Of Dimitry’s Prayer

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘A Quiet Monastery’ – Isaac Levitan, 1890 – Wikimedia

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“Open, O doors and bolts of my heart,
that Christ the King of Glory may enter!”
~ Dimitry of Rostov

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Prayer is an invitation for what is already here to show itself up. It is not that you already know who you are, and that you-the person are begging for a supreme entity, or for an other, to come and soothe you, for an external, benevolent providence to shower you with its benefits. Remember that there is no other entity than the entity of your self, no other providence than the providence of recognising who you are. Nothing, in matters of peace and happiness, could ever enter into you that is not already there. So don’t make that mistake over and over again: to wait for someone knocking at your door, to hope for something to fulfil you, to expect a new element to enter your life. The benefit of life is not with something you receive, but in what you recognise yourself to be. So prayer is prior. It is not in reaching but in realising, not in expecting but in recognising, not in receiving but in noticing, and not in having or possessing, but in being.

So always pray as if you were utterly alone. Pray as if you couldn’t ask anything, anyone, any favour or event, to give you something that is not already there in you, as you, expressed as your very own being. Notice that nothing of worth could ever enter your house that is not already present, already eating at your table, already thinking the thoughts you think, already dreaming the dreams you dream. This is how Dimitry’s prayer ought to be uttered.

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More reflections on a prayer by Dimitry of Rostov… (READ MORE…)

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A Trail of Glory

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The River of Light’ – Frederic Edwin Church, 1877 – WikiArt

If you happen to feel your being one day, don’t let it go out of sight. Follow it everywhere it is. Let it be your only guide. Be gently intoxicated by it, by yourself, by who you are, truly, when you have relinquished this obsession of being a body, and a mind. This is your one and only duty, to stay there, with being, to abide in it, and let yourself be moved by its unmoving current. Don’t go off at a tangent. Don’t take a single step, unless you have with you, as you, this being that you are, and that you could crush at any time, with the single thought that you have your own, separate being. Remember it to be your ultimate identity, the widest circle of your self, without any border, limitless, unfettered by any condition whatsoever.

Feel it in you, as being you, when you go to apparent places. Being tends to stay at home and let your body do the moving. For being never goes anywhere — it is not the travelling type. This is how you can simply go to buy some bread in your street and live a captivating adventure, or explore the farthermost recesses of the earth while feeling quietly at home. Feel that you as being are housing the world, that being is the landscape in which your life is taking place. So be only concerned with the landscape and life will then flow of its own accord. Don’t start believing that you have a life of your own. That’s only the prerogative of the suffering self. No life can be lived happily with an architecture or a design outside being.

And remember that being is a love affair. A renouncing of your own limited self, for a marriage with the beloved truth of your being. A free, princely, bounteous bowing to the infinite. So don’t start making an effort to be, for any effort is an attempt from the part of a belief to reassess its position as a distant, separate, other being. That’s how your nature becomes unseen, when you have replaced it with your own fake one, with your own invented self. For being never hides, if you don’t let it disappear under the weight of your seeking it, of your being somebody that is lacking. So don’t let your being escape you. Don’t lose its trail of joy and glory. Don’t be the one fleeing, running away, desiring to be yourself, by yourself, and then seeking to bring yourself back to the happiness that you have lost, in so many, so many immoderate, superfluous, inappropriate ways. Seek your bliss in being — where it only lies.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900)

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Website:
– Frederic Edwin Church (Wikipedia)

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A Light to Yourself

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Sun’ – Edvard Munch, 1911-16 – WikiArt

There will come a time when words will slow you down. When you will want to explore yourself on your own, without the help of a book or a teacher, free from explanation or guidance. You will want to follow your own trajectory, to be a grownup, and experience your beloved, impersonal, undivided self by yourself and through yourself. You will want, as Krishnamurti said, to “be a light to yourself“. You will find your own security there, in this light, at the source of your transparency, where you will find no division from where to be insecure. You will find your happiness bubbling from your infinite being, where no self can be located, and therefore no suffering. And you will be under the authority of your own being, that will show you the way, through a door eternally open and inviting. You will be on an eternal visit of yourself. And you will meditate, not to reach who you are, not to get there, but to rejoice in it, and give your whole attention to your beloved — though you already have her, have him, all day, on all occasions, near you, close, so very close to you. And you will feel her love as being so fully yours, that you will need no incentive, no set hours, to be being her own being. And you will see around you, and within you, so much beauty, that you will not have to look for it, other than by being with him, and within him. And you will be in need of no thought, of no TV show, to distract yourself from yourself, for how would you want to be distracted from being so wholly in love with the love of your life? So books will have become a bore to get you there, but you’d still read them as you read poetry. And a teacher will be of no use to you, but you’d still be eager for the company of a friend. And you’d go about your life with confidence, because you’re not alone to deal with it. Rather, your life will have become your being, and your being, your life. And at the same time, you will be alone, self-sufficient, in no need of anything, of anyone, to be fully yourself, to be happy. Therefore, you’d give yourself to all, to everything, you’d be a sharer of being, and a passionate lover of beings, and of things. Yes. That’s it. You’d be a light to yourself. A light to yourself.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

