Following Desire

[deci belle]

This is an excerpt from a recent PM…

On the topic of fetish, you've mentioned desire in some of your posts and following it but not all the way. What did you mean by that?

Yes. "Following desires without stepping over the line", is the taoist term.

Well, an openness and sincere vulnerability to a genuinely human awareness of natural subtleties that enter our lives is to be cultivated in order to expand our spheres of practice, which  enables us to penetrate worldly aspects constituting the real, on the nonpsychological level, after awakening to potential. This is in stark contrast to renunciatory regimens espoused by conventional reformative orthodoxies projecting provisional teachings for those with lesser potentials.

This does not mean it is another level of experiential sensitivity~ only that consciousness is void of attachment to conditioned tendencies reifying one's attention-nexus of psychological patterning. Just this is not different than ordinary perception; only one fails to "step over the line" in terms of following unique relationships and endeavors to the extreme of creating future karmic cycles on account of selfish desires being projected by unconscious psychological momentum. Living one's true awareness in total commitment to nonpsychological presence is just this "not stepping over the line."

Taoism has no tenet denying one's spontaneous authentic desire. Desire is real, in terms of potential. But what we, as people, project onto it, or rather, turn it into, by appropriations relative to psychological momentum, change incipient potential (real knowledge) into karmic energy (conscious knowledge). That such activity accounts for universal convention does not constitute a naturalness of true sanity; only a conditioned behavioral phenomenon. To habitually seek and satisfy psychological projections creating endless streams of self-reflective stimulus-craving is patently delusional. Otherwise why would self-actualization be a thing?

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openness and sincere vulnerability to a genuinely human awareness of natural subtleties that enter our lives is to be cultivated

 

It is not a matter of intending vulnerability for a reason, though. Vulnerability is a way of saying, among other things, that one is still, empty and complete as is without habitually following thoughts unawares conjuring what would be, could be, or should be, by sustaining a psychological façade to avoid who one really is right now. Just being really naked to the world, without psychological momentum (habit energy) to hide behind, is a way of understanding the meaning of being truly vulnerable. Vulnerability, as such, is a relatively high-level enlightening mode of practice.

Recognizing real desire lies in seeing potential. Not stepping over the line is a matter of not using potential. Not using potential is the meaning of the saying, "Wisdom is easy, not using it is difficult." In taoist terms, potential is another word for real knowledge. This is the secret to absorbing potential. When one absorbs potential by not using (processing) potential psychologically when seeing it, one has entered the realm of nonorigination on the spot. It's not woo woo at all.

The codex of alchemic practice takes up desire and potential, vitality and real knowledge, lead and water, yang and advancing, as the aspect of following desire in some kind of capacity in terms of describing alchemic firing processes at various levels, depending on the time.

Yin, which I have not mentioned up to this point, represents essential nature, which has the function of beckoning knowledge. Yin is solitary seeing that isn't relative to the person. The technical phrase is, "solitary vision that no one else sees." "No one else" is a reference to the person. This is so because the person does not see potential.

The true self, the nonoriginated self, the selfless self, is itself the nature of awake that constitutes seeing. Seeing reality is wordless, selfless seeing. It is not a psychological process. It happens in real time. Real knowledge is immediate, nondiscursive knowing. True seeing is (as if) seeing the entirety of creation as a dark void. Occasionally, a point of light is discerned in the dimness. Seeing a point of light hovering within the vastness of the dim void of creation is recognizing the real when it arises. Desire is real, but only in not using it does it turn into unrefined alchemic elixir. This is entry into the inconceivable. It is everyday ordinary practice by spiritual adepts and it is natural, but there is nothing ordinary about it in the sense that ordinary people are unable to see potential, because they are habituated to psychological processes that obscure the real when it arises.

Reality already is. That's why taoist tradition calls such actualized people who see, real humans. This is because real humans see and partake of the real which is accomplished by abiding in the midst of the delusional (temporal conventional existence) without construing karmic energy in the three times.

