Heart of Lightness (2 Aumanandada)

i.

Reality is not nihilistic. Reality is not unenlightened. And reality is not unhappy.

Paraphrasing Emily. I’m real. Who are you? Are you – real – too? Then there’s a pair of us!

There are no words for the supreme absolute. But satcitananda is the original postmodern deconstruction.

ii.

The universe, is what the new age calls Isvara. But universal consciousness by any other name still has no name.

I too have no name except the one my loving parents give me. Thus by the transitive property of myth, I am That.

Or if Isvara is the reflection of Brahman in Maya, who am I?

iii.

I am awareness. Awareness is attention minus thought. Thought is everything I’m not.

My absolute existence is naturally intelligent. Call it intuition.

Knowledge is bliss in the mind. Sex is bliss in the body. Love is bliss in the heart of lightness.

footnotes

iv.

if the truth isn't paradoxical, then it isn't truth.

as the mind appears in consciousness, and as the smaller never knows the greater, the mind depends on intuition for the truth. the language of intuition is naturally paradoxical.

v.

not understanding

the language of intuition is paradoxical

is the main cause of that disease 

we call religion

vi.

i truly love how advaita gives paradox a name and then calls it a day. like first koan is best koan, maya. thanks for the anti-memory.

all projection is impermanent

IMPERMANENCE IS AN APPEARANCE IN EXISTENCE

vii.

welcome to the revelation station.

no luggage is allowed beyond the yellow line.

viii.

paradox is the yellow line. her name is maya.

ix.

these are her latest affirmations. i am not nothing. i am not unenlightened. i am not at war with myself.

x.

awareness equals attention minus time. attention equals awareness plus time. time equals attention minus awareness.

First Aumanandada

First, despite all theories of big neuroscience, consciousness is not a product of the body-mind. Such belief is just as much a cloud to understanding yourself as is any fundamentalist religion or psychological superego. Is not consciousness ‘itself’ primal? Inquire within.

Second, understanding yourself is not a matter of belief. In fact, disattaching from all thought, including the foundational one of egoic identification, is the basic practice of spiritual deconstruction, and an integral component of self-inquiry.

Third, this understanding is ‘experiential’ for lack of a better common word, closer to one’s experience of real love than any thought or action ever encountered. This is being. This is soul. This is consciousness. This is atman.

Fourth, this consciousness is the absolute godhead. This being is awareness. This atman is brahman. There’s nothing further. Brahman is samadhi. I always am that. Nonduality isn’t rocket science.

Fifth, this is my latest practice. It’s almost mathematical. a) Pay attention with full cognition. To pay means this attention is outgoing. This practice is neither inner meditation nor just sitting. b) Drop cognition. c) Attention minus cognition equals awareness.

footnotes

beyond affirmation and negation is the space of consciousness-awareness-bliss.

there’s nothing wrong with pleasure. mistaking pleasure for happiness sucks.

to be real, one must live outside the law of physics.

all change is unreal. the real is changeless. no one knows how the real becomes unreal. they call it maya. but a koan by any other name is still a paradox.

i drive a car. i know my body-mind is not the car. I drive a body-mind. i know the body-mind is not myself.

not knowing the body-mind is a tool, I believe I am the tool. god it hurts.

bhagavad gita english advaita wise

what should a poor arjuna do? so many english gitas!

first, if we're talking the gita with shankara's commentary (bhasya), there's really only two. gambhirananda or warrier.

second, if we're talking modern advaita vedanta commentary, we're basically talking chinmayananda or dayananda.

last, for sanskrit translation in particular, there's the sargent. and for an advaitin transcreation, there's the jacobs. other than that, there's like ten thousand others.

lastly, there's the nikhilananda, which may be all of the above.

to clarify, as for english gitas, advaita-wise more or less, there's seven: gambhirananda, warrier, chinmayananda, dayananda, nikhilananda, jacobs, and sargent.

Ode to Awareness

Supreme attention is attention without thought. Attention without thought is unadulterated awareness.

Awareness is like the sea if the sea is the heart. And awareness is like the sky if awareness is the eye.

Awareness is the rope, the double-helix of nonduality. And thought is the snake, the superimposition.

Awareness is the godhead and awareness is the soul. Awareness is brahman and atman is awareness.

Awareness is consciousness without a doubt. But we already know that, don't we, awareness?

footnotes

ATTENTION is about as experiential as one can get. and attention without thought is about as equally non-experiential. beginning at the beginning to end in the timeless is the real art of maya.

all metaphors come in twos, vehicle and tenor. the vehicle is like the finger and the tenor is the moon. the third part of a metaphor is always paradox. it's the unsung which the tenor sings.

some talk about the rope and some don't. ain't no thang.

awareness is the ground, the movie screen, the open field in which the child, space-time, is now appearing.

the last math, the final point. if attention minus thought equals the absolute godhead of brahman awareness, then attention plus deconstruction equals that as well. but who am i to say?

dedicated to ulladu narpadu

Deluxe Imagination

i.

From out of the deep

Arises the dream,

From out of the dream

Arises the scream

From dream time

Waking in space.

ii.

There’s no real borderline

Between the dreamtime in sleep

And the dreamtime in space–

All dreamtime is

Gradual enlightenment.

iii.

The noumenal

Reality

Of absolute

Awareness is

Spontaneously

Self-aware

And the essence

Of self-awareness

Smells like dreamtime

iv.

From out of material ignorance comes the green scream of aha!

