A Ground for Life

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Awakening’ – Xavier Mellery – Photo by Jean Louis Mazieres (Flickr)
The difficulty in this endeavour is that as long as you feel yourself to be a person, you will never know your most profound being. As long as you see the world as being an other-than-yourself, you will never feel the presence of your utmost being. For you will be like above ground — not grounded in your self. You will be a wanderer, forever looking for a destination in other things or beings. And nowhere will you find the home of your true being, for you are forever lost in a world of which you are only a part. And never will you know who you are, for you are living in a place to which you do not belong — a place that is separate from life itself. This unfortunate place has taken the form of a fake, created self or entity, which is but an imagined representation for an equally imagined world. Life has escaped you. And you will keep being above ground, out of tune, forever misplaced, making yourself a sufferer, and a sinner. You will then lose sight of your original mistake. You will start thinking that you have been placed here powerless, doomed to win your happiness at every time-bound step on the road. You will start bending under the weight of this so-called fate of life, from which you will try to escape over and over again. You will lose sight of your self, looking blindly in all possible directions, except in the direction of your beloved home, which is your own, eternally present being. That’s how you become headless, engaged with a thousand things, in a thousand directions, and attempting to find in them a purpose and a peace of living for your bruised self. You have been led through mysteries which only existed as projections. And you have kept running steadily away from your one and only true mystery: the beloved and forever here, forever now, home for your self as being. Here is the truth: Plain being is the ground and the destination; the only existing home for your peace and thrill of living. And life’s purpose is to cancel the imagined distance between your supposed, suffering self living above ground, and the true and happy ground of being which you already are here and now.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Xavier Mellery (1845-1921)

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Website:
– Xavier Mellery (Wikipedia)

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A Plea Answered

Posted on by Alain Joly

For those of us who complain that god never answers their plea, let me tell you something. God is more subtle than that. He never was an entity, with a voice that could speak. She never even was a kind of object, however subtle, that could soothe at the level you are expecting, through the granting of a favour, the offering of a reward. Neither could god curse you with punishment. He doesn’t take sides. She never takes umbrage. God grants only one thing: Its glorious, infinite, loving presence. The lack of answer, the absence of favour, the withdrawing of reward, the malediction of punishment… it’s all on your side. Because you have blinded yourself to its eternal smile at you. Because you have covered your ears lest you might hear its constant whisper at you. For you were too busy thinking, pleading, complaining, expecting, reaching for an outside object or presence, that could give you, forgive you. For you were too engrossed in overwhelming feelings, worries, disputes, about yourself and others, and had definite certitudes about so many things, and such endlessly running opinions and preferences. In other words, you have isolated yourself, separated yourself, crippled yourself, and as a result made god silent and powerless — an empty void where it isn’t.

But god is never silent, if you turn towards where it lives. Its subtle presence at the core of your being is speaking endlessly, calling you with all the patience required. And that presence is never powerless, for it holds you eternally in its sweet embrace, as you can notice if you look at your own being with the same passion. And please don’t forget that your suffering is god’s answer to you. It is her calling disguised, what you had expected all along, the present that you didn’t bother to wrap with golden ribbons. And god also made you a favour. He came to live right at the heart of your being, so that you could never be at a distance from him; so that you could feel him as your own, ever-present self. And by the way, god wasn’t holding back anything. She is generous, offering you the constant reward of peace and happiness. Only you have to feel it in your heart, and not rush out for an auspicious circumstance or a desired object. And if you have ever felt the pang of a curse, understand that this indeed was of your own making. For you have cut yourself from god’s divine hold, and in doing so have lessened the abundance of its bounties. You have made yourself a lone traveller. You have shut your heart from the fountain of love that is steadily flowing as your own, ever-present, precious being, which is god’s being too. God has no power to curse, but you sure have, until you get the courage to open yourself to the infinite presence that sits in and as your self. That simple feeling of being, that all powerful god eternally crowing your self, will block all possible entry for a curse, and keep you safe.

