On ignorance or Existence described as a system of null-functions activated into partial non-nullity by ignorance

 Attached to Suttas on ignorance →

The faculty of self-observation or reflexion is inherent in the structure of our experience. Some degree of reflexion is almost never entirely absent in our waking life, and in the practice of mindfulness it is deliberately cultivated. To describe it simply, we may say that one part of our experience is immediately concerned with the world as its object, while at the same time another part of our experience is concerned with the immediate experience as its object. This second part we may call reflexive experience. It will be clear that when there is avijjā there is avijjā in both parts of our experience, is divided within itself, it is still one single, even if complex, structure.

The effect of this may be seen from the Sabbāsavasutta (Majjhima i,2 <M.i,8>) wherein certain wrong views are spoken of. Three of them are:

With self I perceive self;
With self I perceive not-self;
With not-self I perceive self

A man with avijjā, practising reflexion, may identify ‘self’ with both reflexive and immediate experience, or with reflexive experience alone, or with immediate experience alone. He does not conclude that neither is ‘self’, and the reason is clear: it is not possible to get outside avijjā by means of reflexion alone; for however much a man may ‘step back’ from himself to observe himself he cannot help taking avijjā with him. There is just as much avijjā in the self-observer as there is in the self-observed. And this is the very reason why avijjā is so stable in spite of its being sankhata. Simply by reflexion the puthujjana can never observe avijjā and at the same time recognize it as avijjā; for in reflexion avijjā is the Judge as well as the Accused, and the verdict is always ‘Not Guilty’. In order to put an end to avijjā, which is a matter of recognizing avijjā as avijjà, it is necessary to accept on trust from the Buddha a Teaching that contradicts the direct evidence of the puthujjana’s reflexion. This is why the Dhamma is pañisotagàmã (Majjhima iii,6 <M.i,168>), or ‘going against the stream’. The Dhamma gives the puthujjana the outside view of avijjā, which is inherently unobtainable for him by unaided reflexion (in the ariyasāvaka this view has, as it were, ‘taken’ like a graft, and is perpetually available). Thus it will be seen that avijjā in reflexive experience (actual or potential) is the condition for avijjà in immediate experience. It is possible, also, to take a second step back and reflect upon reflexion; but there is still avijjā in this self-observation of self-observation, and we have a third layer of avijjā protecting the first two.
And there is no reason in theory why we should stop here; but however far we go we shall not get beyond avijjā. The hierarchy of avijjā can also be seen from the Suttas in the following way.

But which, friends, is nescience?…

That which is non-knowledge of suffering,
non-knowledge of arising of suffering,
non-knowledge of ceasing of suffering,
non-knowledge of the way that leads to ceasing of suffering, 
this, friends, is called nescience.

And which, monks, is the noble truth of suffering…

And which, monks, is the noble truth of arising of suffering…

And which, monks, is the noble truth of ceasing of suffering…

And which, monks, is the noble truth of the way that leads to ceasing of suffering?

Just this noble eight-factored path,  that is to say: right view…

And which, monks, is right view?…

That which is knowledge of suffering,
knowledge of arising of suffering,
knowledge of ceasing of suffering,
knowledge of the way that leads to ceasing of suffering,
this, monks, is called right view.

Avijjā is non-knowledge of the four noble truths. Sammāditthi is knowledge of the four noble truths. But sammāditthi is part of the four noble truths. Thus avijjā is non-knowledge of sammāditthi; that is to say, non-knowledge of knowledge of the four noble truths. But since sammāditthi, which is knowledge of the four noble truths, is part of the four noble truths, so avijjā is non-knowledge of knowledge of knowledge of the four noble truths. And so we can go on indefinitely . But the point to be noted is that each of these successive stages represents an additional layer of (potentially) reflexive avijjā. Non-knowledge of knowledge of the four noble truths is non-knowledge of vijjā, and non-knowledge of vijjā is failure to recognize avijjā as avijjā.
Conversely, it is evident that when avijjā is once recognized anywhere in this structure it must vanish everywhere; for knowledge of the four noble truths entails knowledge of knowledge of the four noble truths, and vijjā (‘science’) replaces avijjā (‘nescience’) throughout.*

* Visible forms [Sounds… Images (Ideas)] are dear and agreeable in the world; herein this craving arises, herein it adheres… Craving-for-visible-forms [Craving-for-sounds… Craving-for-images (-ideas)] is dear and agreeable in the world; herein this craving arises, herein it adheres.

And the converse:

…herein this craving is eliminated, herein it ceases.
Dīgha ii,9 <D.ii,308-11>

Not only is there craving, but there is craving for craving as a condition for craving: indifference to craving destroys it. (Tanhā, be it noted, is not the coarse hankering after what we do not have [which is abhijjhā or covetousness], but the subtle craving for more of what we have. In particular, I am because I crave to be, and with cessation of craving-for-being [bhavatanhā, which is itself dependent on avijjà and, like it, without first beginning—Aïguttara X,vii,2 <A.v,116>], ‘I am’ ceases. Bhavatanhā, in fact, is the craving for more craving on which craving depends.)

*
(ii) Reality is the non-existence of things. In other words, things do not really exist, they only appear to do so on account of our ignorance (avijjā). (George Borrow tells of a Spanish gypsy in the last century whose grandfather held this view, so it hardly needs a Buddha to declare it. It seems to be closely allied to the Hindu notion of māyā— that all is illusion.) Now the Pali texts say that the Buddha taught anicca/dukkha/ anattā, and the average Theravādin, monk or layman, seems to take for granted that aniccatā, or impermanence, means that things are perpetually changing, that they do not remain the same for two consecutive moments. Failing to make the necessary distinctions they understand this as implying perpetual flux of everything all the time. This, of course, destroys the principle of self-identity, ‘A is A’; for unless something endures unchanged for at least a certain interval of time you cannot even make the assertion ‘this is A’ since the word ‘is’ has lost its meaning. Bypassing dukkha as something we all know about, they arrive at anattā as meaning ‘without self-identity’. (This is Mr. Wettimuny’s theme, following Dahlke. I do not think he is aware that he is putting himself among the Mahāyānists.) Granted the premise that anicca means ‘in continuous flux’, this conclusion is impeccable. Unfortunately, in doing away with the principle of self-identity, you do away with things—including change, which is also a thing. This means that for the puthujjana, who does not see aniccatā, things exist, and for the arahat, who has seen aniccatā, things do not exist. Thus the Mahāyānists contention is proved.

The difficulty arises when we deal with the sekha, who is in between the two; are we to say for him that ‘things partly exist and partly do not exist’, or that for him ‘some things exist and some do not’ (in which case we seem to have Eddington and the quantum theory)? The former, no doubt, would be preferable, but what is one to make of a partly non-existent thing? And in any case we have the curious state of affairs that there is change (or impermanence) only so long as it is not seen; for in the very instant that it is seen it vanishes. (This is certainly true of avijjā—see A Note on Pañiccasamuppāda §24—but the vanishing of avijjā★,

★, as I understand it, leaves impermanence intact and does not interfere with the three Laws of Thought.)

★NM You can say that ignorance does not exist, for the moment it is seen it is no more. Therefore, you may call it unconsciousness or blindness.

*

Mr. Wijerama has written a very intelligible letter, and I have found something to say in reply; but whether my reply will make things clear is another matter—the question of change and movement is notoriously perplexing and not easily disentangled. But even without entirely clarifying the situation, it is necessary to point out the source of certain current misinterpretations of the Dhamma—in particular, the view that ‘since everything is always changing nothing really exists, and it is only our ignorance that makes us think that things do exist’, which is quite erroneous but very widespread.
*
The attitude you speak of, that of cursing the world and oneself, is, in a sense, the beginning of wisdom. Revolt is the first reaction of an intelligent man when he begins to understand the desperate nature of his situation in the world; and it is probably true to say that nothing great has ever been achieved except by a man in revolt against his situation. But revolt alone is not enough—it eventually contradicts itself. A man in blind revolt is like someone in a railway compartment trying to stop the train by pushing against the opposite seat with his feet: he may be strong enough to damage the compartment, but the damaged compartment will nevertheless continue to move with the train. Except for the arahat, we are all in this train of samsara, and the problem is to stop the train whilst still travelling in it. Direct action, direct revolt, won’t do; but something, certainly, must be done. That it is, in fact, possible to stop the train from within we know from the Buddha, who has himself done it:

I, monks, being myself subject to birth, decay, and death, having seen the misery of subjection to birth, decay, and death, went in search of the unborn, undecaying, undying, uttermost quietus of extinction (nibbāna), and I reached the unborn, undecaying, undying, uttermost quietus of extinction. <M. 26: i,167> Revolt by all means, but let the weapons be intelligence and patience, not disorder and violence; and the first thing to do is to find out exactly what it is that you are revolting against. Perhaps you will come to see that what you are revolting against is avijjā. Nanavira Thera

*

There is progress all the time. Everything contributes to progress. But this is the progress of ignorance. The circles of ignorance may be ever widening, yet it remains a bondage all the same. In due course a Guru appears to teach and inspire us to practise Yoga and a ripening takes place as a result of which the immemorial night of ignorance dissolves before the rising sun of wisdom. But in reality nothing happened. The sun is always there, there is no night to it; the mind blinded by the 'I am the body' idea spins out endlessly its thread of illusion.

*

M: It is ignorance of yourself that makes you afraid and also unaware that you are afraid. Don't try not to be afraid. Break down the wall of ignorance first. People are afraid to die, because they do not know what is death. The jnani has died before his death, he saw that there was nothing to be afraid of. The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. To be free in the world, you must die to the world. Then the universe is your own, it becomes your body, an expression and a tool. The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description. On the other hand, he who is afraid of freedom cannot die. 

Q: You mean that one who cannot die, cannot live? 

M: Put it as you like; attachment is bondage, detachment is freedom. To crave is to slave.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

*

Ignorance must never be lost sight of (as lack of knowledge, hiddenness in probability, or forgetting, or transcendence, or uncertainty à la Heisenberg). Any system that explains existence without it does not explain it.
*
If ignorance is an essential component of existence (whether as the finite unknowing of the infinite, or as the basis of Dependent Arising, or as the Uncertainty Principle in Atomic Physics), then any theory that does not take account of and include ignorance cannot claim to represent existence or the world fully.
The fact that a theory works in practice, by experience, proves that it does so take account, or it would not work. But to show openly or incautiously such ignorance would be offensive, indecent, taboo, and so it is normally hidden, normally inadvertedly.
*
My existence is my presence now, or my present life (birth-to-death); my non-existence is my previous lives (before birth) and my future lives (after death). Both together compose me:
I am composed of both together. The objective materialist who, as a solalterist, forgets himself, takes existence as an all-truth, subordinating “I-me.” The religionist who believes in the permanence of the soul, takes the solipsistic “I-me” as an all-truth, subordinating existence. 
*
If number is definable as what you can count, it is therefore finite, but an infinite number (see Russell, Mysticism and Logic) is what you cannot count, and is therefore not a number except by a pun (vide Russell’s statement that “the number of finite numbers is infinite”—which in “straight” language should be stated as no number of numbers is countable”). A definition of infinity is self-contradictory, verbally, since it involves placing a limit (finis) to that which is stated to have none.

