A Virtue of Old

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Portrait of an old man’ – Paul Cézanne, 1868 – WikiArt

Od age and ailments have an astonishing virtue. They teach us that our body and our mind have a weak reality, that they soften, do not last, crumble. They are like everything else. Their reality is passing, illusory, and ours is not what we have taken it to be. For we notice that as our body weakens, falls apart, we do not with it. We stay as strong as ever. We shine as something else. Not a body. Not a mind. Not an apparent self. But spirit. Our spirit strengthens. Our presence widens — if we care to look at all, to be aware, to not attach ourself to a dying object, to a withering skill. If we stay as our solid being, as that which we haven’t been attentive to so far, for reason of an irrational and obstinate fascination for our body-mind-experience, and our puny self.

So when these, that didn’t have a true reality, go; when these, that didn’t stand the mark of eternity, wither; then our fascination shifts for that which cannot go, wither, or crumble. For what stays massively behind. This reality of ourself hits us in the face — what we are, what we were even when we weren’t looking, weren’t interested, had our life within the limitations of our body-mind. Then it comes soothing us, telling us of our nature, of our grandeur. Then, what falls apart is not just our body or our skills, but also our beliefs about our mistaken reality. Our error as to what our nature is. Now we have a conversation with the infinite, and a rising love affair with the eternal. Now we have a compassion for what we believed ourself to be — body, mind, self, skill, experience — and that now have the humility to show their frail existence. Now we stop minding so much about them, and we find the peace that it is to do so.

So where do we choose to go when we cannot go anywhere, when places become fewer, when time stops being a promise, when circumstances lessen? Where is this place that our body cannot take us to, and that comprehends all that we as a body were chasing relentlessly? What is it that our thoughts cannot give us, and that we now find is here behind and before every thought, every belief, hope, or fantasy? There is a sumptuous gift behind every body or mind that loses grip on the objective world. There is a treasure in the quiet home of our self, when we are asked to stop seeking our happy self in a thousand places, practices, or experiences.

There comes a time when we cannot chase our preferences anymore. When we have to leave behind our dearest experiences. When we have no more time to become, attain, grasp that which we want to grasp, attain, become. But there is offered a time for letting go, for a sweet abandon, for uncovering that which in us can never wither, weaken, age, crumble, suffer any kind of ailment. There is a place which holds the whole world in its loving heart, and this place of love is ourself when we have renounced to find it within time, place, or circumstance. There is a virtue in not expecting from body, mind, world, experience, what they can never give us. There is a virtue in resting where we are, where we swallow body, mind, world in an instant, and are free in spite of circumstances.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)

~~~

.

Website:
– Paul Cézanne (Wikipedia)

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

.

Our Human Condition

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Winter Scene on the Ice’ – Jan van Goyen, 1641 – WikiArt

There is not a person in a thought, or in an assembly of thoughts. Not anymore than there is a person in a body or an emotion, or an activity of the body, a reaction after the emotion. These are but things that exist, but don’t make the complexity and radiance required in there being a person, an animal, or any kind of entity. This world is populated by objects, by appearances, by bodies, but not by persons or entities as such. There are no persons, nobody here that could claim to have its own, independent, separate reality. To think that there is, is an illusion, an invention, one of our many well-rehearsed thoughts.

But of course, beliefs have magic. If we believe to be a person, then we are one. If we believe that there are individuals, a world, untold suffering, then the source is obliging. It will create the reality of one such world, will give us the suffering we claim to have, will manufacture all our many conflicts, which we have come to be attached to, and to believe in. Everything is only a temporary, dreamlike appearance in and of reality, but not reality itself. The more you will believe to be a person, the more you will be one. The more consistency this person will acquire, the more suffering he or she will experience, and the more conflictual will be the world, for you have given them a reality they do not have — except for the reality of consciousness.

We have to keep knowing that we are aware, that we are awareness itself. Being a person is about knowing, not about a body, or a handful of thoughts. The body comes second to knowing. There is knowing first, and then a whole world unfolds, makes itself known. The reality of the world is in knowing, not in there being a world, not in there being a person. Knowing takes it all, wins the game. We’ve got to be aware of that. Then the world is shining. So is the person. They may not be truly here, in reality, but they shine with the transparency of knowing.

Every entity that exists, finds its reality within, from an inside experience. So to be a person is not to be a person, not in its reality. We are a person only from the vantage point of a thought, a belief, a representation, but not from inside, not from the depth of being. There, there is no person, no separation, no suffering, only the infinite body of knowing. After all, could a world with its own individual reality be harmonious or beautiful? Or is beauty or harmony conferred to the world by the grander reality of knowing? A world with its reality conferred by thoughts, beliefs, contains conflict, difficulties, suffering, for it is not recognised for what it is. We have confused the world with our misunderstanding, have rendered it an insecure place, and have made ourself an insecure person, constantly seeking its security in the insecurity of a world, which obviously is a vain enterprise.

So if there ever is to be a person, there is a person in infinity. If there ever is to be a world, there is a world in eternity. The world, our body, our thoughts, are all playgrounds for the infinite. Nothing more. If we do not know that, then we will be a suffering self, a person, living amongst the endless conflicts of the world. If we know we are infinity, then the world will oblige, and acquire the colours of the infinite. As for us, we will be playing being a person, or a thought, but with none of the sufferings or conflicts usually attached with their invented reality. We will remain infinity, eternity, in all occasions, no matter how much we live in time and place, and adopt for a while the limited vantage point of a body and a mind. Our own infinite reality will stay the only reality there is.

Now, imagine a world, a society of people where the only reality there is, is the reality of the infinite, of the eternal. What would this world be? What would our many personhoods be? Where could our suffering and conflicts stand in infinity? Where would our life turmoil thrive in eternity? The whole world — conflict, suffering, everything — stands within one single belief or misunderstanding. For the rest, eternity only is the one shaping the world. Infinity the one making a person — that is our human condition.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Jan Van Goyen (1596-1656)

