Common Sense...

No matter what the experience - world is just an experience called "world" - body is just an experience called "body" - thought is just an experience called "thought" - no matter what the experience - no matter if it's good or bad - pleasant or painful - as these are relative judgments of the same experience - no matter what the experience - there is one thing in common.

It IS.

Something IS. Something EXISTS. What that "something" is, is what we call duality - the description of that something - the judgment of that something - the division of that something into things - into describable ways of communicating. Yet something IS - there is an IS-ness to this, right here and now. This IS. WHAT it is, is duality. The WHAT is irrelevant. We can never say WHAT it is - because we are always knowing it through a limited means. Yet we cannot deny that we are knowing SOMETHING. Something that IS.

That tree is IT. That rock is IT. That thought about paying the bills is IT. No matter the experience, no matter how that IS-ness is manifested, no matter how that EXISTENCE appears, the one thing in common is the IS-ness of it, and that never changes.

If we are stuck in the appearance of it, we are subject to the waves, to the coming and going of it, we are fooled by the apparent division of it. Therefore what I am must be just one of these small insignificant things, something which also began and therefore will end like the rest. My time is limited and that is suffering.

But what APPEARS isn't the absolute reality - AS appearance. A tree isn't absolute - it's experience CALLED "tree" - something EXISTS - it appears AS "tree" - Tree-the-appearance comes and goes - was born and will die - yet EXISTENCE doesn't come and go - only the name and form "tree" was born and will die. When we take appearance (TREE) as absolute we believe the story that goes along with it. Quite frankly, the story is bullshit.

And this isn't some spiritual mumbo-jumbo, something gained from 20 years of sitting in a cave. It's obvious. It's reality BEFORE the bullshit is layered over. It's just simply WHAT IS - right now. It's just about reality - it's not about some new mystical spiritual state or experience. If you want those you can have all you want but it's not about those new states. It's just about reality AS IT IS, right here and right now.

You exist. Therefore you are existence. Therefore what IS, is what you are. You were not something which was born and will later die. The body took shape and will dissolve. Nothing happens to what you are. Nothing happens to existence when a form disappears, just as nothing happens to the ocean when a wave crashes onto the shore. Nothing happens to clay when a pot is broken. Nothing happens to gold when a chain is melted down. When the body dies - when Consciousness ceases to provide it's limited viewpoint, nothing happens to YOU.