Devise no word. When you enter into the world of words, you start falling away from that which is. The more you enter into language, the farther you are away from existence. Language is a great falsification. It is not a bridge, it is not a communication - it is a barrier.
If your mind creates no word, in that silence is God, or truth, or nirvana. So seek no knowledge. Knowledge is conditioning. Knowledge and identity create the ego. The more articulate one is, the more egoistic he becomes.
Be like a mirror, a lake without ripples. It reflects perfectly the moon.
See things for what they are. Take a good look at nature. Go smell the roses, don't name it.
Silence, stillness...
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Reading Osho's Zen The Path of Paradox (Chapter 1 : Empty Sky)
Reading this book a second time. It is a treasure to hold and read.
Chapter 1 : Empty Sky
Like the empty sky it has no boundaries, yet it is right in this place, ever profound and clear. When you seek to know it, you cannot see it.
You cannot take hold of it, but you cannot lose it.
In not being able to get it you get it.
When you are silent it speaks; when you speak, it is silent.
The great gate is wide open to bestow alms, and no crowd is blocking the way.
God is everywhere, in everything and everyone. So be more alert, more aware. Start living in a totally different way. Be more watchful. Be a witness.
Zen brings holiness to ordinary life. Zen transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. It transforms the profane into the sacred. It drops the division between the world and the divine.
Zen looks at humanity with undivided vision - it does not divide. Everything is divine - a tree, a rock, a man, a woman, a child.
The word God is not God. God has to be eaten, God has to be tasted, God has to be lived - not argued about.
Go beyond words and concepts. Get into existence.
Zen is non-conceptual, non-intellectual. It preaches immediacy, moment-to-moment immediacy - to be present in the moment; no pass, no future.
Zen says : Be empty. Look without any idea, prejudice, presupposition. Don't be preoccupied. Let go the past and all of life's conditioning.
You simply sit. If you can sit silently, if you can fall into a tremendous restfulness, if you can relax yourself, if you can drop all tensions and become a silent pool of energy, going nowhere, searching nothing, God starts pouring into you. From everywhere God rushes towards you.
In Zen, the door is always open!
Chapter 1 : Empty Sky
Like the empty sky it has no boundaries, yet it is right in this place, ever profound and clear. When you seek to know it, you cannot see it.
You cannot take hold of it, but you cannot lose it.
In not being able to get it you get it.
When you are silent it speaks; when you speak, it is silent.
The great gate is wide open to bestow alms, and no crowd is blocking the way.
God is everywhere, in everything and everyone. So be more alert, more aware. Start living in a totally different way. Be more watchful. Be a witness.
Zen brings holiness to ordinary life. Zen transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. It transforms the profane into the sacred. It drops the division between the world and the divine.
Zen looks at humanity with undivided vision - it does not divide. Everything is divine - a tree, a rock, a man, a woman, a child.
The word God is not God. God has to be eaten, God has to be tasted, God has to be lived - not argued about.
Go beyond words and concepts. Get into existence.
Zen is non-conceptual, non-intellectual. It preaches immediacy, moment-to-moment immediacy - to be present in the moment; no pass, no future.
Zen says : Be empty. Look without any idea, prejudice, presupposition. Don't be preoccupied. Let go the past and all of life's conditioning.
You simply sit. If you can sit silently, if you can fall into a tremendous restfulness, if you can relax yourself, if you can drop all tensions and become a silent pool of energy, going nowhere, searching nothing, God starts pouring into you. From everywhere God rushes towards you.
In Zen, the door is always open!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Reading Osho's Emotional Wellness
Realizing that I was spiraling down into the abyss again, I decided to read a book by Osho from my library. The book EMOTIONAL WELLNESS talks about transforming fear, anger and jealousy into creative energy, with a chapter on Anger, Sadness and Depression.
Reading the book the second time round gave me some clarity about the way I see myself or think myself. Just need to apply the stuff I have known all along.
Acceptance, letting things be as they are. Seeing things as they are, allowing them to be. So if I am feeling depressed, just feel it. It is just like the sun rising and the sun setting, coming and going. Nothing is permanent.
Don't take life too seriously, don't take thoughts too seriously. Don't pay attention to it. Don't get hooked into the thoughts, they are just thoughts.
Be mindful. Be witness. Be the watcher and the watched. If depression is there, let it be and it will lift off like a veil. Behind every cloud is a silver lining. If there is no cloud, there is no silver lining. Cool!
So depression is one of those things. It comes and it goes. Just be aware of it. Pay attention but give no attention. And it goes off like puff!
Reading the book the second time round gave me some clarity about the way I see myself or think myself. Just need to apply the stuff I have known all along.
Acceptance, letting things be as they are. Seeing things as they are, allowing them to be. So if I am feeling depressed, just feel it. It is just like the sun rising and the sun setting, coming and going. Nothing is permanent.
