Advaita Post 10-01 - Skating: balance and stillness in gliding left to right: life

Year No. 10 01 (January 14, 2009)

How to skate?

Out of nothing
there's the universe
of being-awareness with a white field and
a legged body.
Balance in the center,
creation comes with movement:
weight leaning and
mass flowing towards one side.

Despite imbalance, in action
balance remains.
Joining the shifting means
staying in balance.
The movement continues until
it’s exhausted
and then reverses.
Fortunately, another leg continues
in the other direction.

There is a left to right glide in balance.
There is a flying forward on the plain, while
stillness remains.
That's life, as long as it's there.

An introduction and talk on November 19, 2008 in Gouda: The ocean and the waves

ocean and waves

All different kinds of approaches to non-duality have been spoken of here. What else is there to discuss? Let's look once again at an important metaphor in order to gain a better recognition of non-duality: the famous picture of the ocean and the waves. Everyone knows it, but it's worth going to see more precisely what it means.

The image isn't used for its own sake, rather the intention is for you to recognize something of yourself. This recognition will come only if you literally experience yourself in the picture. It's a kind of imagination in which the distance to the image disappears. Then, the inner meaning becomes clear to you. It's an old image from the ancient Upanishads, found afterwards throughout the Advaita tradition and beyond.

Starting with your experience of yourself as a person, you can experience that you sink into the ocean, dissolve within it and are yourself the ocean. You can also identify yourself with a wave. Then you sit behind your eyes and look at the other waves in the distance. You note: "I am different from the other waves." They are something other; some are higher. You also want to become higher. But you experience that you become less and are likely to disappear. You'll do anything to stretch your life out as a wave.

Naturally you can also see that you are nothing but the ocean and that the other waves are also the ocean, and thus the same as you. This experiential transition is a process in which a change in identification occurs. That process is an object-meditation. Within that process, initially you focus quite strongly in your imagination on the ocean as object, so that you very realistically experience the ocean, including the waves. You shouldn't pass over this phase of reality formation, because otherwise the ocean will remain just a mental image. This ocean can become very real, and unfathomably deep. You can meditatively remain with the ocean as experienced reality in such a way that the distance disappears. In your own experience then you sink into the ocean, you get lost in it and merge with it. So you really experience yourself as the ocean with its waves. As wave, there is the experience that your existence continues downwards, that you are unfathomable. As ocean you experience your bottomless depth that sticks its head out somewhere up above. From that vantage point, there is a view towards the other waves. It's clear that if you identify yourself with one wave and its viewpoint, then you forget your own self-being. Then you are busy, judging, wishing and willing. Fortunately, the consciousness can remain spacious, or in any case can become spacious once again. It's clear that the little wave is just a surface phenomenon which is nothing compared to the ocean. You are the ocean, which now and then includes phenomena on the surface. Therefore the little waves are not different one from another.

Thus, these are two different ways of knowing. In the wave there is an observation of objects from a distance. In the ocean, returning to yourself as feeling awareness, there is an internal knowledge, an internal being-experience that you are the whole ocean. Directly experience yourself as touching all coasts; directly experience in your inner life the other waves as yourself. Look once more at your hand. You can look from out of your eyes towards your hand as an object, for example as an object from which you might remove a splinter. You can also be aware of your inner sphere, for example while touching and feeling something. Then you're already in your hand. Then your hand is not an object. Your hand observes and you are your own hand, as subject of perception. While you look at your hand, you can let your view point of yourself descend. Your perspective lowers, and thereby you get closer to your own body until you merge. The separation between yourself as a subject and object disappears. You can imagine the descending movement as a V - see the book "Non-duality". At first there is (at the top) a separation between observer and observed, while (descending) there is a convergence, and eventually a merging. What you experience depends on your point of view. You can remain aware of the different perspectives simultaneously as you see your hand and at the same time internally feel yourself. This applies also in relation to other things and other people.

That is then a feeling and seeing.

Seeing and feeling come together. The seeing is built into the feeling sphere in which there are no separations. As you see yourself in the mirror, you can say that you see an image. And you are not an image. That non-being which is clear in the aware seeing merges with the being which is clear in the feeling of that image. This becomes evident as you take distance and become more aware on a deeper level.

This is then an internal view.

Yes, an internal consciousness without identifying yourself exclusively behind your eyes or on the tip of a wave, while you simultaneously realize that you as being-awareness are not dependent upon the experienced forms.