‘Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the Temple’ – Giovanni Paolo Pannini, 1724 – Wikimedia
Maybe this is where peace in fact resides. In the fact that peace or happiness can never be found, never be reached. It will be nowhere where you expect it, not in any objective appearance or event, not in any wish granted, not in any kind of alignment between what you want and what you have. You will never obtain what you want. Truth is not there, in what you wish. It doesn’t care for your egoistic projections, for your own private self-interest. Truth is not a mere good to be bargained for, or hoped for, or waited for, which, if not granted will disappoint you, and make you like a rejected lover, or a bruised self. Truth is not any kind of crude object. Remember Jesus who cast out the merchants in the temple. Were you really thinking that there was a physical Jesus actually chasing the merchants from the temple, on the ground of some kind of moral rule?
The merchants in the temple, it is you. It is all of us when we have decided to argue with reality, to buy our happiness with some kind of object obtained, to bargain or negotiate with some invented superior entity the responsibility of what is happening to us, to come to god with pockets full of expectations and desires, making peace a simple object to be bought in the market place of our likes and dislikes. “Wouldst thou be free from any taint of trade?” did Meister Eckhart ask. Imagine the relief that it is: to know or realise that you will not have what you want, that ‘what is’ is all there is, all that you will ever have. What a relief! What a load finally put down, and got rid of! All that you want, desire, expect, all that, will never ever be granted to you. You can forget it all. ‘What is’ is the deal. The grandiose enlightenment you were waiting for lies there, in what simply is! It will never get better than that! You have it all here, in front of you. That is the gift that was specially designed for you. Happiness resides in what you have, in what you are, here and now. This is the secret that Krishnamurti meant when he said: “I don’t mind what happens.”
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On how truth is not an object to be bought in the marketplace… (READ MORE…)
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The Dawn Within 