New video: The Great Spiritual Secret: Without Identification, Anxiety is Ecstasy

Anxiety, which stands for the all the difficult and negative emotions stemming from desire -- desire which basically comes from the sense of division created by a sense of individuality -- is only anxiety when one identifies with the entity that it burdens, that it inflicts with work and pain and wanting. If the mind is pure and no longer so identifies, all those anxieties transform into nothing other than the ecstasy and the bliss of Self.

Why is the practice called "surrender". Why any practice exists with name "surrender"?
This name sounds like someone French person would use

I am all for being clever instead of sitting for hours and doing something but for me it is never about any surrender or letting go or even relaxation but about actually having the effect of formal meditation without having to do this formal meditation. Like you can concentrate on object and eventually get to jhana but you can get to jhana immediately and mind will keep itself on it because it is pleasant and mind concentrates on pleasure and jhana by itself will lead to concentrated mind without needing to do anything. Same even for Vipassana practices, just the specific taste they create can be cultivated and used and mind will notice all the sensations and be in equanimity. Letting go of everything and having empty mind it also the same, there is quality or how you say a "state" and simply experiencing it, maybe adding some jhana to it to make it more attractive for mind will make mind just keep itself on it with no desire to do anything else like being agitated, restless or bored.

Have you though about maybe inventing better name for the practice you describe than "surrender"?

   "Coin" means to impress, or something impressed. Both sides are impressed; generally one side has the head of the sovereign, the other his words and symbols.

   A coin may be made of copper, silver, gold. When all the impressions have worn off, we have only copper, silver and gold. A newly minted copper penny crisp with the face of the divinity is worth a penny, and a worn gold coin with no impressions left is worth a thousand of such.

   Besides, surrender precedes self-inquiry, as ramana maharshi's life displayed. One asks, "who am I" when one doesn't know. Give up your widow's mite for treasure in heaven, where thieves do not steal, moths don't eat, and rust sleeps.


terry




from "fihi ma fihi" (discourses) by rumi, trans arberry



God will grant you your heart’s desire—where your ambition is, that will be yours. “The bird flies with its wings, the believers fly with their aspiration.”

There are three kinds of creatures. First there are angels, who are pure spiritual conscience. Worship, service and the remembrance of God are their nature and their food. They eat and live upon that essence. Like fish in the water, their mattress and pillow are the water. Angels are pure and free of lust, so what favor do they gain by not yielding to such desires? Since they are free of these things, they have no struggle against them. If they obey God’s will it is not counted as obedience, for this is their nature, and they cannot be otherwise.

Second are the beasts who are pure sensuality, having no spiritual conscience to restrain them. They too are under no burden of obligation.

Lastly, there remains the poor human being, who is a compound of spiritual conscience and sensuality. We are half angel, half beast. Half snake, half fish. The fish draws us toward water, the snake toward the earth. We are forever in battle. If our spiritual conscience overcomes our sensuality, we are higher than the angels. If our sensuality overcomes our spiritual conscience, we are lower than the beasts.

“The angel is saved through knowledge,
The animal—through ignorance.
Between the two struggle the people of this world.”

Now, some have followed their spiritual conscience so faithfully that they have become entirely angels and pure Light. They are the prophets and the saints. They are freed of fear and hope. In some, lust has overcome their spiritual conscience so entirely that they have taken on the status of animals. Some are still struggling. These last are the people who feel within themselves an agony and anguish, a sorrow and a longing. They are not satisfied with their lives. These are the believers. The saints are waiting to bring them to their own station, to make them like themselves, just as the satans, too, are waiting to draw them to the lowest of the low.

“When God’s help comes through victory, And you see people
Submitting to His Will in throngs,
Then fill yourself with the presence of the Lord, And seek His forgiveness;
For God turns to men and women again.”

Now, commentators offer an outward interpretation to the above Sura, from the Koran, as follows: Mohammed had the dream, “I will make all the world Muslims and bring them to the path of God.” When he saw his death approaching he cried, “Ah, didn’t I come into this life to call the people to God?” God answered, “Do not grieve. In that very hour when you pass away, provinces and cities which you would conquer by armies and by the sword I will convert to obedience and to the faith, every one of them without armies. The sign of this will come at the end when you are dying, you will see people entering in throngs and becoming Muslims. When this sign comes, know that the time for your departure has arrived. Then give praise, and seek forgiveness.”