395. What I believe I know, I do not yet fully know: what I know I believe, I no longer fully believe.

396. Ignorance screens the truth. It is on that screen that people paint pictures and write underneath their labels “god” and “not-god” and “theism” and “atheism.”

467. What the psychologists—no, psychoanalysts call a ‘fully integrated personality’ is he not simply one who lives (loudly and contradictorily and humanely) according to the Old Testament pattern? The New Testament is not an integrating force: ‘I bring not peace, but a sword …’

468. Why should ‘integration’ be a good thing?
‘Integration’ as integration of ignorance and craving in the personality, just as we now have ignorance and force integrated in the atom with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle—‘Ignorance’
and ‘Force’—those old myths?

483. Knowledge emerges from ignorance as its ‘opposite,’ faith needs and uses ignorance for its medium, since it is essentially the aid for knowledge beyond its own field.
The three have a triangular relationship in an act (with no true opposite for any of the three).
In the ordinary sense knowledge is certain that what is is and that no action is possible. Faith is certain that no result is impossible. Ignorance is not certain how the action is being done, which changes what is known to be into what it is not.

484. One’s thoughts are like nothing so much than an uncorrected text full of mistakes.

485. People seem to approach religion for one of two main reasons or for both mixed together: They are moved either by a wish to discover truth (leaving that vague word vague here) or by a need to find justification for a predilection. Of the first, an outstanding example is, perhaps Kierkegaard. The second is far the more common. In myself I find elements of both. Perhaps the two merge with the incompatibility of two lines that meet at right-angles, and from the meeting-point some set out in one direction and some in the other.

488. Action The ‘actional’ attitude has two complementary modes: (1) The voluntary (’active’) (’exercise of will’, ‘free will’, control, doing, etc.), and (2) the unvoluntary (’passive’) (‘limitation of will’, ‘out-of-control’, ‘inaction’, etc.). These two modes are constantly interlocking and alternating in the process of existence-as-becoming. The Result of an Action comes under (2). (1) looks to (2):.that is, any act is done with respect to its expected result, without which is no act at all. This means what is called an ACT is, in fact, an experienced transition from the voluntary (active) state of (1) to the unvoluntary (passive) state of (2), e. g., the active, voluntary igniting of a fire-work is an example of (1), while the passive, involuntary, nose-tickling firework’s independent buzzing (or the ensuing sneeze), is an example of (2). This whole ACT, as an ‘experience of a transition’ from the one type of constitutive cognizance to the other, opposite, type—on the voluntary-involuntary dimension—involves the manifestation of faith-ignorance already discussed: faith that the result will ensue as expected, and ignorance in the actual experience of the act-as-transition). For simplicity’s sake the examples cited are those of the elation conscious-body/inanimate-thing; but the relation of the Act/result between two conscious bodies (‘persons’) is not essentially different in its basic structure—as I/not-I—from the first-mentioned: then I am this result: what I am is out of my control. More briefly, these two are respectively expressed by the words ‘I’ and ‘me’—‘I’ voluntarily make ‘me’ the involuntary result, ‘me’ being the reflection I see in the not-I.

508. The honest man is describable only in terms of dishonesty.
For his honest quality he possesses in the form of his acts. And acts are alterations made. But he is not his acts: he is not what he possesses: he is not honest or he is his acts: but then by acting he is a changing, and so cannot remain honest, or in other terms: he is what he is not, if he is what he has.

509. Singularity is the identity of two; duplicity is the non-identity of one. Identity = ignorance of duplicity, duplicity = ignorance of identity. Need assumes the identity of what it needs and the duplicity of what it does not need (needs to reject).

510. In the “flow” of time the only constant is space. In the “extension” of space the only continuity is time. Time is inconstant, space is discontinuous. Time is constant in one place, space is continuous in one moment.

511. There are two ways of attempting to deal with the appalling difficulties of choice on the higher ethical levels (Truth/ beauty/goodness; family/country, war/peace, principles/ persons…): (1) one can attempt to justify a one-sided choice, and this is what philosophies of value and religions attempt to do through reason and faith (feeling,) respectively. But this always founders or is never safe from foundering. (2) Or the dialectic can be squarely faced in the fact that no one-sided solution of it is ever justifiable by reason or by faith. And here enters the question not of acceptance or refusal, nor of affirmation or denial, but of letting-go. The letting-go, however, is limited, in life at least (and without taking death into account) by the boundary of ability to let go. 

512. All action, regarded (mathematically) as a function of me, and I being a function of ignorance, action is a function of reflected ignorance.

616. In the Round (i.e., Paṭicca-samuppāda) as arising, ignorance must function, on the pre-logical level as forgetting and as infinite transcendence, and on the logical level as forgetting and the presence of the Assumption (i.e., the impersonal God/ Godlessness or the personal Absolutism/Relativism).
In the pre-logical, ignorance is omnipresent, i.e., as transcendence and as change (—forgetting); but in the logical, it can be pushed aside partly, because the possibility of right view appearing partially and intellectually and patchily, though what the realization of cessation of craving is, is a cataclysm.

Ignorance and craving/clinging constitute (with consciousness) the purely temporal contingency. They are influenceable by will. Consciousness is the absolute negation in virtue of which ignorance and craving can pose the positive ‘world.’ Bhava which is positive, describes the constitution of the moving spatio-temporal contingency which is (a) possible in virtue of the negation consisting in consciousness, and is (b) factual in virtue of the limitations of viewing things imposed by ignorance, and limitations of time/action imposed by craving/clinging.

(On dependent arising) To the question: “What are these sets of terms intended to describe?” we may answer tentatively that they are intended to describe experience of any possible kind where ignorance (that is lack of personal realization of the Truths) is present.

638. To be is to be contingent: nothing, of which it can be said that ‘it is,’ can be said to be alone and independent.
But being is a member of the paṭicca-samuppāda as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.
The destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being.
When ignorance is no more, then consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all; for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no more ignorance then it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in MN 22).

The Absolute receives absolution only from consciousness, and by that act its absoluteness is very particular.

The Incomprehensible is only incomprehensible when comprehended as such: uncomprehended, it is comprehendible as incomprehensible.

Do I know the ignorance of unknowledge, or am I ignorant of the knowledge of my ignorance?

The most illusory of all illusions is the illusion that there is no illusion.

What is certain? Probability. What is probable? Certainty. Can I doubt that I know with certainty my own doubt?

540. Existence described as a system of null-functions activated into partial non-nullity by ignorance. Nanamoli Thera 

The Buddha pointed to everything that is not self

 Introduction to Meditation     

  The important thing in meditation is attitude, rather than technique or tradition. The right attitude is most important. Even if you have the best teacher with the best tradition and the best methods, if your attitude isn’t right, it won’t work.

Many people meditate with an attitude of gaining, attaining, or achieving. It’s not surprising, because our worldly attitude is based on achievement. We are conditioned by our education and society to see life as something we must use in order to attain or become something. On a worldly level, this is the way it is. We have to go to school in order to learn to read and write. We have to do all kinds of things in order to become something or to attain something, but enlightenment (   nibbā na    ) is not something that we ever attain or achieve. This is a difficult thing to comprehend with the intellect, because the intellect is conditioned to think in terms of gaining.

     Practicing without Gain     

The words “Dhamma” and “nibbāna ” are untranslatable because they cannot be explained conceptually: they are realizations rather than things. The best we can do in English is to use a term like “ultimate reality.” Dhamma and  nibbāna are what we realize rather than something we attain or achieve.

When we are meditating, our intention is to incline toward  nibbāna  rather than toward attaining a higher state of consciousness. There are various meditation techniques in which we can achieve higher levels of consciousness, but for  nibbāna there are no stages, there are no levels, there’s no attainment. There’s no development or progress because it’s a realization rather than an attainment.

The problem human beings have with meditation is their worldly mind. The worldly mind is always looking for something. Even if one meditates for years, there’s still a great desire in the mind to find out “Who am I? What am I? What is the purpose of my life?” But the Buddha was not trying to tell us the purpose of life. Instead, he tried to give us guidance to full realization. Therefore, in his basic teaching of the Four Noble Truths, he pointed to everything that is not self, rather than make any statement about what we are or what our true nature is. Even if he had told us exactly what we are, we still wouldn’t really know until we had meditated and found out for ourselves.

     Everything That Is Not Self     

The Buddha pointed to everything that is not self. In Pali, this “everything” is referred to as the five khandhas, translated as the five heaps, or the five aggregates. These are listed as: physical form, feeling, perception, volition (or mental formations), and sense consciousness. These are what we are not—and this “not being anything” is what we mean by anattā, or non-self. Everything that you can perceive and conceive, know through the senses, or think with the mind—everything mental and physical that has a beginning and an end, that arises and passes away—is included in the five heaps. The five aggregates include the whole universe that we perceive and conceive through our senses.

The five aggregates include our bodies. These human bodies are products of the earth, and their nature is to rely on all the things that the earth produces. We have to eat what comes from the earth, and when these bodies die, the elements of earth, water, fire, and air return to the earth again. Seeing our bodies as part of a larger process is a way of recognizing   anattā, a way of seeing that these bodies are not self.

In conventional reality, of course, the body is very much our “self.” When I talk about myself, I am talking about this body; I am not talking about anything else. But when we investigate and reflect, we begin to comprehend the truth of   anattā    as an actual experience. We are no longer deluded into thinking that we actually are our body, feelings, perceptions, volition, and sense consciousness. We know what is not ourself, fully and completely, without any doubt remaining. This is complete enlightenment, and this is what our meditation is about.

     The Conditioned and the Unconditioned     

The teaching of the Buddha is a very simple teaching, because it comprehends things in terms of the conditioned and the unconditioned. Conditioned phenomena are those which arise and pass away. They include everything that we perceive and know through our senses, through the body, feelings, thoughts, and memories. They are conditions; they begin and they end. The Pali term for the conditioned is sankhāra. Sankhāra includes all that arises and passes away, whether it is mental or physical. We are not quibbling about whether it is out there or in here, whether something arises and passes away in an instant or in an aeon. It does not make any difference as far as this way of meditating goes, because the conditioned includes all time-bound things.

The unconditioned is something that most people never realize because they are mesmerized by conditioned phenomena. To realize the unconditioned we have to let go of our constant attachment to conditioned phenomena.

The unconditioned is like the space in a room. When you come into a room, do you notice the space, or is your attention drawn to the objects in the room? You see the walls, the windows, the people, the furniture, the colors, and the decorations. But the space in the room is not noticeable, even though it is there all the time. And when we’re busy watching all the people and the objects in the room, we don’t notice the space at all. It is only when we let go of thinking, talking, considering, and imagining, that we become aware and we notice the space in the room. When we attend to it, we see that space is peaceful and boundless. Even the walls of the room do not limit space.