And now for one last, precious recommendation: To live with the presence of god in your heart not only will protect you from your own talent at cursing yourself, but will open wide the doors of perception for the flooding of beauty. It will make your life a torrent of peace. For god will shower on you gifts after gifts of its benevolent presence. And he will grant you all possible rewards, all answers, all favours, clearing your path towards the blessing of immortal life, of unconditional love and objectless happiness. God was never disingenuous. She never was the void or absence that you took her to be. He/she is a presence so full that you could be his or hers for life eternal. Some have called it the Kingdom of Heaven, some Nirvana. And what blessing and surprise it is to find it right here, right now, as your very own self, veiled only by the plea of not having it, of wanting it, hoping for it, looking for it. Remember: you are not a self in your own right. Your self is nothing but god’s presence espousing you. For you share the same being, as the being of everything and everyone. But I won’t say more. Now you have your answer.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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The Shallow Well

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘View from the Ganges of the burning ghats’ – Edward Lear, 1873 – Wikimedia

We are but a layer. Our sense of identity has been downgraded to being just a thought whose presence is by now so habitual and pregnant that it is likened to our very self. This shallow well, this dubious layer, seems to be all that we have access to, and our thoughts and feelings have been upgraded to ridiculously important and all-consuming proportions. We have the identity of a thought imbued with itself, satisfied as it is to block the view to any deeper reality. It is ironical that the wonder and blessing of truth can be so effectively buried under the thin layer of a single thought about ourself. A thought that is so pervasive and convincing that few are the ones who have even the idea or curiosity of digging beyond it. But try it. A little probing works wonder.

Try to localise the shallow well of your illusory self. If you have to live your life from its vantage point, you might as well have a security check before embarking in such a serious journey. Is this all we are, this shallow thought that’s tossing itself about in our head? Is this all we are, this little body at the mercy of any impending death? Why such fatuous view about ourself? Was this beautiful mind of ours — that can behold the moon and the starry sky, that can fathom the silence and embrace the vision of beauty, the infinite expanse of love — was this mind created only to end up being likened to a thought? It really is a mystery that we have come to be satisfied with a shallow well, when we have at our hand the infinite and largely unexplored field of consciousness: that thing in us that is responsible for our very experiencing and without which no thing or being could ever exist or appear.

The idea we have about ourself is not our real self. We are satisfied with a vague representation, with a limited understanding. We don’t go all the way. We feel it okay to live our whole life — even build empires — without knowing who we are. But this essential knowledge of ourself should really be where we start our journey from. And a good look is worth many books of spiritual knowledge. We only have to notice that we have misplaced our focus. We have been seduced by the objectivity implied in the functioning of our sense perceptions. We feel we have to reach for ourself in the same way, and so we create this dubious sense of self as a projected idea. This mesmerisation is the shallow well — or shadow well — where we do nothing but go round and round in repeated circles of self-assumed ignorance. Only step aside once and you will realise that this thin paper-like layer of yourself is but a bundle of accumulated beliefs.

Only step aside once and you will realise that your self is a deep, unfathomable well that cannot be seen unless you merge with it and become of it. Feel your being as being that emptiness with no end. Be the aware quality behind your very seeing and hearing. Be this divine threshold of pure awareness. Don’t take refuge inside a shallow well. Realise its hidden depth. Relinquish the whimsical thought that stands in the way. Move just below or beyond this idea of and about yourself. There is some courage needed in this small death, but the reward is the path taken from limitation to freedom, from suffering to happiness, from death to immortality, from shallowness to infinity, from lie to truth, from pretending to truly being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Edward Lear (1812-1888)

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Website:
– Edward Lear (Wikipedia)

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At the Crossroads

Posted on by Alain Joly

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
~ Robert Frost

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There are two parallel lives in our life. There are two different roads on offer in front of us. One has a signpost that indicates the destination of death and suffering, of constant uncertainty and tiresome conflicts, with a success that is one hundred percent reliable. You will reach your destination no matter what. The other one is another story altogether. No destination is indicated there. For it all depends on the first step you take. After that it is not well indicated. It is a road with no destination away from your self. A destination that is at no distance from your self. A destination not reachable through time. A predestined destination. You will just have to look behind, above your shoulder, to notice that the distance has already been covered, that you are already at the placeless place of your eternal self as being, and already made of the happiness you are looking for. And all this is right at the beginning, contained in the very first step you take. A timeless step into timeless being.

