Fri, 29 March 2024

Culture

Print

Back

Illumination is seeing what one already is

Paolo D'Arpini  nel Bosco
Enlightenment cannot be achieved with an act of will or effort. It is a spontaneous "revelation" that consciousness transmits to the mind. What is the mind? What is consciousness? In truth they are the exact same thing but if we observe from the point of view of the mind (ego) we cannot understand it. And then? Ramana Maharshi said "investigate where the mind arises and you will discover that it does not exist". Who investigates, who discovers? All questions within the mind whose answers - whatever they may be - impede the satori ...

For this reason, the Zen masters asked the disciples unresolvable questions (koan) to push the rational and speculative tendency towards collapse. The path of "lay spirituality" is the simplest: to continue to live with maximum attention and ability to respond knowing that you are in a film. It is like sailing in the middle of the current without stopping on the right or left bank of the river, eventually it spontaneously flows into the sea.

The experience of the Self, in Zen terms defined as "satori", cannot be described intellectually, so trying to give a description of it here is risky and out of place. At the same time it is important to clarify this "knowledge" that is not comparable to empirical understanding, even if it does not exclude this understanding (that is based on sensory perception).

Zen, satori and knowledge of the Self
We can say that self-knowledge or satori is not an intuition and not even the result of religious reasoning, it is not an objectification nor a transcendence. It is not a sense of omnipresence even if the only agent present is the I.
Self-knowledge is the "natural" state of the intelligence-consciousness in which both the subject and the object merge in the "experience" of an inseparable continuum, in which even though awareness remains, it is not divided into opposites and diversity. It is therefore not a condition of "emptiness", in the sense that we usually give to this term as "absence", but it is actually the emptiness of the ego (ego) which tends to relate to its own projections of "you, he, ... ", etc.

This Self is the inner light that dispels the darkness of ignorance. The one who knows the Self, therefore, is not a person but the fullness of the undifferentiated state of consciousness, in which all dualism ceases, and in which it fully resides in its own nature.

Nevertheless as long as the human mind is prey to ignorance and identifies itself with a specific name and form (the person we imagine ourselves to be) it is necessary for us to carry out a process of recomposition (which is called "yoga" or "spiritual practice"). The energy - or awareness - that allows awakening to our true nature is called "guru" or "master" or "grace" and can manifest itself before us in a form to accomplish the alchemy of Self recognition, but this does not it is properly separate or different from us, it is like a character in our dream that provides us with awakening to ourselves.

Let us take the example of the dream because it is the closest to the similarity of forgetting ourselves, as pure consciousness. In fact, when we dream we see countless characters, some in antithesis with others, but actually they are all the same dreamer. In this dream - called the becoming - we make a journey through space and time, a transmutative process of individualized consciousness, which in other words we could also define transmigration or metempsychosis.

We will now reflect on this process, on this continuous transformation into new forms and names, samsara.
The engine of samsara is karma - or action - but perhaps it would be better to say that it is the propensity to perform the action ... According to the theory of reincarnation the destiny of this life is the maturation of karma stronger than previous lives, with this not exhausting the possibility of future births with other karmas that need a different condition to be able to manifest. The way to create more karma is identified in the attitude with which we live the present life, for example if we give off thoughts of discontent or excessive attachment to the lived events.

In itself the fate of the present life does not change on the basis of the efforts we made while we are living it, it is like a film that is already in the film, so to think of modifying its content (once the projection has begun) is unreal. We can be aware and accept the film - as careful witnesses - or get angry and be moved by it as we wish to change the events with the mind ... and so the new karma is formed ...

Paolo D'Arpini - spiritolaico@gmail.com

Details:

Date: 5 September 2019Author: Paolo D'Arpini
Credits Publisher: Paolo D'Arpini
Public Profile:
Vegetarianism

By the same author: 

Publications and Essays

Ecology (or economy) of death...

Publications and Essays

Remain in Consciousness Intelligence

Publications and Essays

Lay spirituality is not a kite...

Publications and Essays

The origin of thought

Publications and Essays

Naturalism and lay spirituality...

Publications and Essays

Collective consciousness...

Publications and Essays

What is the Self…?

Publications and Essays

Life is transformation

© 1998-2024 Spiritual® and Spiritual Search® are registered trademarks. The reproduction, even partial, of Spiritual contents is prohibited. Spiritual is not responsible in any way of the contents of the linked websites. Publishing House: Gruppo 4 s.r.l. VAT Registration number PD 02709800284 - IT E.U.
E-mail: staff@spiritual.eu

Engineered by Gruppo 4 s.r.l.