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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Zen Master in Prison

Zen Tales

A Master prefers Prison


A Zen master had formed a habit of indulging in petty theft. Someone's cheap, slipper or a spoon etc. 

The law was the law and the Master would confess to the crime and was convicted every time and therefore he spent most of his life in prison.

People were puzzled that, so great a master was so petty a thief.  The sentencing judges always said. that, "We know there is something more to this than we can understand, please enlighten us". The master simply smiled and always remained mum.  

The moment he would be out of prison he would steal again, and he would go back. 

After a few decades, the Master's end was near. All the people and the judges gathered around him to seek an answer. "Your end is near, at least now please tell us, why you did what you did?"


The master laughed and replied, "I steal to get in the jail and I did it for two reasons. First, to be with the prisoners and bring them the inner message."
Who will help them? Outside, for you all, there are many masters. But inside the jail, there is no master. Who will help them?

"Do they not need spiritual guidance? You will be surprised to learn, that I have found many innocent people and pure souls. Many of them much more innocent than the jailers and the people outside. 

I have converted the prison into a beautiful monastery with 2,000 inmates. 

The second reason is I need much time to meditate, but outside I cannot. The hordes of people keep on coming and I cannot be disrespectful by refusing to meet them. So I escape to the Prison where I get a lot of time to meditate. 


Such are the inexplicable ways of a true master.

'Moksha' - Liberation

'Moksha' - Free from the Dance of Life.

_________________________________________

Some lose all mind and become, soul

Insane

Some lose all soul and become, mind

Intellectual

Some lose both and become,

Accepted

Happiness, wealth, health, comfort, power etc. we humans as long as we live, are always seeking to expand who and what we are. 
Sooner or later we also begin to ask ourselves, "What will become of us at the end of all that expansion of the Self?"

Seeking to learn and understand, we talk, listen and discuss with others. 
The more I listened, read, and introspected, the greater grew my confusion. The Eastern philosophies which is inherent within me and the Western philosophy in which I have been educated in and greatly exposed to, provide contrary views on almost everything. 

That's it. 'Views' and views are all we have, shaped by others and circumstances, all external to us. Rarely are we guided by what is within us. 

There can be no greater source of learning and awakening than by engaging with masters, reading and listening to them.  The master called, Guru or Murshid functions as a vital bridge between the energy of the universe and the eternal which is manifest with us.

 To absorb and digest we need to reflect and introspect, for which many hours alone and in silence are necessary.

The majority of people are merely 'accepted'.  They go where the forces of society and power of nature takes them.  Their body is alive, the mind functional but the soul deadened. For them there is little hope. They are unfortunately of little consequence to themselves and the universe.

The 'intellectuals' are not so many as the 'accepted', but their numbers are on the rise. 
The easy access to information, so called 'facts' and opinions gives them the feeling of knowing the truth. They follow a linear way of thinking, often starting with erroneous assumptions and following a faulty logic to conclude things that suit their predisposed biases.

A majority of intellectuals are a menace, because they are always argumentative and therefore  consume huge mental resources unduly strain the mind, both their own and that of others. Intellectuals however are essential to society, for they churn the pot. They are provocative and hence force society and individuals to always question themselves and their actions. However rarely do they awaken the individual.

The mind is a virtual world that we beings create, and the 'insane' are of two types. The mad person and the awakened being. 

Sometimes the mad person falls below the mind. Usually the whole world of the mad person is contained within his or her mind. They have not lost their mind they are merely trapped within their minds. 

The awakened being is also 'out of the mind',  but rises above the mind. Such beings are no more restrained by the mind and the body. This is the state of great masters and sages. A state of mindlessness, just pure spiritual energy.

The masters know that the body made up of the 5 elements, is temporary and will perish, and the mind is a virtual world. They know that the indestructible soul is all that matters, which is unbounded and eventually migrates to a new body in each life.

That is why the masters transcend the body and the mind to become pure energy, which is free from physical and emotional and intellectual factors. They are unaffected by incidents, relationships, cravings, etc. They simply dissolve into the Creator from where their energy  originated from. 

This is what it means to attain 'Moksha' or liberation.