All people have enlightened mind as the essence of awareness. The only reason for the authentic traditions keeping the knowledge of transcendent self-refinement alive is that the runaway mentality must be gradually tricked into forgetting to unconsciously perpetuate its self-reflective function (out of pure habit based on an insane existential fear). Ego-function, per se, does no harm, in and of itself. Moreover, enlightening activity is void of ideas promulgating kinetic futures perpetually cascading lifetimes of wasted energy. Habit-energy chronically changes the Unborn into death-energy (the dualistic karmic processes perpetuating the laws of Creation constituting before and after).

Enlightening being is the selfless intent of nonorigination. Other than an adaptive function abiding in circumstance as is (and a much more effective one at that, compared to one's psychological apparatus)— enlightening being is actually (were it known for what it is), the expression of awake nonbeing in the midst of conscious being. The day-job of enlightening being(s), for those of you who have ever wondered, is seamlessly indistinguishable abidance extent within delusion because Reality as is, in terms of its inconceivable nature, is not different than delusion, only its transcendent nature, abundantly so, for those who see.

To talk about it in terms of the absolute would be nonsense, and to describe it in terms of the created would be impossible. So we just effectively adapt impersonally to circumstances openly and sincerely as karma transforms creatively, without unconsciously creating additional selfish karmic bonds.

Just this is facilitated by following our true desire without attaching to outcomes. Stepping over the line is therefore a reference to ego-motivation.

 

[deci belle]

Continuing the PM response, introducing an alchemic description of advanced taoist self-refining practice…

Alchemically speaking, following desire is "advancing the fire". Advancing the fire is like accepting Power's challenge to audition the potential of a new cycle which is preceded and entered into by one's silent illumination in the midst of ordinary situations. I say this to make it undisputably clear that authentic 24/7 meditation has absolutely nothing to do with formal sitting zazen practice. A veritable state of grace is the fire of silent illumination which is advanced, because before potential is seen, there is no advancing, only a subtle abiding at the site of incipient awareness. Once it is seen, it is advanced. Therefore, it is seeing itself which constitutes "advancing the fire." A wordless knowledge one endeavors as proof, in an actual situation without knowing the twists and turns the situation will inevitably engender, is what real vulnerability to (karmic) inevitability substantiates. From here on, it's like Jesus entering on a donkey amid palm fronds, and an unbending, selfless intent requiring sticking to the story line, and its fully played out inevitability (with the to-die-for cool ending). This is "passing through", in terms of transcending endless cycles entering the tao without remainder.

I used the "Jesus" metaphor in endeavoring to emphasis the fact that any and all created cycles HAVE to end. The law of creation is one birth and one death. Jesus' dramatization of this fact is just evidence of how transcendence works in its midst, every time. Cycles come and go, while transcendence plays along without trying to be "different." Why? Because reality isn't different than delusion, it's just not created. Who knew?

In real practice, one advances the fire simply because it is the time to do so. It's not one's desire to do so. Desire, per se, is essentially immaterial. The essential is in seeing alone. Alternately, when it is time to stop, one stops without aversion or conflicted emotional/psychological (karmic) momentum. Conversely, one follows desire when it arises. It's all about the timing. When one sees the line (relative to recognizing conditioned attachment to outcomes), one then stops advancing the fire. Advancing and withdrawing, one subtly follows the process, carefully operating the furnace of creation and watching over the cauldron containing the medicinal potential of fire and water to be refined into the elixir of immortality.

In adapting to the potential of a new cycle, one "goes along"  to see what reality is without projecting habitual psychological patterns onto the situation engendered by the volatile (unrefined) potential energy inherent in the newly arisen cycle of possibility fueled by created karmic energy (psychological momentum).

Karmic energy is real (potential) energy mixed up as polluted (created) energy. Spiritual alchemy is a recondite process of recognizing the real by virtue of the false and absorbing the real by refining (clarifying) the "false." When one sees the real, it is by virtue of not acting on the false, though they are actually one and the same.

Observing from the selfish perspective of the principal psychological agency, working with the unique natural essence of potential and karmic energy in subtle transcendent spiritual operation is an impossibility for rational discernment, because karma and the psychological perspective are already a self-perpetuating illusion. To say one follows desire without going over the line is to have already gotten rid of the tendency to employ the psychological function in exclusion of one's nonpsychological potential. Seeing itself is the essential point and means of enlightening activity (authentic practice) in the midst of everyday ordinary situations unbeknownst to anyone. Transcendent activity isn't done by the person— it is an impersonal response to inherent situational potential by virtue of immanent selfless knowledge.