It’s the same with the mind. The mind is unlimited and has no boundaries; it can contain everything. Yet we bind ourselves to the limited conditions of the mind—our ideas, views, and opinions. There is room enough in space for every theory, opinion, and view; they all arise and pass away, and there is no permanent condition. So there is room enough for everybody and everything, for every religion, every political view, every thought, every type of human being. And yet, humanity always wants to control and limit and say: “Only these we allow, and those do not have any right to be here.” Trying to possess and hold on, we bind ourselves to conditions, which always take us to death and despair.

Whatever we hope and expect will cause us to feel disillusionment and despair, if we attach to it. This is because whatever we attach to arises and has to pass away. There is nothing that arises which keeps on arising; it can only arise for so long, and then it passes away. So when you bind yourself to any condition that is arising, it can only take you along with it as it passes away. When you attach to anything that is arising, such as your own physical body or any condition in nature, it will take you to death. And so death is the end of that which was born, and despair is the other side of hope and expectation.

As soon as anything becomes unpleasant or unsatisfactory, we tend to jump into some other condition, into something that is arising. This makes life a constant search for pleasure, romance, and adventure. People are always running after that which is interesting or fascinating and running away from the opposite. We run from boredom, despair, old age, sickness, and death because these are conditions that we do not want to be with. We want to get away from them, forget them, not notice them.

But in meditation, the attitude is to be infinitely patient with conditions, even when they become unpleasant or boring. If we’re always running off to find something more interesting, we just keep going round in circles. This is called the cycle of saṁsāra   .

     Meditating on the Ordinary     

When we notice that the conditions of body and mind are just the way conditions are, it’s a simple recognition. It’s not an analysis, and it’s not anything special. It’s just a bare recognition, a direct knowing that whatever arises passes away. Knowing in this way demands a certain amount of patience; otherwise, as soon as any fear, anger, or unpleasantness arises, we will run away from it. So meditation is also the ability to endure, and bear with, the unpleasant. We don’t seek it out; we are not ascetics looking for painful things to endure so that we can prove ourselves. We’re simply recognizing the way it is right now.

The Buddha established his meditation on that which is ordinary, rather than on that which is extraordinary. For example, one technique of Buddhist meditation is mindfulness of the breath (P. ānāpānasati), which is meditation through attention to normal breathing. There are meditations on sitting, standing, walking, and lying down, which are also very ordinary—even boring. With meditation on these ordinary conditions, what is required is an attitude of infinite patience; we make all the time in the world to be with one inhalation and one exhalation. There’s nothing else to do except to be with what is—with the body sitting down, the body standing up, the body walking, the body lying down.

That’s a mental state very different from the one we are accustomed to, isn’t it? When we are sitting down, we normally do not notice sitting. We might sit and collapse out of exhaustion, or we might sit and read, sit and smoke, sit and eat, or sit and talk. We’re always doing something while we’re sitting. And it’s much the same with the other postures. When we lie down, we fall asleep heedlessly. We walk heedlessly, stand heedlessly, and sit heedlessly, so we never really see what is now and what is immediate. We are always thinking about what we have to do now in order to get what we want in the future, and that is endless. Even when you get what you want in the future, you find it only satisfies you temporarily, and then you start thinking of something else you have to have.

     Looking at the Movement of Desire     

I remember, when I was a little boy I saw a toy, and I told my mother, “If you buy me that toy, I promise I will never ask for anything ever again.” I really believed that full satisfaction could be gained from owning that toy! So she went and bought the toy and gave it to me. I think I played with it a little while and set it aside, and then I found something else that I wanted. But I remember how thoroughly convinced I was that, if she would give me that one thing, my desires would be satisfied forever—and I remember that I was not satisfied. Even at that young age, this realization made an impression because I can still remember the lesson: even getting what I wanted was disappointing because then I had to start looking for something else.

In meditation, we are looking at the movement of desire, but we are not passing judgment against desire. Some people think that Buddhists are all against desire, but the Buddha’s teaching is not an annihilationist teaching—it is an awakening. Desire is not something that we reject, or try to annihilate. We reflect on it and understand that it is a condition in nature.

There are desires that are good and desires that are bad. Desires to kill, hurt others, and steal are considered bad desires; all of us have bad desires at times. And then, there are good desires that make us want to help, be kind, or develop into good and wise beings. Whenever we recognize desire—whether it is good or bad—we are using wisdom. Only wisdom can see desire; desire cannot see wisdom. So when you are trying to find wisdom, just know desire. Watching the movement of desire lets us see its nature as a changing condition. And we see that it is not self.

     Buddha-Wisdom     

Buddha-wisdom is something that we use in our meditation, not something we attain. It’s a humbling kind of wisdom; it’s not fantastic. It’s the simple wisdom of knowing that whatever arises passes away and is not self. It is knowing that the desires going through our minds are just that—they are desires, and they are not us. Wisdom is living as men, women, monks, nuns, Buddhists, Christians, or whatever, using the conventional realities of gender, role, class, and so forth, but understanding those realities as mere conventions. Wisdom lets us see that they are not ultimate truth, so that they do not delude us.

Buddha-wisdom is that which knows the conditioned as the conditioned and the unconditioned as the unconditioned. It’s as simple as that. You just have to know two things: the conditioned and the unconditioned. When you are meditating, don’t try to attain, but just open up to your intention for meditating. When you suddenly awaken to the fact that you are trying to get something out of it, that is a moment of enlightenment. With an open mind, you begin to see what is really happening. But if you sit for a year trying to become and attain, you will feel terribly disappointed at the end of it. You will have lost everything because, if you don’t have the right attitude, you will not have the wisdom to learn from failure.

In our meditation, we learn from both successes and failures. People fail all the time. Mindfulness of the breath is one of the most frustrating meditation practices ever conceived because, if you try to get something out of it, it is not a very giving practice. You have to be patient. You have to learn from your successes and from your failures, until you no longer really care whether your experience is pleasant or unpleasant. Then both conditions can take you to enlightenment, to nibbāna.

Ajahn Sumedho from

The Mind and the Way

Turning Towards Emptiness

 

By reflecting, you bring into consciousness the state of conditions as they happen to be now. Having been born, we’re now this age, feeling this way, at this time and in this place. That’s the way it is. That cannot be changed by us. It’s just the inevitability of birth that this is the way it is now. And when you realize this, you have a perspective on the way it is – rather than a reaction to the way it is. If you don’t reflect, you just react to the way it is.

If you’re feeling happy, you get high, ‘I want to be a monk for the rest of my life and devote myself to the Dhamma. Dhamma is the way for me, the only way, the true way’; and you go out and bore people with a harangue on the importance of Buddhism in the world because you’re high and you feel positive and confident. Even that feeling of being inspired and confident and full of faith and devotion and all those kinds of things – that’s the way it is. One can feel a lot of faith, confidence in what one is doing. Or one can feel the opposite: one loses faith, one feels that this is a waste of time: ‘I’ve wasted my life. It’s of no value, I haven’t got anywhere. It hasn’t done anything for me. I don’t believe in it anymore, I’m fed up with it.’ Or one can feel indifference: ‘It’s all right, don’t know what else to do. Better than working in a factory.’ Whichever way you’re feeling now, either extreme or just indifference, that’s the way it is.

So just notice when you’re feeling positive and tremendously energetic, or when there’s a lack of energy and you’re too critical. When you’re depressed, tired or not feeling very well, it’s hard to arouse the inspired feeling. In those circumstances you tend to pick up what’s wrong with things very quickly. The way somebody walks across a room can really irritate you. Somebody blows their nose too hard, and oh, that’s disgusting! But when you are feeling full of inspiration and devotion, you don’t care about the faults of this or that, you’re caught up in this feeling of devotion and faith. These perceptions are to be reflected on as the way it is now. It has to be this way because it can’t be any other way at this moment. We feel like this, we feel tired or invigorated or whatever – this is the way it is. These are the results of having been born and living our lives, and being subject to changing conditions of sensuality.

Then note, really note what you add to the existing conditions. In all-night sittings you may feel sleepy or tired; note what you add to that feeling. Note the feeling itself but maintain a posture, rather than just react to feeling tired from an attempt to annihilate the feeling by following it and sinking into lethargy. When you’re convinced that you’re so tired there’s really nothing you can do about it, and even pulling your body straight is something that seems totally impossible, hold it up straight for a length of time. Observe, and learn how much energy it takes to hold a body up.

How much energy does it take to stop the thinking process? Have you ever noticed that? ‘Just can’t stop thinking’ – the mind goes on and on. ‘Can’t stop, what can I do? I don’t know how to stop thinking – it keeps going. I can’t stop it ...’ I know about this because I’ve always had a problem with a mind that just seemed to be endlessly thinking about something. And the desire to stop thinking and the effort to get rid of it create the conditions for more thinking. It takes effort to do this, not just thinking about doing it. I remember an Australian Abhidhamma fanatic once came to Wat Pah Pong. This man had a mission – when Westerners get into Abhidhamma they become like born-again Christians – but he didn’t know how to meditate; he didn’t believe that meditation worked, and he figured it all out with his Abhidhamma concepts. He felt that you couldn’t stop thinking. He said: ‘You’re always thinking and you can’t stop thinking.’ I said: ‘But you can stop thinking’, and he said: ‘No, you can’t’; and I said, ‘I’ve just stopped thinking’, and he said: ‘No, you haven’t!’ It was pointless to go on talking to someone like that. You have to be alert to know when you are not thinking, so you take an actual thought like ‘I can’t stop thinking’, and you deliberately think that. This is what I did, because I was a habitual, obsessive thinker.

So if you are averse to thinking, instead of trying to stop, go to the other extreme and deliberately think something; and watch yourself deliberately thinking, so that it’s not just a wandering thought process in which your mind goes round and round in circles. Use your wisdom faculty: deliberately think something, some thought that is completely neutral and uninteresting, like ‘I am a human being.’ Deliberately think it, but observe the space before you’re thinking, and then deliberately say: ‘I am a human being.’ Then note the end of the thought, the moment when you stop thinking. Pay attention to the moments before and after the thought, rather than to the thought itself; just hold attention on where there is no thought. Investigate the space around the thought, the space where the thought comes and goes, rather than thinking. Then you’ll be aware of an empty mind, where there’s just awareness but no thought. That may last for just a second, because you start grasping, so you just have to keep being more aware by thinking something again. With practice you can use even very unpleasant thoughts. For example, you might have strong emotional feelings of, ‘I’m no good, I’m worthless’, and they can be an obsession. In some people’s minds they can become a background to their lives. So you try thinking: ‘I shouldn’t think that. Venerable Sumedho says I’m good. But I know I’m no good.’ However, if you take that obsession and use it as a conscious thought: ‘I am no good’, you start seeing the space around it, and it no longer sounds so absolute. When it becomes obsessive it sounds absolute, infallible; the honest truth, the real truth: ‘This is what I really am, I’m no good.’ But when you take it out of the context of obsession and think it deliberately, intentionally, you see it objectively.

That sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ is just a habit of the mind; it’s not the truth. If you really take the ‘I/I am’ and look at it objectively, the feeling created by that ‘I am’ and ‘I am this way’ or ‘I should be/should not be’ is very different from when you’re just reacting.

