Written on November 21, 2009 by Tom Stine
The secret to happiness:
Make peace with your mind.
Make peace with the person you think you are.
Make peace with the world.
Make peace with life.
Make peace with everything.
Everything.
You, consciousness, make peace.
The mind can’t make peace with itself.
Make peace with all that you are.
The only cause of suffering is your argument with what is.
credit:
joxur223
Written on September 16, 2009 by Tom Stine
When I have time, I love to respond to my reader’s questions. I want to share a few recent emails I’ve exchanged with someone:
Hello Tom,
Can I ask you a question? In your recent posting of your tweets, you said:
No matter what I write down, it isn’t true. No matter what I think, it isn’t true.
Adya also said the same thing in his book. This sentence basically contradicts itself. But I think maybe you are saying it is not “completely” true. Or you have a better elaboration?
Yes, the sentence does contradict itself. Unfortunately, I’m in the same boat as Adya or any other spiritual teacher, it’s just that I’m way too honest about this stuff (and so is Adya). EVERYTHING that is said with words is inherently untrue. It is a derived thing. The most obvious example, one that Adya uses a lot, is this: if you are thirsty, which do you want to drink? Real water, H20, or the word “water”? The word water refers to the real stuff. So, the word water is not real, it has no substance. It always refers to something else.
In this awakening business, you are always endeavoring to get to the truth of what you are. What we have all done for most of our lives is believe that the THOUGHTS we have about ourselves are what we are. And that is not true. We endeavor to always get to the heart of what we are looking at, the “truth” of it.
So, the word “I” is not what I am. Even if I observe this body and the sensations I “feel” from it, I can go further and see that this is not me. What am I? Ah, that cannot be answered in words. It can only be known.
The best that any spiritual teacher can do is use words to point you in the direction of truth. Period. We are using falsehoods, or derived things, thoughts and words, to point at truth. Or, as Ramana used to say, we have fallen into a thorn bush and are now covered in thorns. We then take one of the thorns and use it to pick out all the other thorns. Then we throw the last thorn away! His particular thorn is what he called “the I thought.” Discover that the “I” thought is not you was Ramana’s entire teaching.
I hope the above helps! Namaste…. Tom
Your explanation is very helpful! But I still have some questions, so please bear with me. Basically nothing is describable by words. Words are just labels. Water can not be adequately described by words. For those who never know water, reading the wiki page about its attributes doesn’t help any. If there is a cup of water in front of me and I say “this is water” to those who know what real water is and agree to use the word “water” as its label, then the statement “This is water” must be a true statement. If this is correct, then what you said about thoughts and words is not completely correct. Spiritual teachers run into the same dilemma when trying to use words describe ultimate reality to people who don’t have direct experience. Oneness, Emptiness, Everythingness and etc after all only add more confusion and make them go nowhere. So I think what you said only can be confined to when talking about ultimate reality.
I want to focus on two things you said. First:
If there is a cup of water in front of me and I say ‘this is water’ to those who know what real water is and agree to use the word ‘water’ as its label, then the statement ‘This is water’ must be a true statement.
What I would say is that “this is water” is as close to truth as a STATEMENT can get. The key is that statements are never correct. They are always an approximation to truth. Always. They are still never the truth. When you point at the water and say “this is water” it is still THE WATER ITSELF that has the truth in it. Not the words. Make sense?
Because, as you pointed out, we AGREE to use the word WATER as a LABEL for the stuff in the cup. Notice the chain of events: we create a word, water, and agree to use it to describe something.
Why so picky about this? Because human beings walk around believing that the words they hear in their head are real things. And worst of all, they believe that the word “I” means something real, meaningful, important. They think they ARE the word “I” and the thousands upon thousands of associations they have attached to that word: I am a man, I am good, I am miserable, I am happy, I am a great lover, I have an ugly body, etc. I, I, I.
And what is the truth? There is no I. Period. You are not a word, a thought, a belief, an idea. You aren’t anything. Hence, we say, you are nothingness. There is no “I” no matter how many words you attach to it.
FYI, Eckhart Tolle does a pretty nice job of dissecting “I” in A New Earth. He calls it ego, but same thing.
The second thing you mentioned that I want to focus upon:
Spiritual teachers run into the same dilemma when trying to use words to describe ultimate reality to people who don’t have direct experience. Oneness, Emptiness, Everythingness and etc after all only add more confusion and make them go nowhere. So I think what you said only can be confined to when talking about ultimate reality.
Ah, but here’s the bigger problem: even the water you see in the cup isn’t water in the cup. It is, to use your words, Ultimate Reality. Right there in the cup. So is the cup. Water is not only a label for the real thing, water, the actual physical water, H2O, can be seen as a “label” for what it really is….. NOTHINGNESS appearing as form.
