No maker, no made, all unfolding perfectly... But how is that going to help me feel better about seeing someone suffer?
Why would you want to feel good about seeing someone suffer?? lol... you must mean, how is this going to help you to help others to be liberated from suffering?
If that's the question, the answer is that you won't be able to help others in most cases, because most people would not have any clue what you are talking about, and if anything they would be hurt by these ideas as their dreams would be shattered. On the other hand, sometimes you can help someone understand, but you think you can't. Like my neighbor--I forget his name now, but he is a real interesting guy from the little I know of him. He talks to me mostly about fruit that he likes. Strangely, he told me his favorite fruit was a pineapple one day, and I just happened to have just bought a pineapple for $1, even tho I don't like pineapple much. I gave it to him. Then a few months later (recently) he told me it was the best pineapple he'd ever had and he had to repay me with some fruit sometime. Somehow, he mentioned something about me being Jewish, and I said, "well, not really." And he said, "oh ok, but you believe in God at least." I said, "Well, not really." And he was flabbergasted. He said, "Well, you better, or else what will happen on judgement day?" I said, "There's nobody here to judge or be judged. If you pay attention to direct experience you'll see there's only the seen, the heard, the cognized, nobody in any of it." He said, "Wow, man, that's deep. I got to come over and talk with you sometime!"
Anyway, you may be able to help folks if you can first help yourself. Otherwise you'll be preaching a message that nobody will have reason to believe. I'd say just keep quiet until you have some true liberatory insight... until your intellectual understanding is confirmed by direct experience of the happiness of no self, no mind, automatic perfection. Even if that experience is only a brief one, it will shake the doubt right out of you. You'll be a true convert and nothing will ever be able to sway you from this understanding, no experience of God no matter how powerful. In fact, i recently (maybe 2 months ago) had my latest God experience while on ayahuasca (I wasn't expecting the effects to be so strong). It was foolish of me to have taken 1.5g of mimosa given that I was alone there to watch my sleeping baby. I was fighting it and God was right there, and I was bargaining with him/it. I said, look God, we both know that you and I don't exist and this whole dialog is an illusion, but can you please shut off this drug experience? I'll change my life if you want me to, just tell me what I have to do to shut this off. And God said, "Ok, then stop selling psychedelics to people and teach them the dharma instead. You already know that psychedelics are only confusing people if they don't understand reality to begin with." It was hard for me to accept because this business was providing most of my income, but I had no choice, especially because I knew this was truth being spoken. So I accepted, and shortly after, the experience was over.
Now, back to this whole idea of helping yourself to be liberated. That sounds almost selfish to some people. But think of it like this... you actually are not really helping yourself, but rather, this body/mind being referred to as "yourself" is helping an infinite number of "your" future body/minds that would otherwise be enslaved to identity if not for "your" endeavors to untie the knot of ignorance in this very life. While it may be hard to see that this current body/mind is not you, it should be a bit easier to see that future body/minds are not you. Thus, liberating this body/mind is the opposite of selfishness, even if no "other" beings are helped in the process in this lifetime (altho in most cases, many "others" will be helped in the process).
So instead of seeing liberation as selfish (which is an incredible trick the ego plays!) try to see clinging to identity as selfish. I once had an experience in which I was allowed to let go of identity in a dream, and I was *so* scared, but I had been training hard to remember that the whole point was to benefit all beings. So I said, "well, ok, I'll let go, since it is for the benefit of all beings." And upon saying that, I dissolved, painfully, into the universe. It was very painful, the letting go, that time. That was a dream (without drugs). Since then there's been a lot more bliss involved in these experiences, but usually still some initial trepidation. I always have to keep in mind how what I'm doing is for the benefit of all beings, to fight the illusion that it is selfish.
No comments:
Post a Comment