The open secret is that the world is not separate from the individual. A "sage" is one who knows this and proves this in actual affairs. The ancient taoist saying is "the world is the sage." To repeat, the world is not separate from the individual. This is the reality behind unified awareness actualizing oneself and potential without differentiating between self and other. Only those who can prove the world is not separate, by virtue of actual affairs, are those who see potential and adapt "selflessly" without perpetuating karmic energy in the course of adapting to situations.

Seeing potential is the same as not acting on potential, inasmuch as seeing potential is already transcendent activity (obviating ego-awareness), therefore by seeing alone, one gathers (absorbs) potential for further refinement. It is all a matter of seeing karmic "things" as real potential. Why? Because that's what self-refining enlightening activity is. Harmonize with the secret natural process as such and you can become a wizard.

Somehow, in the course of one's affair with Power, one gives the world what it wants (by following desire), without losing one's unified nonoriginated selfless self (by acting on potential in such a way as to perfectly match creation without projecting so much as a spark of ego-awareness). The word match has a very special connotation. For now, that is all I can say about it.

Taoist alchemic tradition calls this subtlety stealing potential. It is really like this. The imagery of going into the dragon's or tiger's lair and stealing the jewel or pearl comes from the extremely ancient tradition of wizardry. Immortals, wizards, buddhas and enlightening beings are all getting away with their lives, over and over and over in the course of endless transformations. The terms are based on the reality. It is a stupendous secret. This is the development, activation, fruition and storage of inconceivable, real knowledge.

Ordinary people don't know this, nor is it necessarily desirable that they do. So those with the aspiration to discover who they really are, do not deviate from operating on the level of ordinary people. That is, they accept their enlightening function exactly as an ordinary person in the midst of what ordinary people do, because ultimately, all people are the same, as they all function by virtue of Mind, which is essentially enlightenment. The world being the sage is so, because the sage knows perpetual nonoriginated reality by virtue of delusion is already perfect seamlessly undifferentiated unified awareness.

That is what a sage sees. Such seeing is already your own mind right now. It's not good, or right~ it's just real. Such seeing is already naturally transcendent to boot.

In seeing perfect seamlessly undifferentiated unified awareness by virtue of delusion (situational evolution), I hope it is obvious to those hung-up on emptiness, that such is not dependent on the Absolute (sudden realization), nor its multifarious anticipatory and post-operative mis-interpretations; the secret of Mind being entry into the inconceivable, is that enlightening activity is neither ordinary nor holy. Buddhism's teaching of suchness transcending karma by virtue of karma is called the Supreme Vehicle of buddhas, tathagatas and bodhisattvas. Suchness is just this "neither ordinary nor holy."

Wizardry is recognizing the light hidden within desire, and following it in reverse (as potential). Worldlings follow desires as the light of their lives (Creation) in the normal course of delusional existence. The one gains immortality  by riding on nonoriginated potential through endless karmic transformations in the course of events and the other accedes to endless cycles of birth and death, in this life, not to mention the next.

 

 

ed note: add penultimate paragraph

Edited December 21, 2023 by deci belle

[deci belle]

I've gotten other responses… I set up a new espresso machine, so I'm not asleep yet at 2am and the wind is blowing with immanent snow❄︎❄︎❄︎

S'body said:

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I'm wondering if the mind needs to be reined in, or if the mind settles itself.

It is "reined in" only by forgetting to use it, so reversion to its pre-conditioned state, i.e. settled isn't a matter of will-power. Nevertheless, if it is allowed to go off on its own by unmindfulness, this is ordinary ignorance; following thoughts unawares. Self-refining subtle observation is settling the mind by concentration in stillness and activity without relying on rote configurations of formality, whether that be posture, time or environment.

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If I let my mind wander, and then allow that wandering mind to be an object of awareness along with the rest of the world outside it, it seems much easier to remain in an observant state.