It’s a bitch describing this stuff, but there you go. You do the best you can, and that’s what you get.
Let’s keep it simple: stick with something like paying attention to awareness. Just pay attention to it. Focus on it. Look at it. Ponder it. Inquire about it. If you go to Adyashanti’s website, he’s done a lot of satsangs in the past year where he discusses this a bunch. Get a few of them and listen. If I remember correctly, there was one entitled “Rest as Awareness” that was quite good.
Nisargadatta sat for 3 years with “the feeling of being” and simply sat and looked at it every which way until he was done. Whatever arose, he would look at it and inquire about it and see how it fit into the “feeling of being” and keep going and going. Honestly, it’s a process of exhaustion more than anything. That’s why the Buddha called it Nirvana. The word simply means cessation. You simply exhaust the tendency to go unconscious by sitting with what arises. It really is that simply. Hard to do, I admit, but really is that simply.
I hope all the above helps. Namaste.
Written on September 25, 2008 by Tom Stine
A few days ago, I wrote about not having control over your life. So far, I would say the comments are running an even split: some agree, some think I’m off my rocker. So let’s dive into this subject a little further. Let’s talk about your thoughts.
IF you have any control over your life, then you almost surely would agree that your thoughts, your mind, your thinking plays a tremendous role in that control. Makes sense, right? To have control over my life, I must make choices. To make choices, I must think about the options. I must decide things, weigh the pros and cons, look at the possibilities.
Furthermore, there are my desires, my wishes, my intentions, my wants. As one of my favorite bloggers, Andrea from Empowered Soul said, you set an intention and then you create these things in your life (and with this part, I would agree to an extent). In a nutshell, you control the outcomes of your life with your intentions. Which, of course, are thoughts. Same with desires and wants. They are emotionally charged, to be sure, but they are thoughts nonetheless. So far, so good, right?
Okay, so if you have control over your life, that control must ultimately come from your thoughts and thinking. So, the obvious question that arises is: do you have control over your thoughts? Do you “choose” your thoughts? Do you decide what you will think?
Let me answer these questions via a dialog with my old buddy René (René Descartes that is—”I think, therefore I am.”) Let’s see what René has to say:
Tom: So, René, do you control your thoughts? Do you choose them?
René: Of course, you bone head. I’m the thinker of my thoughts. I choose what I’m going to think.
Tom: Okay, then what is your next thought going to be?
René: Um, well, I’m going to think about my dog, Pierre.
Tom: Great! So think about Pierre for a moment.
(Pause)
Tom: Tell me, René, is Pierre the only thing you thought about during the past few minutes?
René: Well, no, I did think about the jeune fille (woman) I saw last weekend. But I mostly spent the time thinking about Pierre.
Tom: Why did you think about your date from last weekend? Don’t you have control over what you think?
René: I don’t know. Sometimes thoughts just pop into my head. You know?
Tom: Yes, I do know. So, when I first asked you what your next thought is going to be, why did you choose to think about Pierre? What caused you to choose Pierre the dog over all the millions of things to think about?
René: I don’t know. It just popped into my head to think about the dog.
Tom: Uh, René, so how much control do you have over your own thoughts?
René: Merde! I refuse to answer that question. Smart a$$!
Tom: Je t’aime, aussi, René.
I think the point should be clear. No control over your thoughts. None. If you will spend a few moments, sitting quietly, and pay attention to your thoughts, you will notice that they just arise. Sometimes there are patterns, such as when you think about the same thing for days or months at a time. At other times thoughts arise that are completely out in left field. But arise they do. And “you” have no control over them.
Given that you have no control over your thoughts and thinking, is it that hard to imagine that you have no control over your life? Let’s save further discussion for the comments, as I know there will be plenty.
The next little essay I do will tackle the next questions to be asked, ones that I suspect you may have already guessed at: who is the “you” that would or would not have control? Who is the “thinker” of your thoughts? Who is the “you” that would possibly control your thoughts, life, actions, and mind?
Namaste.
Written on May 7, 2008 by Tom Stine
How cool! Some of my regular and new readers are having a lot of fun commenting on my recent post, Are All Thoughts Untrue? I have quite a few responses to make, but I felt it would be more interesting to do another article on thoughts and toss in a little bit on thinking, too. So, here is a random series of thoughts on the subject of thoughts. (Personally, I find it hilarious that we have thoughts about thoughts and thinking.)
gets it right.So there you go. Some random thoughts. Honestly, as I mentioned in the last point, I can’t really make heads nor tails out of all this thinking stuff. It seems to be an experience we all have, thoughts entering our awareness, passing through consciousness, to be replaced by new and different thoughts. Constantly changing, constantly moving. All ephemeral and difficult to pin down.
