Perception & Reality

Friends,

Sharing some messages that I received from my spiritual guide, though in pieces on different days but forms a beautiful garland of the subject.

20-2-13

Perception is always relative, it’s comparative. You can only compare. There is no absolute perception.

21-2-13

Vedanta says ‘yes the object exists, of course, but it may not be a cube or a globe or a cone or a rectangle or what you think it is because whatever you think, it is always the result of your relative perceptions.’

22-2-13

‘What is!’, nobody knows or nobody can know because the senses, the sensory organs or the sensory instruments which are used to know an object are themselves imperfect and relative and, therefore, nothing can be known in its absolute content.

23-2-13

Your opinions, your perceptions, your ideas, your images, they are all relative. They are not absolute. But certainly, some thing exists and that which actually exists cannot be found by the sensory organs.

24-2-13

Can the Truth be found through the mind? Vedanta says ‘Well! All that the mind can do is conceive of it or try to conceive it. It can have an idea, a faint idea of it. Beyond that, even the mind fails to understand the real substance of the universe.’

25-2-13

Vedanta also says that the real substance of the universe, is the same everywhere. In you and outside you. And that substance cannot even be found by the mind. Then, if it cannot be found by the mind, what is the use of seeking or exploring?

26-2-13

Vedanta says, ‘when the mind understands, its inability to reach out and find it, finally rests or lets go; surrenders; becomes still and quiet naturally, not forcibly – then, when the mind and the senses have ceased their function – peacefully, tranquilly – in that tranquility and absolute stillness and quietness, there is, what is actually there.

 

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Silence Your Mind

There once was a farmer who discovered that he had lost his watch in the barn. It was no ordinary watch because it had sentimental value for him. After searching high and low among the hay for a long while; he gave up and enlisted the help of a group of children playing outside the barn. He promised them that the person who found it would be rewarded.

Hearing this, the children hurried inside the barn, went through and around the entire stack of hay but still could not find the watch.
Just when the farmer was about to give up looking for his watch, a little boy went up to him and asked to be given another chance. The farmer looked at him and thought, “Why not? After all, this kid looks sincere enough. So the farmer sent the little boy back in the barn.

After a while the little boy came out with the watch in his hand! The farmer was both happy and surprised and so he asked the boy how he succeeded where the rest had failed.

The boy replied, “I did nothing but sit on the ground and listen. In the silence, I heard the ticking of the watch and just looked for it in that direction.

What lesson could this story hold ? Give it a shot…. No winning prize though! 🙂

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What is out there?

(Photo Credit Visualphotos)

Suppose our instrument of perception, let us take the eye, is made like a telescope or a microscope. Our view of the universe would be entirely different. The 3 dimensions of an object that we see before us, will be different. The shape may be different, the view may be different.

So can we conclude, what we see is entirely dependent upon our instrument of perception, in this case, the eye?

Secondly, the eye is the instrument and by a process the image is being interpreted by brain.

Could it be a possibility that what the brain interprets and what is out there, is not same?

Would do you say?

 

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Bondage vs Freedom

I couldn’t resist sharing this.

Quotations Treasury - a sub-blog of Soul Needs - 'One Garden'

A Sufi teaching tells of the man who visited a great mystic to find out how to
let go of his chains of attachment and his prejudices. Instead of answering him
directly, the mystic jumped to his feet and bolted to a nearby pillar, flung
his arms around it, grasping the marble surface as he screamed, “Save me from
this pillar! Save me from this pillar!”

The man who had asked the question could not believe what he saw. He
thought the mystic was mad. The shouting soon brought a crowd of people. “Why
are you doing that?” the man asked. “I came to you to ask a spiritual question
because I thought you were wise, but obviously you’re crazy. *You* are holding
the pillar, the pillar is not holding you. You can simply let go.”

The mystic let go of the pillar and said to the man, “If you…

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I am having my soup!

There is a story, a beautiful story about one of the practices of Zen, which is one-pointedness, one-pointed attention.

It is said that when Bodhidharma was living in China in his little hermitage on the top of one of the mountains, three young aspirants went searching for him to find out the teachings of Zen and attain freedom, Satori, Nirvana.

With great difficulty they searched and searched and searched and finally after many days reached the top of the peak and saw the great master Bodhidharma sitting and drinking his soup from a big wooden bowl with a wooden spoon.

So they went to him and said, “Sir, we have come from a very long distance, we have suffered a lot. We have been searching for you sir, so that we may learn the secret of Zen, the secret of one-pointed attention, the secret of attaining Satori which is freedom from bondage for all mankind. Please be kind enough to teach us this.”

And the master said, without even turning to look at them, “I am drinking my soup.”

The three young men looked at each other confused, wondering if the master was deaf or had he heard them properly? They had asked him a serious question about Zen and how to attainSatori and he said “I am drinking my soup”. That was obvious, they could see it!

So they waited for a while and again posed the same question. The master again said the same answer, “I am drinking my soup.”

They waited and again asked him the question and when the third time he gave the same answer, naturally they were angry and perturbed and they said, “But sir, we were asking you a very serious question.”

So he turned to one of his disciples and said, “Give them their soup.” So the three men ended up sitting nearby drinking their soup from their own bowls which were handed out to them.

Half-way through the drinking of the soup, it occurred to them, what a silly thing that they were doing! When actually they were looking for Satori and for Zen, here they were sitting and drinking soup like any ordinary person.

So they asked the same question again to the master and he said again, “I am drinking my soup.” They got very angry and shouted out together, “We are also drinking our soup.”

