What is awakening?

I had this thought today. All people are awake. It's just that some people are not aware of it.

Maybe you think like this: “I’m so stupid. I’m so fuckin lazy. I eat too much junk food. I watch too much crap on TV. I have so many stupid thoughts in my head. How can I be awake? When I wake up my life will change. I must take up my meditation practice again. To be awake is a completely different state of mind. It is definitely not this what I experience now. Eckhart and Buddha and Adyashanti and all the awakened people are not like me.”

Maybe you think like this: “I have studied so hard under so many years. I have been to so many meditation retreats. I have met many awakened teachers. Something is wrong with me. I haven’t really got it yet. What I experience here and now is not awakening. I have so many stupid thoughts coming into my head. Eckhart says that awakened people don’t have stupid thoughts in their heads. I really have to do something. I really have to intensify my meditation practice.”

Maybe you think like this: “ I have practiced meditation for years. I have met truly awakened teachers. I have read tons of spiritual literature. I am practically there. I am highly evolved. Most people are sleeping but I am not.”

What I try to say is that we are all awake, (when we are not asleep at night).We don’t have to put any particular teaching into practice. We don’t have to try the best we can. Problems begin when we believe that something is wrong with us, that we lack something and that we have to do something about it.

This is it. What is, is. Of course the totality is enormous compared to what we experience here and now with our senses, but still, this is it, right now.

We are here. We are awake. You are reading this, right now. You are staring at a computer screen. You are awake. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to try harder. You don't need to learn a method how to wake up. You don't have to learn how to laugh or smile. You don't have to realize anything.

Interpretations

History of religion scholars know of 22 000 different interpretations of the New Testament. 22 000 different Churches and sects have been formed through history. Terrible religious wars have been fought between them.

After his awakening, Buddha began to teach how anyone could find what he had found. After his death his teachings was spread by his disciples. Over the centuries many different schools were formed.

We are all bent differently. This is natural. We all make different interpretations due to different biological and cultural conditionings and life situations. We interpret life differently. Even the greatest gurus or smartest professors can see only but small glimpses of the totality. A life is a glimpse of the totality.

I guess that you know the story of the blind men and the elephant. The blind men were asked, “What is this you have in front of you?” One of them touched its leg and said, “It is a pillar.” Another one touched its tail and said, “It’s a whip.”

Form and formlessness

Mahayana Buddhists and those who are into Advaita Vedanta sometimes speak of absolute and relative truth. Maybe these concepts can be helpful. Right and wrong doesn’t exist from the eternal point of view and nothing of what is going on here in this world of form matters at all. The eternal world is formless; it has no qualities, and it can thus not be described with words. It can only be experienced, however not through the senses. The body, the mind and the sense perceptions are illusory, Maya.

In the world of form, where I live, things are good or bad, right or wrong, partly right or wrong or partly good or bad. For example, it is wrong to abuse children or to exploit poor people to get rich. It can be partly right to be selfish. Here in this dimension, you shouldn’t do to others what you don’t want others to do to you. However, we all make mistakes.

I can see, I can hear, I can feel and I can think. I can observe my thoughts and feelings. My thoughts and feelings are thus only a part of me. I can be here and now, in pleasure or pain or I can escape into a fog. I can escape in to fantasy worlds, I can get stoned or I can put all my energy into a career. All this is illusory from an absolute point of view.

I live my life here in this world of form. If I am dead drunk or sober, if I am selfish or unselfish, if I have a right wing or a left wing bent, doesn’t matter at all from an eternal point of view.

I like Eckhart’s way of looking at this. It is not one way or the other. The world of form and the formless world are two aspects of the totality, like two sides of a coin. One side cannot exist without the other. What would the formless world be like without observers? Would it exist at all? What would the formless world be like if no one was there to wonder about it?

Well, what would the world of form be like if no one was there to observe it?

We have to find ways to make a living. We have all been thrown into the water to sink or swim. We have to have some fun, a roll in the hay now and then, at least when we are young; we need sunsets and red wine and we need little children to tell fairy tales to. All this takes place in the endless formlessness.

What are thoughts made of?

 

What are thoughts made of?
What is the observer of the thoughts made of?
What are dreams made of?
What is the dreamer made of?
What are the waves in the water made of?

 

Empty space

What would the world look like if no one were here to look at it; would the mountains still be mountains and the rivers still be rivers? Or would everything be just an endless empty space with a few quarks or strings floating around here and there?

No sounds, no colors, no smells, no cold winds, just a few electrons, quarks or whatever in an endless sea of emptiness?