Please feel free to leave your comments, thoughts, ideas, whatever, below. I look forward to seeing what the above brought up for you. Namaste.
Written on May 2, 2008 by Tom Stine
A friend of mine sent me the following in response to my article on the Adyashanti Retreat I recently attended:
Still chewing on your premise of not knowing that 2 + 2 will be 4 tomorrow. I have had some discussions with people who seem to be on the path but take it to a ridiculous extreme. For example, a friend of mine claimed the same kind of premise. I said o.k., let me light this lighter next to your arm. I believe based upon past experience and the rules of the world of illusion that you will burn. He said he couldn’t agree that he would burn. He couldn’t agree that the lighter would light. Conceded that may happen but given the fact we’ve both seen the lighter work, just worked and is not empty, it most likely will light. If it does light and placed next to your arm, your arm will most likely burn. One does not ‘know’ the future but can make reasonable predictions as to consequences of the world of illusion.
The world of the formless and the world of form are the same. One arises from another. They are connected. We should resist nothing and be open to everything but ignoring basic principles and observations that repeatedly occur could be done to an extreme and at one’s peril.
First, let me say that I completely agree that there are many people on the spiritual path who take things to ridiculous extremes. I have been one of them. Anything can be taken too far, and it is amazing the forms of trouble we can get ourselves into in spirituality. (Remind me to write about the time 18 years ago when I tried to live on sprouts and sunflower seeds!)
Let’s look, though, at the statement I made that my friend mentions. Here it is in its entirety:
I’ve had various discussions about thoughts with others on the path, and my experience at this retreat reinforced a viewpoint (or more appropriately, a knowingness) I have been taking more and more. And that is that all thoughts are untrue. Even the ones that have a semblance of truth, such as 2+2=4, are still not true. Oh, sure, 2+2=4 is useful, but even a “law” of nature could change tomorrow.Everything in the world of form changes, or at the very least can change. If you ask me, “Will 2 plus 2 equal 4 tomorrow?” in all honesty I have to answer “I don’t know.” How can I know? The future is always The Unknown.
I’m going to answer my friend in two slightly unrelated ways. Let’s start by looking at the future. I think everyone will agree that we cannot know the future. Even people who seem to be able to predict the future via some psychic means are rarely so accurate that you would ever take them to the race track and bet on horses with your life savings. The future is the great unknown. As a matter of fact, we can even go so far as to say that the future doesn’t even exist.
How can I say the future doesn’t exist? Simple. Can you see it? Can you hear it? Can you touch it, smell it, taste it? No, not at all. So where is the future? Ah, it is only a thought in the mind. There is no future other than as a thought. It can’t be experienced. Only what is here right now can ever be experienced. That’s why Eckhart Tolle called it The Power of Now. Because Now is all there is to time (you can follow the same line of argument to demolish the idea of a real, solid past).
Do you see, then, that it is literally conceivable that anything can happen? If the future is not only completely unknown, but moreover can never even be known because it doesn’t exist, then it becomes impossible to say that what I remember happening yesterday, or what I’m experiencing now, will continue to happen. As crazy as it sounds, gravity could stop working tomorrow. It might be pretty wild, pretty wacky, and almost surely the death of my human existence (and then again, maybe not!), but that is still a possibility. And not just an abstract, remote one. Anything can happen.
I know saying things like gravity may not work tomorrow or 2 + 2 may not equal 4 are extreme examples, but they are used to illustrate a point. We take for absolute certainty even far more mundane things than the laws of mathematics and science. For instance, every time you worry about what your spouse will say to you about the things you haven’t done, every time you feel fear about the shrinking of your bank account or the security of your job, you are accepting as true a thought about a future that is absolutely unreal because there is no future and no way to know what it would bring if it were real.
Actually, this truth that there is no future is the quickest, easiest way to undo fear. Without a future, you cannot be afraid. Fear is thinking that something is going to happen to you and the response in your body to that thought. Fear is sometimes referred to as a projection of our past (memories, which are more thoughts) onto the supposed future creating yet more thoughts. The body then responds to all this nervous system excitement by releasing adrenaline and a hundred other molecules into the blood. A very familiar process to most of us. But when you drop the notion of the future, you drop your fear. It really can be that simple.
So let me anticipate my friend’s next question: “Okay, Tom, that’s all well and good, there is no future and no way to know if down will be up tomorrow. But how can one function in the world without believing in ‘basic principles and observations that repeatedly occur?’ You haven’t answered that yet. How can you not believe in 2 + 2 = 4 and still do math, balance your checkbook, etc.?” Alright, give me a second, I’m just warming-up!