In contemplating the Four Noble Truths you have the truth of suffering, its arising, its cessation and then the Path. You can’t know the Path and the way out of suffering until you are aware of where everything ceases – in the mind itself. The mind is still vital and alert even when there is no thought in it; but if you don’t notice that, you believe you are always thinking. That’s the way it seems. You only conceive of yourself when you’re thinking, because you’re identified with memory and the sense of ‘I am’ or ‘I am not.’ That ‘yourself’ is very much a conditioned, programmed perception in the mind. As long as you believe in that perception and never question it, you will always believe that you are an obsessive thinker, and you shouldn’t be this way or shouldn’t feel that way and you shouldn’t worry – but you do, and you’re a hopeless case; and so it goes on from one thing to another.

So ‘I am’ is just a perception, really – it arises in the mind and it ceases in the mind. When it ceases, note that cessation of thought. Make that cessation, that empty mind, a ‘sign’ rather than just creating more things in the emptiness. You can get refined states of consciousness by fixing on refined objects, as in samatha meditation practices that emphasize calming the mind – but with the contemplation of the Noble Truths you’re using the wisdom faculty to note where everything ceases. And yet when the mind is empty, the senses are still all right. It’s not like being in a trance, totally oblivious to everything; your mind is open, empty – or you might call it whole, complete, bright. Then you can take anything, like a fearful thought – you can take it, deliberately think it and see it as just another condition of the mind rather than a psychological problem. It arises, it ceases; there’s nothing in it, nothing in any thought. It’s just a movement in the mind and therefore it’s not a person. You make it personal by attaching to it, believing it: ‘And I’m such a hopeless case. I know I can never be enlightened after all the things I’ve done; the stupid things. And I’m so selfish and I’ve made so many mistakes. I know there’s no hope for me.’ All that arises and ceases in the mind!

Believing is grasping, isn’t it? – ‘I know what I am and I know I’m no good.’ You believe that, and that’s what grasping is. You create that belief, so the mind goes on in that way. And you can find all kinds of proof that you’re no good – you can even start getting paranoid: ‘Everybody knows that I’m no good, too. Yesterday Ven. Sucitto walked by and I just knew that he knows I’m no good. Then this morning I came into the hall and Sister Rocana looked at me a little bit strangely – she knows!’ Through belief you can see and interpret everything that people do in a personal way, as if they’ve all been condemning and judging you. That’s paranoia.

Even the most beautiful thoughts and aspirations, as well as the most evil and nasty ones, arise and cease in the mind. Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying good and evil thoughts are the same. They have the same characteristic of arising and ceasing, that’s all. In other respects they’re different. Good thoughts are good thoughts, evil thoughts are evil thoughts. So I’m not saying it’s all right to think evil thoughts, but I am pointing beyond the quality of the thought: love and hate arise and cease in the mind. In this perspective you’re going to the reflective mind, where most people are totally unaware. People are generally only aware of themselves as a personality, an emotion or a thought – in other words, as a condition.

For practice, don’t worry about the qualities that go through the mind, how wonderful, interesting, beautiful, ugly, nasty or neutral they might be. We’re not investigating qualities or denying the quality of any thought, but just noting the way it is. Then you leave it alone so that it ceases. You create a thought, deliberately put it into the mind and let it go. To let go doesn’t mean you push it away: you leave the thought alone, though you’re aware of it during the whole time: the moment before the thought, the interstices and the ending.

We don’t notice the space around thought very much. It is just like the space in this room, I have to call your attention to it. What does it take to be aware of the space in this room? You have to be alert. With the objects in the room you don’t have to be alert, you can just be attracted or repelled: ‘I don’t like that, I like this.’ You can just react to the quality of beauty and ugliness, whether it pleases or displeases you. That’s our habit – our life tends to be reaction to pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness. We see beauty and we say, ‘Oh, look at that! Isn’t it absolutely fantastic?’ or we think ‘Oh, disgusting!’ But the beautiful objects and the ugly ones are all in space, and to notice space you withdraw your attention from the beautiful and ugly objects. Of course they’re still there; you needn’t throw them out, you don’t have to tear down the building so that we can have a space here. But if you don’t concentrate on what’s in that room with love or hate, if you don’t make anything out of it, your attention withdraws from the objects and you notice the space. So we have a perspective on space in a room like this. You can reflect on that. Anyone can come and go in this space. The most beautiful, the most ugly, saint and sinner, can come and go in this space, and the space is never harmed, ruined or destroyed by the objects that come and go in it. The mind works on the same principle. But if you’re not used to seeing the spaciousness of your mind, you are not aware of the space that the mind really is. So you’re unaware of the emptiness of the mind, because you’re always attached to an idea or an opinion or mood.

With insight meditation you’re reflecting on the five khandhas – on the body, rūpa; feelings, vedanā; perception, saññā ; mental formations, saṅkhārā; and sense-consciousness, viññāṇa. We may want to get rid of them, but that is another condition, another saṅkhāra that we create. So we investigate them until they no longer delude us, and allow them to cease in the empty mind. When you think, ‘My body’s still here – how does it cease? It’s still here, isn’t it?’ Consider that the body will live its lifespan; it has been born, and it will disappear when its kammic force ends. What happened to Napoleon? What happened to the Queen of Sheba? And Confucius and Lao Tzu, and Marie Antoinette, Beethoven and Bach? They’re memories in our minds; they’re just perceptions in people’s minds now. But that’s all they ever were anyway, even when their bodies were alive. ‘Venerable Sumedho’ is a perception in the mind – in my mind it’s a perception, in your mind it’s a perception. Right now the perception of it is: ‘Venerable Sumedho is alive and kicking.’ When the body dies, the perception changes to: ‘Venerable Sumedho is dead.’ That’s all. The perception of death is there along with the name ‘Sumedho’, where now it is alive and kicking.

So as you experience it, the body is a perception that arises and ceases in the empty mind. With this realization of the empty mind, you can develop the Eightfold Path very skilfully. The Eightfold Path is based on right understanding, and that is the understanding of cessation.

Ajahn Sumedho 

Trust in the Dhamma

I feel a tremendous trust now. I feel confidence in what we call the Dhamma—in the Way Things Are—because it’s no longer important what happens to me, to this creature here. It’s no longer a worry. Whatever happens—the best, the worst, praise, blame, success, failure, leukemia, or robust good health till the age of ninety-five and a peaceful death as one sits down in meditation—feel confident that it’s all right the way it is. See it as Dhamma, rather than interpreting it and giving it a personal quality.

In Buddhism, we often talk about courage and fearlessness. Whenever we take the personal view, we are frightened, and we do cowardly things. We think, “I am going to suffer. What I love is going to be taken away from me. I’ll lose my health, be an invalid, feel pain. Nobody will love me, and I’ll be left alone. Life will be horrible. I’ll be lost, alone, unloved, in pain, old and sick, poor me!” That’s a lot to be frightened of, isn’t it? But when these fears are seen as Dhamma, then even the worst is bearable. We realize that this is not a permanent person or position that we are involved in. This is a transition from birth to death within the human form. And what we have, as human beings, is the opportunity to awaken between birth and death.

In the awakened mind, there is no fear. There is knowing, there is clarity, and it’s not personal. It’s not mine; it’s not yours. When all things cease, what remains is clarity, intelligence, brightness. We can call that “the true subject.” When people ask, “But what is my true nature?” I answer, “It’s peaceful, intelligent, calm, and bright. It’s deathlessness—but don’t take that personally.”

Ajahn Sumedho 

Murdoch Murdoch – Never Forget the Greatest Generation

In this classic Murdoch Murdock satirical video Allied soldiers – just before storming the French coast on D-Day (May 6, 1944) – give their reasons for being prepared to die in the name of multi-racialism, multi-culturalism, LBGTism, communism, and the destruction of White societies that are to follow following the defeat of Germany.

– KATANA]

Transcript

Captain: All right men! Nazi occupied Europe lies before you! Many of you will die here today, but all of you are heroes! Let us take this moment before we engage our enemy to remember what it is that we fight for.

Thomas, are you prepared to die today?

Thomas: Yes sir!

Captain: And what are you prepared to die for?

Thomas: Sir, I’d gladly give my life for the future of our country. Future where all negroes use the same water fountain as us, and go to the same schools as our kids. [flag waving and cheering]

Captain: And you Tyler, why do you fight.

Tyler: Sir! I’m fighting so that in the future our daughters can abandon motherhood and join the workforce, to be like men! [flag waving and cheering]

Captain: That’s right Tyler! Our society doesn’t need mothers. It needs more worker units, in a non-binary capitalistic, soul-crushing, machine!

James, what are your hopes for the future?

James: Well I just want my granddaughter to pop out as many welfare-supported mulatto babies as possible! [flag waving and cheering]

Captain: I’m sure all of us would recognize our White privilege, and would agree, we should offer up one of our granddaughters to the superior African bull.

Now let’s hear from Nigel, from the Royal Army. What are you fighting for soldier?

Nigel: Well sir, I would say my greatest hope would be to see a Muslim Mayor of London, one day! But the truth is, I aspire for something even greater! That some day no Muslim sex criminal will be punished in our kingdom again! [flag waving and cheering]

Captain: John Pierre, why did you join us on this most holy crusade?

John Pierre: Well, my Capitan, I wish to see those German invaders pushed out of France, so that on one glorious day it can be occupied permanently by a tidal wave of sub-Saharan Muslim invaders!

Captain: We should all be so lucky as to be replaced by a tidal wave of sub-Saharan Muslim invaders! [flag waving and cheering]

Thomas: How about you Captain? Why do you fight?

Captain: I fight so that one day a black man can be President of the United States! And use his authority to force bakeries to make cakes for homosexual weddings!

For schools to allow transsexuals to use whatever bathroom they want!

So that my great-grandchildren will be burdened with debt at the beginning of their adult lives for a worthless degree from a Marxist educational system! [flag waving and cheering]
 
Thomas: Well that’s beautiful Captain!

What about you, Frank?

Frank: Well, I want to help free the jewish people from the “Holocaust” camps! So that they can hang guilt over us for nine centuries, while they quietly take over every institution of our society, from finance and education, to media and government bureaucracy! [flag waving and cheering]

Captain: They are truly god’s chosen people! And we should submit before their superiority!

What about you Isaiah? Aren’t you from the tribe?

Isaiah: Well, I’m just here to support our communist allies. So that they can rape Eastern Europe for a couple of generations, and murder tens of millions of people in China!

Captain: Well communism is the way of the future, boys.

Remember folks, the Nazis are the bad guys! And we’re the heroes!

Are you ready?

John Pierre: Viva la France!

Nigel: For King and Country!

All: For our future!

Screen Text: ALL OF THEM DIED THAT DAY BUT THROUGH THEIR SACRIFICE THEIR DREAMS WERE REALIZED.

Never Forget the Greatest Generation
Source →

In your world you are truly alone, enclosed in your ever-changing dream, which you take for life.

 Questioner: There are very interesting books written by apparently very competent people, in which the illusoriness of the world is denied (though not its transitoriness). According to them, there exists a hierarchy of beings, from the lowest to the highest; on each level the complexity of the organism enables and reflects the depth, breadth and intensity of consciousness, without any visible or knowable culmination. One law supreme rules throughout: evolution of forms for the growth and enrichment of consciousness and manifestation of its infinite potentialities. 

