Who are You?

During his reign as emperor of China, Emperor Wu of Liang (502–549 AD) embraced and promoted the golden age of Chinese Buddhism. He came to be seen as the Chinese counterpart of the Indian Buddhist Emperor Ashoka the Great. 

Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch of China, came to visit Emperor Wu around 520 AD.

The emperor told Bodhidharma, " I have built numerous temples and given financial support to the monastic community. Please tell me how much merit will I get for these deeds?"

Bodhidharma replied, "None whatsoever.You have not done anything out of piety nor out of wanting to do good. Pretending to do good you only wanted to purchase merit, but remember that merit cannot be purchased."

Furious and perplexed, the emperor asked Bodhidharma, "Who are you to tell me such things? I demand to know, who are you?'

Bodhidharma replied, "Your Majesty, I don't know."

What can be learnt from this great historical encounter?

'Know thyself and then be thyself'. 

Everyday we have people who do not know who they themselves are, telling others what to be or become. 

Even those who know a little about themselves are trapped in a state of confusion, trying to be someone else.

Who are we? 

We are nothing, but existence at play.

We are given a name, a religion, a country, a race, various official qualifications, a work title and finally a social title. In the end we will die to be relegated to the dustbin of existence, clueless about who we really are.

We know we are nothing, and we will remain nothing. Everything is given to us by others. All that is given to us will one day be taken away from us. 

So we create this delusional concept that we are something or someone, who is going to journey to some far away place, where we will be surrounded by sweet music, where angels dance for us, where rivers of alcohol flow. In paradise we will feast and dine on the most wonderful of foods and be attended to, by beautiful virgins who will ceaselessly fulfil our every sexual desire.

Somehow this ridiculous notion survives, and we ridiculously foolish humans, lap it up and swear by it.  So we will go out there, maim, kill, destroy for our place in this fantasy called heaven and 'paradise'.

Even as we know we are nothing, we believe so greatly in our puny intellect to analyse and discover the so called reason of our existence. 

The birds, the flowers and the animals never ask this question nor do the seasons, the sea, and win. They bestow unconditionally their wonderful grace and sometimes their awesome fury upon us.

Who are you? 

Spiritually speaking shorn of all those props and labels, you are merely another nobody, just like me. Someone who is on a journey from birth to death in a body that is perishing slowly by the moment.

Let us just, live and let live. Find harmony and balance between us and our world. To celebrate life, amongst its splendid wonders and bounty, and to die happily. 

If there is a paradise, heaven or a hell, it is here and now.

Truth is not attained, it is realised.

'The Truth lies within us'. What did the Gurus and masters mean by that?

What did Jesus mean when he said, "The kingdom of God lies within us"?

Therein lies the answer. God called by a thousand names in numerous language are just another name for the Truth.

Truth is not an acquisition that has to be sought. It is not a goal to be attained. 

It is a realisation and an awakening. 

If truth cannot be attained, then how is it realised?

To be truly happy and liberated, then to the core of our being we must travel.

Answers, we will not find outside of ourselves, but only within.

We must journey within ourselves. We must abandon all that is not the truth.

To travel inwards we must get rid of all that is superfluous to our being.

What are these superfluous elements?

Its important note that anything that comes and goes is not us.

Our possessions, attachments, desires, and anger, they are things that will come and go. We believe that they are us, but they are not. They are mere acquisitions. These are the things that will not permit us to journey within ourselves.

Then there is the ego, the 'I'.

As long as the 'I' exists, it inhibits us from discovering the truth. When we let go of the ego as the Guru explains, the truth is realised not by seeking but by letting go. This is because we do not enter the divine, but make ourselves open to let the divine emerge from within us.

Hence the symbol of Truth is represented by the 1000 petalled lotus. Each petal as it opens represents the unfurling of a falsehood and an untruth shedding away.

What are the falsehoods that we pursue to arrive at the Truth?

