Demons and Angels

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Magnolias’ – Carmen Delaco, 2022 – WikiArt

We are only ever made of thoughts. Sometime, thoughts come elaborate, with clearly defined words, perfect punctuation, following their due purpose. And sometime not. Sometime, they come as lightnings, striking us with a belief, an old stale repetitive assumption. Sometime, they linger unsaid, not pronounced, sneaking in but making untold damages. Sometime they don’t even need to be expressed. They have taken us over, have made a puppet of our life, tearing it apart in every mindless direction. All these thoughts are like little devils, unseen demons, unnoticed burglars stealing our identity. We have been brought to our knees, at the mercy of every one of their injunctions. We have been made just a collection of them, and nothing but an assumption. An idea of ourself. A self literally made up by the constant assault of thoughts, and by our believing them — belief being yet another thought.

Look in every direction you may. Notice here the coming of a hope, of a longing that takes form, but is yet just a thought. And when a worry comes, that this longing may never be fulfilled, it is just another thought that comes dancing with it. Attend to your expectations, to how you now imagine a future event. See how this evocation of the future comes as just another thought in your mind, for there is only ever thinking about the future. The future doesn’t exist, is always only imagined by a random thought. A regret, a desire, a fear, any bout of suffering or satisfaction, any feeling, comes wrapped in and as a thought. Thoughts are everywhere in our world. Even our body, our action, our world, are coloured and shaped by a thought or an image that condition their being perceived. A habit is a thought that took root and grew confident, unchecked, and many of our conditionings were once thoughts that have formed to become the established norm. As long as there is a thought somewhere in the system, that comes to define us, to give us a stand, an identity, that identifies with the body, that separates from the world, that gives a fleeting joy, or a tenacious pain, then we are not alone. We are not independent. We are not being our own identity. We have given it all up to thoughts, and have lost our being in them.

So go behind it all. Go before everything that appears for a while and recedes. Go before every worry, every hope, every mindless desire, behind every dull satisfaction that lingers lazily, every fear that strikes and leaves its trail inside you. Go to the place in you before every thought. Visit that portion of yourself where thoughts are of no consequence, where they are made trivial, ridiculous in their powerlessness. Go where distance is not, for thought as time has created the gap between yourself and your true nature, a gap where hides every shades of conflict and suffering in yourself — which are again thoughts. And go where you discover yourself to be unbreakable, unsoilable, eternal, for death too is another of your endless thoughts, maybe the most perverse one, but one that doesn’t stand being seriously investigated. Notice that thought is always some kind of thing, and that there is one place in yourself that a thing, that a thought, will never touch, or affect, or change: it is that portion of emptiness in yourself, which is only full of itself, and is therefore inaccessible to a thought — any thought. That placeless place is your peaceful being, your identity, who you truly are. To stand as that will freeze dead all the many thoughts whose only function was to give you support or approval, identity or escape, or contentment. These are burglar- or demon-thoughts, that come to lie to you, and try to impose their views on everything and on yourself. But a thought that is starting its journey from that virgin place of being is but a devotee and an angel, respecting your true identity and carrying in its wings the offering of your being, which is love. It is but a servant of the higher intelligence of truth. In general, demons are many, and angels are but a few.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Carmen Delaco (born 1976)

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Website:
– Carmen Delaco (WikiArt)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Apocalypse

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Traditional bhavachakra wall mural’ – By Wonderlane (Sakya Monastery of Seattle) – Wikimedia

There is a beautiful and meaningful contrast in Buddhism. It is to be found in the approach to impermanence (‘anicca’), which can be a very effective pathway to our true nature. It says: everything that passes away is not it, is not you. Notice everything in and around you, and see that it won’t be always here. The house where you live will be destroyed, and no objects you possess will stay forever, including your body, and the billions of other bodies, including the trees, the seas, the mountains, the air you breathe. Eventually, they will all go. Your thoughts, emotions, qualities, character, mind, that you think characterise you, well… The planets will wither too, the suns will die down, and space even may one day be swallowed back where it once was seemingly born.

Scan your experience and try to find something that doesn’t pass away. But go far enough. For then will come, like a new dawn, the revelation that there is something here that never passes away. There is a permanence, a nature, that is your very being, which will never not be, and which swallows in its own profound nature all things discovered to be devoid of their own independent natures. So in the end, nothing really passes away, for all the separate objects of your experience do not possess their own individual, separate nature, which could be considered impermanent. Impermanence is when you think you are a body. But in fact, permanence is all there is, and it is lived and seen as the one being that we truly are.