~~~

.

Website:
– Jan Van Goyen (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

.

The Immeasurable

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Study of Clouds over the Roman Campagna’ – Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, 1782 – Wikimedia

There is a vast empty field of knowing within our experience, if we’re looking for it. It is vast not in regard to its sheer dimension, for it has none. Its vastness comes from its being without dimension, limit or edge. It is behind or before everything that we have taken to be ourself, including our body, our thoughts, our alleged self. It is here, motionless, massive, lending its very essence to everyone and everything. It’s easy to miss it, for it has not the objective quality that everything has in experience. We live in a field of objects that we can see, hear, touch, measure, be aware of. We are so fond of them that we have made ourself an object too, pretending to be our body, our mind, our thoughts. We have such a fascination for objects that we have become blind to that which holds them, and pervades everything. We are blind to our own essence, to our vastness, limitlessness — to that which makes objects experienced.

The consistency of objects around us has only the consistency of that which is aware of them. Objects do not own their own private essence, and neither do we. They find their essence and habitation in that which knows them. So we live in a world that is not defined by its edges, its limits. We should always understand that we live in vastness. That our world is empty of its own essence, and is only the expression of our being aware of it. It will never have another substance than the substance of knowing. So we live in emptiness, in infinity. The body may have its limits and constraints, but we do not.

We are devoid of what binds and limits our body-mind-world. So we should live our life as if there were around us only an empty knowing. Try it, to live as if unconstrained, unlimited, expanded. See that this is the truth of your being, this being not limited by time or place, this being free. Don’t engage your thoughts as if they were objects, but see them as an emanation of the silence they are made of. Thoughts are variations of silence. They are silence’s oscillations. If we are unaware of that silence, thoughts will come to veil it. If we see silence as our own nature, they will be messengers of its eloquent wisdom.

So the reality of thoughts is only the reality of the silence that holds them. Just as objects have only the reality of the knowing that knows them. And just as we ourself have only the reality of our nature as pure knowing — not as a body, nor as a mind, nor as anything limited. Limitation too is borrowed from the infinity that holds it and allows it, as eternity holds time. Where would an idea of time be, if it wasn’t within the eternity out of which it can be divided in past, present, future? Where would an idea of place be, if it wasn’t in the very infinity that permits it to exist? The structure of time and space is only for the convenience of a body and mind. We ourself have no such convenience, no such limits.

