Using Desire by following its Celestial Timing

[deci belle]

These are a couple comments I've transferred from a thread about attachment to desire where someone made some good points.

Desire is a wonderful thing. But attachment to desire is something else altogether. Attachment to anything is conditioned and dependent. I would have to say either you are or aren't mired by dependent habitual conditioned energies. But mostly it is a matter of gravity and degree. In terms of the most basic necessity, observing the disease of the mind entails suffering. This is an habitual relationship not with the world, but with oneself. It is neurosis. This neurosis is a mental crutch. This is dependency one must acknowledge and cut away from one's life.

Keying one's attention to externals without being sidetracked, without abandoning oneself to craving, one learns to deliberately manage following the heart's desire without stepping over the line. The most subtle veils of delusion are of your own making and must be swept away until there is nothing left of your habits. When you don't crave, personal issues of self and other turn into a matter of mutual response because now the situation becomes the context. Sure, no one else knows that— but when you do, you are not at issue with conditions, and you don't get swept away by emotional craving or selfish psychological patterns. So when others seek to manipulate or cling psychologically or emotionally, you detach from their issue, not the situation. The situation may very well go on, but you don’t perpetuate issues relative to self and other and right or wrong. This is itself an expression of compassion, even should it be ruthless.

Who can start and end here without further deliberations?

Not sidetracked by externals in this regard, one follows the heart's desire without stepping over the line. It is a most curious affair, because, in terms of clarity, you do not go along with the world's momentum— but then you find that the world must have you without exceptions. It is relentless. This is where (the buddhist image of) Mara comes into play. She is relentless. She never goes away …only temporarily recedes from time to time. Even sudden enlightenment only severs the compulsion to follow conditions; stopping without rejecting is always in your power, so harmonizing enlightenment does not depend on the sudden. Whereas creation is fecund— endless manifestations material and mental; enlightening activity is endless transformations according to the time without unknowingly changing along with creation’s phantasmagoria. You have the power to choose going along or not, whereas the norm is going along with Change unawares.

As it so often happens, something comes in from left field and one's flow is obstructed, and one naturally stops. Ordinarily, one’s psychological momentum, characteristic of insistence, might seek to push through obstacles— or even assign self-reifying definitions without benefit of objective knowledge. That is stepping over the line— merely seeking definitions relative to self and other is entertaining intellectualism, which perpetuates habit-energies fueling the personality’s psychological momentum bound to creation. Should one admit objective impersonal analysis, the only measure is mutual accord in reality. Beyond the fact that creation is already oneself without beginning, being the partial aspect in the real meaning of unity, mutual accord is the affair of subtle response carried out by virtue of the nature of reality. Working with potential is possible because it is inherent in situations themselves. Admitting objective analysis is really just immediate impersonal knowledge. As one gradually stops using the selfish perspective relative to self and other, the immediate objective knowledge of potential relative to situations gradually becomes apparent. This is mentioned further on as the Dharma Eye. Seeing potential actualizes immediate acquiescence, or virtuous accord in reality, also known as nonresistance or the virtue of the receptive. Just different names to express the arising of enlightening potential.

To the degree one follows the heart's desire within unknowing (innocence, that is— not ignorance or cunning rationales), situations are naturally self-refining. This is all made possible because effective self-refinement enables immediate acquiescence. By selfless mutual accord, conditioned situational gravities stop; it's not that you have to stop outside of stopping. It's a matter of seeing reality. Real seeing is spontaneous transcendent seeing. It comes about by not exercising the personality's psychological apparatus habitually. In terms of physics, it is simply an absence of momentum, so one is not carried over into arbitrary action and one stays within the response-body. Enlightening being is the innate quality of subtle response, which is to affirm that sudden realization is not a necessary consideration in terms of expressing effective enlightened qualities. Why?

Enlightening being is the quality of being so— it's self-refining, and is therefore selfless action in the world, Using the world's situations for self-refinement, instead of self-gratification, one begins to see reality— not that self-refinement and self-gratification are mutually exclusive, because they’re not. Reality is inconceivable; good or bad is not the criteria of enlightening being(s). This is the means to develop authentic practice. Wielding potential without thoughts of good or bad, enlightening activity is open and sincere unminding response in meeting the created energy of ordinary events. Sudden enlightenment is just waking up to the fact that the light shines (or not) as creation radiates the causeless. The light is like spontaneous enlightening activity adapting to conditions by one who is awake to the activation of innate spiritual function. Subtle spiritual response is natural because Creation and Nonorigination are not different.

I've noticed a certain reluctance and trepidation in some to personally own up to the term enlightening. At the risk of appearing glib, I only mention it because people need to know that sudden and gradual are two rails on the same track. They are one continuum. Don't be misled by the analogy of the two rails. The light is one substance and so are its inconceivable functions. It’s like Blues and Country (being music) are Rock&Roll. It’s the Mystery Train and no one knows why.

Getting back to momentum, or even further— back to some good points someone made regarding "now." The exquisite realm of now is effortlessness, whereas the perpetually creative realm is beginningless arbitrary ideas arising out of nowhere to upset the weak balance and harmony of those clinging to personal conditions: that's karmically bound evolution. Creative evolution is Karmic. Self refinement is the long process of ridding the aware being of clinging bias and inclination to arbitrary psychological stimulus whereby one’s autonomy in the midst of worldly situations is gradually stabilized. Enlightening being is not a matter of insularity, it is unity coming from within differentiation. Creation evolves by virtue of its conditioned potential. After a long time of gradual practice, seeing reality is recognized as such, but one still loses this again and again when seduced by phenomena. Unbending intent is single-minded determination to avoid following externals unawares. Beginners use renunciatory discipline or precepts; adepts plunge fully into delusion, without differentiating. In practice, one develops discipline first (symbolized by the 3rd I Ching hexagram, Difficulty), then deflects externals (symbolized by the 4th hexagram, Darkness or Innocence). First stopping conditioned stimulus; then seeing situational potential void of one's self-reflective psychological patterning.

