The Brush of Ecstasy

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Shoreham Bay, Evening Sunset’ – John Constable, 1828 – WikiArt

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There is a hidden ecstasy in your being;
Only you have — to access it — to ignore
The clamour of your endless thoughts,
Wildly thinking themselves to death;
To leave them behind, so far behind,
A thing of secondary importance,
Not that first, foolish, imaginary role.

Ecstasy has its own special requirements:
One is postponing all future goals and attainments
And envisaging yourself only in the now
Where peace can be seen to thrive,
Far and away from imagination,
Settled within the hard ground of being
Where is built a temple for yourself.

And stay there, don’t mingle with the body,
Don’t make it an essential — not more
Than necessary — it’s a fake friend;
Then, when you have built a home
Secure from the turmoil of feelings
Free from all that come to lure you into their net;
When you are — as to say —
Outside your usual self,
As the etymology concedes;
When you have recognised the world
As your own inseparable body;
When you have opened wide all windows,
Extricated yourself from the grip of time;
When you have habituated yourself
To the pure light of just being;
Then — and only then —
And only perhaps

Then might a brush of ecstasy
Come upon you — gently but noticeably;
Only beware of too much of it
Lest it will send you back to some
Old, stale beliefs about yourself — stay humble.

Then might a brush of ecstasy
Come upon you — that will make you
Leave your own dated sense of self,
And adopt that quiet remoteness of being
As your new, unmistakable home.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by John Constable (1776-1837)

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Website:
– John Constable (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Voices from Silence (other poems from the blog)

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The Impossibility of Knowing

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘All Pervading’ (detail) – George Frederick Watts, 1887 – WikiArt

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“Beat on that thick cloud of unknowing
with a sharp dart of longing love,
and do not give up, whatever happens.”
~ The Cloud of Unknowing (Anonymous)

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Habit is a driving force in our lives, yet it doesn’t have good reviews: it is an object of critics. It is making us dull and repetitive. It is non-creative, indolent, designed for our self-protective needs. It is born out of fear, uncertainty. It is a shield for what we feel bullies and thwarts us, and is thereby blocking our sensitivity and vulnerability. Habit debases love. But habit is not the real culprit in this affair: it is a victim of the one more fundamental habit of knowing.

Humanity is steeped in apparent knowing. We all have a posture of knowing. To know is the great pretension. Games are invented to praise and reward the people who know. The injunction to know is overwhelming. It is the believed road to success and wealth. Not knowing is a humiliation. We could take pride in knowing anything, in being ignorant, in the most ridiculous things, only to save us from being suspected of not knowing. For knowledge is believed to be gold. But although conceptual knowledge is indeed of great value in our society, the posture of knowing is nevertheless the greatest impediment to seeing who we truly are, and how to live our lives free and happy.

We don’t speak here of knowledge in the sense of conceptual or relative knowledge. Most of the knowledge necessary for our body and mind to function in the world is valid and necessary, of course open to mistakes and misinterpretations, but is not what we are discussing here. We are investigating fundamental knowledge, or knowledge as essence, the primal act of being.

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An essay on the articulation between knowing and not knowing… (READ MORE…)

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The Direct Path

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring’ – Ma Yuan, 1190 – WikiArt

We are such complex beings, always confused by endless choices and directions, caught as we are in the repeated convolutions of our thought patterns. Because we see ourselves as an intricate network of thoughts and feelings, we are naturally engaged in finding the solutions for our life conundrum in that same dark cavern of thought. But mistakingly and unfortunately so. For this is a labyrinth from which we can never come out. It has been designed for our loss and suffering. It has been masterly laid down by ignorance, for the sole and only purpose of perpetuating itself. If you want my advice: stay away if you can. But if you are already trapped and caught, well don’t worry: there is a way out. And it might be an easier one than you think.

The problem with thought is that it is constantly crowning itself as the chief master in all deeds and endeavours. It is doing so well in so many fields that its influence overflows beyond its natural area of competence. It is forever engaged in a process of belief and identification. It has persuaded itself that it represents the body, and is by now certain to be a person — a ‘he’ or ‘she’ who commands. It has put the load of finding happiness on itself, and is driving the body out in the world in a constant search for new objects and circumstances, all with the aim to obtain the precious package. And since it has come all the way here, it might as well seek to bring to itself not only happiness but also peace, freedom, love, justice, beauty, and the likes.

This is how we get lost — along that avenue of thought. Along that deceptive, inefficient, never ending seeking. This is madness — this labyrinth we have created for ourself. Thought and its acolytes as feelings, images, body, hope, desire — all that joyous team — out on a mission to find happiness. The danger of such an endeavour is to be found in the thin line down the page on the contract, that stipulates the side effects of such a folly: namely that this mistaken avenue will produce suffering in the forms of all the fears, violence, hatred, confusion, and sorrow that this endeavour brings with itself. And we won’t be able to heal these unfortunate ailments with more of the same as we failingly try to. Suffering can never be overcome using the tools that brought it in the first place. We have to find another way out of this labyrinthine maze and mess.

The good news is that you don’t have to follow every shallow, intricate alleys of this labyrinth, which is understood by now to be only a dark prospect. You are not doomed. Happiness was never meant to be such a dreary, sweaty enterprise. Right there, in the middle of the maze, in your darkest moment of loss and despair, is the secret chamber of peace, and the gate to the freedom you have sought for so long. Right there is the hidden, direct path out of it all. The short cut through the maze. Right here and right now. When you have slowed down and looked for once from the position of the one that has been here, present in all eternity, just below the threshold of your labyrinthine thoughts and feelings, and in fact mingling with them. This is the abode of rest which magically appears when thoughts, feelings, images, body, hope, desire, and world, have been put in their right place. This direct path is not a path. It is ‘it’. It is that very place or thing — which is not a place, not a thing — of your wildest dreams. It is this one silent watcher that precedes what you take to be your self, and presides over your golden destiny as being. The One that is so easily overlooked and missed — so discreet and transparent is it. Thinner than a breath. Space-like. Peaceful. Blissful. Blessed. As simple and direct as your deepest, most intimate sense of being. Just ‘I’. Yes, plainly just ‘I’.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ma Yuan (1160-1225)

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Websites:
– Ma Yuan (Wikipedia)
– On a Mountain Path in Spring

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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