Nisargadatta on Words

Questioner: As I listen to you I find that it is useless to ask you questions. Whatever the question, you invariably turn it upon itself and bring me to the basic fact that I am living in an illusion of my own making and that reality is inexpressible in words. Words merely add to the confusion and the only wise course is the silent search within.

Maharaj: After all, it is the mind that creates illusion and it is the mind that gets free of it. Words may aggravate illusion, words may also help dispel it. There is nothing wrong in repeating the same truth again and again until it becomes reality. Mother's work is not over with the birth of the child. She feeds it day after day, year after year until it needs her no longer. People need hearing words, until facts speak to them louder than words.

Q: So we are children to be fed on words?

M: As long as you give importance to words, you are children.

Q: All right, then be our mother.

M: Where was the child before it was born? Was it not with the mother? Because it was already with the mother it could be born.

Q: Surely, the mother did not carry the child when she was a child herself.

M: Potentially, she was the mother. Go beyond the illusion of time.

Q: Your answer is always the same. A kind of clockwork which strikes the same hours again and again.

M: It can not be helped. Just like the one sun is reflected in a billion dew drops, so is the timeless endlessly repeated. When l repeat: 'I am, I am', I merely assert and reassert an ever-present fact. You get tired of my words because you do not see the living truth behind them. Contact it and you will find the full meaning of words and of silence—both.

Turning to Be

The forms awareness deems to take 

appear to me in space and time 

but that’s a prevalent mistake, 

ridiculous, when my sublime 

nature is seen as here and now 

and all of me I disavow 

as immaterial to one 

spontaneous intent to know 

myself. It is as if the sun 

shone down upon itself to grow 

an oak which turns a leaf to see 

inside the sun it is to be.

Air

division is the air

the world inhales—

violence is the air

the world exhales—

the wisdom of love is the air

that leaves the world

breathless

Baptism of Love

We weren’t religious.

But drinking downstairs all alone one Friday night,

I started thinking who am I to not baptize our daughter,

sleeping upstairs, two years old,

dreaming new identities she could be like Lego characters

assembled thought by thought until

the ever-present inimitable magic of one’s being is covered up

by something old and borrowed.

Every beer was turning me more blue.

And so I tip-toed up the staircase,

passing prints of Andrew Wyeth’s artless landscapes

opening around an empty house,

until I stood above her sleeping peaceful form,

and felt the consciousness we shared as breathtaking love.

Then I touched my finger to my tongue

and prayed she’d always know she is that light of being

that had come into our disillusioned lives

to teach us what we always are.

I placed that finger on her forehead

feeling fourteen billion years as building to this second.

Suffering Through

The world is like an incubator 

growing wisdom in its fervor 

slowly. Some will never see 

through confines of that world because—

there’s not an object to that final 

preposition. There’s no objective 

in the world at all. Such is 

its insight being seen outright. 

There’s only the absolute subjective.

Christine: an Appreciation

She drove that orange Volkswagen like freedom itself. No one would ever know where to find her. That didn’t mean she wasn’t quite striking when around, but only that she could disappear before you knew it.

And her style, beneath it all, was traditional. She had no misgivings about the American Dream other than it should exclude no one, especially women. So it was inevitable that we would slowly drift apart. She veered toward that dream, driven, and I was always swerving away from it, searching.

The only reason we lasted as long as we did was the initial nuclear fusion-like strength of our love those first years. In time, it took the form of our beautiful daughter, to whom she sacrificed much to be a loving mother. Not too long ago, I told her ours was an epic history. She questioned that, and I countered maybe it was more mythological: the marriage of Sea and Sky and the birth of Venus.

Chris passed away on Friday. Imagine the loss of an ocean. And the depth of its absence.

unthinkable pseutra

today's art is tomorrow’s cliché, but truth is no time.

fear of transformation fuels the status quo. imagine what love does to it?

love isn't your all-time favorite default state? what are you thinking?

there's nothing when self-awareness isn't love. isn't That something?

i’m sorry it took me so long to see there’s never anything to forgive.

acting can never keep up with the play.

why, my dear, shall we dare to imagine following the truth. how lovely that would be!

the self intends countless ever-transforming perspectives on itself. should it be anything less?

if non-dual wisdom isn't the alien, what is?

set the alarm for now.

wake up. it's now.

one chooses one. it's only the choosing that appears duplicitous.

it's not rocket science. although it's also rocket science.

one never knows the extent of what the other gives in their relationship because one never knows the limits of what the other thinks it is.

relax. surrender. only the heart knows. and only the heart does.

in the self-awareness universe, it's all about the aperture.

what is an eye? who am i ? two sides of the headless coin.

how many facets in diamond awareness?

what is your original facet?

if an answer can't be seen as a question, it isn't an answer.

what is your relationship with the non-dual?

in other words, try thinking the unthinkable.

life isn't fair. it is and it isn't.

asking who i am is love without question.

Ballyhoo

Black lights above a psychedelic 

roller coaster returning to 

the sea of soy—beneath its rails 

the barker builds banana splits 

and on the midway middlemen 

delight in dukkering amusements. 

The carnival is burning down the town. 

Come see the doubleheader being 

played in three-dimensional 

illusion! Come hear the organ grinders! 

Smell the neon; feel its pain. 

And while you wait in a line to die for, 

taste the floss that’s spun from rain. 

Genealogical Self-analysis

The fear of death 

is just the fear of that 

which one 

essentially has always been. 

My genealogy, 

if traced in truth, 

descends 

the evolutionary scale 

on earth, continuing 

to comets, stars, 

and all 

dark matter coming from that burst 

of light emerging from 

the great unknown. 

Unborn— 

that is my only family name.

Tempest in a Teapot

Imagine all the world is inside-out 

and what you thought was hard reality 

is pure imagination resting in 

a headless head. That picture window is 

an opening within this consciousness. 

Look, chickadees are feeding on themselves. 

Their cerebellum is this space of sky 

and eyes are everywhere it touches. Ground 

is just the edges of a deepest sleep 

from which the branches of some scientific 

playground spread until I see myself. 

My leaves are falling everywhere. My river 

runs through sure-footed galaxies. My ocean 

waves at countless years of soundless notions. 

None of this is what I really am.