Your beautiful and insightful reflection prompted the following questions, which don’t require answers – except from our own internal inquiries to arrive at answers that resonate for each of us individually:
1. “[Y]have been free of bondage from the beginning of time.” Does this matter to people who do not realize/feel it? Does it matter to those who do?
2. If we experience “a sense of deep peace and effortless joy that heals all ills” and “conscious presence,” why depart from it to regret and worry about conflict elsewhere in the world or at other times for us?
3. Is seeking “the end of conflict” as illusory as seeking happiness?
4. If there is no “who” or “doer,” who/what is experiencing or causing conflict?
5. Doesn’t “[t]he ultimately simple act of allowing ‘what is’ to be” include conflict? And, who is doing the allowing?
6. Ultimately, isn’t there just a flow of thoughts, feelings, sensations, sights, sounds, and other unnamable aspects that become “experience” via the perspectives and POV that our minds take? Don’t those perspectives/POV “produce” experiences of conflict, peace, happiness, and everything else in the range of experience? (And, what are perspectives/POV really?)
7. What is to be gained by “trying” to manipulate our perspectives/POV to “create” different experiences? Isn’t the nature of awareness/conscious presence to be unperturbed by its contents, e.g., conflict? What if we simply accept/not resist the conflict we and others experience?
8. Do any of us ever reach the stage of Bodhisattva, where we have the insight and compassion to alleviate the suffering and conflict experienced by others? Can we ever remove the plank in our eye in order to remove the mote in another’s? Do the lessons of the Chinese farmer parable mean that we can never know if our helping or other actions will yield beneficial effects? How do we know that a sociopath’s actions will not ultimately prove beneficial for current or future generations? Does contemplating his actions or the end of conflict in the world accomplish anything more than changing our perspective/POV on the Now to one absent of peace, happiness, and acceptance of what is?
Apologies for the long list. Your reflection challenged and stimulated my thinking. Just as it is natural for Mike to express, it is natural for Noel to inquire.
Thank you for all of these questions! I love them all and there probably isn't one of them that I have not wondered about 10,000 times in this lifetime! Although now I'm wondering if they aren't all the same question in different forms, Ha! Reading them over, I keep returning to the one salient question that would dissolve all the others: If there is no “who” or “doer,” who/what is experiencing or causing conflict'? This was a biggie for me, many years ago, to discover, despite myself, that there is no 'me', no 'doer', no experiencer. Everything is just happening on its own, no license required. Oh yeah, that's when the fun begins.
Not that life becomes perfect. You will still, if you're like me, get angry, sad, impatient, bored, any and all forms of human aggravation...BUT...the difference is they no longer have roots in an imagined self. Well, at least the roots don't have the grip they used to have. In fact, those aggravations can and do become doorways to a deeper awakening. As far as I can tell, there's no end to it.
It's a ridiculously beautiful afternoon here in Ojai. My wife and I are off for a walk. Many thanks for your missive. Your questions are my questions.
Wonderful dialog, fellas!
Mike
Your beautiful and insightful reflection prompted the following questions, which don’t require answers – except from our own internal inquiries to arrive at answers that resonate for each of us individually:
1. “[Y]have been free of bondage from the beginning of time.” Does this matter to people who do not realize/feel it? Does it matter to those who do?
2. If we experience “a sense of deep peace and effortless joy that heals all ills” and “conscious presence,” why depart from it to regret and worry about conflict elsewhere in the world or at other times for us?
3. Is seeking “the end of conflict” as illusory as seeking happiness?
4. If there is no “who” or “doer,” who/what is experiencing or causing conflict?
5. Doesn’t “[t]he ultimately simple act of allowing ‘what is’ to be” include conflict? And, who is doing the allowing?
6. Ultimately, isn’t there just a flow of thoughts, feelings, sensations, sights, sounds, and other unnamable aspects that become “experience” via the perspectives and POV that our minds take? Don’t those perspectives/POV “produce” experiences of conflict, peace, happiness, and everything else in the range of experience? (And, what are perspectives/POV really?)
7. What is to be gained by “trying” to manipulate our perspectives/POV to “create” different experiences? Isn’t the nature of awareness/conscious presence to be unperturbed by its contents, e.g., conflict? What if we simply accept/not resist the conflict we and others experience?
8. Do any of us ever reach the stage of Bodhisattva, where we have the insight and compassion to alleviate the suffering and conflict experienced by others? Can we ever remove the plank in our eye in order to remove the mote in another’s? Do the lessons of the Chinese farmer parable mean that we can never know if our helping or other actions will yield beneficial effects? How do we know that a sociopath’s actions will not ultimately prove beneficial for current or future generations? Does contemplating his actions or the end of conflict in the world accomplish anything more than changing our perspective/POV on the Now to one absent of peace, happiness, and acceptance of what is?
Apologies for the long list. Your reflection challenged and stimulated my thinking. Just as it is natural for Mike to express, it is natural for Noel to inquire.
Happy NOW Year indeed!
Noel
Noel,
Thank you for all of these questions! I love them all and there probably isn't one of them that I have not wondered about 10,000 times in this lifetime! Although now I'm wondering if they aren't all the same question in different forms, Ha! Reading them over, I keep returning to the one salient question that would dissolve all the others: If there is no “who” or “doer,” who/what is experiencing or causing conflict'? This was a biggie for me, many years ago, to discover, despite myself, that there is no 'me', no 'doer', no experiencer. Everything is just happening on its own, no license required. Oh yeah, that's when the fun begins.
Not that life becomes perfect. You will still, if you're like me, get angry, sad, impatient, bored, any and all forms of human aggravation...BUT...the difference is they no longer have roots in an imagined self. Well, at least the roots don't have the grip they used to have. In fact, those aggravations can and do become doorways to a deeper awakening. As far as I can tell, there's no end to it.
It's a ridiculously beautiful afternoon here in Ojai. My wife and I are off for a walk. Many thanks for your missive. Your questions are my questions.
Cheers, M