This is mindful observation. This is precisely the way to carry out subtle practice regardless of conditions. This is akin to seeing oneself and the world as the void itself and void of itself. In the void, there is only unity. Observing coming and going within unity is just seeing. Just this is profound practice when carried out continuously with unbending intent.

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Maybe this is what you mean by following desire? We can follow the desire in the same way a puppy will follow an interesting smell - maybe roll in it a bit when we find it - then move on whenever it seems more interesting to do so.

hahhaaa!! But there is something in the recognition. As far as following the smell, there is discernment, which is immediate knowledge. Does he like it or not? Puppy likes it if he rolls in it. When puppy comes home, clearly it is obvious that he has stepped over the line. So in recognition of potential, the knowledge is immediate. One already sees it as oneself.

When a point of light appears in the void, this is desire. It will come to us with all possibility intact. Recognition is following. Mindful observation is following. Rolling in it changes it, and this is going too far. But stopping at smelling deeply might not be going too far. In any case, it depends on the situation.

But our desire isn't usually just a smelly or a glistening lump. It may have a volition that requires our response. Desire is karmic. Enlightening activity is a matter of seeing potential by virtue of karmic energy, and absorbing its potential without incurring karmic debt. In following desire without stepping over the line, though we might recognize desires as selfish projections (without needing to judge), it is because we still may not yet clearly see the essence of desire as already complete. Should we then act, seeking to do something with it, then essence loses its uncreated potential and so do we, in regards to our relationship with the situation, should we choose to "help it along" by ignorant activity.

Now here's the constant, factored in to the timing aspect of subtle spiritual adaption practiced by adepts of immortalism: when potential eventually does fall into the created sphere, as it inevitably will, it changes into the killing energy of the situational cycle taoism calls the "yin convergence." One must observe evolution in terms of the timing of the yin convergence. Smelling the situation is a very good simile. Even pressing one's nose into it without incurring too much stickiness is ok. Otherwise, should we take some home with us, we have already changed the situation. That is the real danger of working with desire. 

When the created energy of desire does turn into killing energy, one must then withdraw the fire into recondite secrecy, in order to store the unrefined potential elixir, void of intellectualism— not letting so much as a spark leak out of the empty vessel of the real body of awareness which has no location.

So dealing with change/karma/potential/desire must be a matter of knowledge. Those who see change are not subject to Change. That is the rule. Otherwise, "one will get hung up in the bush without a guide."

Discretion is essential. True desire's potential is like the essence of a verrry erotic spark. It must be handled with a kind of flair …style, if you will. Otherwise it is best left alone for another time.

Taking it home isn't wrong. Taking it home is like putting medicine in the cauldron to be cooked. It is dangerous. One must be able to maintain a subtle quality of nonpsychological unminding throughout the process. Though the situation is banging on our door, we do not let it in. Though our own mind is fire, we do not let it out without our conscious intent. So dealing with desire effectively is a very delicate affair, where the difference between not enough and too far is as a hairsbreadth. This is how we must measure the medicines. This is how powerful potential is.

Having taken it home, one has now setup a kind of workable karma for the present. Keeping this volatile karmic presence present and viable by maintaining its quality of potential intact is described in the alchemic manuals as observing unrefined elixir. If one can manage to seal it away by mind without damaging its essential undefinable nature (by not defining it through habituation to intellectualism), the unrefined potential will cook by a subtle unminding concentration void of intellectual conjecture, into a refined state of potential whereby it is then absorbed naturally in the center of one's immaterial real body at the right time. You will see it when it is ready, without venturing to "help it along."

[deci belle]

Another response…

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You can also investigate the source of the desire and figure out how to drop that. Actually investigating the causes is very important. Ordinary people chase after conditions and have no clue what the cause was.

The thrust of this thread is following true desire arising from within one's situational vulnerability as a result of spontaneous accord with mutually arising conditions in order to carry out the subtle operation of enlightening being. The kind of work you are referring to involves various initiatory stages of provisional teaching relative to stopping and seeing by virtue of reformative discipline recognizing psychological patterns habitually clinging to sense-objects.

