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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Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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The Puzzled Self

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Bridges’ – Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, 1905 – WikiArt

We succumb to this original mistake again and again. That error has been enforced in the system through thousands of years of repetition, belief, conditioning, habit, and its illusory power has strengthened itself to the point of being a truth. The mistake is: we’re looking for something outside ourself. We’re reaching out. All the time. We’re craving for. We are deemed insufficient. Needy. In consequence, we have broken the world apart, have created chasms and distances, have invented time when it is not needed. We have made life into a battle and a struggle. We have given rise to suffering and confusion. And the worse of it, we have isolated ourself. We have projected everything that is not our body and mind as something that is ‘other’, different in nature, and have made that ‘other’ the only open source available for the rising and falling of happiness in ourself.

Quite a mouthful isn’t it? What an inextricable bundle we have created! And our self? Well, it has been reduced to something marginal, that forever needs to be reassured, consoled, fulfilled, aggrandised. We have created an insatiable monster that destroys everything in its path. Its hunger can never be satisfied. And its thirst is unquenchable. It will want to be forever filled. And that process will make us the target of unbelievable constraints. It will divide our world into fragments, and will scatter them around like a gigantic, incomplete jigsaw puzzle. With ourself being only one of its lost pieces. What a dreadful prospect! Well, we have made it ourself, all alone; and the responsibility for it goes nowhere but in the direction of our very own self. But don’t try to fix, arrange, mend, repair. Don’t go back in the wrong direction. Don’t go again after your lost happiness. Don’t do more of the same. There is no hero needed here. What’s needed is something a bit more subtle. And way easier believe me.

You have to look. Just to look. To look and to see. To look is on your part. To see is not. It’s a given. You have to look at your self, at all the scattered pieces of your self. And you have to remove just one element of the puzzle that acts like a wrongdoer, a confusing piece, the error in the system. Remove your well-rehearsed tendency to look for happiness outside yourself. Just take that possibility away from yourself. That’s the grain of sand that blocks everything, and engages you on a road a thousand-time trodden, to no avail. Feel the wonder of that one last element of escape out of the system. Nowhere to go. Nothing to be. Dare for once to look at that simple truth in the eyes, which is: you won’t find anything of value outside your own being. It all falls back on you now. The whole world. The thousand scattered pieces of yourself. The suffering. The confusion. The whole paraphernalia. Everything. On yourself. Then…

Then you will see that you are alone. All alone. Not isolated but alone. You will see what you truthfully are. You will see that you are made of one single piece that only works for and as your self. That piece is the missing element of your puzzle. The one that was unseen, forgotten, and which had been replaced with a clumsy, invented, unfitting one that placed your life into this unresolvable puzzle of suffering and loss. That piece is the unifying factor, the one that will make chasms into a bridge of Life, and your broken world into a fitting piece of Oneness. For that piece has a magical touch that will make every pieces of yourself fall back into place. For there were never any scattered fragments in your Self. There was only Being, the one and only owner of that which you are, and of all that which can possibly be. And that feeling of being, with its supreme knowing, is enough to give you the peace and happiness that you looked for in a thousand directions or scattered pieces. Being is your aloneness. And in that aloneness is the golden spring from where happiness is seen as your only possibility. That’s it. This is the given. What you needed to see… Puzzle completed!

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911)

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Website:
– Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (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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Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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The Gospel According to St. Matthew

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’ – by Pier Paolo Pasolini – (With Enrique Irazoqui)

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“The motivation that unites all of my films
is to give back to reality
its original sacred significance.”
~ Pier Paolo Pasolini

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The famous Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini made this beautiful statement about his art: “When I make a film, I shift into a state of fascination with an object, a thing, a fact, a look, a landscape, as though it were an engine where the holy is about to explode.” This can be immediately felt as we stroll amongst the first scenes of his 1964 movie ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’. We are met with an angelic Mary looking at a bewildered Joseph leaving home after the discovery of her pregnancy. Silence prevails and only a concert of bird’s songs can be heard. Joseph wanders in solitude in a landscape that is desolate yet teeming with presence and energy. He comes to the edge of a town and kneels against a nearby stretch of land where a bunch of children are playing, giving like a lullaby of innocence to Joseph who closes his eyes and abandons himself to the moment. This is the chosen time when an androgynous angel appears and gives him the revelation of the divine nature of Mary’s pregnancy.

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Discover the magnificent film by Pasolini on the Gospel of Matthew… (READ MORE…)

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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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Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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On Parmenides

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The School of Athens’ – by Raphael, 1509 (fresco at the Vatican City) – Wikimedia

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“There is nothing,
and there will never be anything,
outside of being.”
~ Parmenides (trans. Francis Lucille)

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The Oxford Dictionary wrote this very concise description of Parmenides: “Greek philosopher. Born in Elea in south-western Italy, he founded the Eleatic school of philosophers. In his work ‘On Nature’, written in hexameter verse, he maintained that the apparent motion and changing forms of the universe are in fact manifestations of an unchanging and indivisible reality.” This statement is a quintessential definition of non-duality, and a summary of Parmenides’ work expressed as far as the early fifth century BC, in the cradle of western civilisation. The depth of understanding and vision required to make such statement has puzzled and influenced many a philosopher since, and has aroused the interest of countless spiritual seekers. This spiritual message is worth a good attention here.

Parmenides is the author of one single work, a poem of which only fragments have remained over the years. It survived because the around 800-verse original poem was abundantly quoted by his pairs, and could be re-formed in a shorter version, as known today, of 160 verses. His poem, today translated as ‘On Nature’, ‘On Reality’, or simply ‘Fragments’, is comprised of three parts of which the second and most important has survived in its almost entirety.

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A study of Parmenides’ statement of truth in his poem ‘On Nature’… (READ MORE…)

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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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Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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