Take that less traveled road, and your life will have a wholly different perspective. It will become directionless, and yet open to a thousand possibilities. Whether these possibilities are incarnated or not will be of no importance at all. Because you have already reached all that you ever wanted to reach. You have already arrived at your destination. Replete. Complete. In no need of reassurance, or results, or of anything that would prove of your so dearly sought after happiness. This is very different than wanting to incarnate a possibility with the belief that it conceals in itself the recipe for your happiness. And when it is found dry and empty of such promise, pursuing another possibility, never incriminating the process itself but only the object that didn’t meet the required expectation. It is like trying a thousand medecines for a cure, and when proved unsuccessful, only questioning their efficacy and never the diagnosis of the illness.

So the road to suffering is paved with a thousand directions, while the road to happiness shows itself to have no direction at all, for the simple reason that its efficacy is not in self-improvement through the acquisition or pursuit of objects, but in the quiet and peaceful realisation of your being’s directionless and objectless nature, and its hundred percent reliability in matters of happiness, which is all life is about. The thousand possibilities are then only left to express that already achieved happiness, not bearing on themselves the expectation of, and responsibility for happiness. The reason why the road towards suffering is so unfailingly chosen is that as long as you grant objects the power to give you happiness, the direction on the signpost will indicate ‘Happiness’. How could you ever choose an unknown direction over a clearly defined one towards the dearest purpose of your life? Bear in mind that the right indication on the signpost is for you to see, understand, and write. Then the directionless place of your own being will be choicessly chosen and implemented. What you already are is never a matter of choice. What you are not and never could be is only a matter of choice. The less travelled road then becomes the only possible road, and the direction to which it points is the direction of your self, where happiness resides.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

Quote by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

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Website:
– Robert Frost (Wikipedia)

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The Buddha Nature

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Buddha Painting at Amazing Banyan Tree’ – Utsav Rock Garden – Wikimedia

When you see the representation of a Buddha in meditation — or a Shiva or a goddess —, it is not about a person or a god, not about an entity, no matter how mythical or divine he or she might be. It is yourself represented. It is the description of your own aware being. Present. Self-sufficient. Undisturbable. Undivided. Not dispersed. It is a representation of consciousness — that thing or essence of which we are made, and with which we are all having our many experiences. It is the very form of being. It is an attempt to make seen what cannot be seen, to make graspable that which cannot be grasped. It is the form of the formless. It is teaching itself. It is truth in a condensed and visible form.

To see it that way will never make you laugh again at the expressions of devotion in front of statues. It is not to say that the immense majority of believers do not see in these statues the representation of a person or a god, but rather to emphasise the truer significance behind these objects of devotion. They are reminders of truth, wake up calls from the bottomless being contained in your own being. They are beseeching you to direct your attention inwards. You are being asked to devote your attention to your self, to worship your own being, to not disperse yourself in the ten thousand things and the endless dance of thoughts and feelings, but to focus on that which is before them, that which is seeing them all. That is your true self, and that true self is Buddha-nature.

A Buddha in meditation is not a Buddha in meditation. It doesn’t tell you that you should meditate. It is rather the expression of the very being that sits as your very self or awareness. In other words, it is you. You are this close to a Buddha sitting in meditation. A breath away. Less than a breath, you are it to a point that you can never even envisage. That’s what keeps you so far remote from it. This is the real belief: to think of yourself as being a common person and not a Buddha. Imagination is taking you far away from your true self. Don’t let it do that to yourself. Don’t be so malleable as to follow the injunctions of a voice in your head. Sit down in yourself and look within. Surrender to the presence of your innermost being. Stay with it. Admire it. Your true nature is nothing but Buddha-nature. It is the only thing that you must not be asked to believe. It’s just for the realising.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Utsav Rock Garden

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Website:
– Utsav Rock Garden