Don't take life too seriously, don't take thoughts too seriously. Don't pay attention to it. Don't get hooked into the thoughts, they are just thoughts.
Be mindful. Be witness. Be the watcher and the watched. If depression is there, let it be and it will lift off like a veil. Behind every cloud is a silver lining. If there is no cloud, there is no silver lining. Cool!
So depression is one of those things. It comes and it goes. Just be aware of it. Pay attention but give no attention. And it goes off like puff!
Monday, February 14, 2011
Is Depression (and Death) Truly Understood?
Reading some more chapters of the book A Shooting Star dedicated to Markus Ng. Many of his friends wrote about his leadership, his good work, his life with God, his external self. No one wrote about the troubled young man, his inner self. Maybe no one truly knew him.
His writings were often sad, angry, disturbed. Not much different from mine when I am feeling down and depressed. Only difference is I know mine is just a phase I have to go through.
I remember when I was studying in the University of Malaya circ 1985-87, I used to have such bad days which no one knew about and would go to St Francis Xavier's Church at night to pray at the Grotto, weeping my heart out. I felt so lost in the world and did not know what to do. And praying was my only solace. And the crying was good. Released all the tension.
I remember breaking down while attending a Catholic camp at Port Dickson in 1986. There was a lot of light and warmth that night. I was confused and thought I was dying. I did not realize that I was feeling God in me. People around me did not know what to do. They tried comforting me but did not realize that I was experiencing God.
I remember breaking down at work in Parkson Grand, Subang Parade in 1988, when I had so much thoughts of failure, of not being good enough, of not doing my job well. My boss referred me to a shrink who put me on some anti-depressants which did me no good but got me freaked out about drugs, and I swore never to go on them again. Then my boss transferred me to Head Office and things changed for the better because I loved my job.
These happened long before I was finally diagnosed with depression in 2005. And all these time, I did not know that I was suffering from depression. Somehow, I managed to live my life, work, get married, have kids. That was a miracle! Count my blessings.
It is sad that Markus did not live to fully understand and appreciate his condition. It is sad that through his vocation to serve Malaysians and his Church, he did not get a chance to see how his life could have turned around as mine did. Instead it seemed that he drove himself to death, inviting death in his writings, challenging death.
And did he finally understand death? Everyone who wrote of him wrote that he is now with God, that he is only a memory, that he died young, that he was a nice guy when he was alive. Do we all understand life and death? People write as though he is just Markus. Do his family and friends know that he is more than that? That he is one of us? One of many? One with Christ? Jesus died and yet he lives in us. We know it because it is taught to us by the Church. Conditioning. Markus did and yet he lives in us. Do we know that?
I understand death because each day I die a little death and each day I am born to live another day, to experience life. And someday, I will also truly depart from this Earth (and this lifetime), and when I do, I go with the good feeling that I am going home to Consciousness (aka God or Creator or Supreme Being), like going back to the great melting pot.
His writings were often sad, angry, disturbed. Not much different from mine when I am feeling down and depressed. Only difference is I know mine is just a phase I have to go through.
I remember when I was studying in the University of Malaya circ 1985-87, I used to have such bad days which no one knew about and would go to St Francis Xavier's Church at night to pray at the Grotto, weeping my heart out. I felt so lost in the world and did not know what to do. And praying was my only solace. And the crying was good. Released all the tension.
I remember breaking down while attending a Catholic camp at Port Dickson in 1986. There was a lot of light and warmth that night. I was confused and thought I was dying. I did not realize that I was feeling God in me. People around me did not know what to do. They tried comforting me but did not realize that I was experiencing God.
I remember breaking down at work in Parkson Grand, Subang Parade in 1988, when I had so much thoughts of failure, of not being good enough, of not doing my job well. My boss referred me to a shrink who put me on some anti-depressants which did me no good but got me freaked out about drugs, and I swore never to go on them again. Then my boss transferred me to Head Office and things changed for the better because I loved my job.
These happened long before I was finally diagnosed with depression in 2005. And all these time, I did not know that I was suffering from depression. Somehow, I managed to live my life, work, get married, have kids. That was a miracle! Count my blessings.
It is sad that Markus did not live to fully understand and appreciate his condition. It is sad that through his vocation to serve Malaysians and his Church, he did not get a chance to see how his life could have turned around as mine did. Instead it seemed that he drove himself to death, inviting death in his writings, challenging death.
And did he finally understand death? Everyone who wrote of him wrote that he is now with God, that he is only a memory, that he died young, that he was a nice guy when he was alive. Do we all understand life and death? People write as though he is just Markus. Do his family and friends know that he is more than that? That he is one of us? One of many? One with Christ? Jesus died and yet he lives in us. We know it because it is taught to us by the Church. Conditioning. Markus did and yet he lives in us. Do we know that?
