Thursday, September 25, 2008

What can you really know?

What do you really know?

You feel you know the world so well, know this body, this "Mind", this person-that-you-are...

You really have just taken on many assumptions about what's appearing and then blindly accept the appearance as "this and that", this is mine, this is me.

But how do you really know anything? It appears. And then the thoughts create a commentary about it, label it, seemingly separate it out.

What do you really know? What are you absolutely certain of? What CAN you be absolutely certain of? Look out there now, at this appearance - is it real? How can you possibly know? The only way you have conceptualized it is through information (concepts) you have gained from within the appearance itself - information gained from within THAT which you are theorizing is itself an illusion.

Wouldn't that information be more illusion?

Isn't the world you see, and the one seeing the world, all conceptualized? All second-hand information? Learned?

The dream appears, very realistic, very detailed, thinking is happening, decisions are made, actions occur... pain is felt, emotions come and go. Yet we have NO PROBLEM denying the reality of a dream.

What really is the difference between a dream and this "real world"?

Detachment doesn't come through an effort to detach, through a desire to detach - this is still more attachment. Detachment comes from really seeing that this world, that we've taken to be so real, is nothing more than an illusion, an appearance, a bundle of constantly flowing perceptions and sensations that are conceptualized in thought, labeled using acquired Worldly Knowledge, believed in mistakenly.

Detachment comes from the brick wall of recognition, the glaring obviousness that every SINGLE THING we know is a CONCEPT, second-hand information ABOUT the world, ABOUT what-you-are.

And this recognition is an abject Void, an absolute not-knowing, a certainty of uncertainty about the world, a humbling realization that strips away the pretentious and ignorant assumptions and beliefs, in which we've constructed this "reality of what we are".

What really IS this world and this body-mind? Can you ever REALLY know?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you Randall,
I do apologize for the relentless questioning. I can't type fast enough to really "TALK" to you.
I know that All the stories are bullshit, but that "Knowing" never stops them from playing.
I am Sooo in my own way on this.
I do appreciate your pointing so Clearly~
M

Anonymous said...

Wonderful, very clear

Anonymous said...

"Your true nature is Knowing Presence - the intelligence which is beating the heart and spinning the planets - looking at itself right now...

Wow.