Maharaj: This may or may not be so. Even if it is, it is only so from the mind’s point of view, but In fact the entire universe (mahadakash) exists only in consciousness (chidakash), while I have my stand in the Absolute (paramakash). In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears. All there is is me, all there is is mine. Before all beginnings, after all endings — I am. All has its being in me, in the ‘I am’, that shines in every living being. Even not-being is unthinkable without me. Whatever happens, I must be there to witness it. 

Q: Why do you deny being to the world? 

M: I do not negate the world. I see it as appearing in consciousness, which is the totality of the known in the immensity of the unknown.

What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear, but not to be. The appearance may last very long on some scale of time, and be very short on another, but ultimately it comes to the same. Whatever is time bound is momentary and has no reality. 

Q: Surely, you see the actual world as it surrounds you. You seem to behave quite normally! 

M: That is how it appears to you. What in your case occupies the entire field of consciousness, is a mere speck in mine. The world lasts, but for a moment. It is your memory that makes you think that the world continues. Myself, I don't live by memory. I see the world as it is, a momentary appearance in consciousness. 

Q: In your consciousness? 

M: All idea of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, even of ‘I am’ is in consciousness. 

Q: Is then your ‘absolute being’ (paramakash) un-consciousness? 

M: The idea of un-consciousness exists in consciousness only. 

Q: Then, how do you know you are in the supreme state? 

M: Because I am in it. It is the only natural state. 

Q: Can you describe it? 

M: Only by negation, as uncaused, independent, unrelated, undivided, uncomposed, unshakable, unquestionable, unreachable by effort. Every positive definition is from memory and, therefore, inapplicable. And yet my state is supremely actual and, therefore, possible, realisable, attainable. 

Q: Are you not immersed timelessly in an abstraction? 

M: Abstraction is mental and verbal and disappears in sleep, or swoon; it reappears in time; I am in my own state (swarupa) timelessly in the now. Past and future are in mind only — I am now. 

Q: The world too is now. 

M: Which world? 

Q: The world around us. 

M: It is your world you have in mind, not mine. What do you know of me, when even my talk with you is in your world only? You have no reason to believe that my world is identical with yours. My world is real, true, as it is perceived, while yours appears and disappears, according to the state of your mind. Your world is something alien, and you are afraid of it. My world is myself. I am at home. 

Q: If you are the world, how can you be conscious of it? Is not the subject of consciousness different from its object? 

M: Consciousness and the world appear and disappear together, hence they are two aspects of the same state. 

Q: In sleep I am not, and the world continues. 

M: How do you know? 

Q: On waking up I come to know. My memory tells me. 

M: Memory is in the mind. The mind continues in sleep. 

Q: It is partly in abeyance. 

M: But its world picture is not affected. As long as the mind is there, your body and your world are there. Your world is mind-made, subjective, enclosed within the mind, fragmentary, temporary, personal, hanging on the thread of memory. 

Q: So is yours? 

M: Oh no. I live in a world of realities, while yours is of imagination. Your world is personal, private, unshareable, intimately your own. Nobody can enter it, see as you see, hear as you hear, feel your emotions and think your thoughts. In your world you are truly alone, enclosed in your ever-changing dream, which you take for life. My world is an open world, common to all, accessible to all. In my world there is community, insight, love, real quality; the individual is the total, the totality — in the individual. All are one and the One is all. 

Q: Is your world full of things and people as is mine? 

M: No, it is full of myself. 

Q: But do you see and hear as we do? 

M: Yes, l appear to hear and see and talk and act, but to me it just happens, as to you digestion or perspiration happens. The body-mind machine looks after it, but leaves me out of it. Just as you do not need to worry about growing hair, so I need not worry about words and actions. They just happen and leave me unconcerned, for in my world nothing ever goes wrong.

M - Nisargadatta Maharaj

Khemaka

Attached to Sekha →

On one occasion a number of elder bhikkhus were dwelling at Kosambī in Ghosita’s Park. Now on that occasion the Venerable Khemaka was living at Jujube Tree Park, sick, afflicted, gravely ill.

Then, in the evening, those elder bhikkhus emerged from seclusion and addressed the Venerable Dāsaka thus: “Come, friend Dāsaka, approach the bhikkhu Khemaka and say to him: ‘The elders say to you, friend Khemaka: We hope that you are bearing up, friend, we hope that you are getting better. We hope that your painful feelings are subsiding and not increasing, and that their subsiding, not their increase, is to be discerned.’”

“Yes, friends,” the Venerable Dāsaka replied, and he approached the Venerable Khemaka and delivered his message.

[The Venerable Khemaka answered:] “I am not bearing up, friend, I am not getting better. Strong painful feelings are increasing in me, not subsiding, and their increase, not their subsiding, is to be discerned.”

Then the Venerable Dāsaka approached the elder bhikkhus and reported what the Venerable Khemaka had said. They told him: “Come, friend Dāsaka, approach the bhikkhu Khemaka and say to him: ‘The elders say to you, friend Khemaka: These five aggregates subject to clinging, friend, have been spoken of by the Blessed One; that is, the form aggregate subject to clinging, the feeling aggregate subject to clinging, the perception aggregate subject to clinging, determinations aggregate subject to clinging, the consciousness aggregate subject to clinging. Does the Venerable Khemaka regard anything as self or as belonging to self among these five aggregates subject to clinging?’”

“Yes, friends,” the Venerable Dāsaka replied, and he approached the Venerable Khemaka and delivered his message.

[The Venerable Khemaka replied:] “These five aggregates subject to clinging have been spoken of by the Blessed One; that is, the form aggregate subject to clinging … the consciousness aggregate subject to clinging. Among these five aggregates subject to clinging, I do not regard anything as self or as belonging to self.

”Then the Venerable Dāsaka approached the elder bhikkhus and reported what the Venerable Khemaka had said. They replied: “Come, friend Dāsaka, approach the bhikkhu Khemaka and say to him: ‘The elders say to you, friend Khemaka: These five aggregates subject to clinging, friend, have been spoken of by the Blessed One; that is, the form aggregate subject to clinging … the consciousness aggregate subject to clinging. If the Venerable Khemaka does not regard anything among these five aggregates subject to clinging as self or as belonging to self, then he is an arahant, one whose taints are destroyed.’”

“Yes, friends,” the Venerable Dāsaka replied, and he approached the Venerable Khemaka and delivered his message.

[The Venerable Khemaka replied:] “These five aggregates subject to clinging have been spoken of by the Blessed One; that is, the form aggregate subject to clinging … the consciousness aggregate subject to clinging. I do not regard anything among these five aggregates subject to clinging as self or as belonging to self, yet I am not an arahant, one whose taints are destroyed. Friends, [the notion] ‘I am’ has not yet vanished in me in relation to these five aggregates subject to clinging, but I do not regard [anything among them] as ‘This I am.’”

Then the Venerable Dāsaka approached the elder bhikkhus and reported what the Venerable Khemaka had said. They replied: “Come, friend Dāsaka, approach the bhikkhu Khemaka and say to him: ‘The elders say to you, friend Khemaka: Friend Khemaka, when you speak of this “I am”—what is it that you speak of as “I am”? Do you speak of form as “I am,” or do you speak of “I am” apart from form? Do you speak of feeling … of perception … of determinations … of consciousness as “I am,” or do you speak of “I am” apart from consciousness? When you speak of this “I am,” friend Khemaka, what is it that you speak of as “I am”?’”

“Yes, friends,” the Venerable Dāsaka replied, and he approached the Venerable Khemaka and delivered his message.

“Enough, friend Dāsaka! Why keep running back and forth? Bring me my staff, friend. I’ll go to the elder bhikkhus myself.”

Then the Venerable Khemaka, leaning on his staff, approached the elder bhikkhus, exchanged greetings with them, and sat down to one side. The elder bhikkhus then said to him: “Friend Khemaka, when you speak of this ‘I am’ … what is it that you speak of as ‘I am’?”

“Friends, I do not speak of form as ‘I am,’ nor do I speak of ‘I am’ apart from form. I do not speak of feeling as ‘I am’ … nor of perception as ‘I am’ … nor of determinations as ‘I am’ … nor of consciousness as ‘I am,’ nor do I speak of ‘I am’ apart from consciousness. Friends, although [the notion] ‘I am’ has not yet vanished in me in relation to these five aggregates subject to clinging, still I do not regard [anything among them] as ‘This I am.’“

Suppose, friends, there is the scent of a blue, red, or white lotus. Would one be speaking rightly if one would say, ‘The scent belongs to the petals,’ or ‘The scent belongs to the stalk,’ or ‘The scent belongs to the pistils’?”

“No, friend.” “And how, friends, should one answer if one is to answer rightly?” “Answering rightly, friend, one should answer: ‘The scent belongs to the flower.’”

“So too, friends, I do not speak of form as ‘I am,’ nor do I speak of ‘I am’ apart from form. I do not speak of feeling as ‘I am’ … nor of perception as ‘I am’ … nor of determinations as ‘I am’ … nor of consciousness as ‘I am,’ nor do I speak of ‘I am’ apart from consciousness. Friends, although [the notion] ‘I am’ has not yet vanished in me in relation to these five aggregates subject to clinging, still I do not regard [anything among them] as ‘This I am.’

“Friends, even though a noble disciple has abandoned the five lower fetters*, still, in relation to the five aggregates subject to clinging, there lingers in him a residual conceit ‘I am,’ a desire ‘I am,’ an underlying tendency ‘I am’ that has not yet been uprooted. Sometime later he dwells contemplating rise and fall in the five aggregates subject to clinging: ‘Such is form, such its origin, such its passing away; such is feeling … such is perception … such are determinations … such is consciousness, such its origin, such its passing away.’ As he dwells thus contemplating rise and fall in the five aggregates subject to clinging, the residual conceit ‘I am,’ the desire ‘I am,’ the underlying tendency ‘I am’ that had not yet been uprooted—this comes to be uprooted.

“Suppose, friends, a cloth has become soiled and stained, and its owners give it to a laundryman. The laundryman would scour it evenly with cleaning salt, lye, or cowdung, and rinse it in clean water. Even though that cloth would become pure and clean, it would still retain a residual smell of cleaning salt, lye, or cowdung that had not yet vanished. The laundryman would then give it back to the owners. The owners would put it in a sweet-scented casket, and the residual smell of cleaning salt, lye, or cowdung that had not yet vanished would vanish.

“So too, friends, even though a noble disciple has abandoned the five lower fetters, still, in relation to the five aggregates subject to clinging, there lingers in him a residual conceit ‘I am,’ a desire ‘I am,’ an underlying tendency ‘I am’ that has not yet been uprooted…. As he dwells thus contemplating rise and fall in the five aggregates subject to clinging, the residual conceit ‘I am,’ the desire ‘I am,’ the underlying tendency ‘I am’ that had not yet been uprooted—this comes to be uprooted.