However, there is an inward meaning to this Sura as well: People think they can drive away evil by great effort and striving. After struggling
and exhausting all their powers and means, they fall into despair. Then God says to them: “You thought you could achieve this goal through your own power, action and work. This is the law I have laid down: Whatever you possess, spend it in Our name. Then Our grace will supervene.

“You must journey upon this infinite road with the feeble hands and feet that you possess. We know well that with feet so feeble you can never accomplish this journey. Indeed, in a hundred thousand years you will not be able to accomplish a single stage of this journey. But even as you collapse and fall, with no strength left to struggle farther, then Our loving breath will carry you on. Even a child, so long as it is a suckling, is carried in the arms, but when it is grown it is set free to walk. Now in this hour when your powers have left you, when your own means fail, behold Our graces, Our gifts and Our love. You will not witness even an atom of such blessings after a hundred thousand strivings.”

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    And then there is the illusion that one has separated out the ground of being from the manifestations of being, as though they weren't not-two. Another trompe l'oeil. What is transparent is not non-existent.

   "Recognitions" involve placing pictures in their proper sequence and category, while primary cognition confronts the present as immediately and intuitively real. Phenomenologically, directly. Aristotle says that the senses take an immaterial "impression" of the world. We go from being impressed to being manipulative, to creating karma. Living in a world composed almost exclusively of tools.

   There is an underlying sense here - the underlying "self" idea, perhaps - that the ego survives, and "exits" the "illusions" of phenomena through faith in..."what is continuously." One might sum this up as, "there is a god, and I am him." Rather solipsistic, taken as a doctrine rather than as an ecstatic exclamation.

   Perhaps consciousness itself is just a bubble of froth on the surface of a vast ocean. No more the ocean itself than a container of seawater in the desert interior.

    Anyhows, there is  danger of stumbling upon the truth and then trying to use it for any number of purposes. As the truth unfolds there is one blissful sunrise after another, and we're always drawn over the next hill, and the next, the foothills of the great mountain range. Each new vista claims to be the ultimate, but we know deep down, if we can see it, it isn't the ultimate, because we are still here.

   A zen master was sitting with a monk one time, and he asked the monk if he had been to the top of the mountain. The monk affirmed that he had. The master then inquired, "and did you see anyone while you were there?" The monk replied, "No, there was no one." The master then said, "And to think I doubted this fellow!" The monk remarked, "If I hadn't been to the top of the mountain, how would I have known there was no one there?"

terry

   



from the zen teachings of huang po, trans blofeld:


10. When the people of the world hear it said that the
Buddhas transmit the Doctrine of the Mind, they suppose
that there is something to be attained or realized apart
from Mind, and thereupon they use Mind to seek the
Dharma, nol knowing that Mind and the object of their
search are one. Mind cannot be used to seek something
from Mind; for then, after the passing of millions of aeons,
the day of success will still not have dawned. Such a method
is not to be compared with suddenly eliminating conceptual
thought, which is the fundamental Dharma. Suppose a
warrior, forgetting that he was already wearing his pearl on
his forehead, were to seek for it elsewhere, he could
travel the whole world without finding it. But if someone
who knew what was wrong were to point it out to him, the
warrior would immediately realize that the pearl had been
there all the time. So, if you students of the Way are mis-
taken about your own real Mind, not recognizing that it is
the Buddha, you will consequently look for him elsewhere,
indulging in various achievements and practices and ex-
pecting to attain realization by such graduated practices.
Bul, even at er aeons of diligent searching, you will nol be
able lo attain to the Way. These methods cannot be com-
pared to the sudden elimination of conceptual thought, in
the certain knowledge that there is nothing at all which has
absolute existence, nothing on which to lay hold, nothing on which
to rely, nothing in which to abide, nothing subjective or objective -
It is by preventing the use of conceptual thought that you will realize
Bodhi; and, when you do, you will just be realizing the Buddha who
has always existed in your own Mind! Aeons of striving will prove to
be so much wasted efort; just as, when the warrior found his pearl,
he merely discovered what had been hanging on his forehead all the
time; and just as his finding of it had nothing to do with his efforts to
discover it elsewhere. Therefore the Buddha said: 'I truly attained
nothing from complete, unexcelled Enlighlenmenl."

 

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