Things exist. I won't deny it. But they only exist as illusion whose illusory source is my body-mind. We are only an apparent flickering of radiance without end.
So, why is this consummate feeling of mine no big deal? Because it is filled to brimming with everything just-as-it-is, and because this has always been so.
So, what about good and evil? What about the starving babies, the innocents slaughtered by disease? Mine is a philosophy of calloused determinism if I account for such horrors as the inevitable consequences of innumerable causes, although this is so. But that is only a partial vision of a totality in which there is no "I." Whether regarded as real or illusory, there is certainly suffering, just as there is compassion, altruism, and effort to end suffering--all wrapped up together in our conditioned plane of existence. Compassion and altruism are divine instincts in a realm of "I" and "you" separate from the cosmos. But if we really want to end suffering for once and all, effort must be directed against the root delusion of a separate self with its demon spawn of desire and fear. Should humanity awaken to this truth, good and evil would be subsumed by a reality beyond both.
"...but this does not mean that we all can experience kensho to the same degree, for in the clarity, the depth, and the completeness of the experience there are great differences..." - Roshi Philip Kapleau
I believe I am experiencing early stage kensho. Without doubt I have (apparently) punched through some kind of veil--the bottom has dropped out and I have an all-encompassing, all-pervading, very real sense of emptiness and one-ness with all-that-is (apparently). I sense a common essence of everything and everybody. On the other hand, the pull of deep conditioning remains strong and I foresee greater depths ahead as I further relinquish self to Self, the "divine abandonment" of de Caussade. I must let go.
So, why is this consummate feeling of mine no big deal? Because it is filled to brimming with everything just-as-it-is, and because this has always been so.
So, what about good and evil? What about the starving babies, the innocents slaughtered by disease? Mine is a philosophy of calloused determinism if I account for such horrors as the inevitable consequences of innumerable causes, although this is so. But that is only a partial vision of a totality in which there is no "I." Whether regarded as real or illusory, there is certainly suffering, just as there is compassion, altruism, and effort to end suffering--all wrapped up together in our conditioned plane of existence. Compassion and altruism are divine instincts in a realm of "I" and "you" separate from the cosmos. But if we really want to end suffering for once and all, effort must be directed against the root delusion of a separate self with its demon spawn of desire and fear. Should humanity awaken to this truth, good and evil would be subsumed by a reality beyond both.
"...but this does not mean that we all can experience kensho to the same degree, for in the clarity, the depth, and the completeness of the experience there are great differences..." - Roshi Philip Kapleau
I believe I am experiencing early stage kensho. Without doubt I have (apparently) punched through some kind of veil--the bottom has dropped out and I have an all-encompassing, all-pervading, very real sense of emptiness and one-ness with all-that-is (apparently). I sense a common essence of everything and everybody. On the other hand, the pull of deep conditioning remains strong and I foresee greater depths ahead as I further relinquish self to Self, the "divine abandonment" of de Caussade. I must let go.
No comments:
Post a Comment