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Post by laughter on Jan 24, 2014 22:35:02 GMT -5
This is the discussion thread for the Emptiness Dancing Impromptu Book Club. Anyone is welcome to the club at any time! Please see the Unmoderated version of the thread if you're curious as to how the thread will be moderated. The intent is to stimulate discussion based on quotes from the book that are posted here. ================ Here is Shawn's review of Adya. From the first few chapters of the book, I'd describe this as something written for someone who is curious as to what all this talk of realizing one's true nature is all about. Some facts from the editor's introduction: Adya was born Stephen Gray and is a spiritual public speaker and teacher from the San Francisco area, and the editor hints that he was raised by hippies. His background includes a 15 year Zen practice that led to becoming a Zen Dharma instructor. The book is described as an expression of the talks Adya gives in satsang, and his presentation and interests are described as resonant with his Zen roots as well as the traditions of Aidvaita, both ancient and traditional or as expressed by more modern figures such as Nisargadatta. |
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Post by glimmer on Jan 25, 2014 3:56:29 GMT -5
On his description of "awakening":
"I didn't tell my teacher anything about the experience for about three months because it seemed pointless. Why would anyone need to know this?"
Chapter 2 para 15. Why indeed. Ultimately his expression of it became beneficial to others. |
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Post by glimmer on Jan 25, 2014 4:04:01 GMT -5
When we really start to take a look at who we think we are, we become very grace prone. We start to see that while we may have various thoughts, beliefs, and identities, they do not individually or collectively tell us who we are. A mystery presents itself: we realize that when we really look at ourselves clearly and carefully, it is actually astounding how completely we humans define ourselves by the content of our minds, feelings and history. May forms of spirituality try to get rid of thoughts, feelings and memories -- to make the mind blank, as if that were a desirable or spiritual state. But to have the mind blank is not necessarily wise. Instead, it is more helpful to see through thoughts and to recognize that a thought is just a thought, a belief a memory. Then we can stop binding consciousness or spirit to our thoughts and mental states. chapter 1, para 16 "Then we can stop binding consciousness or spirit to our thoughts and mental states." And who is left then in the stillness that is not a thought and not a memory? And does who is left need any I-dentification at all. |
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Post by silver on Jan 25, 2014 5:06:21 GMT -5
What is so beautiful about awakening is that when you are no longer functioning through your conditioning, then the sense of "me" who was living that life is no longer there. Most people are familiar with a sense of a me living this life. But when this is seen through, the experience is that what really runs and operates this life is love, and this same love is in everybody all the time. When it is working its way through your personal stuff, it gets dissipated, but it is still there. Nobody owns this love. Everybody is essentially the manifestation of this love. Chapter 1 para 20I know I may not be 'fully' awakened, or aware of being fully awakened, but I get this. In recent times, I've become a Pin(terest)Head, and just the other day, was looking at faces from people all over the world, and the hundreds of portait photographs were professionally done, and were incredibly beautiful.....in each picture, the eyes were looking directly into the camera - directly into the eyes of the photographer - directly into my eyes, and you could feel this love (or maybe there's a better word) that belongs to no one and everyone - that connection. (Or is this just my imagination?) The thing is, I think I've always had a sense of that connection because as a young kid, I used to draw, and portraits were my specialty so, I think that explains or helps explain how I got here. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 25, 2014 8:13:11 GMT -5
What is so beautiful about awakening is that when you are no longer functioning through your conditioning, then the sense of "me" who was living that life is no longer there. Most people are familiar with a sense of a me living this life. But when this is seen through, the experience is that what really runs and operates this life is love, and this same love is in everybody all the time. When it is working its way through your personal stuff, it gets dissipated, but it is still there. Nobody owns this love. Everybody is essentially the manifestation of this love. Chapter 1 para 20love without condition is just the very thing sans it no bunny pancake on head for to take wing. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 25, 2014 8:16:01 GMT -5
What is so beautiful about awakening is that when you are no longer functioning through your conditioning, then the sense of "me" who was living that life is no longer there. Most people are familiar with a sense of a me living this life. But when this is seen through, the experience is that what really runs and operates this life is love, and this same love is in everybody all the time. When it is working its way through your personal stuff, it gets dissipated, but it is still there. Nobody owns this love. Everybody is essentially the manifestation of this love. Chapter 1 para 20in each picture, the eyes were looking directly into the camera - directly into the eyes of the photographer - directly into my eyes, and you could feel this love (or maybe there's a better word) that belongs to no one and everyone - that connection. (Or is this just my imagination?)