While it is true that, as I stated, I can’t really believe anymore that 2 + 2 will always equal 4, the key point is that I’m losing all my belief in my thoughts as containing a single iota of truth. As has been said so many times, things like 2 + 2 = 4 are just concepts, simply thoughts that are removed from not only direct experience but also removed from the formless truth. Thoughts are ever changing, part of the world of form. Not bad, not good, just completely unreal.
It is my experience that as you open yourself to consciousness, as you become aware of your true identity as awareness itself, you quit believing in the contents of your mind. All this mental stuff, from the more mundane to the laws of the universe, begin to seem only to serve one primary function: to keep you believing that you literally are the contents of your mind. “I am what I think I am,” says the mind.
But as you awaken you begin to realize that you are not your thoughts. All of this mental stuff is simply the fairly random bursts of energy flowing through your body-mind. You begin to realize that you are the very awareness itself that has been always looking out of your eyes and listening through your ears.
As for daily living, it seems that I can function just fine without believing so strongly in the truth of things. To use my friends example, while I may not believe it is true that the flame from a lighter will burn me, I’m still not going to stick my hand in it. Why not? Because I have a memory that says it will burn me. And nothing inside me really has any interest in being burned. Not because it is afraid of the burning, but because it chooses not to be burned.
Moreover, having a memory of hot things burning me no longer produces the extreme fear or psychic drama that it used to produce. It seems just like a simple “fact” with which I can play along. The laws of the world thus become interesting thoughts with which to play. Without the drama, without my identity tied up in my thoughts, all of these thoughts become tools, at times useful, for existing in the world of form.
Another example of how this seems to work: I woke-up in the middle of the night and had this strong image in my mind of being drowned (I recalled a movie in which someone’s head was held underwater for a few minutes). I felt fear arise about it, but as I went with the image and experience, I could feel myself relaxing into the idea of drowning, feeling myself experiencing the body gasping for air, the last big of consciousness fading away and then dying, and all of this occurring with a sense of acceptance and peace.
As I sit typing these words, I can feel the same type of thing with regard to being burned by a flame. Intensely painful, yet unreal, too. I suppose I’m reacting this way because at a deeper level I realize that this body is not what I truly am. The thought crosses my mind that this burning is, too, a part of the One expressing itself in the world of form. Nothing is separate.
It may be the world of form and change and seemingly unreal, but my body-mind functions in it. The system seems to have some rules, and I seem to be following those rules. But I’m not really thinking about it. So much of this type of thing is just getting done without much, if any conscious thought. Which is cool. And, to be certain, I still have times when I get completely caught-up in the world of form and the thoughts that go through my mind. At times they seem very real and true. But then I recall the truth, something shifts, and all is well again.
To be honest, this not knowing if anything is true has left me to confront the startling truth that I really and truly do not know anything. I don’t know. That is my answer to so many things anymore. I guess it could have been the answer to my friend’s question, but I must confess it is more fun to play around with all these words and ideas and formulate an answer.
And the best thing is that as I’ve admitted more and more that I don’t know, I’ve begun to feel more peaceful than I ever have in my life. A fantastic peace is settling in that is most welcome. And there is a wordless, silent Presence that I have begun to truly, one that I am knowing more and more each day.
All of this seems to be the trajectory of spiritual awakening. There are moments of great opening to truth, experiences of formless bliss (or for some, formless terror), when lots of illusions fall from our minds and consciousness becomes aware of itself. And then there are times of going back and forth, from knowing what you are to getting somewhat lost again in thoughts and feelings and the world. And on and on it goes. Until it finally ceases entirely. Or maybe not.
You really never know, do you? Even ideas on spiritual awakening cannot be known with certainty . No matter who says them or how “enlightened” they are. But that is a different discussion for another day.
The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a dream character, of course, unless it’s your goal to wake up, in which case the dream character must be ruthlessly annihilated. If your desire is to experience transcendental bliss or supreme love or altered states of consciousness or awakened kundalini, or to quality for heaven, or to liberate all sentient beings, or simply to become the best dang person you can be, then rejoice!, you’re in the right place: the dream state, the dualistic universe. However, if your interest is to cut the crap and figure out what’s true, then you’re in the wrong place and you’ve got a very messy fight ahead and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of a face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
Q: Since all is pre-ordained, is our self-realization also pre-ordained? Or are we free there at least?
A: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise, it is just space. As long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied — you just are.
So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary…. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence.
Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of a Soul, Self or Atman. According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.