The world has beauty for it borrows its essence from the beauty and purity of that which holds it, and builds its form and structure with bricks after bricks of empty being. Emptiness is the body of this world of beings and things, which it moulds or shapes with its creative fullness. For emptiness can only exist in the fullness of being. We are only because of our being ‘being’. We are full of our own being, which is revealed as the being of everyone and everything. So there is in ourself and of ourself only an immensity. We are immense when we cannot be measured or limited in any way by our thoughts, body, or self. If we notice that this is so, that we are made of that immensity, that we are immeasurable, then we will lend to the world that same immensity of ourself, and we will notice between everyone and everything an impenetrable likeness. This likeness is born of the oneness that is the secret core of everything, and of all apparent multitude.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819)

~~~

.

Website:
– Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

.

Hidden Fragrance

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Autumn’ – Andrew Wyeth – WikiArt

There is majesty in being your own gorgeous, naked self. But thoughts come and spoil it all. We are always running up and down the line of time, feeding on memories, fearing the future we imagine, leaning on our hopes and expectations, bleeding from our constant suffering, building multiple roads of escape. We never leave ourself alone, never stay with the peace that is naturally the nature of our being. We are always on the move, indulging in the landscape of our many objective experiences, getting lost in them — after all, they are so many, so attractive. They seem to hold the secret of our happiness. So we spend a lifetime shaping them to our convenience, but they are reluctant.

In fact our thoughts have become primary when they should be secondary. They have become the fabric of our life, along with our many experiences, when they should have stayed only an ornament. There is a ground that stays still and silent under our many involvements with things, perceptions, sensations. These crowd us by the thousands, but we should not be deceived. They will want us to believe that they are us — our one and only identity, but don’t listen. There is a oneness that is here taking them all in, enveloping them, lending them the quiet blanket of its peaceful, infinite making. So be careful where you put your emphasis on, what you choose to recognise yourself to be. You are not an aggregation of body and mind content. You are the quiet aware presence which holds the ten thousand things of experience in its loving bosom, and gives them a light to be seen and experienced. Put there your life emphasis, for that presence is your very lifeblood.

So be watchful of what you take yourself to be. Will you marry your identity with all things objective, or with what gives them the ground where they thrive, are born and die? Will you go with the passing or with the ever staying? Will you have a fascination for the many or for the One? Be careful to always stay where you truly are, where you were never born and could never die, where peace is like your true body — before you venture in experience — and where your silent being is seen as the home that harbours every portion of your life. This is how you stand where only the infinite is, and where place is like its humble attendant. This is how you have your days spent in eternity, and time is like its useful valet, for the sake of your daily activities. And that’s how you view your many activities and relationships as a gorgeous play, and the peace of your being as the space where they thrive and are nourished. Don’t let anybody make you think or feel otherwise: Peace is the crux and heart of your life — its sometimes hidden, sometimes revealed fragrance. 

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)

~~~

.

Website:
– Andrew Wyeth (Wikipedia)

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

.

An Impeccable Death

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Death of Buddha’ – Odilon Redon, circa 1899 – Wikimedia

It is striking to think that the day when we die is always today. It is not happening tomorrow, will not take place in the future. Death is for now. This is where and when it takes place. In the present. In presence. The death of the body, its ending, may take place in the future, but is not death. It doesn’t have the implications, the magnitude of it. The death of the body is like a wave that ceases to undulate, to imagine its difference, its conflicting attributes, and finally breaks before we notice that it is not what we are, that there is here, before it, as our very making and identity, an ocean of peace. This ocean is what death is — before we imagine to be a self that thinks itself separate.

We have been moulded in and as a presence that was never born and could never die. This inability to exist or appear as something distinct, or different, is real death. This incapacity to cease or find an ending at our being, is true ending. It is a place where we can never go. This place of being has no objectivity. It is nothing that we can be or project ourself to be. It is pure being, done, final, already perfected, unattached, a free fall. It is a death so complete that it has no object. It is not the death of something, of an object, of an entity — for such death is not truly death. It is the realisation that we are not what we have believed ourself to be. That there is not here an entity, a self that could be dying, that has an existence of its own. That realisation, and above all what is left here to be and live by, truly is death. And in that death is contained, concentrated, achingly shining, the whole of life.

So death is now. It is happening now without our noticing. It is achieved — our death, the one that we fear, that we have pushed away, that we don’t want to envisage, envision, is done, gone through already. It’s a matter of noticing what is — that we are not here, that nothing was born, that it would be curious to die, that what we are has no other attributes than being. How would you put to death something that is without attributes or qualities? How would you end something that was never born? Moreover, no appearance, or thing, or body, could ever die without it being the expression or the modulation of something untouched by death. That something exists deathless is the sine qua non for the existence of death itself. That’s why life itself thrives through the exercice of death. What is deathless is our being. It is being — that which we all share in, which we call eternity, or the infinite, for it is one, and being one, it cannot be measured, qualified, or put to death. That’s how we are immortal — through only being, which we share as the experience of love. Death is when we cannot die anymore. It is obliterating objectivity — therefore our existence as an entity. An impeccable death comes at this price.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

~~~

.

Website:
– Odilon Redon (Wikipedia)

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

.

A Universal Cure

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Creation of the World XIII’ (part) – Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, 1906 – WikiArt

The part that we’re playing is not small. We are not living in a corner, limited by the skin of our bodies, and the world is not limited to the time and space in which it seems to unfold and have its conflicts and sufferings. The world has a foot in the infinite. In fact not just a foot, it is bathed in infinity, in eternity, and so are we, we who have been made small and suffering entities by our limiting beliefs and prejudices. We are ruling the world with our thoughts and then blame ourself for it. For the results are of course as limited as our thoughts can be. We have made the world the hostage of our limitations, and its hostility is in fact our own, that we have projected unto it. We believe and think we can only play small and limited, but in fact, we haven’t quite seen ourself as we are, and from this blindness comes the entirety of the world’s agony, and ours too.

Fortunately, ours and the world’s true essence comes spilling over in every possible way through the manifestation of beauty, and through the many expressions of love or peace. That’s what makes it so attractive in spite of all, and that’s where we should be way more curious than we are. Beauty, love, intelligence, peace, are not created by the random structure of a body and the passing thoughts in our mind. This is not where they are manufactured. They are born of infinity and wholeness. They are the expressions of the One, which we can never own. We are in fact rather owned by them, embraced by the infinity that is their reality. We must surrender to this god given identity. We don’t have to play small. Would we think of god playing small? So why would we of ourself, who are like the arm and willpower of God in God’s dream? So we don’t have to play small in this world. We ought to play our given, sacred part. We ought to be what we are and recognise ourself and the world as a whole, indivisible being. A being that is nothing but our own, that is experienced here and now every time we say ‘I Am’, and that we are fortunate enough to share in.

Act on the world from within. Mould it from there, from the source of yourself and of the world, from the ground of being that you feel as your own being, and that is the common ground of all beings and all things. This ground has the best ability. Religions haven’t called it Paradise or Eden for nothing. There is always a truth behind every misunderstood word. This ground of being is where you can play big, from within, from the interior of everything and everyone. You don’t have to create a new reality. It’s already there within and without, for the taking and for the looking. This reality is already here, already yours. There is love and harmony woven in the fabric of life, just here and now in and as our given experience. Our efforts to heal ourself and the world are veiling this reality, and so are our limited thoughts, which carry the false reality of there being persons and separation instead of the reality of one being and the peace contained in the infinite. Our own unlimited being is the ground where we can play big, for it is as large as God’s being if we are willing to notice its real, undefeatable nature. In fact, being is a universal cure, and it’s always at hand.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911)