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Websites:
– Edvard Munch (Wikipedia)
– J. Krishnamurti

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Perfect Days

Posted on by Alain Joly
’Perfect Days’ – by Wim Wenders (with Koji Yakusho)

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“All my films deal with how to live.”
~ Wim Wenders

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Why do we watch a movie or enjoy any piece of art but for the joy, happiness, or relief we derive from such activity? Well, sometimes we use a movie not so much to feel, but rather to stop feeling. We want to be alleviated from our sense of boredom, or be distracted from our constant worry, or have the lowest ambition to be rewarded with pleasure, plain simple pleasure which, if not delivered, will make us move on to something else. Film as an art form is ambiguous, for it has in itself an entertaining power which makes it the prey to our most suspect desires. Well, Wim Wenders, in this movie, wasn’t going to give way to that ubiquitous trap and fall. With ‘Perfect Days’, he made a movie in which there is no desire to be had, which offers no suspense, no excitement, no resolution of any kind, but from which you would never want to move away. A movie that describes the quiet, plain, orderly living of a man whose job is to clean public toilets in Tokyo.

Hirayama lives each and everyday as if it was a perfect day. For him, there is no possibility of failure in life. And he makes sure that boredom is an impossibility. So he cares. Hirayama cares about everything he does, and seems to be profoundly related to his modest home, to his morning toilet, and to the watering of his plants. He does what he has to do, with no judgment or resistance. He doesn’t mind. He feels his inner freedom. He has everything he needs, so he smiles at life and life smiles back at him. He breathes when he steps outside and looks at the sky as for the first time, the wonder of it all. Then he buys himself a can of coffee from a local vending machine, opens his van, sits, drinks a sip, chooses a song from a bunch of cassette tapes, lights the engine, drives, and listens to ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ by The Animals. For that’s where he is now, in the house of the rising sun, going to his work through the sprawling suburbs of Tokyo’s morning, undisturbed, confident, present.

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A reflection on the film ‘Perfect Days’ by Wim Wenders… (READ MORE…)

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The Watcher

Posted on by Alain Joly

I remember the old odd days when I would sit in the woods on a tree trunk, or on a bench by a meadow, and watch nature playing its part in front of me. I would just watch, thinking very little. I’d leave my life aside, with all its worries and miserable sides. It was not worth looking at, not now, not at this point. For now I’d be a watcher. I knew there might have been a secret here, in this watching, in this looking at anything, at shadowing trees, flowers dancing in the breeze, stack of woods, clouds drifting in the sky. I intuited that it was all there, contained in the watching, enveloped within my experience. In this gaze was the answer. In this questioning was life throwing its identity at me, revealing its essence at last. At least I believed so. But it had to be a skilled watching. It had to have no intention intertwined with intention. It had to stand on this fine line. There was a strange alchemy taking place here, somewhere between the seer and the seen. A sacred, secret brew where reality could be unveiled, if only I could watch with the right, finely tuned focus.

After all, what other reality do we have than this one simple reality of ourself? What other than this presence? Just this presence, this watching, this being, this feeling. Just this. After all, this is all there is. I may look as much as I might, I won’t find anything outside of it. It is all there. I am stuck with it. So I might as well be there, stay there, dissect it, pull it apart. I might learn something of myself, of this looking at something, at anything. As if right there was concealed a hint never caught before, never encompassed, something which could resolve a miserable life. I was quite certain that if I looked hard enough, not at what I was seeing, not at anything out there, but at what this watching is made of, what it consists of, then I might free fall a long way within myself, to land in a new place, a new way of being, a freshness. So I stayed silent, enclosing myself with myself, and watched. Some may call it meditation. But I didn’t know that.

