The Simple Truth

Photo Credit. Man in the Universe

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"I warn you, whoever you are.

Oh, you who wish to probe the arcana of nature,

if you do not find within yourself that which you seek,

neither shall you be able to find it outside.

If you ignore the excellences of your own house,

how do you intend to find other excellences?

In you is hidden the treasure of treasures.

Oh, man,

 know thyself 

and thou shall know the Universe and the Gods!”

Inscription at the Temple of Delphi.

Do we give our permission to be born into this life? More to the point, ‘who’ is there to give that permission in the first place? Who is this ‘I’ that is born, lives for a while and then dies? From whence came this ‘I’ that we journey through life with so intimately and yet barely ever notice, let alone truly know?

Isn’t it remarkable that the very essence of what and who we are, should be something that most of us are quite ignorant of? Yet even that simple question almost never arises in our minds!

It would seem that we are thrust out into this world without choice and most of the 'happenings’ of life that follow appear to be choice-less as well. The Tibetan wheel of life depicts this cycle of existence in a very graphic, unemotional way, showing the beginnings of human life, from helpless infancy, through to adulthood and all the stages leading on from there to old age and finally death. Unless we are to meet with an untimely end, we all must pass through these various unavoidable stages.

Yet it is our ‘arrival’ at the time of birth and our ‘departure’ at the time of death that are the most mysterious aspects of our existence, giving rise to the eternal question, from where did I come, to where will I go? Everything in between seems geared to pull us away from investigating the origins of our ‘Self’. Are we not almost continuously consumed with the drama of ‘life’and what appears to be happening to us? The only respite we have from the round of endless distractions comes during our sleep, at which time we reconnect so naturally and effortlessly with our true nature that here again, we barely even notice it. We know that we must sleep and yet we take the ‘blessedness’ of that condition almost completely for granted.

Although it is true that we all are born and must die, how we live out our lives in between those two crucial events is not in the least bit certain. Do we allow ourselves to be tossed into the cauldron of life, believing it to be real and true, or, do we take what is our inherent birthright, as conscious, sentient beings and go deeper, to discover the truth of who and what we REALLY are. All of us have the freedom to glimpse beyond the veil of day to day circumstances, we have the freedom to discover our true origin and yet few of us seem compelled to do so.

If we are conscious and aware, then, no matter what our outer life circumstances may be, we have the potential to see beyond them to what really is and if the intention of self-discovery is strong, then rather than being distracting, life itself can provide the very tools with which to make this most important discovery.

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Excerpt from the book; Awareness Comes Knocking

Like the Rays of the Setting Sun

Our lives are running out like the rays of the setting sun,

Death is closing in like the lengthening shadows of evening.

Now what is left of this life will vanish as fast as the last rays of light.

There is no time to waste...

from Patrul Rinpoche's 
Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones

Recently, my nephew; the eldest son of my older sister, passed away.
No one had seen it coming. No one was prepared or forewarned.
It was shocking. He was only thirty-seven years old.

If we ever need to be reminded of our mortality, the untimely passing of someone close to us and young in years is perhaps the most poignant.

It raises all manner of questions and stirs the inner flame of fear and uncertainty, even if on a deep and unrecognised level, of what is awaiting us all.

Death is such a mystery, it is such a profound 'unknown.'
To move through life as though death will somehow never touch us is to float in the vast uncertainty in a tiny bubble of illusion.

Every breath that we draw is bringing us that much closer to the 'great leveller.'

Nickolas was the only other Buddhist in my family. He found enormous comfort in the teachings of the Buddha and most particularly in the teachings on compassion.

He never missed an opportunity to reach out and embrace those he loved and let them know it. His compassion had not yet matured into the 'great compassion' of the enlightened ones but he was on his way.

His mother, Jana was distraught in a manner that is unbearable to witness and in the manner of all mothers who lose a child seemingly before their time.

Naturally, she wanted his funeral to be just as he would want it to be. After all, this would be the last thing that she could do for him in this world. At the time of his passing, Nickolas had been living in a different town from his mother. As the body was kept for autopsy Jana made the journey there only once it was released and taken to the funeral home.