”When this was said, the elder bhikkhus said to the Venerable Khemaka: “We did not ask our questions in order to trouble the Venerable Khemaka, but we thought that the Venerable Khemaka would be capable of explaining, teaching, proclaiming, establishing, disclosing, analysing, and elucidating the Blessed One’s teaching in detail. And the Venerable Khemaka has explained, taught, proclaimed, established, disclosed, analysed, and elucidated the Blessed One’s teaching in detail.

”This is what the Venerable Khemaka said. Elated, the elder bhikkhus delighted in the Venerable Khemaka’s statement. And while this discourse was being spoken, the minds of sixty elder bhikkhus and of the Venerable Khemaka were liberated from the taints by nonclinging.
SN 22: 89

**
* An untaught ordinary man who disregards   noble ones … lives with his heart possessed and enslaved by the embodiment view, by uncertainty, by misapprehension of virtue and duty, by lust for sensuality, and by ill will, and he does not see how to escape from them when they arise; these, when they are habitual and remain uneradicated in him, are called the more immediate fetters.” M 64

“The five more remote fetters are: lust for form, lust for the formless, conceit (the conceit ‘I am’), distraction, and ignorance.” DN 33

“There are bhikkhus who, with the exhaustion of (the first) three fetters, have entered the stream, are no more subject to perdition, certain of rightness, and destined to enlightenment. There are bhikkhus who, with the exhaustion of three fetters and the attenuation of lust, hate and delusion, are once-returners: returning once to this world, they will make an end of suffering. There are bhikkhus who, with the destruction of the five more immediate fetters, are destined to reappear spontaneously elsewhere and will there attain final Nibbāna, never returning meanwhile from that world. There are bhikkhus who are Arahants with taints exhausted, who have lived out the life, done what was to be done, laid down the burden, reached the highest goal, destroyed the fetters of being, and who are completely liberated through final knowledge.”
MN 118

“That which is the exhaustion of lust, of hate, and of delusion is called Arahantship.”
SN 38:2

**

“Here, bhikkhus, some recluse or brahmin, with the relinquishing of views about the past and the future, through complete lack of resolve upon the fetters of sensual pleasure, and with the surmounting of the rapture of seclusion, unworldly pleasure, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, regards himself thus: ‘I am at peace, I have attained Nibbāna, I am without clinging.’

“The Tathāgata, bhikkhus, understands this thus: ‘This good recluse or brahmin, with the relinquishing of views about the past and the future…regards himself thus: “I am at peace, I have attained Nibbāna, I am without clinging.” Certainly this venerable one asserts the way directed to Nibbāna. Yet this good recluse or brahmin still clings, clinging either to a view about the past or to a view about the future or to a fetter of sensual pleasure or to the rapture of seclusion or to unworldly pleasure or to neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling. And when this venerable one regards himself thus: “I am at peace, I have attained Nibbāna, I am without clinging,” that too is declared to be clinging on the part of this good recluse or brahmin.

That is determined and gross, but there is cessation of determinations.’ Having understood ‘There is this,’ seeing the escape from that, the Tathāgata has gone beyond that.

“Bhikkhus, this supreme state of sublime peace has been discovered by the Tathāgata, that is, liberation through not clinging, by understanding as they actually are the origination, the disappearance, the gratification, the danger, and the escape in the case of the six bases of contact. Bhikkhus, that is the supreme state of sublime peace discovered by the Tathāgata, that is, liberation through not clinging, by understanding as they actually are the origination, the disappearance, the gratification, the danger, and the escape in the case of the six bases of contact.”

MN 102

Sekha as the witness

Attached to Sekkha→

To say 'not me, not mine' is the task of the witness.

Q: I just cannot investigate the living moment — the now. My awareness is of the past, not of the present. When I am aware, I do not really live in the now, but only in the past. Can there really be an awareness of the present?
M: What you are describing is not awareness at all, but only thinking about the experience. True awareness (samvid) is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed. Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may also be a part of the event; you watch all unconcerned in the full light of clarity and understanding. You understand precisely what is going on, because it does not affect you. It may seem to be an attitude of cold aloofness, but it is not really so. Once you are in it, you will find that you love what you see, whatever may be its nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness. If it is not there, you are merely interested — for some personal reasons.
*
Q: The person goes and only the witness remains.
M: Who remains to say: 'I am the witness'. When there is no 'I am', where is the witness? In the timeless state there is no self to take refuge in. (...)
Q: What about the witness? Is it real or unreal?
M: It is both. The last remnant of illusion, the first touch of the real. To say: I am only the witness is both false and true: false because of the 'I am', true because of the witness. It is better to say: 'there is witnessing'. The moment you say: 'I am', the entire universe comes into being along with its creator.
*
Something prevents you from seeing that there is nothing you need. Find it out and see its falseness. It is like having swallowed some poison and suffering from unquenchable craving for water. Instead of drinking beyond all measure, why not eliminate the poison and be free of this burning thirst?
Q: I shall have to eliminate the ego!
M: The sense 'I am a person in time and space' is the poison. In a way, time itself is the poison. In time all things come to an end and new are born, to be devoured in their turn. Do not identify yourself with time, do not ask anxiously: 'what next, what next?' Step out of time and see it devour the world. Say: 'Well, it is in the nature of time to put an end to everything. Let it be. It does not concern me. I am not combustible, nor do I need to collect fuel'.
Q: Can the witness be without the things to witness?
M: There is always something to witness. If not a thing, then its absence. Witnessing is natural and no problem. The problem is excessive interest, leading to self-identification. Whatever you are engrossed in you take to be real.
Q: Is the 'I am' real or unreal? Is the 'I am' the witness? Is the witness real or unreal?
M: What is pure, unalloyed, unattached, is real. What is tainted, mixed up, dependent and transient is unreal. Do not be misled by words — one word may convey several and even contradictory meanings. The 'I am’ that pursues the pleasant and shuns the unpleasant is false; the 'I am' that sees pleasure and pain as inseparable sees rightly. The witness that is enmeshed in what he perceives is the person; the witness who stands aloof, unmoved and untouched, is the watch-tower of the real, the point at which awareness, inherent in the unmanifested, contacts the manifested. There can be no universe without the witness, there can be no witness without the universe.
Q: Time consumes the world. Who is the witness of time?
M: He who is beyond time — the Un-nameable. A glowing ember, moved round and round quickly enough, appears as a glowing circle. When the movement ceases, the ember remains. Similarly, the 'I am' in movement creates the world. The 'I am' at peace becomes the Absolute. You are like a man with an electric torch walking through a gallery. You can see only what is within the beam. The rest is in darkness.
Q: If I project the world, I should be able to change it.
M: Of course, you can. But you must cease identifying yourself with it and go beyond. Then you have the power to destroy and re-create.
Q: All I want is to be free.
M: You must know two things: What are you to be free from and what keeps you bound.
*
To say: 'I know myself' is a contradiction in terms for what is 'known' cannot be 'myself'.
Q: If the self is for ever the unknown, what then is realised in self-realisation?
M: To know that the known cannot be me nor mine, is liberation enough. Freedom from self-identification with a set of memories and habits, the state of wonder at the infinite reaches of the being, its inexhaustible creativity and total transcendence, the absolute fearlessness born from the realisation of the illusoriness and transiency of every mode of consciousness — flow from a deep and inexhaustible source. To know the source as source and appearance as appearance, and oneself as the source only is self-realisation.
Q: On what side is the witness? Is it real or unreal?
M: Nobody can say: ‘I am the witness'. The ‘I am' is always witnessed. The state of detached awareness is the witness-consciousness, the 'mirror-mind'. It rises and sets with its object and thus it is not quite the real. Whatever its object, it remains the same, hence it is also real. It partakes of both the real and the unreal and is therefore a bridge between the two.
Q: If all happens only to the 'I am', if the 'I am' is the known and the knower and the knowledge itself, what does the witness do? Of what use is it?
M: It does nothing and is of no use whatsoever.
Q: Then why do we talk of it?
M: Because it is there. The bridge serves one purpose only — to cross over. You don't build houses on a bridge. The 'I am' looks at things, the witness sees through them. It sees them as they are — unreal and transient. To say 'not me, not mine' is the task of the witness.
Q: Is it the manifested (saguna) by which the unmanifested (nirguna) is represented?
M: The unmanifested is not represented. Nothing manifested can represent the unmanifested.
*
M: Still, finally you come to the need of a direct witness. Witnessing, if not personal and actual, must at least be possible and feasible. Direct experience is the final proof.
Q: Experience may be faulty and misleading.
M: Quite, but not the fact of an experience. Whatever may be the experience, true or false, the fact of an experience taking place cannot be denied. It is its own proof. Watch yourself closely and you will see that whatever be the content of consciousness, the witnessing of it does not depend on the content. Awareness is itself and does not change with the event. The event may be pleasant or unpleasant, minor or important, awareness is the same. Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realise that awareness is your true nature and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own. (...)
Q: Is not awareness a form of consciousness?
M: When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness. But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness. Reflected awareness, the sense ‘I am aware’ is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is the reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross.
*

Q: Has the witness name and form, or is it beyond these?