What I am hoping to introduce here is conscious acceptance of whole being as-is in terms of a purity of desire that requires no action based on personal longing (or rejection)— only a selfless (that is, nonpsychologically motivated) response to situations based on potential itself. "Based on potential itself" means sensing in accord with reality, which is simply seeing without layering psychological projections onto pure sensual and intuitive perception. In this way, one one enters directly into opportunities continually arriving at the incipient well-spring of presence. Taoism calls this "resting in the highest good." Buddhism calls this the pedestal of awareness, or the pivot of awareness.

On the surface, just this much is all a person can do— it is just the quality of impersonal objectivity, the functional perspective of enlightening being adapting to conditions according to the time and situation. The pivot of awareness, with no bias or inclination, is seeing suchness as is in terms of mutual response. "With no bias or inclination" doesn't predispose one in terms of a certain categorically "enlightened" manner of response according to conventional norms or propriety. Not at all. Here one is liberated from all manner of convention, being that opportune outrage may be perfectly suited to the occasion, yet— perhaps not from convention's consequences. Nevertheless, it is possible to carry out audaciously ruthless compassion spontaneously without selfish motivations of clinging or rejection.

Just this comes into being by virtue of karmic awareness— that is, psychological momentum. One is essentially empty already. Emptiness isn't void. The emptiness of enlightening being is potential itself because selflessness is the sage's unity within the temporal. Everything as oneself is sagehood.

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Alchemy is just a teaching. Its independent modality isn't beyond reality. Alchemy is based on reality, not the universal socially-evolved human consensus deriving from time immemorial and beyond. It is simply an effective device enabling those with liberated eyes to become evermore familiar with the celestial mechanism which is nonoriginated. Using desire is one of a number of ploys to gain an intimate relationship with potential; a specific authentic enlightening practice for those who readily resonate with humanity's natural capacity as inconceivable being.

When one is blind to egotism and possessiveness, one sees all sorts of striving come to an end. This is existence beyond karmic awareness. No longer expending energy on speculative relationships and their outcomes, adaptivity to conditions naturally gathers potential as unrefined elixir. This is selfless (enlightening) action beyond moralistic self-reprobation. It's just being natural. Enlightening activity has no motive to gather. Alchemy is just a description of enlightening reversion whereby situational karmic energy is set up to assume its potential.

Such authentic practice is an "advance" mode of transformation within delusion for those whose potential is commensurate with the requirements. Whether or not one has yet gained the perspective that sudden enlightenment affords is immaterial. Why? The fact is, the vast majority of self-proclaimed "awakened" individuals are obviously unable to avail themselves of such activity. The truth is, the sudden is nothing more than a spontaneous, impersonal event. It is just the way it is and no one knows why. The gradual approach, whereby one learns to work with essence directly without intermediary, is already predisposed to such spontaneous results, allowing students the facility to meet the unforeseen challenges thrust upon anyone who happens to stumble into one's selfsame source of inconceivability.

Chang Po-tuan, in his tome, Understanding Reality, wrote a thousand years ago, stating in the second verse:

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THOUGH HUMAN LIFE HAS A LIMIT OF A HUNDRED YEARS, THE LENGTH OF LIFE, AND WHETHER IT WILL BE DIFFICULT OR SMOOTH, CANNOT BE KNOWN BEFOREHAND. YESTERDAY RIDING A HORSE THROUGH TOWN, TODAY A SLEEPING CORPSE IN A COFFIN: FAMILY AND WEALTH CAST OFF, THEY ARE NOT YOUR OWN POSSESSIONS; WITH EVIL DEEDS COMING ON ON, YOU CANNOT FOOL YOURSELF. IF YOU COME UPON THE GREAT ELIXIR WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING FOR IT, HAVING COME UPON IT, YOU ARE A FOOL IF YOU DO NOT REFINE IT.

Let this quote serve as a warning to those who consider themselves "awakened" or else those conceiving spiritual aspiration. Such (self) refinement is both in terms of the psychological faculties as well as the nonpsychological function. Mind is one.

It isn't that karma exists or not or that potential becomes real after it wasn't… after one sees essence, karma and potential are one sameness. Before people learn to see, they need applicable teachings commensurate with their development to deal with reality according to their level of virtuous accord with the Way in order to transcend the false and abide in the real.