I understand death because each day I die a little death and each day I am born to live another day, to experience life. And someday, I will also truly depart from this Earth (and this lifetime), and when I do, I go with the good feeling that I am going home to Consciousness (aka God or Creator or Supreme Being), like going back to the great melting pot.
Expressions
I am now browsing through a book dedicated to Markus Ng titled A Shooting Star. It is on loan from my friend Mei. The book writes of a young man who died young, a young man who suffered from depression, a young man his family and friends felt was a beacon of light that faded out.
From the moment I heard that Markus passed away through a friend's status on gmail, I knew that he was not unlike me. We are what the medical term call sufferers of depression or mental illness, if you like. His writings (or expressions of thoughts) are not unlike mine, searching for the meaning in life and death. The only difference is I know that I am just a part of a whole.
Depression sounds so depressing, so mental. I would like to say that it is just a disharmony between mind and spirit. Spirit says experience life, mind labels life. Spirit says internal God, mind says external God. Spirit says love, mind says a lot of other things less than loving. Spirit says forgive, the mind is full of anger and mistrust.
I think I was depressive all my life, not because I could not cope with life, but my views were in conflict with what I felt deep inside me. Conflicts of life's conditioning and the so called realities of life. Fortunately for me, I discovered myself later in life and questioned life no more. Life is just that, an experience for the spirit, the immortal. After all, we are all light, made man. We all came from the same place and we are in the same place (this planet), and we will go back to the same place, Consciousness.
Just as people get sick, suffer from illnesses such as cancer and diabetes, depression is a state of mind, of unresolved issues. And the mind (put to good use) can heal. Yes, we all have healing powers, if we believe in it (or better know it).
However, we have to remember that we all have a mind which projects images of ourselves and others based on conditionings, we all have what is called the Ego, a mind-made self, we all have thoughts which are all mind-made stuff, we all have emotions, we all have past pains. All these are parts of who we physically and mentally are, some more physically and mentally strong, so to speak. Some less mentally strong, so to speak.
While it is good to remember Markus for who he was and what he was, it is also good to remember that his spirit lives on in all of us, whether we knew him personally or not. Remember, parts of the same body? We are like the blood that flows through the body, we are like the energy force (the qi) that keeps the body alive. It is just that spirit has no name, no personality. Like God. After all, we are all light beings (souls) from the Ultimate Consciousness (what we call God). We are all stars in the night sky. No beginning, no ending.
I still get into "depressing" states but I know that it is part of life, like the seasons of life. And just as the seasons change, I change. A master once said "Hot and cold are the different states of the same thing." Enough said.
From the moment I heard that Markus passed away through a friend's status on gmail, I knew that he was not unlike me. We are what the medical term call sufferers of depression or mental illness, if you like. His writings (or expressions of thoughts) are not unlike mine, searching for the meaning in life and death. The only difference is I know that I am just a part of a whole.
Depression sounds so depressing, so mental. I would like to say that it is just a disharmony between mind and spirit. Spirit says experience life, mind labels life. Spirit says internal God, mind says external God. Spirit says love, mind says a lot of other things less than loving. Spirit says forgive, the mind is full of anger and mistrust.
I think I was depressive all my life, not because I could not cope with life, but my views were in conflict with what I felt deep inside me. Conflicts of life's conditioning and the so called realities of life. Fortunately for me, I discovered myself later in life and questioned life no more. Life is just that, an experience for the spirit, the immortal. After all, we are all light, made man. We all came from the same place and we are in the same place (this planet), and we will go back to the same place, Consciousness.
Just as people get sick, suffer from illnesses such as cancer and diabetes, depression is a state of mind, of unresolved issues. And the mind (put to good use) can heal. Yes, we all have healing powers, if we believe in it (or better know it).
However, we have to remember that we all have a mind which projects images of ourselves and others based on conditionings, we all have what is called the Ego, a mind-made self, we all have thoughts which are all mind-made stuff, we all have emotions, we all have past pains. All these are parts of who we physically and mentally are, some more physically and mentally strong, so to speak. Some less mentally strong, so to speak.
While it is good to remember Markus for who he was and what he was, it is also good to remember that his spirit lives on in all of us, whether we knew him personally or not. Remember, parts of the same body? We are like the blood that flows through the body, we are like the energy force (the qi) that keeps the body alive. It is just that spirit has no name, no personality. Like God. After all, we are all light beings (souls) from the Ultimate Consciousness (what we call God). We are all stars in the night sky. No beginning, no ending.
I still get into "depressing" states but I know that it is part of life, like the seasons of life. And just as the seasons change, I change. A master once said "Hot and cold are the different states of the same thing." Enough said.
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