M: The witness is merely a point in awareness. It has no name and form. It is like the reflection of the sun in a drop of dew. The drop of dew has name and form, but the little point of light is caused by the sun. The clearness and smoothness of the drop is a necessary condition but not sufficient by itself. Similarly clarity and silence of the mind are necessary for the reflection of reality to appear in the mind, but by themselves they are not sufficient. There must be reality beyond it. Because reality is timelessly present, the stress is on the necessary conditions.
Q: Can it happen that the mind is clear and quiet and yet no reflection appears?
M: There is destiny to consider. The unconscious is in the grip of destiny, it is destiny, in fact. One may have to wait. But however heavy may be the hand of destiny, it can be lifted by patience and self-control. Integrity and purity remove the obstacles and the vision of reality appears in the mind.
Q: How does one gain self-control? I am so weak-minded!
M: Understand first that you are not the person you believe yourself to be. What you think yourself to be is mere suggestion or imagination. You have no parents, you were not born, nor will you die. Either trust me when I tell you so, or arrive to it by study and investigation. The way of total faith is quick, the other is slow but steady. Both must be tested in action. Act on what you think is true — this is the way to truth.
(...)
Q: How does the person come into being?
M: Exactly as a shadow appears when light is intercepted by the body, so does the person arise when pure self-awareness is obstructed by the 'I-am-the-body' idea. And as the shadow changes shape and position according to the lay of the land, so does the person appear to rejoice and suffer, rest and toil, find and lose according to the pattern of destiny. When ... the person disappears completely without return, only the witness remains and the Great Unknown.
The witness is that which says 'I know'. The person says 'I do'. Now, to say 'I know' is not untrue — it is merely limited. But to say 'I do' is altogether false, because there is nobody who does; all happens by itself, including the idea of being a doer. ...The dissolution of personality is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off.
Q: When you say, I am in the state beyond the witness, what is the experience that makes you say so? In what way does it differ from the stage of being a witness only?
M: It is like washing printed cloth. First the design fades, then the background and in the end the cloth is plain white. The personality gives place to the witness, then the witness goes and pure awareness remains. The cloth was white in the beginning and is white in the end; the patterns and colours just happened — for a time.
Q: Can there be awareness without an object of awareness?
M: Awareness with an object we called witnessing. When there is also self-identification with the object, caused by desire or fear, such a state is called a person. In reality there is only one state; when distorted by self-identification it is called a person, when coloured with the sense of being, it is the witness; when colourless and limitless, it is called the Supreme.
*
Questioner: Is the witness-consciousness permanent or not?
Maharaj: It is not permanent. The knower rises and sets with the known. That in which both the knower and the known arise and set, is beyond time. The words permanent or eternal do not apply.
*
M: When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something: 'I am this, I am that', continues, but only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps. [Sekha situation is ambiguous which reflects in this rather unclear statement. On the level of views sekha doesn't assert 'I am this, I am that' but as long conceit "I am" persists emotional reactions would proof that aggregates aren't totally part of objective experience and still tendency to see them as "I" and "mine" are there.
*
This witnessing is essential for the separation of the self from the not-self.
Q: The witnessing — is it not my real nature?
M: For witnessing, there must be something else to witness. We are still in duality!
Q: What about witnessing the witness? Awareness of awareness?
M: Putting words together will not take you far. Go within and discover what you are not. Nothing else matters.
*
Q: And you are the witness?
M: What does witness mean? Mere knowledge. It rained and now the rain is over. I did not get wet. I know it rained, but I am not affected. I just witnessed the rain.
*
M: There are the two — the person and the witness, the observer. When you see them as one, and go beyond, you are in the supreme state. It is not perceivable, because it is what makes perception possible. It is beyond being and not being. It is neither the mirror nor the image in the mirror. It is what is — the timeless reality, unbelievably hard and solid.
Q: The jnani — is he the witness or the Supreme?
M: He is the Supreme, of course, but he can also be viewed as the universal witness.
Q: But he remains a person?
M: When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realisation the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself. The person has no being in itself; it is a reflection in the mind of the witness, the 'I am', which again is a mode of being.
*
Q: Another question. There is the person. There is the knower of the person. There is the witness. Are the knower and the witness the same, or are they separate states?
M: The knower and the witness are two or one? When the knower is seen as separate from the known, the witness stands alone. When the known and the knower are seen as one, the witness becomes one with them.
Q: Who is the jnani? The witness or the supreme?
M: The jnani is the supreme and also the witness. He is both being and awareness. In relation to consciousness he is awareness. In relation to the universe he is pure being.
Q: And what about the person? What comes first, the person or the knower.
M: The person is a very small thing. Actually it is a composite, it cannot be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there. It is but the shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind.
Q: The mirror is there, the reflection is there. But where is the sun?
M: The supreme is the sun.
*
Q: I do believe you, but when it comes to the actual finding of this inner self, I find it escapes me.
M: The idea 'it escapes me', where does it arise?
Q: In the mind.
M: And who knows the mind.
Q: The witness of the mind knows the mind.
M: Did anybody come to you and say: 'I am the witness of your mind'?
Q: Of course not. He would have been just another idea in the mind.
M: Then who is the witness?
Q: I am.
M: So, you know the witness because you are the witness. You need not see the witness in front of you. Here again, to be is to know.
Q: Yes, I see that I am the witness, the awareness itself. But in which way does it profit me?
M: What a question! What kind of profit do you expect? To know what you are, is it not good enough?
Q: What are the uses of self-knowledge?
M: It helps you to understand what you are not and keeps you free from false ideas, desires and actions.

*

Q: If I am the witness only, what do right and wrong matter?
M: What helps you to know yourself is right. What prevents, is wrong. To know one's real self is bliss, to forget — is sorrow.
Q: Is the witness-consciousness the real Self?
M: It is the reflection of the real in the mind (buddhi). The real is beyond. The witness is the door through which you pass beyond.
Q: What is the purpose of meditation?
M: Seeing the false as the false, is meditation. This must go on all the time.
[In this exchange word self is used just as is used by Delphi prerogative]
*
Q: How does it come?
M: I told you already. Find him who was present at your birth and will witness your death.
Q: My father and mother?
M: Yes, your father-mother, the source from which you came. To solve a problem you must trace it to its source. Only in the dissolution of the problem in the universal solvents of enquiry and dispassion, can its right solution be found.
*
M: The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.
Q: When I look at myself, I find I am several persons fighting among themselves for the use of the body.
M: They correspond to the various tendencies (samskara) of the mind.
Q: Can I make peace between them?
M: How can you? They are so contradictory! See them as they are — mere habits of thoughts and feelings, bundles of memories and urges.
Q: Yet they all say 'I am'.
M: It is only because you identify yourself with them. Once you realise that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say 'I am', you are free of all your 'persons' and their demands. The sense 'I am' is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying: I am young. I am rich etc. But such self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.
Q: I can now understand that I am not the person, but that which, when reflected in the person, gives it a sense of being. Now, about the Supreme? In what way do I know myself as the Supreme?
M: The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realise that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source, the Inexhaustible Possibility.
*
Q: What else can I be?
M: Find out. Even if I tell you that you are the witness, the silent watcher, it will mean nothing to you, unless you find the way to your own being.
Q: My question is: How to find the way to one's own being?
M: Give up all questions except one: 'Who am l'? After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The 'I am' is certain. The 'I am this' is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.
Q: I am doing nothing else for the last 60 years.
M: What is wrong with striving? Why look for results? Striving itself is your real nature.
Q: Striving is painful.
M: You make it so by seeking results. Strive without seeking, struggle without greed.
*
The idea — 'I am the witness only' will purify the body and the mind and open the eye of wisdom. Then man goes beyond illusion and his heart is free of all desires. Just like ice turns to water and water to vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears in space, so does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and non-existence.
*
Q: How does one bring to an end this sense of separateness?
M: By focussing the mind on 'I am', on the sense of being, 'I am so-and-so' dissolves; "I am a witness only" remains ...
Q: You speak from your own experience. How can I make it mine?
M: You speak of my experience as different from your experience, because you believe we are separate. But we are not. On a deeper level my experience is your experience. Dive deep within yourself and you will find it easily and simply. Go in the direction of 'I am'.
*
Q: As a witness, you are working or at rest?
M: Witnessing is an experience and rest is freedom from experience.
Q: Can't they co-exist, as the tumult of the waves and the quiet of the deep co-exist in the ocean.
M: Beyond the mind there is no such thing as experience. Experience is a dual state. You cannot talk of reality as an experience. Once this is understood, you will no longer look for being and becoming as separate and opposite. In reality they are one and inseparable, like roots and branches of the same tree. Both can exist only in the light of consciousness, which again, arises in the wake of the sense 'I am'. This is the primary fact. If you miss it, you miss all. (...)
Q: Is the conviction: 'I am That' false?
M: Of course. Conviction is a mental state. In 'That' there is no 'I am'. With the sense 'I am' emerging, 'That' is obscured, as with the sun rising the stars are wiped out. But as with the sun comes light, so with the sense of self comes bliss (chidananda). The cause of bliss is sought in the 'not—I' and thus the bondage begins.
*
Q: How does the personal emerge from the impersonal?
M: The two are but aspects of one Reality. It is not correct to talk of one preceding the other. All these ideas belong to the waking state.
Q: What brings in the waking state?
M: At the root of all creation lies desire. Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other. The fourth state (turiya) is a state of pure witnessing, detached awareness, passionless and wordless. It is like space, unaffected by whatever it contains. Bodily and mental troubles do not reach it — they are outside, 'there', while the witness is always 'here'.
*
Q: What dies with death?
M: The idea 'I am this body' dies; the witness does not. (...)
The one witness reflects itself in the countless bodies as 'I am'. As long as the bodies, however subtle, last, the 'I am' appears as many. Beyond the body there is only the One.
*
M: The witness only registers events. In the abeyance of the mind even the sense 'I am' dissolves. There is no 'I am' without the mind.
Q: Without the mind means without thoughts. 'I am' as a thought subsides. 'I am' as the sense of being remains.
M: All experience subsides with the mind. Without the mind there can be no experiencer nor experience.
Q: Does not the witness remain?
M: The witness merely registers the presence or absence of experience. It is not an experience by itself, but it becomes an experience when the thought: 'I am the witness' arises.
Q: All I know is that sometimes the mind works and sometimes it stops. The experience of mental silence I call the abeyance of the mind.
M: Call it silence, or void, or abeyance, the fact is that the three — experiencer, experiencing, experience — are not. In witnessing, in awareness, self-consciousness, the sense of being this or that, is not. Unidentified being remains.
*
M: One must also know that a rope exists and looks like a snake. Similarly, one must know that the real exists and is of the nature of witness-consciousness. Of course it is beyond the witness, but to enter it one must first realise the state of pure witnessing. The awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned.
Q: Can the unconditioned be experienced?
M: To know the conditioned as conditioned is all that can be said about the unconditioned. Positive terms are mere hints and misleading.
Q: Can we talk of witnessing the real?
M: How can we? We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the transient, the conditioned. To go beyond, we must pass through total negation of everything as having independent existence. All things depend.
Q: On what do they depend?
M: On consciousness. And consciousness depends on the witness.
Q: And the witness depends on the real?

