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Your nature is simple being, free from thoughts

M.: The object of creation is to remove the confusion of your individuality. The question shows that you have identified yourself with the body and therefore see yourself and the world around. You think that you are the body. Your mind and intellect are the factors of your wrong identity.

Do you exist in your sleep?

D.: I do.

M.: The same being is now awake and asks these questions. Is it not so?

D.: Yes.

M.: These questions did not arise in your sleep. Did they?

D.: No.

M.: Why not? Because you did not see your body and no thoughts arose. You did not identify yourself with the body then. Therefore these questions did not arise.

They arise now because of your identity with the body. Is it not so?

D.: Yes.

M.: Now see which is your real nature. Is it that which is free from thoughts or that which is full of thoughts?

Being is continuous. The thoughts are discontinuous. So which is permanent?

D.: Being.

M.: That is it. Realize it. That is your true nature. Your nature is simple Being, free from thoughts.

Because you identify yourself with the body, you want to know about creation. The world and the objects, including your body,appear in the waking state but disappear in the state of sleep. You
exist all through these states. What is it then that persists through all these states? Find it out. That is your Self.

– Sri Ramana Maharshi
– Talks 610

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Noble Buddha

Buddha is immense and immovable, and pervades all the universes. In comparison, the vast sky is but a tiny grain floating in the middle of a boundless sea.

Buddha is eternal. Buddha existed before the universes and will exist long after the universes. And since Buddha is always everywhere, the past is the future and the future is the present.

Buddha’s powers are immeasurably mysterious, and Buddha appears in unlimited forms according to requirements. Buddha never rests in the quest to benefit all.

Buddha’s light is profound beyond the scope of our imaginations. In comparison, the light from zillions of suns and moons would amount to less than of a single candle in broad daylight.

– Ven. Song Chol (Seong Cheol) (1912~1993), one of the great Zen masters in the last century, was also called the Living Buddha of Korea

Opening the Eye, 141

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Loneliness

What is this sense of loneliness? Is it the result of our daily life which is so self-centred, so egocentric, so selfish, which is all the time isolating, building a wall around oneself? That brings about a quality or feeling of utter loneliness, utter despair in that loneliness. If you do not escape from it and you see the absurdity of escaping, the fact that running away from it is part of that loneliness, then you have the energy to face loneliness. We are wasting that energy through verbal or actual escape, so when you realise the absurdity, the silliness of it, then you are facing loneliness.

But to go through that loneliness without escaping, without verbalizing, which is to be with it completely, requires a great deal of energy.
You need energy to live with something ugly and not let it corrupt you, just as you need energy to live with something beautiful and not get used to it. That uncontaminated energy is the aloneness to which you must come; and out of that negation, out of that total emptiness, there is creation.

Surely, all creation takes place in emptiness, not when your mind is full. Death has meaning only when you die to all your vanities, your superficialities, to all your innumerable remembrances.
Then there is something which is beyond time, something to which you cannot come if you have fear, if you cling to beliefs, if you are caught in sorrow.

– Krishnamurti

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There are no others to help

There are no others to help.

A rich man, when he hands over his entire fortune to his family, has not a coin left to give a beggar.
So is the wise man (Jnani) stripped of all his powers and possessions?
Nothing, literally nothing can be said about him.
He cannot help anybody, for he is everybody.
He is the poor and also his poverty, the thief and also his thievery. How can he be said to help when he is not apart?
Who thinks of himself as separate from the world, let him help the world.
The only thing that can help is to wake up from the dream.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

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The body is a helpful tool

Q: Swami frequently says that we should not identify with the body.
If I reject the idea that this is my body, what other instruments can I use to realize the Self? Don’t I need to identify with the body in some way in order to use it to do sadhana?

AS: You are wearing a shirt. Does this mean that you must take this shirt to be yourself? You wear a shirt to keep warm, but you don’t say,
’I am a shirt’. You can use the body as an instrument to realize the Self without thinking, ’I am the body’. Just regard the body as a helpful tool.

