Kindle Notes & Highlights
All phenomena are like the sky and the characteristic feature of the sky is its natural condition. Every thing abides in this natural condition. No phenomena manifesting to perception can be altered from their authentic state. “Nobody in the past who has set out on the path has reached the destination by persisting in seeking and striving. Nobody who has undertaken action has ever achieved the fruit. Nothing can be altered from the natural condition. All abides therein.”
“There is nothing to do, nowhere to go and nothing to be.”
At the meetings, when someone says that they understand intellectually what he is saying, he is quick to point out that you either understand something or you don’t. “Two and two equals four: is that an intellectual understanding or do you know it for a fact?”
Bob says that our problems are always one of relationship; the relationship of a seemingly divided self, pitting itself against the notion of other. There is either a pushing away of things believed to be unpleasant and undesirable, or a desperate attempt to cling onto the things believed to be good and bring happiness.
The practice was ongoing and after a while he got tired of the effort it required to maintain a particular state. “I still hadn’t found out what it was that had given me the second chance, so that intensity was still there.”
Nisargadatta’s I Am That.
Simply start from the fact that you’re already That and stay with it.
“He was taking away all my concepts and the dearly held beliefs and ideas of things that I thought I’d understood. He’d kick everything out from underneath me. And even though there might have been the seeing of the most profound truth, that simply wasn’t good enough either. And the most sublime expression would be kicked out too. I was continually left with nothing. There was nowhere left to stand.”
Nisargadatta told Bob that the only way he could help anyone was to take them beyond the need for further help. And he did this by pointing out to Bob that he wasn’t what he believed himself to be. “I wasn’t the body or the mind and I could see that. What Nisargadatta was saying and continually pointing out was that it was all conceptual. The images, ideas and imaginings that I had about myself weren’t the truth. I understood what Nisargadatta was pointing to.”
“When the chatter of self-pity and resentment started up again, there was a remembering that actually there was nothing there and so it wouldn’t last.”
Bob sometimes uses a story to illustrate the point that when habits start to dissolve, the seemingly subtle becomes increasingly pronounced. He recounts that years earlier when he had started to give up smoking, the first handful of sunflower seeds he ate seemed bland with little taste to them. After a while without cigarettes, his tastebuds began to be able to discern the subtleties of the seeds. Likewise, the beliefs that had formed the notion of a separate “me” by imagining it was apart from the totality had seemingly clouded the very taste of the oneness. In the seeing through of this
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The image of a uniformed burly night watchman sitting alone by the warmth of a brazier on a dark wharf on the Melbourne waterfront couldn’t be further away from any clichéd notion of spiritual.
Nisargadatta called the understanding the “natural state”; that pristine awareness in which everything is appearing. This understanding is not predicated upon being anything. It just is. A street vendor selling cigarettes in crowded Bombay, a holy man bathing in the Ganges, a night watchman on the Melbourne waterfront – the form is irrelevant. Understanding is all.
the notion of purpose is futile. To say there is purpose requires measuring it from some location. You have to set up a reference point. Without a reference point what can you say?”
While there’d be thinking and wondering about what was going to happen, there was no building up of a story about it or getting caught in any sort of mental anguish.”
What’s Wrong with Right Now Unless You Think About It?
Presence-Awareness.
James Braha’s book Living Reality, which recounts his time spent with the Adamsons and is woven around material from the daily talks and question sessions.
There is nothing to get and no one to attain anything. Any attempt to understand with the mind simply keeps the conceptual mind-stream flowing. Thinking busies itself trying to attain the goal of non-thinking; it behaves like a rodent in a wheel. It aims for a notion of an understanding it is imagining. It is a thought trying to take hold of another thought – an impossibility.
Nisargadatta said, “Do not struggle to come out of the mud of your own concepts, you will only go deeper. Remain still.” You cannot think your way out. It is unresolvable. In remaining still and stopping the chatter, simply put a STOP on the thought flow, simply pause a thought.
Huang Po, “Understanding comes through an inexpressible mystery. The approach is called The Gateway to Stillness beyond all Activity. Know that a sudden comprehension arises, when the clutter of conceptual thinking and discriminating thought activity subsides.”
The Dzogchen Buddhists call it The Great Perfection or non-conceptual awareness; the emptiness before thoughts appear and start believing in themselves.
What you are seeking, you already are. The great word or Mahavakya is I am That, this is That, everything is That.
When you look and investigate you’ll find you’re not the body, nor the mind. The body-mind is just another pattern or appearance in this emptiness, just as the tree, the flower, the cloud and everything else is.