With this understanding, you will come to realise that your suffering also cannot stand the revelation of your completeness. What you called ‘suffering’ can only exist in the belief that all objects have their own separate existence. Believing yourself to be one such separate object, you find yourself to be incomplete, not enough, therefore seeking in objects your happiness or completeness, which you could of course never find. You started with a wrong view in mind, which made everything down the line unsatisfactory, and biased. That’s why the Buddhist term for suffering ´dukkha’ has the meaning of an ‘unstable stand’, or more poetically, the ‘badly fitting axle-hole of a cart or chariot’ giving ‘a very bumpy ride’. So what then? Suffering never actually existed? Was it all in our mind? Created by a simple belief, an ill-fitting understanding, a shaky representation, that rendered our world unstable, untrue?

In Buddhism, the positive is never named. What is is never mentioned. That’s why it is said that our existence bears the three qualities of ‘impermanence’, ‘suffering’, and ‘no-self’. You will never find a self in something that it always in movement, always changing. No self in things, no self in a thought, no self in a body, no self in you — this is how far it goes. There is no self inside your body-mind. There cannot be. This is logic. No phenomenon could ever hosts a self. There is ‘no self-existent essence’, as suggests the Buddhist term ‘anattā’. Essence cannot just exist. It would make it appear or disappear. The essence of all things, including your own self, is infinite, not limited, not bound to any phenomenon. So ‘no-self’ in Buddhism is only a strategy for you to realise that the only self in presence is the nature or being of all things and selves, which we are, but cannot comprehend or even name. This is what the wisdom of Buddhism has put in practice in such an eloquent and radical way. Not even a name are you given for your own being. The nameless, you can only be.

So the ‘three marks of existence’ of Buddhism are nothing but the story of an apocalypse. ‘Impermanence’, ‘suffering’, and ‘no-self’, may give you a rather apocalyptic vision of your existence. But this is only if you have forgotten that the word ‘apocalypse’ means in fact ‘revelation’. The apocalyptic picture of our existence in this world is used as a wake-up call to push us into the revelation of our true nature as being. It is all about strategy. Do not take religious teachings to be the real thing. They are but teachings that point to a deeper, unnameable truth — the turning around of an apocalypse into the revelation of our true being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photo of ‘bhavachakra’ mural by Wonderlane

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Website:
– Three Marks of Existence (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Our Only Landscape

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘An Autumn Landscape with a view of Het Steen’ – Peter Paul Rubens – WikiArt

We are always wandering about, always attracted by a thousand things. Falling for every passing experience. Looking for the fleeting promise it might carry. The reason is: we are so vulnerable to happiness. We want it above all else, at all cost. We know we deserve it, that it is our due, that it is natural, in the order of things, to be happy, rested, at peace. So our mind is never still. Seeking to obtain it. Longing to have it given. Working for it relentlessly. Sometime pretending to be happy if necessary. If it is what it takes. After all, this is the game we are being asked to play. This is our fate, that we have accepted as the norm, and to which we have complied and have been a slave. We would do anything to feel alive, contented, our heart full, our mind at peace, secure, on top of things. And we feel depressed when being turned down. Lost and disheartened at every bout of despair or suffering.

But maybe it is all an unfortunate misunderstanding. Maybe we have taken a wrong turn, and were embarked in our own forgetfulness, distracted by the general consensus. Maybe there is no need to wander about. Maybe experience is of no need to us for happiness. Maybe happiness is not found in experience, not in the least. Maybe working for it creates a distance, a gap, throwing it far and away, like something never reached, never quite here. Maybe hoping for it makes us a self, an illusory entity that needs to obtain peace through the satisfaction given by objects, events, favourable circumstances, which makes us dependent and fearful. What an irony it would be, if it were just this, just this misunderstanding, and that happiness was in fact right here, already spread in and as our sense of being, offered to us with a ruban — a gift eternal for our simply being here and now. How clumsy on our part, to have looked away from ourself for that which is not only in ourself, but our very own self itself. How foolish it all was.

