The Resting Place

Posted on by Alain Joly

“There is no resting place until the real comes into being.“
~ J. Krishnamurti (‘The World Within’)

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Where could we find a resting place, when we are running in a thousand directions for a sparkle of relief or happiness? Where could rest be, when we are constantly afflicted with every form of suffering and doubt? There is always something brewing in our mind, something that needs to be arranged or perfected. Dissatisfaction is rampant, forever displaying its multiple consequences and leaving us gasping for a peace that is eluding us again and again. In other words, we are stuck in an eternal roundabout, with no clear directions on offer, except for the same old directions that we have explored a thousand times, to no avail. Yet rest is an essential. We know it from intuition. We know it as our deepest knowledge, our only certainty in life. There is a home — of this we are certain. Otherwise we wouldn’t be running around in this constant, infatigable search for love, peace, joy, and the likes. Our stubborn seeking is a proof that the stamp of life is to be found in easiness, naturalness. We are not meant to struggle and strive.

It is interesting to notice that peace always comes in the form of a recognition. We are not here on uncharted grounds. We have explored this chamber of peace a thousand times before. Only we keep forgetting it. In fact, our search for peace and happiness in the field of objective experience is nothing but our many clumsy attempts at remembering. Yet in reality, not truly so. For we should rather proclaim that our search in the field of objective experience is nothing but our many successful attempts at forgetting. How do we forget that which cannot be forgotten? How do we miss the obvious? How do we obscure the light? Well, just by being a self in its own right. Just by thinking to be a self separated from the field of experience. And therefore looking in that field for experiences that will relieve us from our constant seeking. That’s the perfect catch-22. So we become choosy, selective, a slave to experience, forever oscillating between being its victim or its conqueror. But this unfortunate manoeuvre is what puts us afar from the peace we are looking for. Peace is in fact nothing but our deepest, most intimate identity as being. And experience is nothing but a vassal of peace when we have recognised who we truly are.

Only be that eternal being curled in and as your self, and no experience will ever be a source for joy or a cause for suffering. Let your being infuse in and as eternal being, and peace will appear to be the very structure of your self — its indestructible nature. Don’t ever go out for peace, but rather find it within, as the revelation of your utmost being. There is a cabinet of peace waiting for your noticing. It is that very place of rest that you have been longing for, and expecting to find in situations and circumstances, when it is simply the very expression of your inner sense of being. See this peace as your only reality. Be of it, as much as it is of you. And let it pervade your being until it has conquered every corner of experience. Peace will then be seen as the fabric of every thing and being encountered. You will start noticing it in the many figures of life. In every bird flying across the sky. In every towel used to dry your hands. In the business of city hassle. Even in the harsh words addressed to hurt you. Peace is like a torrent of rain falling at your doorstep. It will wash your self clean of any impurities of experience. As it will equally clean experience of any residue of your self. Then will you and experience walk hand in hand under the vault of an unbreakable peace. Each intimately woven with the other, yet both being the children or emanation of an indissoluble unity.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Bibliography:
– ‘The World Within: You Are the Story of Humanity’ – by J. Krishnamurti – (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)

Website:
– J. Krishnamurti

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Arise, O Krishna!

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Rasa Mandala Dance of Krishna and the Gopis’ – Anonymous, 1760 – Wikimedia

Arise, O Krishna! This is not a time for discretion. There is enchantment around the lake of experience. Ladies have come with fine clothes and jewellery to be adorned by you. You have to be their cup-bearer, the one presence giving to every forms of experience their gorgeous light. For what is a thought without the cup in which it grows, stands for a second, and disappears? Krishna, you alone are the meaning and beauty attached to every object that inhabit our daily living. So this is not a time to hide, but to reveal, to shed light, to glorify. The Gopis — the milkmaids of the Krishnaite folklore — have come to you in the effervescence of their longing. You are the reason for their looking so beautiful. They come to you to be revealed and embellished by your presence, by the one being that is their most precious jewel. So enter the round, O Krishna, and dance with every one of them.

