Monday, August 3, 2009

A Riddle


Do you want to understand Nonduality?

Take the "thingness" away.

How will you enjoy your understanding?

Who remains to understand?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I do want to understand non-duality but from what I read of it not being a concept or idea it is therefore beyond the mind and thus any understanding. I don’t even know what understanding is anymore. I don’t know what it is to know something. I used to think I knew things but now all my understanding and knowledge seems ephemeral and relative. I define ideas by other ideas in a loop of understanding relative only to me. There is nothing outside of me that I can find that is solid and permanent by which to define anything. It feels like the floor of all of what I used to call knowing has fallen away and yet I still go on, I work and do things, I talk to people but now everything seems a fraud, a fake, a lie. What I believe to be me and the world seems a fabrication, something that I perpetuate by the momentum of memories. Where is the world that I always believed to be? It is not, it is nowhere, it is nothing but memory, a collection of ideas, ideas that are refreshed every morning when I awake and my world begins again. I do not feel oneness or wholeness I only feel what was is gone. I sit here and see symbols on the screen, I make ideas out of the symbols, I write other symbols and think they represent something to some other person but I don’t even know if there are any other persons. That there are others is just another idea I have. How would I know if there was or wasn’t another person? There only seems to be a flow of experiences that I either want to repeat or avoid. I attach labels to them of right and wrong, what makes sense and what does not, invent reasons for what did or didn’t happen. But all this is known only to me. And what is the me? Another thing I don’t know. I operate on the premis of a me but I cant point to it. I instant I read about enlightenment, awakening, oneness they become another story like the trailer for the movie. Oh, I can’t wait till that movie gets here. It looks so great I can’t wait to see it. All ideas of enlightenment become something other than what is, something to acquire. something to define my dissatisfaction with what is.

Thanks for all your writing.

Jeffrey

Randall Friend said...

Jeffrey,

Very nice. The entirety of the conceptual is falling away. And what remains? What is the result or outcome? It can only ever be nothing, not-knowing.

The only thing that is known with certainty is that you ARE. You exist. WHAT you are is only definable in concepts, as you're seeing.

THAT you are is unquestionable. The knowing that you are is the only point. That knowing is pure being, existence - the very essence of all these "things".

So as these things come about, they are obviously and can only ever be relative, from an individual perspective. There isn't anything more to know. Everything you know is relative and therefore not absolute.

YOU are the absolute. YOU are the unchanging and limitless reality upon which these appearances come and go.


love
randall

Anonymous said...

I get what you say about ignoring, and who is the one left over. However what i get stuck with is that some things hurt. Hurt really bad. And they seem harder to let go. I mean yes the attention is wandering and that can be observed and fallen away. but these deep hurts from experience it seems harder to ignore them. because they seem justifed.

i really am sad that my love has died. i cant take it. and yes i can see the thing to do is to recognise ah who is the one who is holding or contracting this sadness. let it fall away. but to me, (where i am) the thing that can be realized doesnt seem as good as her. how can anything ever be? how can anything make that ok?

Randall Friend said...

Anonymous,

My condolences and love to you. Loss of a loved one is probably the most tragic experience in Life. Nothing will make it ok. Trying to justify it in terms of nonduality is useless.

Just be with the pain - notice it. Allow it to be. Recognize the stories woven from it. Eventually it will become clear that the knower of the pain is already beyond it anyway. The knowing of the pain is your true essence. The knowing isn't in pain - it's already at peace with it.


love
randall

Anonymous said...

Standing Under.. He weeps,,,silent tears of nothingnesssss.....

Einrich said...

I understand nonduality, or at least I like to think that I do. :D

Taking away something does nothing to increase understanding. Only understanding of what the "thingness" is can create it, and that is the relationships between this "thingness" and other "thingnesses".

However I will react.

A pattern emergent in a sub-region nature, nothing more, nothing less.