—it’s just a dream my maya dreamed one afternoon.

footnotes

between  dream  time  and  space  

is the scream of a newborn baby

like paradox is the stuff of myth 

and myth is the stuff of maya

NIRVANA SMELLS LIKE SAMSARA

haiku to duality and beyond!

deconstruction

indication

koan

dedicated to olson, earl of gloucester and lux, the revelator

Ode to Twosday

i.

After the rock of deep sleep and the ripe vegetation of the sleeping dream, the dreamlike awareness of the dream awaking is like a great hallucination to universal consciousness.

In such living color, consciousness, of course, identifies with the amazing body-mind. Wouldn’t you? Now, it is seeing through its error of its being it, just because it hurts.

Not to mention, in America, there’s still a thing called public education, with its disciplines of reading, writing, history, geography, and rhythm & blues.

ii.

After modern education is postmodern deconstruction. In India, they call this learning neti neti. It’s one of the two designed usages for the tool of mind.

The second honest usage of the mind is called indication, or pointing. It’s basically consciousness talking to consciousness in simple metaphor, or maybe charades!

The third and double-secret usage of the mind is called paradox, koan, maya. You read it here first. That the permanent appears to be impermanent is one trick pony.

footnotes

lately it's like if advaita vedanta is the sea in which the ten-thousand foot wave of nisargadatta maharaj appears, then sign me up.

the genius of gaudapada is in seeing that the waking dream is just another state of consciousness, as is deep sleep and the sleeping dream, and not consciousness, the fourth, the force, only.

before self-awareness is self-consciousness. before self-consciousness is the inorganic molecular rock of ignorance and it's evolving organization.

all poetry is just three chords and the truth. all truth is deconstruction and its revelation.

that deconstruction is one of the two legitimate uses of the mind indicates a certain kind of clairvoyance, or what arthur m. bell calls "the dependence of seventh substages on the next highest stage." paradox, koan, and maya, oh my!

it is said when consciousness points at consciousness, the fool looks at consciousness. who says that?

Jnana's Inferno

Just as there’s never not that

absolute awareness,

there’s never not this

self-awareness.

Like sparks of a silent inferno,

this forms, evolves, and realizes,

in countless iterations of that.

An American Mahavakya

Before one knows I am That (or consciousness is the absolute, atman is brahman, tat asi tvam), one must first know one is consciousness.

In America, where materialism rules like the new boss, it’s believed the brain produces consciousness, like money produces happiness, lol. Else sing about Jesus and drink wine all day.

Meanwhile, all across the land, the consciousness prophets are selling their product as best as they can. For when in Rome, one either does what the Romans do, or go ignored (or worse co-opted) into that good green night.

This turning, this new metaparadigm, this abandoning of one’s conditioning to identify as mind or body or body-mind, requires this kind of elementary education. Mama, don’t let the doctors of divinity teach your children.

Everything appears in consciousness. Think about it. If everything appears in consciousness, and I am witnessing everything, then I am consciousness. This is an American Mahavakya.

Good Words

A good word is an axe

tearing down my houses of belief.

A good word is an arrow

shooting straight through the mist

finding the heart of my beloved.

And like all good words

they’re left behind

on an abandoned field

in empty space

and unadulterated timelessness.

.

Comans on Shankara on Gaudapada on Samadhi

"There is also the problem that the word samadhi has been reified to the extent that it embodies a “mystical” state of consciousness which is seen to be the goal of all spiritual practice, as it forms the necessary condition for the realisation of Brahman. In the literature extolling the importance samadhi the word is frequently translated as “super consciousness”, a meaning that has nothing to do with the etymology of the word samadhi. Such translations succeed only in further conditioning the seeker by fostering an imagination as to what Self-knowledge is like, and what is its precondition. The problem with this whole enterprise is that the seeker then assiduously tries to cultivate a particular type of experience, the nature of which is in the imagination, and this is done at the cost of neglecting the Self that, according to the Advaita of Sankara, is simply Awareness itself. In short, the whole search for a “mystical” samadhi experience can be a mistaken adventure, in that it can amount to an ignorant denial of the Self, for in searching for an experience of the Self the searcher overlooks the fact – and the teaching of this fact is made explicit in such Upanişads as Brhadaranyaka and Kena- that Brahman, the ultimate subject, pure Awareness, cannot be experienced objectively like a sense object, because it is Experience itself.

According to the second explanation in the commentary, i.c.. “samadhi is that in which one is resolved”, Gauḍapada is using the word samadhi as a description of the nature of Brahman, rather than the idea that Brahman is to be gained through a samadhi experience. In this interpretation, which seems to be the one the commentator prefers judging from his introduction to the following verse (“Since it was said that Brahman itself is samadhi, motionless, without fear…”), Brahman is said to be samadhi itself, just as the turiya -Self was described earlier as “free from all division” (nirvikalpa) (2.35). According to this understanding, the turiya -Self is inherently nirvikalpa and as such it is “samadhi” by nature. What this means is that the turiya -Self, as pure Awareness, is Experience per se (anubhūtisvarüpa), or in the words of the Brhadaraṇyaka Upanişad: “This Self, the experiencer of everything (sarvänubhūh), is Brahman” (2.5.19). In this statement of the Upanisad the Self is presented as Experience itself. Thus there are two views in Advaita, and at a certain level they are quite divergent: the first, more “yogic” view, advocates realisation through the cultivation of a samadhi experience: the second takes its stand on the Self as self-revealing Awareness, as Experience per se, and while it does not deny the value of meditation it looks somewhat critically upon the samadhi-oriented search for a special experience of the Self. I believe that the latter view accords more closely with the teachings of Sankara and his disciples."

from The Method of Early Advaita Vedanta: A Study of Gaudapada, Sankara, Suresvara and Padmapada by Michael Comans