~~~

.

Website:
– Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (Wikipedia)

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

.

The Ending of Time

Posted on by Alain Joly

“Don’t wait for the right time, make this time right.” I read this quote lately, attributed to Neem Karoli Baba. Let’s meditate on it. For no uttering of a master is ever innocuous and randomly said. It comes from a deep source that is ever overflowing. If you do catch what it means, if you chew what these words contain of wisdom and truth, you will see how the now of time blends into the now of being. For there is no now of time. The now of time is a well-rehearsed illusion. Its only reality is practical, for the right functioning of the body in the field of experience. But there is one other reality that is here now, and this is the reality of yourself, of who you are truly in and as the eternal now of your being. In this newly discovered reality, you will notice that there is no possibility of waiting for the right time. The right time for an understanding is a handy projection to give you the hope that you need, and spare you an immediate death, a confrontation with your true self. Your hidden assumption behind the so-called ‘right time’ is: ‘You should better postpone. You should better wait. There is a sometime that will come right one day in the future. So keep at it. Keep meditating, keep practising. The fruit will come eventually. You will come to deserve it. But not here, not now. It is for another now — a future now.’ But let’s be cautious here. For the right time will never come. Of that I can assure you. It can’t. This time is not there. It has no reality. It is an escape. A postponing for your own sake. Cleverness at work. There is no waiting with truth. This timeless now that your being is made of, is the only time there is and will ever be. Assert this truth. Lean towards it. See that understanding already shines in and as your own being. Spare yourself the waiting. The ‘right time’ is a spiritual myth.

Make this time right. Make it the ever flowing home of your being. Feel that you are now, the now you seek in the future, and this now can never leave you. This now will never pass, and never come to be. This now has grown to infinite proportion. It envelops you. It cannot be pushed to another now, for now is always one. It has no duration. Feel that you are yourself this ‘right time’ which you want to postpone and find in the future. Sink into it. Make it disappear as time, and reveal its true identity as being. That’s how you make this time right: by being the being that you are. By living your truth. By sensing that what you are is not an object in time and space, but is the very container in which time and space can spread their limbs. Time is what thought has superimposed on the reality of being. If you stay at the level of time, it means that you are still living in your thoughts, and are lured by their promises. To make this time right is to go beyond thought. It is to pierce time through — which is yourself as thought — and discover that beyond time is a nature that is timeless. Beyond the idea of your being a separate, time-bound entity, is a presence that is always here, always now, and therefore always true and right. This presence doesn’t need a now to come into being. This presence is what you are, untouched by time or place, ignorant of even the possibility of ignorance, and devoid of any idea of lack or seeking. You will never again wait or expect to be anything other than what you are now, for being is your true and unavoidable, indissociable nature. From now on, this time of now will forever be the right one, for the simple reason that it bears within itself the ending of time, and the revealing of the unborn. In fact, the ultimate virtue of time is in the eternity that it hides.

.

~~~

Text and photo by Alain Joly

Quote by Neem Karoli Baba (1900-1973)

~~~

.

Website:
– Neem Karoli Baba (Wikipedia)

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

.