Rote learning of scriptures, rituals, pilgrimages, mere muttering of prayers, endless intellectual discussions and debates about the truth, contemplation, patronising charity, pursuit of power, influence, wealth, lust, anger attachments, ego, tolerance etc. 

What are the pathways to realise the truth?

We cannot find these pathways by our seeking. 

As the Guru says, "Sat Sri Akal" meaning 'Truth is God'. Just be truthful in every thought, and action.  Work, live, play and meditate truthfully. 

The pathways to the Divine, the Truth automatically emerges when we are truthful.

We will know that it is the right path when we become compassionate, friendly, loving natural, and develop not a tolerance but respect for all people, all creatures, all things, in fact all of existence.

Once upon a time I was young, very successful, had significant wealth, socially busy and a member of a large family. Then over a few years everything simply fell apart and slipped away. 

I became a pauper, only my wife, sons and a handful of individuals stood by me. I became socially undesirable. This entire world was too small a place for me to retreat into.

Wallowing in self pity, I developed an intense negativity about everyone, everything and life itself. When this happens, at first one is seized with incredible rage, wanting to unleash destruction on all and sundry.  I came to appreciate, how mass murderers were created. Thankfully this insane phase ebbed away as I lacked the time and resources to give effect to the entities that had brutalised my being. 

I had to survive, so like a drowning man I struggled and I struggled, but to little avail. 

I met with people and institutions who I believed had the power to make all my problems go away. They had the necessary placebo effect on me. 

Though my actions were directed outwards, my thoughts flowed inwards, constantly contemplating. Nothing exhausts a man more than negative thoughts and all this blame game was consuming me still further.  

Nothing in our lives is useless, all that contemplation worked as a catharsis.  I realised that  unless we expel all the negativity within us, there is little or no scope for the positive to enter our being.  

I concluded that I  alone was responsible for my situation and there was no worldly solution to my anguish. 

When all worldly doorways shut , there is always one doorway, the spiritual  which opens to the true seeker.  

Eventually I surrendered to the force that moves the stars and the planets. The energy that gave life to each being and the mystical power that makes events unfold. I realised the Truth, which is called by a million names in a thousand languages as God.

The doorway lay in my own being, where the little drop I was merged into the infinitely vast ocean of God. I found that through silence, then meditation.

When one surrenders, the fight goes out of us, we are emptied of everything. Emptied of  all emotion, all thought, all desire all wants and needs.

The less I seek the emptier I become. I am attaining nothing yet I am awakening and realising the  infinite.

It will pass

We will always see the divine in the form we have been taught all our lives in our places of study and worship or in our literature and art.  
If that should happen, then we should know that we are not experiencing the divine. 

The human mind is so powerful that it easily fools even us ourselves. When we desperately long for something, our mind is easily capable of conjuring it up for us. 

Our minds are very powerful, therefore it projects whatever we desperately seek. We feel we are conscious but in reality we hallucinate.

It is not necessary for us to seek the truth, like insects we can be born and like insects we can die. However if we wish to be truly happy and liberated, then to the core of our being we must travel.

Answers we will not find outside of ourselves, but only within.  
To travel inwards we must get rid of all that is superfluous to our being. 
What are these superfluous elements?

Its important note that anything that comes and goes is not us. 
Our possessions, attachments, desires, and anger, they are things that will come and go. We believe that they are us, but they are not. They are mere acquisitions. These are the things that will not permit us to journey within ourselves.

Then there is the ego, the 'I'.  
As long as the 'I' exists it inhibits us from discovering the truth. When we let go of the ego 
As the Guru explains, the truth is realised not by seeking but by letting go. Because we do not enter the divine, but make ourselves open to let the divine emerge from within us. 

Letting go will occur when we realise that all existence is an illusion or what the ancients call "Maya'. This realisation can come to us when we achieve great success, great failure, great anguish, sorrow, or exhilaration which leads us to meditation.

Meditating because we are merely seeking or because we are bored will produce what the student discovered, that it too will pass and we are back right we started from. 

___________________

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