rinpoche (‘precious teacher’), during a talk to his disciples. A book of his teachings called Heart Advice from a Mahamudra Master is highly recommended and teaches all the essentials of Tibetan Buddhism from someone who has a genuine experience of the truth that lies behind the words. Sometimes expositions of Tibetan Buddhism become overly structured and conceptual, but Gendun Rinpoche has a way of not only teaching the concepts, but also of indicating that which is beyond concepts and is also immediate and vital.

Happiness can not be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present,
in open relaxation and letting go.

Don’t strain yourself,
there is nothing to do or undo.
Whatever momentarily arises
in the body-mind
has no real importance at all,
has little reality whatsoever.
Why identify with,
and become attached to it,
passing judgement upon it and ourselves?

Far better to simply
let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves
without changing or manipulating anything
and notice how everything vanishes and reappears, magically,
again and again, time without end.

Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It’s like a vivid rainbow which you pursue
without ever catching,
or a dog chasing its own tail.

Although peace and happiness
do not exist as an actual thing or place,
it is always available
and accompanies you every instant.

Don’t believe in the reality of good and bad experiences;
they are like today’s ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax
this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there –
open, inviting and comfortable.

Make use of this spaciousness,
this freedom and natural ease.
Don’t search any further
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing –

Emaho! Marvellous!
Everything happens by itself.