Well, my intuition was right. There is right here, a secret to be felt, guarded behind the limitations of my mind. A hint that my thoughts had concealed, along with my feelings, my identifications, memories, perceptions, sufferings — all that endless, formidable toil. And just there, right in the middle of it, something awakens, slowly pervades it all, and shows me what I am. Ah! If only we could clothe all that we are doing with this quality of watching. And all that we are watching with this quality of being. When all that you are looking at is looking at you. When all that is seemingly other is discovered to be yourself. When you can live and breathe at last, and feel who you are truly. And stay there, in the woods, in the sunlight, amongst shadows, but above all in your newly discovered self. There only exists the song of a bird, the river rushing by, and the silence breathing into it all, the fantasia of my life suddenly melted within one single being. This is where duality is stripped of its reality. Where the One has it all. And where the thousand things — including my old self — are clothed and replaced by their essence.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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The River of Peace

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Landscape with a River’ – Aleksey Savrasov – WikiArt

I think it is important to rest in the peace of our being. To gain that position and stay there, rejoice in it, find one’s home in it. To have peace as our perennial identity. To live in its aura. Then we might hang one thing on the door of our sweet cabinet of peace, a notice with these simple words written on it: ‘Do not disturb’. Why should I be disturbed? Should a thought come, out of habit, and visit me, claiming to break my peace for an adventure out of myself, in search of a moment of excitement, a share of happiness, or an elusive instant of peace, then I might gently tell her to stay away. Why should I break my peace for an activity whose only purpose is to find the peace that I already am? Peace then becomes my best manual to navigate through the many demands of life. It will ease my many battles with choice. It will bring my thousand little craving digressions down to a few necessary ones, that will serve me with something that I don’t already have. It will simplify my quest. I won’t have to be so dispersed, grabbing every opportunity to gain a shadow of peace when peace shines for me like a thousand suns. Peace is like a wide, silent, powerful river that follows one destination only: itself. It won’t deviate from its course. It is already made of the many rivulets that come unable to really feed it, of the thousands raindrops that fall and won’t trouble it, of the ocean that it never in a thousand years needs to expect. As for the storms, they only become an opportunity for the river of peace to flood every single thing found on the shore of experience, drowning them in its everlasting course and presence. What would a storm of peace be? What could it be but the sweetest of contamination, where every possible experience is discovered to be peace itself being stirred out of itself, and landing back within itself. This is when you might change the notice on your cabinet’s door and write simply: ‘Come in for peace.’

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Alexei Savrasov (1830-1897)

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Website:
– Alexei Savrasov (Wikipedia)

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The Sieve of Life

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Mont Sainte-Victoire’ – Paul Cezanne, 1890 – WikiArt

Consciousness wants to have it its ways. That’s how we meet life on such a bumpy road: Because we oppose the naturalness of being or consciousness, with our views and ideas. We too want to have it our ways. So there is a friction here at play. This friction is our suffering. This friction is the expression of our ego. It is our way of fighting through life, of being stubborn, willing, desiring, at the expense of the truth of our being. The world is not just a world. It is truth in action, with its laws and momentum. They cannot be ignored. They require our understanding, our consensus, our unanimity and harmony, our unison. This unison commands us to look in the same direction, in that very sacred meadow where being can be met. Don’t look for the world to be such a place of meeting. There is an obligatory passage before you can meet the world and your life at the level they must be met. This passage is yourself at its deepest. It is but the hidden expanse of your being. So being is your exploration field. It is your developer liquid, that will give your life its true colours. This is how the world is to be met — through the intercession or filter of being. This is where you will be handed the gift that you have been relentlessly looking for. A gift that will never disappoint you, for it has been uniquely designed for your needs.

So meet the world in being. Meet your life in being. You will smoothen your bumpy road into a path of truth. Life will stop being an achievement, to be only the natural consequence of your internal exploration. Contemplate your being in all occasions, and you will render to your life its ultimate, pristine, innate perfection. You will stop using your life for your own private objectives, distorting it to your conditioned, egoistic convenience. Cease trying to acquire things, bending them to meet your own preferences. Notice that the harshness of life is always on your side. We command suffering and conflict, we invite difficulties. They are the pointed head of the army of our egotistical tendencies. Remember separation to be your worst enemy. Don’t let it come through your door, no matter how seductive it may appear to you. Don’t make it your special guest. Any entity that forms inside your self as an object is only a treacherous self. Trust only formless, undivided being. Pass your life experience through its sieve. Let being be your guide, that one thing which comes first, which is preeminent in your life, and through which life ought to be lived. Sieve your life through the natural influence of being. That’s how you avoid friction. That’s how you annihilate conflict. That’s how you kill all possibility of suffering in the egg. And that’s how you invite the gift of happiness, love, beauty, and eternity in your life — these coveted needs of yours.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)

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Website:
– Paul Cezanne (Wikipedia)

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