If she could have, she would have taken it to the Buddhist centre but the wishes of other family members had to be respected and so a compromise was reached. Nickolas's mother is not a Buddhist and knows very little of its ways and teachings and yet in her sincere desire and need to express her love for her eldest son she tapped into an intuitive spring in her being and let it flow.


Continue reading in Return to Forever

Do Not Be Distracted

Adi Annamalai

Even in the very midst of the myriad demands of day to day life it is possible to find moments of peace.

We live in times that are  saturated by the media, instant communications and electromagnetic 'noise'.
  
Often we can feel that we are hurled along in a kind of vacuum over which it seems we have very little control.  This gives us the sense of constant and almost endless 'busyness'.  A feeling that life is rushing by and we are merely trying to stay abreast of events...

Excerpt from the book Never Not Ever Here Now

Growing Up

The Uncertainty of Life

When i was a child, my grand parents owned a farm in Motueka, a small town, just across the bay from Nelson in New Zealand, where i grew up.  My visits there usually lasted a few days and i always looked forward to them with much excitement. On this farm, i experienced great freedom. Hugal, their boxer dog and i would spend hours scouring the pastures and playing among the walnut trees.   We spent tireless days searching for berries and disturbing rabbits in their burrows. There were so many things to do on the farm, so many nooks and crannies to explore and this, peppered with the imagination of a child, led to many little adventures.

When i was about 7 or 8 years of age, my grand parents sold the old farm and bought a lovely, bright, new house overlooking one of the inlets near the beach of Kaiteriteri.  This area is not too far from Motueka and forms a series of ocean inlets and beaches that are gilded with strings of golden sand. In those days there were lots of pine trees and forests and the air  hummed with the sound of cicadas.

Not  many people lived there, but the few who did built small, wooden cottages between the pine trees and would visit on weekends or holidays.  If i came to stay during the week, i could take Hugal and go down and ramble on the beaches for hours without seeing more than a mere handful of people.

I was devastated when the farm was sold. Nothing could ever take its place an so many happy memories  abounded for me there.   Holidays at Kaiteriteri, were a very different matter. These bought new and some times very challenging events into my life.  I enjoyed the same freedoms in this new place as i had always enjoyed on the farm.

Being free to roam as i pleased was one of the highlights of my childhood years, but this was a freedom that i could really only enjoy during the visits to my grandparents.  I took this freedom which they gave me, as a sign of their trust and was prepared to do whatever it would take to retain it.

One incident that stands out in my memory very vividly during this time, took place at the beach not too far from my grandparents new home.
It was late afternoon and the tide was going out.  In this place the tides came in a very long way.  So high, in fact, that only a tiny strip of golden sand would be showing when it was full.  But when it went out again, it would leave the beach naked and wet with little ribbons of seawater ferrying out the last dregs of water. The whole area, that was in one minute blue, would then be drained and become a shining stream of river-lets that diminished rapidly as the water was sucked out into the bay. All this would happen within the space of just a few hours, so there were tidal forces and rips at work in these inlets that were  very powerful.  During these hours the beach inlets would be like giant bath tubs when the plug is taken out and i was warned on many occasions to be very careful.

This particular afternoon, i was playing alone on the side of one of these tidal streams when the small bank of sand that i was sitting on caved in.  Suddenly i was thrown into the stream which was very cold and very swift.  So swift in fact, that i was sucked under by the currents and tossed about like a leaf in a white muddle of water and sand that was being dragged out to the open sea.

From a moment of blissful play and unawareness, i was thrown into a turbid cauldron of icy foaming water.  The current was so strong and the surge so powerful, that no matter how much i struggled and flailed around i could not find  which way was up or down until i was knocked and scraped along the bottom.

In the midst of this crisis i had the very lucid awareness that my short life might well be about to end.
However by this time, the powerful current had  surged out into the open bay and i found myself tossed up and then pushed out of a whirling mass of seawater.

After the initial sobs and gasps for air, i noticed that the shore line was a long way off.  In those few minutes the tidal surge had dragged me about 200 meters out into the bay.  It was utterly terrifying to see this and also that there was no one on the beach to call for help. The entire length of the beach, in both directions, was totally deserted...

Read more in Awareness Comes Knocking
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