M: The witness is the reflection of the real in all its purity. It depends on the condition of the mind. Where clarity and detachment predominate, the witness-consciousness comes into being. It is just like saying that where the water is clear and quiet, the image of the moon appears. Or like daylight that appears as sparkle in the diamond.
Q: Can there be consciousness without the witness?
M: Without the witness it becomes unconsciousness, just living. The witness is latent in every state of consciousness, just like light in every colour. There can be no knowledge without the knower and no knower without his witness. Not only you know, but you know that you know.
Q: If the unconditioned cannot be experienced, for all experience is conditioned, then why talk of it at all?
M: How can there be knowledge of the conditioned without the unconditioned? There must be a source from which all this flows, a foundation on which all stands. Self-realisation is primarily the knowledge of one's conditioning and the awareness that the infinite variety of conditions depends on our infinite ability to be conditioned and to give rise to variety. To the conditioned mind the unconditioned appears as the totality as well as the absence of everything. Neither can be directly experienced, but this does not make it not-existent.
*
M: Develop the witness attitude and you will find in your own experience that detachment brings control. The state of witnessing is full of power, there is nothing passive about it.
*
Q: What benefit do I derive from listening to you?
M: I am calling you back to yourself. All I ask you is to look at yourself, towards yourself, into yourself.
Q: To what purpose?
M: You live, you feel, you think. By giving attention to your living, feeling and thinking, you free yourself from them and go beyond them. Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains. Then you go beyond the witness. Do not ask how it happens. Just search within yourself.
Q: What makes the difference between the person and the witness?
M: Both are modes of consciousness. In one you desire and fear, in the other you are unaffected by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events. You let them come and go.
*
Q: When I wake up in the morning, the world is already there, waiting for me. Surely the world comes into being first. I do, but much later, at the earliest at my birth. The body mediates between me and the world. Without the body there would be neither me nor the world.
M: The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way. Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it. Have a good look at yourself and all these misapprehensions and misconceptions will dissolve. Just as all the little watery lives are in water and cannot be without water, so all the universe is in you and cannot be without you.
Q: We call it God.
M: God is only an idea in your mind. The fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: 'here and now I am'. Remove, the 'here and now' the 'I am' remains, unassailable. The word exists in memory, memory comes into consciousness; consciousness exists in awareness and awareness is the reflection of the light on the waters of existence.
Q: Still I do not see how can the world be in me when the opposite 'I am in the world' is so obvious.
M: Even to say 'I am the world, the world is me', is a sign of ignorance. But when I keep in mind and confirm in life my identity with the world, a power arises in me which destroys the ignorance, burns it up completely.
Q: Is the witness of ignorance separate from ignorance? Is not to say: 'I am ignorant' a part of ignorance?
M: Of course. All I can say truly is: 'I am', all else is inference. But the inference has become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and seeing. The sense 'I am' is the manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call self, God, reality or by any other name. The 'I am' is in the world; but it is the key which can open the door out of the world. The moon dancing on the water is seen in the water, but it is caused by the moon in the sky and not by the water.
*
Q: How is it that in spite of so much instruction and assistance we make no progress?
M: As long as we imagine ourselves to be separate personalities, one quite apart from another, we cannot grasp reality which is essentially impersonal. First we must know ourselves as witnesses only, dimensionless and timeless centres of observation, and then realise that immense ocean of pure awareness, which is both mind and matter and beyond both.
*
...Be like that infant, instead of trying to be this or that, be happy to be. You will be a fully awakened witness of the field of consciousness. But there should be no feelings and ideas to stand between you and the field.
Q: To be content with mere being seems to be a most selfish way of passing time.
M: A most worthy way of being selfish!
*
Abandon all ideas about yourself and you will find yourself to be the pure witness, beyond all that can happen to the body or the mind.
Q: If I become anything I think myself to be, and I start thinking that I am the Supreme Reality, will not my Supreme Reality remain a mere idea?
M: First reach that state and then ask the question.
*
The witness is not a person. The person comes into being when there is a basis for it, an organism, a body. In it the absolute is reflected as awareness. Pure awareness becomes self-awareness. When there is a self, self-awareness is the witness. When there is no self to witness, there is no witnessing either. It is all very simple; it is the presence of the person that complicates. See that there is no such thing as a permanently separate person and all becomes clear.
*
Q: We were told that of all forms of spiritual practices the practice of the attitude of a mere witness is the most efficacious. How does it compare with faith?
M: The witness attitude is also faith; it is faith in oneself. You believe that you are not what you experience and you look at everything as from a distance. There is no effort in witnessing. You understand that you are the witness only and the understanding acts. You need nothing more, just remember that you are the witness only.  ... Cease to be the object and become the subject of all that happens; once having turned within, you will find yourself beyond the subject. When you have found yourself, you will find that you are also beyond the object, that both the subject and the object exist in you, but you are neither.
*
You must realise yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.
*
But, of course, your must not be merely alert. Your mindfulness must include the mind also. Witnessing is primarily awareness of consciousness and its movements.
*
M: It is you that need my body to talk to you. I am not my body, nor do I need it. I am the witness only. I have no shape of my own.
You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realise that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.
Q: .. While you are on earth, are you also in heaven (swarga)?
M: I am nowhere to be found! I am not a thing to be given a place among other things. All things are in me, but I am not among things. You are telling me about the superstructure while I am concerned with the foundations. The superstructures rise and fall, but the foundations last. I am not interested in the transient, while you talk of nothing else.

*

M: There is no cause. You merely dream that you roam about. In a few years your stay in India will appear as a dream to you. You will dream some other dream at that time. Do realise that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you and you are the immutable witness. No happening affects your real being — this is the absolute truth.

*

M: The Guru is basically without desire. He sees what happens, but feels no urge to interfere. He makes no choices, takes no decisions. As pure witness, he watches what is going on and remains unaffected.

*

Q: But when you look at yourself, what do you see? 

M: It depends how I look. When I look through the mind, I see numberless people. When I look beyond the mind, I see the witness. Beyond the witness there is the infinite intensity of emptiness and silence.

*

Questioner: Before one can realise one's true nature need not one be a person? Does not the ego have its value? 

Maharaj: The person is of little use. It is deeply involved in its own affairs and is completely ignorant of its true being. Unless the witnessing consciousness begins to play on the person and it becomes the object of observation rather than the subject, realisation is not feasible. It is the witness that makes realisation desirable and attainable. 

Q: There comes a point in a person's life when it becomes the witness. 

M: Oh, no. The person by itself will not become the witness. It is like expecting a cold candle to start burning in the course of time. The person can stay in the darkness of ignorance forever, unless the flame of awareness touches it. 

Q: Who lights the candle? 

M: The Guru. His words, his presence

*

The person is in unrest and resistance to the very end. It is the witness that works on the person, on the totality of its illusions, past, present and future.

*

Q: In meditation, who meditates, the person or the witness? 

M: Meditation is a deliberate attempt to pierce into the higher states of consciousness and finally go beyond it. The art of meditation is the art of shifting the focus of attention to ever subtler levels, without losing one's grip on the levels left behind. In a way it is like having death under control. One begins with the lowest levels: social circumstances, customs and habits; physical surroundings, the posture and the breathing of the body, the senses, their sensations and perceptions; the mind, its thoughts and feelings; until the entire mechanism of personality is grasped and firmly held. The final stage of meditation is reached when the sense of identity goes beyond the 'I-am-so-and-so', beyond 'so-l-am', beyond 'I-am-the-witness-only', beyond 'there-is', beyond all ideas into the impersonally personal pure being. But you must be energetic when you take to meditation. It is definitely not a part-time occupation. Limit your interests and activities to what is needed for you and your dependents' barest needs. Save all your energies and time for breaking the wall your mind had built around you. Believe me, you will not regret.

*

Q: The immutable — does it die? 

M: It is changing that dies. The immutable neither lives nor dies; it is the timeless witness of life and death. You cannot call it dead, for it is aware. Nor can you call it alive, for it does not change. It is just like your tape-recorder. It records, it reproduces — all by itself. You only listen. Similarly, I watch all that happens, including my talking to you. It is not me who talks, the words appear in my mind and then I hear them said. 

Q: Is it not the case with everybody? 

M: Who said no? But you insist that you think, you speak, while to me there is thinking, there is speaking.

*

Once you realise that all happens by itself, (call it destiny, or the will of God or mere accident), you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed.

*

M: You are responsible only for what you can change. All you can change is only your attitude. There lies your responsibility. 

Q: You are advising me to remain indifferent to the sorrows of others! 

M: It is not that you are indifferent. All the sufferings of mankind do not prevent you from enjoying your next meal. The witness is not indifferent. He is the fullness of understanding and compassion. Only as the witness you can help another.

Q: All my life I was fed on words. The number of words I have heard and read go into the billions. Did it benefit me? Not at all! 

M: The mind shapes the language and the language shapes the mind. Both are tools, use them but don’t misuse them. Words can bring you only unto their own limit; to go beyond, you must abandon them. Remain as the silent witness only. 

Q: How can I? The world disturbs me greatly. 

M: It is because you think yourself big enough to be affected by the world. It is not so. You are so small that nothing can pin you down. It is your mind that gets caught, not you. Know yourself as you are — a mere point in consciousness, dimensionless and timeless.

*

Q: Please tell us; beyond the mind does consciousness continue, or does it end with the mind? 

M: Consciousness comes and goes, awareness shines immutably. 

Q: Who is aware in awareness? 

M: When there is a person, there is also consciousness. 'I am' mind, consciousness denote the same state. If you say 'I am aware', it only means: 'I am conscious of thinking about being aware'. There is no 'I am' in awareness. 

Q: What about witnessing? 

M: Witnessing is of the mind. The witness goes with the witnessed. In the state of non-duality all separation ceases. 

Q: What about you? Do you continue in awareness? 

M: The person, the 'I am this body, this mind, this chain of memories, this bundle of desires and fears' disappears, but something you may call identity, remains. It enables me to become a person* when required. [* Usually NM refers to asankhata dhatu as himself, here he uses word person, in the sense puggala or individual. Coming back to the ignorance on which existence of person depends is impossible]

*

Names and shapes change incessantly. Know yourself to be the changeless witness of the changeful mind. That is enough.

*

M: The goal is shown by the Guru, obstacles are discovered by the disciple. The Guru has no preferences, but those who have obstacles to overcome seem to be lagging behind. In reality the disciple is not different from the Guru. He is the same dimensionless centre of perception and love in action. It is only his imagination and self-identification with the imagined, that encloses him and converts him into a person. The Guru is concerned little with the person. His attention is on the inner watcher. It is the task of the watcher to understand and thereby eliminate the person. While there is grace on one side, there must be dedication to the task on the other. 

Q: But the person does not want to be eliminated. 

M: The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of 'I' and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the 'I' and the 'mine'. The teacher tells the watcher: you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of 'I am', which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. ‘I am this, I am that' is dream, while pure 'I am' has the stamp of reality on it. You have tasted so many things — all came to naught. Only the sense 'I am' persisted — unchanged. Stay with the changeless among the changeful, until you are able to go beyond.

Q: When will it happen?
M: It will happen as soon as you remove the obstacles.
Q: Which obstacles?
M: Desire for the false and fear of the true. You, as the person, imagine that the Guru is interested in you as a person. Not at all. To him you are a nuisance and a hindrance to be done away with. He actually aims at your elimination as a factor in consciousness.
*
Maharaj: What do you consider to be wrong with your mind?
Q: It is restless, greedy of the pleasant and afraid of the unpleasant.
M: What is wrong with its seeking the pleasant and shirking the unpleasant? Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance — letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression.
*
Realise that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events; that while all happens, comes and goes, you alone are, the changeless among the changeful, the self-evident among the inferred. Separate the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications.
*
When you sit quiet and watch yourself, all kinds of things may come to the surface. Do nothing about them, don't react to them; as they have come so will they go, by themselves. All that matters is mindfulness, total awareness of oneself or rather, of one's mind.
Q: By 'oneself' do you mean the daily self?
M: Yes, the person, which alone is objectively observable. The observer is beyond observation. What is observable is not the real self.
Q: I can always observe the observer, in endless recession.
M: You can observe the observation, but not the observer. You know you are the ultimate observer by direct insight, not by a logical process based on observation. You are what you are, but you know what you are not.
*
M: If you stand aloof as observer only, you will not suffer. You will see the world as a show. a most entertaining show indeed.
Q: Oh, no! This lila theory I shall not have. The suffering is too acute and all-pervading. What a perversion to be entertained by a spectacle of suffering! What a cruel God are you offering me!
M: The cause of suffering is in the identification of the perceiver with the perceived. Out of it desire is born and with desire blind action, unmindful of results. Look round and you will see — suffering is a man-made thing.
*
All happens as if there is a mysterious power that creates and moves everything. realise that you are not the mover, only the observer, and you will be at peace.
Q: Is that power separate from me?
M: Of course not. But you must begin by being the dispassionate observer.

M - Nisargadatta Maharaj