The thing is, I think I've always had a sense of that connection because as a young kid, I used to draw, and portraits were my specialty so, I think that explains or helps explain how I got here.
It's the only thing that isn't your imagination. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 26, 2014 17:03:12 GMT -5
After experiencing the "nice moment," you then reconstitute your familiar sense of identity. But actually these opportunities are like little peepholes through which the truth is experienced. If you start to watch for them, you will notice them. All of a sudden the mind will stop thinking of its story. You might notice that your separate identity or sense of a me just took a break, and whatever you truly are didn't disappear. chapter 1, para 22Very similar to what Tolle advises and I take this to refer to what Niz calls "the witness". Unlike Tolle, Adya is not very subtle with respect to what a sense of a separate "me" means in relation to this. Adya is like an iron fist in a velvet glove. The point can be made that the witness is an intellectual contrivance that can be attached to and that can obscure what Adya describes as what he saw on the day he asked the question "what is it that hears the bird chirp". The conceptual tension between these ideas -- that the witness sees itself in everything that the witness clearly perceives as what it is not -- is what he's referring to with his reference to paradox in the chapter. As I've said elsewhere today, it seems to me that the question of "what is it that witnesses?" is where insight ends and devotion begins. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 27, 2014 14:41:10 GMT -5
there's one thing that can get through the eye of the smallest possible needle. Space, your own nothingness, can get right through into heaven. None of us can take one shred of a self-centered identity with us. ... We recognize that formless spirit is the essence, the animated presence of everything. chapter 1, para's 24 and 25absence With that first step, when I realized that what was looking through my eyes and senses was awakeness or spirit rather than conditioning or memory, I saw that the same spirit was actually looking through all the other pairs of eyes. ... It is paradoxical that the more this spirit or consciousness starts to taste itself, not as a thought or idea or belief, but as just a simple presence of awakeness, the more this awakeness is reflected everywhere. The more we wake up oout of bodies and minds and identities, the more we see that bodies and minds are actually just manifestations of that same spirit, that same presence. chapter 1 para's 18 and 19form is emptiness, emptiness is form and it all dances |
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Post by laughter on Feb 2, 2014 23:21:58 GMT -5
Some human beings find it easier to be open minded and some find it easier to be open hearted but to really be here now is to be both. When you are open, you do not filter the experience nor do you barricade yourself. You do not try to defend yourself, but you open up to the mystery by questioning what you believe. So is it an irony that the way toward the end of fear is through the ultimate in what the person would perceive as vulnerability? Is it an irony, or perhaps, reflective of something deeper, something that the mind perceives as a contradiction but isn't. That which is untouchable, unbreakable and beyond any assailant needs no defense. The point is not to get rid of thoughts or feelings, but just not to feel located inside of them. We never stop feeling. There will always be ideas that we will agree are true, and others that we'll call false. We don't stop loving or liking and we don't always stand stoic and silent in the face of the maelstrom. It's just that these thoughts and feelings are seen for what they are. They're seen for appearances. Nothing that appears to us is separate from us, but nothing that appears to us is what we are. When you give yourself this amazing gift of not trying to find yourself within some particular concept or feeling, then the openness expands until your identity becomes more and more the openness itself, rather than some point of reference in the mind called a belief or a particular feeling in the body. I'm reminded of Niz: Niz: To be aware is to be awake. Unaware means asleep. You are aware anyhow; you need not try to be. What you need is to be aware of being aware. Be aware deliberately and consciously; broaden and deepen the field of awareness. You are always conscious of the mind, but you are not aware of yourself as being conscious. Do I hear someone saying "but isn't that a practice??" -- I say turn that question inward, because it's really one of self-inquiry in the form of "what is it that practices?". |
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Post by enigma on Feb 3, 2014 18:20:39 GMT -5
After experiencing the "nice moment," you then reconstitute your familiar sense of identity. But actually these opportunities are like little peepholes through which the truth is experienced. If you start to watch for them, you will notice them. All of a sudden the mind will stop thinking of its story. You might notice that your separate identity or sense of a me just took a break, and whatever you truly are didn't disappear. chapter 1, para 22Very similar to what Tolle advises and I take this to refer to what Niz calls "the witness". Unlike Tolle, Adya is not very subtle with respect to what a sense of a separate "me" means in relation to this. Adya is like an iron fist in a velvet glove. The point can be made that the witness is an intellectual contrivance that can be attached to and that can obscure what Adya describes as what he saw on the day he asked the question "what is it that hears the bird chirp". The conceptual tension between these ideas -- that the witness sees itself in everything that the witness clearly perceives as what it is not -- is what he's referring to with his reference to paradox in the chapter.As I've said elsewhere today, it seems to me that the question of "what is it that witnesses?" is where insight ends and devotion begins. As the paradox curmudgeon, I feel it's my responsibility to say, it only looks like a paradox, as there isn't anything that one is not. |