Conversations with Annamalai Swami
– LWB, p. 331

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What is the easiest way to God

Question: How to acquire the child like state?
Mataji: Seek the company of the pure and Godlike and obey the Guru and elders. This will lead to the spontaneous unfolding of the childlike state.

Question: How shall we realize God?
Mataji: Weep for Him and you will find Him.

Question: I cannot weep at all. Tears simply won’t come. What shall I do?
Mataji (laughing): Seek the company of those who weep. Keep the company of pure and God minded persons.

Question: What is the easiest way to God?
Mataji: Profuse tears.

Question: And if tears do not come?
Mataji: Then you should seek the company of those who shed tears; namely, seek satsang. This is the easiest way to God through love and devotion.

– Sri Ma Anandamayi

~Question and answers with Ma Anandamayi. Matri Upadeshamrita.2

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Outside influence

Try your utmost never to succumb to anyone’s influence. In order to become firm, calm, deeply serious, and full of courage, with one’s personality wholly intact, pure, and holy out of one’s own strength, one has to be centred in God.

Sri Anandamayi Ma

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Keep quiet

Whatever thought comes,
whatever it is,
even the thought of meditation: stop.

Discover the source of these thoughts:
“I have to meditate,
I have to be free,
I need freedom”.

Keep quiet and wait.

Find out from where these thoughts are coming.

Return back to the source of these same thoughts
and tell me
what you see.

What do you call this?
Where will it lead you?

It will strike at your mind forever and
you will become what you have always been.

You will not find this
through any method,
don’t be deceived once again
by your mind.

You are here to be free,
in this very instant,
without doing anything,
without even stirring a single thought.

That’s why you are here.

I don’t tell you to go to the Himalayas,
or to the caves or to the forest.

I have seen many people
with head hanging down, doing penance,

I have seen many in the higher altitudes of the
Himalayas:
they did not discover freedom.

It is here and now.

What is there to think about this?

Even without thinking,
you are That.

The habit of thinking,
of doing something,
is your only impediment.

Give at least one second to yourself,
without doing anything,
without even thinking.

Do not make any kind of effort,
and see the result.

– Sri Papaji

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The Maharshi’s eyes

When I was at Ramanasramam in the 1940s I used to spend hours looking at the Maharshi’s eyes. They would be open and staring, but not focused on anything. Though his eyes were open, they were not seeing anything. Those eyes were completely free of thoughts and desires. The mind is revealed very clearly in the eyes, but in those eyes there was nothing at all to see. In all the hours that I concentrated on those eyes I didn’t once even see a flicker of a thought or a desire. I have not seen utterly desireless eyes like his on any other face. I have seen many great saints during my life, but no one has impressed me as much as the Maharshi did. If you want freedom, find a man like this who has absolutely no desire, someone who sits unmoving like a mountain. Sit in his presence and see what happens.

~ Sri Papaji

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The Dharma body is beyond spirit

The theory of Mind-only in Buddhism is not the opposite of materialism. Mind-only refers to the original Mind (true nature) where mind and matter are not two.
Space (true nature) gives birth to mind; mind gives birth to personality, which gives birth to action.

Usually people think that the terms ‘matter’ and ‘mind’ completely explain the basic nature of the universe. However, the true nature of the universe lies somewhere else.

In Buddhism, the Dharma body is beyond spirit, and the true human is beyond the soul. Attaining this is final enlightenment. The Dharma body is the root of the form body, spirit, and soul. When the form body, spirit, and soul lose their root, they merely move through life, continually replacing each other (samsara). This is our human world.

Buddhism is an educational system which teaches each person how to find their true nature. Other religions, too, are like a bridge to finding our true self.
Words cannot explain the hidden principle of Buddhism; however it is possible to transmit it from mind to mind.

A related earlier line in the same section states:
Buddha is Mind; Dharma is the material. Before the Buddha Dharma appeared as name and form and even before the historical Buddha appeared, true nature existed.

– Zen Master Man Gong