Give to the thoughts that come and wander for a time in our minds their chamber of peace. Clothe them with clarity and intelligence. Appease the suffering of which they are the vehicle, and offer them the rest they deserve. Don’t let anyone unattended. Not a feeling should be left alone, frightened or sad, without benefiting from your warm embrace. No sensations should come along without your building for them a temple of awareness. Be the one present for all, infallible, unswerving. Should a Gopi be lost in the contemplation of nature, and you are here showering her vision with beauty. You are the noble harmony of every experience, and what confers to the dance of life the sweetest of melodies. And have you noticed, O Krishna, how your absence can throw a shadow of sorrow on every experience that passes unseen by you? And have you witnessed how acute is our longing for you, when you withdraw your loving gaze from the many happenings of our lives?

So now, with flowers in their hair, and boundlessness in their hearts, do the Gopis join in your endless round, O Krishna. You hold everyone, every experience, every object that stands lost and alone, in your loving arms. You create around them an armour of beauty, and clothe them in truth’s brightest apparel. That’s how we find the peace at the heart of experience: by marrying every appearance to the gentle presence that holds them. And that presence is ourself — who we are — now giving shape to every perception, every occurrence, sheltering them in the being that gives them protection and form. That’s how the Gopis are experienced as an emanation of Krishna, and how Krishna is seen to be their primordial cause. So now arise, O Krishna! Truly arise! We have come here in celebration of truth, to contemplate you and be contemplated by you. The set for the dance has been arranged. We have come to you enamoured as humble milkmaids, as the fervent Gopis of your heart.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Anonymous (1760-65)

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Website:
– Raslila (Wikipedia)

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Let’s be very Clear!

Posted on by Alain Joly

What a pity! That truly is a pity isn’t it, that the Divine isn’t an object? Consider for a moment: if God’s nature was objective, a thing to be acquired, we’d all be running after it with eagerness. Nothing could stop us from getting it. The path to it would be clear, easy, rehearsed a thousand times, with unmistakable steps. We would all be happy — the shy, lazy ones only in a small measure, but clearly so; and the greedy ones probably piling chunks after chunks of happiness at home, for the bad, chilly days. No doubt that after a while, happiness would be placed in the market place, to be simply bought — a democratic God, available to all. Only, God would then become so pricy, that only the rich amongst us could afford it. The poorest would have to stay unhappy, miserable. After some time, the rich ones would no doubt find God boring, to be replaced by another more exotic good. And happiness would be set aside, discarded as a thing of a time past. Dreadful prospect, isn’t it?

But thank God, the Divine wasn’t made into an object! So none of this could ever have happened. Not to God! To anything else yes, but not to god, not to happiness! The price for God had been set, right from the beginning, as an inestimable one. And the way to acquire true happiness was made into such a subtle, noble pursuit, that no money could ever be of any use for it. We may try, as we did for centuries, to make God’s being into another subtle object, something convenient, setting methods, churches, temples, ashrams, where it could be practised, and happiness made into a precious ornement to be obtained. But none of that was found to be effective, in final analysis. Only a few rare, lofty, unmatchable seekers were able to find God where it truly lived, and make themselves so available to it as to become of it themselves. These rare beings have found there a joy so ineffable as to appear unreachable, and God was downgraded to a celestial being or an exotic state, to be idealised and worshipped. That’s not yet an ideal situation, is it?

So let’s start again and be very clear from the beginning! God has never been, will never be, and could never be found as any kind of object. It is not something to be attained, and its presence is not at a distance from us. The difficulty in recognising its presence lies in God’s utter subjectivity, and in the abundance of it in ourself. So don’t move from where you already are. This place of yourself is the only suitable enough spot for happiness to thrive, and a precious enough container for God’s humble, sublime home. And don’t wait for another time than this present time of now. God is only accessible here and now. You will find it nowhere else. Stay there. In yourself. As yourself. But go to the very heart of it, at the core of what you are and always have been. Who you already are is the secret cabinet where God dwells, and has dwelled all this time, without your noticing.