And then the master finished his soup, put the spoon and the bowl down. Turned to them and said, “No, you are not drinking your soup.”

“You are drinking your soup and thinking of Zen. You are doing two things at the same time. You are thinking of Zen and drinking your soup while I was drinking my soup, I was drinking my soup, I was drinking my soup; I was doing nothing else.”

(As told by my spiritual guide Sri M)

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Retreat with Master

I was away for almost a week doing what I love most. I find so much peace when I am with my spiritual guide whom we call as just “M”. He visits us once every year and we just love these days spent with him.

 

Usually we will go away for 3 days, in a quiet location in desert or near sea. The routine of the retreat is planed in such a way that it breaks the pattern of daily routine. Some meditation, yoga, talks, Questions and Answer sessions are always woven in-between. We had such lovely time together. There were 66 of us bringing variety in the oneness. Country, religion, gender, age or social status does not matter.

 

I don’t meet him to know his answers to my questions. He helps me explore and find my answers. Sometime he did not correct me when I found wrong answers. When I contemplate and realize that it is incorrect and why, then we discuss and begin the next exploration. But in the process I learnt about the other side of the coin.

 

Guru can stimulate a healthy evaluation of a question and its answer after contemplation.

 

During these days, he shared his wisdom with us in many stories which are Sufi or Zen stories. I have been sharing them with you and the new ones will be coming up soon. Today he has returned back and withdrawal symptoms are easily visible 😦

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Method to meditate by Buddha

This story is about the relationship and also of the teachings by discussion between Buddha and his favorite disciple, Ananda and it’s about meditation. We all meditate, many of us do, very often we can sit but we cannot meditate because our mind moves here and there, up and down most of the time.

So is there a way to meditate? When one meditates, does one have to strive hard to meditate or does meditation come naturally without any striving? To illustrate this point, there is this beautiful story of a discussion that the Buddha had with his disciple, Ananda.

One day Ananda was trying to meditate and in his mind there was a question which was almost insurmountable and in his effort to find a solution, an answer to this question, Ananda was walking up and down, up and down until his feet started to bleed.

He could not compose himself to sit down and meditate unless he had found a theoretical answer, a solution to this particular problem that plagued him that day.

The Buddha, it is said, who was watching this whole scene quietly, called him over and said, “Ananda, aren’t you a great musician? Haven’t you played the veena for me many times?” “Yes,” said Ananda, “My lord.” “I have at your request, played the veena to you many times.”

“I liked the music, the veena as you play it,” said the Buddha. “Can you bring your veena once more and play it for me?” “Sure” said Ananda “whatever you wish, that I fulfil.”

Off he went and came back with his veena. “Just a minute Ananda,” said Buddha, “can you hand over the veena to me? I would like to tune it for you.”

“Surely,” said Ananda and handed-over the veena to the Buddha. The Buddha took the veena into his hands and started tightening the strings. He tightened and He tightened and He tightened and He tightened and then when the strings had become so taught that they were in danger of breaking, snapping, Ananda cried out, “stop, stop.” “O great one, now you will break the strings because you have tightened them too much.”

“Ah,” said Buddha, “I am sorry” and then he loosened the strings until they became so loose and slack that Ananda said, “O enlightened one, the strings now are so slack that no music will come out of it. One cannot play on this. They have to be tightened up to a certain level and not more and not less for music to come.”

So the Buddda smiled and said, “So Ananda, so also is the mind. To go into deep meditation, to listen to the music of the spheres, one has to keep the mind alert and stable and poised, not slack and lazy; at the same time not so stressed and tight as you seem to be keeping your mind.”

“For no music shall come, for the mind shall break and if the mind breaks, no instrument have you other than it to find the truth. Therefore, follow the middle path, neither too much nor too little; neither this extreme nor that.”

“And if you keep to this golden principle of the middle path, you surely shall attain the capacity to reach Nirvana.”

 

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Death and certainty about it-Buddha

It is said, once when Buddha was preaching in a city, there came to him a woman whose only son had died. She came to the Buddha, put the dead body of her little son, baby, before him, bowed low and said, “O great Buddha, the enlightened one, please bring life back to my son, for thou art capable of anything that thou wishes to do.”

What did the Buddha do? The Buddha said to her, “Leave your son, the body of your son here lady, please follow my instructions; go to all the houses in this area, enquire from them if anyone has ever died in their house now or many years ago; and if you find somewhere where nobody has died ever; get me a mustard seed from there and I shall bring your son back to life.”

So the lady went looking for the mustard seed from a house where no one had ever died. The search was futile because there was nowhere or no house where someone had not died at some point or the other. So she came back to the Buddha and told the Buddha, “O enlightened one, I haven’t found a house where no one has died.”

Then the Buddha said to her kindly, “Sit down lady, understand this that death is inevitable to anyone who is born, anything that is born has to die, there is no one who can escape death. So, therefore, think how to free yourself from sorrow while you are still living. That is the most important teaching that I can give you. As for the rest, I sympathise with you.”

 

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Where Are The Pockets?

Mulla Nasrudin had become old and was afraid that he can die any moment. Nasruddin started making arrangement for his funeral, So he ordered a beautiful coffin made of ebony wood with satin pillows inside. He also had a beautiful silk caftan made for his dead body to be dressed in.

The day the tailor delivered the caftan, Mulla Nasruddin tried it on to see how it would look, but suddenly he exclaimed, “What is this! Where are the pockets?”

 

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