On this, the anniversary of a horrible attack against mankind by mankind, am I to understand all of that fire and death as mere illusion?
"There is neither unity nor diversity. Infinite indivisible consciousness alone is the reality....Just as a man who is fighting with a lion in a dream shouts in that dream, though in truth he is silent and asleep, the infinite consciousness which entertains all these notions is at peace and silent within itself." - Vasistha's Yoga
Dreams seem real to the dreamer. They terrify, they elicit wrenching sorrow, they impose an apparent duality just as our "waking state" is also experienced through subject-object modality. But 9/11, the death of my father, the birth of my children, are these mere apparitions?
"Birth death, Maya, delusion, blindness, non-substantiality, substantiality, wisdom, bondage, liberation, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, embodied and disembodied states, a moment and eternity, unsteadiness and firmness, you, and I and the other, truth and falsehood, cleverness and foolishness, notions concerning time, space, action and matter, form, sight and related thought, action springing from the intellect and senses, and all the five elements by which all things are pervaded--all these are pure consciousness, which, without abandoning its nature, appears to be all these (just as space seems to be cut up though it is really not so cut up). - VY
So the overweening answer to my question is "yes," yes in the light of pure consciousness prior to even a glimmer of a glimmer of thought. It is then, when my ever-buzzing body-mind becomes secondary, that "I" dissolves into pure non-dual consciousness: void yet dynamic, aware yet without subject or object. Sadly, most of us blindly embrace our notions of ourselves and ride out the currents of samsara as a ripple among rapids. Eventually our notion of death ends our notion of birth and we empty back into a sea of peace we never really left. In truth we are water in water, space in space, pure consciousness before, during and after this dream of life. Enlightened living is much akin to lucid dreaming: living this dream fully aware it is a dream we live. In words rivaling the Tao, itself:
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream
"There is neither unity nor diversity. Infinite indivisible consciousness alone is the reality....Just as a man who is fighting with a lion in a dream shouts in that dream, though in truth he is silent and asleep, the infinite consciousness which entertains all these notions is at peace and silent within itself." - Vasistha's Yoga
Dreams seem real to the dreamer. They terrify, they elicit wrenching sorrow, they impose an apparent duality just as our "waking state" is also experienced through subject-object modality. But 9/11, the death of my father, the birth of my children, are these mere apparitions?
"Birth death, Maya, delusion, blindness, non-substantiality, substantiality, wisdom, bondage, liberation, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, embodied and disembodied states, a moment and eternity, unsteadiness and firmness, you, and I and the other, truth and falsehood, cleverness and foolishness, notions concerning time, space, action and matter, form, sight and related thought, action springing from the intellect and senses, and all the five elements by which all things are pervaded--all these are pure consciousness, which, without abandoning its nature, appears to be all these (just as space seems to be cut up though it is really not so cut up). - VY
So the overweening answer to my question is "yes," yes in the light of pure consciousness prior to even a glimmer of a glimmer of thought. It is then, when my ever-buzzing body-mind becomes secondary, that "I" dissolves into pure non-dual consciousness: void yet dynamic, aware yet without subject or object. Sadly, most of us blindly embrace our notions of ourselves and ride out the currents of samsara as a ripple among rapids. Eventually our notion of death ends our notion of birth and we empty back into a sea of peace we never really left. In truth we are water in water, space in space, pure consciousness before, during and after this dream of life. Enlightened living is much akin to lucid dreaming: living this dream fully aware it is a dream we live. In words rivaling the Tao, itself:
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream
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