Now I’ll tell you a secret. Ask yourself the question: What is the only portion of my present experience that is exempt of objects, of things known? Find this place in yourself where you cannot be any thing, where you cannot be located, where you cannot even be named, where you are made no existence at all, where you cannot know anything but your own present being, where you and the whole world can be embraced in one subtle presence that cannot be found but is paradoxically all there is, all that you were, and all you will ever be. Feel this presence in yourself, as yourself. See that you have been in God’s home all along. Gently notice its glory being slowly revealed. Delve in it, and as it, patiently. This is what God’s being feels like — that subtlest presence that you are in fact referring to when saying ‘I’. There! Do you feel it? Rest and live only as that.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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A Cathedral of Grace

Posted on by Alain Joly

We always want to be at a distance from experience. In fact, we keep behind, we don’t get involved — at least not entirely. We are aloof. We keep experience at bay. That allows for a certain safety, we think. But that distance is the distance we keep from ourself. This is the chasm we have opened, through which we have numbed ourself. So we had to fill this chasm with a belief in separation, with the idea of a being separate from other beings and things. In this chasm is born our loneliness, and the vast field of our search for happiness. This search is but our desperate attempt to fill the gap we have created and nourished. And this chasm is how we have been made to think ceaselessly about ourself. How we have been made to judge, hope, project, regret, complain, expect, believe. These are — we think — the measure of our control in life. But they are in fact the loss of our innocence. For this chasm or distance is what our suffering is made of. It is the way we have found to not be wholly being — being appearing to be a dangerous flame, of a consuming nature. So we have stepped safely aside. In this keeping away from the flame, in this refusal to die, is our chasm, our whole precipice of pain.

But this flame of being is in fact our fountain of peace. It is what makes us present, uncompromisingly one with experience, with nowhere to go but ourself, and nothing to be but that which we already are. In this place of being, we are not allowed distance, and time is proscribed. There is nowhere to go in being. Nothing to be but being. This flame of being will cancel the distance that was your safety. It will devour you, digest all your hopes and projections, burn your regrets, crush your fear, and debunk all idea of separation. You are thus crashing in being, and are consumed in its flame. Experience is now revealed to be nothing but the experiencing of your self within your self. You are given no room for separation, and are discovering yourself to be the sublime core of all that can possibly exist. You may look all you want, you won’t find yourself anywhere, for the simple reason that there is no location for you to be in. And you will find no space for a self to have experience, for the experiencer has dissolved in experiencing. This merging of your self with experience is how suffering is made impossible. This is how you are made present here and now, one with everything and everyone. And this is how you are made to feel in awe with what you see, hear, and touch. You are ravished to just be, and are suddenly placed at the teeming heart of your self, unable to not fully, gorgeously be. You are entering a cathedral of grace, and are placed in a well of light, amongst songs of glory.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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On Passing Away

Posted on by Alain Joly

We think that most of our life is taking place in the field of body, thoughts, feelings, and sense perceptions — all of these making a self and a world, and the myriads of experiences that come as a result. This is what our life seems to be for the most part. But look again. Because in fact, no. It is not like this. That’s where the misunderstanding lies. Most of our human experience — not to say the whole of it — is spent in being. In emptiness. In vastness. Of course there is a body here that can be sensed. And feelings can be felt. And objects perceived. And thoughts are occurring all the time. And with them a sense of a separate self has been born. And all this joyous team seems to have acquired reality, and has in consequence been cursed with a measure of drama and suffering. But much was missed along the way. For in fact, none of these really took the place we imagined. None of it is taking any place, any space, or occupying any length of time. For the whole space of experience is already occupied by our sense of being. Life in its totality is made of one indivisible reality that fills our experience to the brim. This reality as being precedes experience — experience being nothing but being manifesting itself within itself.

