Freedom, liberation, truth, is really the most fragile thing,
it can be destroyed with a word,
an image,
an idea.
An image can override all truth, masking it, covering it over,
and we accept the image as the truth,
we can hide in the image.
We can feel more secure with these things we build….
they don’t change and seem permanent.
But no one ‘wants’ the truth of permanence.
Permanence has no truth.
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Wow,great words.
Yup, we don’t ‘want’ the truth of permanence.
How will we, when we’re still stuck in wanting, and ego. Even seeking is a want , for something, an image, an idea of happiness or enlightenment.
To get rid of ‘want’,
to get rid of images.
.Or rather let the want and image just ‘be’
and let is evaporate,
to where ever it may please.
If you mean personal freedom, etc, I would agree.
But if you mean true freedom, true liberation it is anything but fragile. It is more solid than any word or image. As the Gita mentions water cannot wet it nor fire burn it.
“An image can override…” This is the mechanics of maya, the illusion or mask. Last night in an after-movie discussion, I was surprised by the large, complex and strange worldview one of the participants held. Us vs Them. His truth was out there (laughs)
Your closing is perfect. It speaks to the mind’s desire to ‘know truth’. Yet liberation requires liberation even from truth. (laughs)
We just touched down in Toyama an hour ago. During the flight, Akiko and I saw Mt. Fuji nearby, jutting through the clouds. The snow from the peak was blown off to one side by the high winds. One could see the trail of snow suspended in mid-air, trailing off into nothing.
This particular post is written for the doer, the act-er; a person that believes they can somehow control or wrangle the truth. An image living within an image.
I think we mean to say the same thing, Davidya, with different words. Truth may be strong, as you have said. It is also impotent, and without power. It may seem strong to one that believes they can somehow know it, or otherwise use it to gain their greatest happiness. It is the source of the infinite enigma, and the doer thinks and ponders and builds it up into an image of what they hope it will be, and this image-breeding-image process destroys truth, but only as far as the person seeking it.
Of course, we can never touch it in that way. It has nothing to do with what we might want or hope for it to be.
So maybe it is good to say, the image destroys the “truth” within the image.
Whether there is any truth in an image is the next question.
Yes Uzma, The image (in this case) is where we begin and end, because that is what we have.
We sit with our greed, for example, but we never sit in order to change the greed into non-greed,or some other silly-ness like that.
In order to desire to change, we must have an idea of what we hope to change into. And this is huge stumbling block for many, as this is still the image in operation. It is a projection of what we hope to become.
But we do not sit in order to become; we sit in order to see. Not what we want to see, and not to get the “right” answer, whatever the hell that might be, but simply to see.
We sit to see, and not to change.
We’ll return to Tokyo on Sunday. See you all then!
If only I could get my mind to believe it does not need beliefs.
If only I could have that one thought that would end all thought.
If only I could correct the idea that I need to correct anything.
If only I could awaken from the dream of needing to awaken.
If only I could remember that there is nothing to remember.
If only my wanting not to want would bear fruit.
If only I could dissolve into the permanence of being…………….
Beautiful, Eric.
The trick is, it is this wanting it to be other that it is that causes it to not be what it is. You already are the permanence of Being. But because you think you’re not and have expectations that it’s really something else, it remains at a distance.
Let mind by mind
Let thought be thought
Let ideas be ideas
Let dreams be dreams
Let memory be memory
Let wanting be wanting
Then you can let you be you
People may describe the silence of the mind and dissolving of self, but these are effects or experiences, not techniques. They tell you what they saw as it’s so hard to describe what they became.
Eric,
If only first class flights were available to everyone.
(laughs) Yes, and if only wishes were horses………bless you Takuin.
Beautiful poem. Freedom is space, undestroyable, but getting there is fragile, delicate, and easily destroyed by the reach for concepts and ideas.
Thanks, Kaushik.
I like that word – delicate. Dangerous is also apt, if there is movement toward what we think it should be.
The danger is in reaching for the ‘idea’ of freedom, thinking it is in any way real. A guru may tell us it is all bliss, all love, all this or that, and all we can do is imagine what that apparent state is. Then we begin our search by looking for the state we have imagined, which is not the actual thing.
Such a dangerously subtle trick.
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