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Post by laughter on Feb 3, 2014 21:25:07 GMT -5
Very similar to what Tolle advises and I take this to refer to what Niz calls "the witness". Unlike Tolle, Adya is not very subtle with respect to what a sense of a separate "me" means in relation to this. Adya is like an iron fist in a velvet glove. The point can be made that the witness is an intellectual contrivance that can be attached to and that can obscure what Adya describes as what he saw on the day he asked the question "what is it that hears the bird chirp". The conceptual tension between these ideas -- that the witness sees itself in everything that the witness clearly perceives as what it is not -- is what he's referring to with his reference to paradox in the chapter.As I've said elsewhere today, it seems to me that the question of "what is it that witnesses?" is where insight ends and devotion begins. As the paradox curmudgeon, I feel it's my responsibility to say, it only looks like a paradox, as there isn't anything that one is not. I now consider myself to have been officially crummudgeoned.  |
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Post by laughter on Feb 6, 2014 20:55:59 GMT -5
Open mind, open heart. Realize that there isn't somebody in there to protect. ... The only reason you ever thought that you needed protection was because of a very innocent misunderstanding. This happened because when you were given a concept of yourself in very early childhood, you also received a kit with which to build walls that would protect this concept. ... Whether you cling to a self-image as a good person or as an inadequate person, the kit of identity is used to protect that image. This is very innocent. It happens without your knowing that it's happening. It continues until you realize that inherent in this holding of "me" as a self-image in the mind and body is the belief that you need protection. You can't have one without the other. They come in the same box. When you drop your protection, the truth comes in and takes away the self-image. chap 3 para's 8-10Aw schucks .. poor Fred's gonna' be out of a job! |
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Post by enigma on Feb 6, 2014 23:45:41 GMT -5
Open mind, open heart. Realize that there isn't somebody in there to protect. ... The only reason you ever thought that you needed protection was because of a very innocent misunderstanding. This happened because when you were given a concept of yourself in very early childhood, you also received a kit with which to build walls that would protect this concept. ... Whether you cling to a self-image as a good person or as an inadequate person, the kit of identity is used to protect that image. This is very innocent. It happens without your knowing that it's happening. It continues until you realize that inherent in this holding of "me" as a self-image in the mind and body is the belief that you need protection. You can't have one without the other. They come in the same box. When you drop your protection, the truth comes in and takes away the self-image. chap 3 para's 8-10Aw schucks .. poor Fred's gonna' be out of a job! It's time we ousted Fred anhyoo. Marie and I were talking about this in our duck satsang today. After recognizing that we get pulled into thoughts, the next thing is to notice why. (Deciding not to get pulled into thoughts is not really an option, as Fred would surely agree) We always get pulled in because something becomes important to the self identification. This is why it's important to recognize that we are not the person who holds that image. Otherwise, there will always be a need to protect and defend it, and that's when we fall in the river. The constricted view from in the river is never going to reveal anything worthwhile. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2014 9:40:32 GMT -5
I know I may not be 'fully' awakened, or aware of being fully awakened, but I get this. In recent times, I've become a Pin(terest)Head, and just the other day, was looking at faces from people all over the world, and the hundreds of portait photographs were professionally done, and were incredibly beautiful.....in each picture, the eyes were looking directly into the camera - directly into the eyes of the photographer - directly into my eyes, and you could feel this love (or maybe there's a better word) that belongs to no one and everyone - that connection. (Or is this just my imagination?)
The thing is, I think I've always had a sense of that connection because as a young kid, I used to draw, and portraits were my specialty so, I think that explains or helps explain how I got here.
It's the only thing that isn't your imagination. "You've heard of the french nation and the british nation.Well, this is the imagination.It's a wonderful place." For me, not so much. |
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Post by laughter on Feb 8, 2014 11:48:09 GMT -5
It's the only thing that isn't your imagination. "You've heard of the french nation and the british nation.Well, this is the imagination.It's a wonderful place." For me, not so much. Hey 'bum. Adya's pretty clear about those images -- the wonderful ones as well as the not-so-wonderful ones involve suffering as long as there is identification with them, and it's in the open questioning of this identification that they're seen for what they are, only images. |
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