Contemplations

Without contrast the image is blurred. Sensing the background: the silence,
the vastness, the emptiness;
the wonder of reality comes into view.

Nothing to hold, nothing to keep.
Neither possessions, nor loved ones,
nor the body, nor the mind, nor the self.
Clinging is taken away.
Resisting is gone.
Holding is gone. Holding is gone.

Gone, gone, gone beyond
gone utterly beyond,
Awakening praised.

Gate gate paragate
parasamgate,
Bodhi svaha.

One bright day you recognise what is true within yourself. By feeling what is there you move right through it's shadow into the light on the other side, returning to the home that was never left.

There is something formless yet complete,
That existed before heaven and earth;
Without sound, without substance,
Dependent on nothing, unchanging
All pervading, unfailing,
Without beginning, without ending.
One may think of it as the mother of all things.
Its true name we do not know;
"The Way" is the by-name we give it.

See, all things howsoever they flourish
Return to the source from which they grew.
For the timeless net has been cast wide,
Coarse are its meshes, yet nothing slips through.

~ Lao Tsu: Tao Te Ching

Omnia mea mecum porto.
'All that is mine, I carry with me.'

Bias of Priene, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, is said to have answered those dismayed by seeing him walking naked on the road, fleeing from his hometown
that has been attacked by the barbarians.

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding under-current of our natural state. ~David Whyte

The Awakened One was once living at Savatthi in Jeta's Grove. A deity called Rohitassa came to him late in the night, paid homage to him and asked: "Lord, the world's end where one neither is born nor ages nor dies nor passes away nor reappears: is it possible to know or see or reach that by travelling there?"

"Friend, that there is a world's end where one neither is born nor ages nor dies nor passes away nor reappears, which is to be known or seen or reached by travelling there -- that I do not say. Yet I do not say that there is an end to dissatisfaction and sorrow without reaching the world's end.

Eternity is not a long time,
it is outside of time.
Things are not what they appear to be;
nor are they otherwise.

No sound, no silence.
No light, no darkness.
No source, no destination.

I was entirely in the present. There was neither past nor future. No expectations, no judgments of my situation. No sense of regret, for there was no sense, as I said , of past (to regret) or future (to despair for).

I just existed, and it was beautiful. I was transcending eternity and in the void and I was the void and the void was me... and I would be in this place where I was forever... and if forever were to be an instant or a thousand years was immaterial and irrelevant.

I felt, "Abide with me, here, now, for I am at peace, and we are one". I felt a oneness with whoever was in the room with me, and whoever was unconscious with me, and it was good. It was just that -- good. Nothing fabulous, or miraculous, or brilliant. Just "good". Perfectly, clearly, good.

I could have spent a trillion years right there, with that presence, whatever it was. But the hard thing to explain is that there was no "trillion years". There was just NOW. I had no sense of future. At the time, any concept of "eternity" was beyond my experience, for "time" was beyond my experience.

The glorious euphoric peace, the presence, the empty, falling, now-ness with no past or future -- I can't recapture it, and it has changed my life, and I need to talk to others about it, and as a scientist I know that it was probably "just anoxia" -- but there is so much more to it that cannot be explained -- and yes, it has changed my life.

Not what I saw, or heard, but what I felt. My priorities lined up, my values came into focus, everything in that void where one would think "Nothing" existed - the only reason it is called "Nothing", I believe, is that there is no Time, and existence is purely Being.

That was my experience. Perhaps this is what the existentialist philosophers tried so hard to communicate, this "being-in-the moment", this awareness of self... what they stated was paltry compared to this. What I felt was powerful and intense and life-changing. It transcended any mere "moment".

But with this experience, I know (and I don't know how) that I can't force it, or rush it. This pure, perfect psychological state, that I achieved by accident and can only recapture in memory, is real, an a genuine capability of the human mind. I need to talk about it. I did a bad job, just now, of communicating what happened. I made it seem trivial. ~Alison D's NDE

The illusory difference between life and death,
between being and non-being dissolved,
and I have emerged into the Silent Bliss of Reality.