So this is an announcement for the deceased self that we have been engrossed in all this time. Body, thoughts, feelings, senses, will continue their existence, but will lose their identity as a self. Custody will be returned to whom it always and forever belonged: pure, unlimited being. In its quality of the only inheritor of the feeling of being, ‘I’ or consciousness is now made the one true identity for all selves, and the only essence or ‘is-ness’ for all objects of experience. For we are in fact eternity, which our presence as a time-bound self has veiled. We are in truth the infinity of being, which our insistance in being a separate being has limited. And we are in reality peace itself, which our relentless seeking for happiness has sent in the hidden. There never was a self, and there never was a world. Not in the way we have imagined it. Not with the reality we have conferred to them. Being has drowned them long ago; and has given them the only reality to which they are entitled to belong. That’s how anyone, and anything, and any experience can be made to rest in peace: In giving in to being. In passing away.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Turner’s Moon

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Moonlight, A Study at Millbank’ – J.M.W. Turner, 1797 – WikiArt

This text is directly inspired by an analogy used by the teacher of non-duality Rupert Spira. I found it to have such evocative power that words started to pour out and I couldn’t stop them. This text is therefore dedicated to Rupert and his timeless vision and teaching.

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Sometime a painting just comes timely to move your heart. It is a gorgeous landscape painting, depicting a coastline and the sea, with boats and fishermen in the moonlight. At Millbank, Turner was painting in dark, subtle hues of black, blue, and purple browns, to define a night, leaving here and there traces of light, golden reflections on the water. In the wide expanse of the sky, he had left one portion of the painting untouched. Pure as white. Undarkened. For the painter had a view in mind. He was to paint a moon, bright and resplendent. And no moon was ever so bright.

This part of the scenery that wasn’t painted, it was you. You, before you were made a person, before the identification with thoughts, feelings, body, story, hurts, memories, projections, beliefs. The nature of the moon was that part of you that was left unseen, unexplored, but that had quietly illuminated you all along, giving you a self and an identity without your knowing, lending you a hidden strength for your bruised self, and bathing you in its unheard silence. It was the trusted one, the one reliable thing in a life of relentless changes and challenges. It was the peace of your true self, the precious being that had been covered up by the night of objective experience. This is the moon Turner had meant to convey.

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A meditation on the evocative power of Turner’s painting… (READ MORE…)

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Anything at All

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Fenêtre ouverte sur la Seine’ – Pierre Bonnard, 1911 – Wikipedia

Isn’t it humbling to realise that whatever experience you or anybody may have, whatever experience there is anywhere, anyhow, from any thing, at any time, in any dimension of life, will come down to being just this, this pure and impersonal sense of being that is the source and essence of all selves and things. You may live a child’s experience deep in the Amazon forest or a tree standing proudly in the Californian air. You may be a woman or a man in Paris, Kathmandu, or a lost, forgotten village in Greenland. You may live rich and imbued with yourself or excruciatingly poor, sleeping on a pavement somewhere, forgotten from all. You may be an ant living the life of an ant, in a scrumptious colony of fellow ants, or a dignified elephant leading the herd, the matriarch in her world. You may be an expression of utmost violence or anger, or lingering in total peace and appreciation of the world. Or an energetic horse running in the morning dew, or a distant owl hooting quietly before falling asleep. Or maybe a wave crashing in the ocean, or a whale flapping the water, or a little anchovy swimming in the big silver mass of its shoal. Or a soaring eagle, or any wild flower of any wild mountain meadow, or that heavy stone there, resting in a river bed. Or the lamp at your bedside. You may be anything that stands, sits, lies, flies, swims, exists, loves, suffers, ages or dies. You may be the majestic suns and planets of the universe dancing around, following their laws and trajectories. You may be god himself, or the goddess herself. The thousands and thousands expressions of devotion towards the divine, any human being lost in prayer. You may be just a thought. One word ushered at a lover’s ear. Or a gentle wind. Or a wonder. Or a tear. Or a sigh. Or nothing at all. A dream. Empty space. Anything. You may be anything at all. — And this is eternity. And the infinite is at your door. Here. Now. Love expressing itself. Being being ignited. Sameness. God’s presence felt.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)

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Website:
– Pierre Bonnard (Wikipedia)

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