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The Great Replacement

Posted on by Alain Joly

You can always add to experience. You can always have more thoughts. Or different ones. More refined ones. Changes can always occur and always will. You can always fall down to the lowest of the lowest, and judge yourself undeserving. And that is more thoughts about yourself. You can always imagine anything. This is endless, all this activity. It will never stop. It will never reveal any truth worth of the name. It will keep going, headlessly, aimlessly, meaninglessly, like an illusion feeding on itself in order to give itself a seeming reality. Go anywhere in your objective experience, be it your feelings, your sensations, your perceptions, your body, the world out there, none of these will bring an inch of the happiness you are desperately running after. This enterprise is doomed to bankruptcy. It will leave you broke, feeble, mortal, prone to regular fits of unhappiness. It will leave you with not a penny of certainty, not a pebble of solidity, and a very little share of that life-giving energy which you are naturally entitled to. So what are we going to do now? We cannot stop thinking, feeling, perceiving, doing. We need a new comer in the picture. A special adviser. A rock of solidity in our changing sea of uncertainty. Who is going to win the game? When we have turned round and around the table for a new name, a new shareholder, another hope, another fake answer, another bout of shaking certainty, then maybe, it might dawn on us that:

The prodigal son is already at home. Everything we need is present within and without, here and there, now and then, enveloping our vey experience with its all pervading knowing. This something cannot be named, cannot be emptied of itself, and will not make the slightest effort for you. It was here all along, ignored, unnoticed, yet having the dimension of a sky, the solidity of a rock, and the certainty of something that was here before the coming of universes beyond universes. It is like discovering in yourself the wisest of gurus present at hand, in all circumstances. It is your eternal refuge waiting for you to come in. But beware now, for that unfailing refuge, that wisest of gurus, that beloved amongst the beloveds, is you. It is you, you understand? Not something to be reached. Not something far and away. You have nowhere to go, nothing to be, no time to wait for, except being your own unfailing, wise, beloved self. You are it all. Here. Now. Whatever. Whenever. Wherever. Release that old, worn out Chief Operating Officer of yours, and replace it with being. Look around now and relax. Being is all there is.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Taking Sides

Posted on by Alain Joly

Don’t you want to be just made of that? To wholly embrace this experience? Not to stay in a little corner, to be always wanting, claiming, hoping, complaining, but to find yourself being the bearer of all things, merging with the ten thousand colours of experience — not being just one side of it? To be whole is never a matter of choice, but parting is. Awareness is always choiceless. If you exert a choice, in the form of a chooser, then chances are that you don’t know the true nature of living. You’re not aware, no — not yet aware. You’re still sleeping in a dark cave. You haven’t contemplated all that life is. You haven’t truly been amongst the trees, and been taken by the harmonious course of a bird. You haven’t been a lover of the grass, and a true partner of that heap of dried, dead leaves in the autumn air. You haven’t quite yet mingled with the clouds, and merged your being with the being of the sky. No, not quite yet. For now, you’re just being a chooser.

Don’t cheat on your true self and being, by partnering with a thought, a feeling, or some particular object. Don’t be abused by the noises and colours of experience, to the detriment of the silent presence that hosts them. There is something profoundly sad about taking sides — identifying with opinions, beliefs, preferences, judgments. For really, to take sides is to be a self. It is to play in the limited courtyard of your thoughts and feelings, and not be touched by the immensity of not knowing, of having no preferences, of not being a chooser. To take sides means: you haven’t let reality be as it is. You have intervened, and in doing so, have limited your self, have made it into a poor little thing.

For taking sides will send you on the dangerous road to fear, loneliness, and confusion. It will make you retire in the fake refuge of your separate self. Remember this: every time you take sides, every time you exert a control, you are not being ‘you’ — I mean your true ‘I’. You have been dragged and caught by the cunningness of a thought. You have been robbed of your essential self. You have made yourself into a point of view with a limited scope and understanding. You have been squeezed in a little corner of your invention. I am begging it to you now: Stop being anything. Don’t think yourself to be a body, and therefore be an insider. Don’t push away experience, and therefore be an outsider. Don’t be sidetracked with a sideshow. No. Make your true self the real show of experience. You won’t regret it. You will be standing on the stage of life under a shower of light and applauds. For then, you have vanquished all that separating gig. You have given your life the colour of life itself. You have treated your being with the being of all selves and things. And you have exchanged your never ending complaints with a life lived in utter thankfulness. Just by not taking sides.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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