So, this is how it is! We are already fixed in our being, which is peace, which is joy, and have been so all along. We have missed that: that this was our belonging, our identity, to be at peace, firm, stable, fastened, secure in our simply being. And that this simply being was enough, the completion we were after, what we thought was to be earned at the very end of a deceitful string of efforts. Adding to simply being is where we made the mistake, where the wrong turn was taken. We had to stay where we were, and simply notice where we actually were, and what we in fact truly were. Being was not a little thing, undeserving of attention. Being was the completion, everything: you, happiness, peace, experience, the world, all gathered in and as the simple experience of only being. That’s how you lose all wandering, all attraction to things, exchanging them for the one only attraction worth falling for, which is yourself. You have to fall for yourself, for your being. You have to let being embrace you, and swallow you. Then, you won’t have to be anything, won’t have to look for something or someone other than yourself. For you are the fact of being, and this in itself is all the landscape you will ever need and find yourself in.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

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Website:
– Peter Paul Rubens (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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Overflowing Questions

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Edge of a Lake (Souvenir of Italy)’ – Camille Corot, c.1855-60 – WikiArt

Wouldn’t you like to have a knowledge which cannot be surpassed, which amounts to everything? That has in its core the truth of living, the philosopher’s stone from which everything springs, and to which all appearances owe their existence to? Actually, don’t you already long for it, and have done so for as long as you can remember? Is it not what you secretly hope for in your life? To have this knowledge, this direct access to the peace of your being? To have it here at hand, like a secret bond which you can find under and within every difficult situation, every outrage, every burst of suffering? And wouldn’t you love to harvest what this intimate knowledge contains? Its most reliable sense of joy, of contentment, and see yourself plentiful, complete, enough, in an absence of need? Wouldn’t that be great? To uncover it, and let it find its natural place in you, and as you, easily, without your doing very much about it? Wouldn’t that be great? Would anything be more valuable to you? Would that not be worth a life? Any life?

And what if you were told that you are not this bunch of objects which you have believed yourself to be — these endless qualifications, and the myriad of thoughts and feelings to which you have tied yourself with? Wouldn’t that give you freedom, a sense of release? To be unattached, not bound to your body-mind, at least not in a fundamental way? Wouldn’t that be healing, to be not the body but what holds it in its embrace? Wouldn’t that be soothing, to be not the mind but that which lends it the space to wander about? What is to you more elating and convincing than finding yourself naturally, effortlessly, in a place of health and vigour? The body’s ailments? The mind’s silly wanderings? Well, what if they were not really yours? Wouldn’t you like to find out, what would be their fate when left alone? What could be their trajectory when you rest peaceful in your own healthy, infinite body of awareness? Wouldn’t that be great to make this discovery? To have the final answer behind all that has been troubling you for so long?

And what if you were to uncover some even bigger findings? That behind your long, busy, eventful, suffering life, there has been a stillness, a silence which couldn’t be stirred or broken? And that nothing truly ever happened in your life? That it has been just a passing dream? What would be the implications of that ? And what if you were to find out that the world is just only clothed by the awareness of it? That it is not there in the way you had imagined so far? And that behind it all was also dawning the certainty, the knowing of your immortal, undefeatable nature? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? To see, feel, touch the truth of it with your hands, that death is a myth? That it is not there? Not in the least? Wouldn’t that be extraordinary? That things do die but not you? That body does become ashes but not you — not that which you truly are? That mind withers away but not you — not your primal being which you have to concede is eternal, is infinite? Wouldn’t that take your breath away? Wouldn’t that blow your mind?

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Camille Corot (1796-1875)

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Website:
– Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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A Safe Harbour

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Sea against a rocky shore’ – Ivan Aivazovsky, 1851 – WikiArt

In our relative existence, we are always only a simple human being, a disciple of truth. We are seeking to merge the relative with the absolute, and to raise the finite where the infinite compels it to be. There is no being a super human, with a perfected soul. There is no being a specialist in the field of spirituality. The knower is a so shy and humble presence that it won’t show up when you are there. You will hide it with the boastful assertion of your own self. So if you want to espouse your true nature, you will have to feel yourself as almost nothing. You will have to stop reifying yourself, and make your person a servant of truth. There is a soothing freedom from pride and arrogance to be experienced in our human life.

The feeling of separation is what makes you assert yourself. To only and simply be is felt to be insufficient. You need to be or have something that makes you whole and happy, which you then seek through objects, qualities, qualifications, events, circumstances. To be somebody, to be important is the privilege of incompleteness. Being has no privilege, is not a superior position. it won’t make you anything. It won’t give you an advantage. You’d have to be miserable for that. You’d have to be limited. Your nature as peace doesn’t belong to you the person. When you have realised yourself as the one being that you truly are, then it won’t make you anything, it won’t give you a pedestal. Your knowing is in not knowing. In simply being.

There is a special, humble glory that lies in not being a self that feels separate. Peace is the perfume of your divine nature, that stands unaffected before the person that you happen to be. It is the nature that lends itself to the making of the world and to the selfing of its myriad of apparent entities. It is the secret power behind all appearances. Your nakedness is the key for its being seen and felt in your existence. You will then live from the stand of that knowing presence. Your self will cease feeling separate and superior. Your person will be depersonalised, will have infinity as its ‘I’ identity, and love as its guiding principle. But you won’t get any pride out of it, for your person is now devoid of its own, personal substance.