That’s why they tell us in the Gita, the sword can’t cut it, the fire can’t burn it, the wind can’t dry it, the water can’t drown it – purely and simply because it contains all of those things. None of those things could be without it. So how can you grasp it with a concept when it contains all concepts? We can only use terms such as That, or awareness. We are talking about the no-thing, the un-manifest.
With the awareness of being no-thing, you’ve gone as far as you can ever go; you’re there where you’ve always been.
Let life unfold from the point of view that what you really are is the unmanifest, the pure essence.
without a concept, without a thought, before another concept arises, you realise that you are existence; you are the living-ness, the being-ness.
As the poem says, “It’s closer than your breathing, nearer than your hands and feet.” You’ve never been away from it. Never could.
Undistracted non-meditation is going on all the time, when there’s no-one to meditate, and nothing to meditate on. That is the natural meditation and that is what you are.
Whichever way you go is always in the mind – north, south, and east, west, high or low – it’s always in the mind. There is only one way out of the mind. Full stop. When you full stop, you pause a thought in that moment, don’t you? And before another thought has arisen, what’s happening? Pause a thought right now? Just repeat a word. Repeat it out loud. Any word.
The search itself is the problem. While you are seeking, there is a belief that there’s something you don’t have right now but will get at some future time if you do certain things.
When you realise that you can’t get out of the mind by looking, what must happen? Wouldn’t there just be a natural full stop? In that full stop, the thought is paused for a brief moment. In that pause, when there’s no thought going on, you haven’t stopped seeing, you haven’t stopped hearing, you haven’t disappeared and you haven’t fallen apart. When there’s no conceptualising going on, no thinking, you are prior to the mind. And that’s how simple it really is.
It seems that wanting to get something else creates the suffering. Bob: Yes. There’s nothing else to get. You are already That.
You are not going to be feeling-less or emotion-less, but when they come up, they are seen as they are in the moment. They are not related to past events and experiences, and they’re not a problem.
You are not an appearance. You are the reality, and the reality that you are is no-thing. The definition of reality is That which never changes. It’s the so-called emptiness, or the no-thing that never changes. What can you add to no-thing? What can you take away from no-thing?
These opposites are not in conflict with one another. There is nothing taking a stance against the other. If it is spring now, soon it will be summer. Spring’s not saying, “I wish it were summer.” It moves on naturally, without any conflict. The incoming tide doesn’t fight the outgoing tide. A storm will come through and blow things apart. After a while it dissipates and nature gradually renews itself. The pairs of opposites are constantly there, but there is no conflict.
Problems are problems of relationship – relative to, and it’s always relative to this self-image we’ve got. When you see it’s a fictitious image based on past events and past experience, you see the trap we put ourselves in.
there any need to stop the thinking if it is realised what it is taking place in? What are the clouds taking place in? Isn’t the cloud in space? Do you have to stop the cloud to recognise the space, or do you realise that the space is always and ever the background in which the clouds appear? It’s not a matter of trying to stop the thinking – it is simply understanding what you actually are. You are that essence itself, not the concepts or anything that appears on it.
In the Hsin Hsin Ming it states, “Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.”
If we were able to choose our thoughts, why would we ever have an unhappy one? Why would we ever have an angry thought, or a fearful thought?
Nisargadatta says, “Don’t take delivery.” He explains, “If the postman knocks on your door with a parcel containing a bomb and you don’t take delivery of it, is it going to hurt you?” It’s simply going to move on. If we don’t take delivery of these things, it’s just no big deal.
Just the fact that in seeing that something is false, you can’t truly believe it again.
You just do whatever comes up? Bob: Whatever you are moved to do. Just like if a sickness comes upon you, you do whatever comes up in response to it. It might come through someone else that you are pointed to do this or that.
Even though the old habitual patterns started again, if you’ve seen the falseness of it, you can’t actually believe anything anymore because it loses its intensity.
Just like the story of the fellow in the dark of night who steps on what he thinks is a snake. When he shines a torch on it and finds it is just a piece of rope, the sense of relief is immediate. However, the body’s instinctual response of fear and trembling which was triggered by the belief that the rope was a snake, that takes a lot longer to die down. And that was the same here. Though there was an immediate seeing through it, the chatter would go on again. Poor me, blah, blah, blah... the resentment and the taking delivery of the things that were going on.
I might have some answers to the question and he’d knock them out. I’d fire up and argue about that a bit, yet I was continually left with nothing.
Once you see something is false, you can never truly believe it again. And if you can’t believe it, how can you keep going back into it?
I am That. Thou art That. This is That. That’s That. All is That. And the That they are talking about is that sense of presence or essence.
If you stop imagining and anticipating, and stop recalling the past, where are you? You are in that immediacy which you’ve never left. So we’ve never actually moved away from this presence.