Quote

Dogen said, "People become buddhas and buddhas become people."

Stopping is not static and seeing is not relative to the person. Stopping sees the relative (movement), whereas seeing is just awake without bias or inclination. Secure in one's dedication to now, presence is basically being ultimately natural, without hangups. From this vantage, it is easy to see momentum (or conditioned potential) in situations. That's why I say either one is or isn't attached to kinetic (karmic) momentum. One only sees the real by virtue of stillness; conditioned energy  is its mass times momentum squared. Not that it matters~ what matters is that in seeing the real from within the false, one gradually enters the inconceivable. One uses delusion to enter reality. This is possible because enlightenment is not different than karma. Enlightening being sees this. Spiritual illuminates match creation by its inherent potential and use it to partner with creation according to the time. Partners of creation do not go along with its karmic evolution, while ever gathering its potential. That's why some have been known to "ascend to heaven in broad daylight." Jesus isn't the only one by a long shot.

In many respects, desire is complete in and of itself. Attention is mutual, in terms of self and other in the sense that one necessarily attracts when another is attracted. That much doesn't require deliberation. In terms of application, desire and bliss are coeval. The timing depends of their arising (or their arousal). The point is, it's mutual. This is the direct relationship we have right now within the heart of nonorigination. Relative to the essence of the creative, enlightenment isn't different. When one follows desire with openness and sincerity presently, without anticipatory momentum, one is activating the tao in reality without intermediary. This is enlightening being, but don’t expect the world to cooperate, so don't mention it. If it did, adapting enlightenment to conditions wouldn't be exceptional, and buddhas becoming people wouldn't be a secret— even though it has always come and gone without saying. This is because selfless movement doesn't have mass, only potential, therefore it can't be said to be still or moving. Subtle adaption is like that. The inconceivability just is without any body knowing better or being the wiser. Since it's already your own mind right now, immediate acquiescence is like taking over creation and stealing its potential. Poof.

The ancient taoist alchemical classics all tell us to refine the self and await the time. They also say neither rushing ahead nor lagging behind, like a cat watching a mouse-hole, ever vigilant, ever careful not to miss the timing: when the celestial time arrives, human energy is responsive. It's not a matter of helping the tao, it is just in an ever-ready equipoise in mutual respond to situations fearlessly, honestly and without cupidity. Obviously, the timing arises in the situational context.

The whole point of this kind of subtle intensity is to follow the breath of creation, which waxes and wanes in intimate accord with the celestial design. Only enlightening beings see this. This is an affair of transcendent living whereby one has no mind in going along with creation which is literally neither here nor there. One clings neither to the falsity of the conditioned matrix nor to the reality of the mystery, because they are not different. It is just as is and no one knows why. The ancients have left this teaching for those who have the affinity to follow in their footsteps to carry out the open secret, and go on …beyond.

In the final analysis, the benefit is this: taoism calls it stealing potential. Such is that the spiritually aware potential energy that makes manifestation possible can be gathered by any individual not going along with the karmic matrix of creation. This gathering of potential is real, yet one doesn't actually gather anything. It goes back to following the heart's desire within unknowing: innocence following the heart's desire naturally steps over no line. It is all a matter of seeing.

One last thing… it is like the story of the monkeys who do not want 3 nuts in the morning and 4 nuts at night. So the monkey feeder says, "Ok, I'll give you 4 in the morning and 3 at night"— at this the monkeys are very pleased. One doesn’t seek to please because that’s the monkeys’ business. First of all, you adapt to the situation selflessly and respond impersonally to give the universe its arbitrary causeless requirement in each situation as it arises. It is not a matter of logic, but of strategy. Secondly, one uses the current situation as a means to master the 3rd and 4th hexagrams in order to transcend the conditional aspect (without anybody knowing). Since you don't speculate on the conditional manifestation, you naturally cull its essential potential and seal it away void of intellectualism.

You see, the way of the world is to get it all backwards— and keep it that way! So the way of all prior illuminates is to foment subtle audacious reversal within the course of creation in order to take it over and steal its potential (back) unbeknownst to anyone. Actually, it is a matter of freeing unrefined potential from its conditioned matrix simply by seeing reality as it really is, as it is. In terms of alchemy, those of you who know the I Ching, know that the 3rd hexagram Difficulty is done before, i.e., in the morning. This is advancing the yang fire. This is effort. This is following desires. This is entering the tiger's lair. The 4th hexagram Innocence should be done after. This is withdrawing the fire when the killing energy of the yin convergence first arises, in order to gather potential and seal it within innocence void of intellectualism. This is non-doing. This is only a possibility by virtue of following real desire without stepping over the line, so to not act on arbitrary ideas relative to the personality.  Just the not-doing of intellectual activity is itself stealing potential. Having done so is gathering the medicines of the spiritual elixir. Guard this in the wordless. Spiritual release is spontaneous awakening.

Having directly divulged the secret, who can put it to use?

 

 

ed note: add "without rejecting" in 5th paragraph; put a little in the middle; put "acting on arbitrary ideas" in parentheses in last paragraph

Edited March 19, 2020 by deci belle