It is no accident that the life of many truth seekers is expressed through poverty and nakedness. In not possessing, in being undefended, as is the case for nuns, monks, hermits, anchorites. There is joy in not owning your own self, and your own identity. There is release in being at the service of the loving, silent being which you have discovered yourself to be. You have lost the prestige and identity contained in being a seeker. For there is no seeking in being. Being contains the gist of that which you want to obtain or achieve through your constant seeking — the juice of it. Being is the heart of life, and its reward. The Eden which you have placed far and away, as a cherished belief or possibility, is now found here, in the simple knowing of your being.

So there are no Shris, Maharshis, Bhagavans, Rinpoches, Maharaj-s, or Your Holiness, at the level of the person. There are even no sages. All these titles are only for ‘being’, for the reverence of truth, for the One. There is always only one Bhagavan. One Rimpoche. One sage. The peace contained in simply being is not another quality that is added to you as a person. A person, a body-mind, doesn’t have peace. Peace or understanding doesn’t belong to you. It is not for the person. It is all contained in that which lends you consciousness. It is in the presence that makes you, out of which you draw your personhood, and which allows you to love, live, and share. You are not an autonomous, self-contained person. You are infinity lending itself to a portion of finitude. How would an appearance be conscious, if it wasn’t for the presence which contains and creates this appearance? This peaceful, infinite presence is all there truly is. The One you have to bow to. Your teacher and your beloved. Your safe harbour in the storm of appearances.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900)

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Website:
– Ivan Aivazovsky (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Offerings of Praise

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Olive Grove’ – John Singer Sargent, 1908 – WikiArt

I don’t know if you have ever been in a gathering of truth seekers. Men and women willing to learn the truth of their being. Rendered humble enough to go through this discipleship. Battling to overcome their suffering. Journeying through the opening of their heart. Relinquishing their endless identities. Embracing infinity and friendship. If you haven’t, then I’ll leave this blessed and prominent ancient Christian theologian Ephrem the Syrian speak for it. Describe it in its own poetical terms. Tell you what it is like. Literally. And if you have, well then you have.
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“Who has ever beheld gatherings of people
whose sustenance is the giving of praise?
Their raiment is light,
their countenance full of radiance;
as they ruminate
on the abundance of His gift
there burst forth from their mouths
springs of wisdom;
tranquility reigns over their thought,
truth over their knowledge,
reverence over their enquiry,
and love over their offering of praise.”

~ Ephrem the Syrian (Hymns on Paradise, IX:28)

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Quote by Ephrem the Syrian (c.306-373)

Painting by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)

Additional text by Alain Joly

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Bibliography:
– ‘Hymns On Paradise’ – St. Ephrem the Syrian (trans. Sebastian Brock) – (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press)

Websites:
– Ephrem the Syrian (Wikipedia)
– John Singer Sargent (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Beauty in Essence (other pointers from the blog)

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Anatomy of a Desire

Posted on by Alain Joly

You must not desire the truth. You must let the truth desire you. For truth has the greatest desire, the most efficient one, to which yours is but a pale copy. It is the desire to be itself alone, unaccompanied, unsoiled. In the fulfilment of that desire, truth will swallow you, will undress you and render you transparent, nonexistent, naked. You’d be inspired to let go, to give in, to trust that desire which is so greater than yours. For your desires are small, inadequate, vile, selfish. They won’t get you where you truly want to be. They will miss the mark. Every time.

So don’t desire truth. Don’t make it like something you can possess. Truth is in fact already possessing you, the only one in command. So undress your being of the superfluous. The superfluous is all the beliefs attached to yourself, that makes you a self that feels separate, an entity in a body, delineated by its thoughts and feelings, that looks up to experience, and betrays its profound suffering through its constant desire for fulfilment.

Notice that your desire has no true owner. The one that desires is not really there. It is but an idea, a desperate attempt to feel that you are complete. But you won’t feel complete by means of desiring, for desire is already the sign of your incompleteness. The problem with being a desirer is that it places you ahead of your natural identity as being. It is a position of ignorance with a plan and a hope. The desirer is a made-up entity whose unacknowledged goal is to consolidate itself. So don’t make truth like a projected goal to be achieved. The desired object of enlightenment, or realisation, was never intended. It was in fact all for the desirer, to strengthen your false identity as a self, to adorn the temple of separation, to attach yourself to another idea. Liberation is not in desiring to be liberated.

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Continue this exploration of desire in matters of truth… (READ MORE…)

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