Before that development reaches a critical mass of energetic response whereby one actually can recognize the medicines, the teaching of alchemy has been left behind by prior illuminates to enable the wise to work with the polluted in order to realize the pure. When one practices the real in the heart of the false for a long time, the false reverts of itself and one experiences spiritual movement based on psychological stillness. There is nothing to understand. All processes are spontaneous.

Just this is following the will of God without knowing it. When one sees, there is nothing whatsoever to know. Dealing with situations, one follows desire in order to introduce guidance, which, among other meanings, is a code-word for observing the obscure as it gradually assumes clarity.

Desire is. It turns into wisdom with eyes that see the world as oneself.

 

Understanding Reality by Chang Po-tuan  ISBN 0-8248-1139-9

 

 

ed note: try to fix paragraphical anomallies… unsuccessfully, add ISBN of Understanding Reality

Edited December 25, 2023 by deci belle

[deci belle]

Somebody wrote:

Yes, I would love some guidance on how to get off on the world without going along with it. When you said that you are not addressing the kind of work that amounts to initiatory stages of provisional teachings of stopping and seeing in terms of carrying out discipline recognizing and discriminating habitual psychological patterns relative to sense-objects.…

Which would have been my approach; so I'm floundering slightly.

…being an entirely understandable predicament❤︎, because our ordinary perspective is programmed in this way through everyday ordinary conditioning. Enlightening perspective set forth by all the world's authentic teachings has to account for that which does not reference relative psychological postures, so the confusion felt by beginners is directly attributable to the fact that reality can only be seen in a gradual fashion after having slowly gained a sober stability in the nonposychological perspective, which has absolutely nothing to rely on in terms of instinctual and learned biases and inclinations based on personally created and consensually perpetuated mental distinctions. The nonpsychological (spiritual) perspective is the perspective of nonorigination, which sees its nonoriginated perpetual potential as naturally as can be, in terms of the world as situational (impersonal) relativity. So in this way, the relative has its enlightening aspect inherently so, without any such self-referential discriminatory element inclusive or abiding.

In the knowledge of nonoriginated sameness within difference, one just rests in the unfolding presence as is without activating the discriminating mind. Bankei said, "Don't turn the Unborn into other states". Bodhidharma said, "Don't know". The Tao te Ching's opening verse elucidates the fact that there is no fixed path, therefore the perpetual  has to be discovered for oneself at every turn, and it doesn't have to be pretty.

Nevertheless, using the provisional as a handrail or ballet-barre is entirely appropriate. And when such an approach has proceeded effectively to the point where one begins to forget to perpetuate self-referencing pattern-awareness— this is because the processes of effective self-refinement are slowly dispersing the human mentality's suffocating atmosphere of its own specious identity in terms of a karmic existence. A luminous still presence can then abide as clarified space being one's reverted nonpsychological posture, whereby nothing to refine quickens without remainder. Mind is one, there are no two mentalities. Delusion ultimately expresses an unskillful use of mind, having long obscured its inherent enlightening potential.

Sudden realization of one's essential nature is the result of such enlightening activity, not the cause of it. When you see your nature, you not only see that that has been your true identity all along, you know that ALL being is thus, before the first thought.

When I say that I am not addressing the kind of work that amounts to initiatory stages of provisional teachings of stopping and seeing in terms of carrying out discipline to recognize and discriminate habitual psychological patterns relative to sense-objects, it means that what I am bringing up is relative to enlightening activity beyond the stage of personal self-refinement.

This is entry into the inconceivable. We are all just this inconceivability. Inconceivability is your own mind. I have to admit that there is not much difference between stages (in fact, there are no stages to speak of in terms of reality). Just know that self-refinement in terms of gradual practice and gradual practice of enlightening being are one continuum. In the aftermath of the sudden, the emphasis of gradual practice is just a bit different, that's all.

Since there is no difference in terms of enlightening being before or after the sudden, I speak of the perspective of selfless enlightening function in ordinary situations because when dealing directly with essence in terms of "turning the light around" spoken of in the Golden Flower teaching, there is no intermediary. This teaching is essentially no different than the subtle operation within suchness spoken of by Chan buddhism or the term "entering the Tao in reality" mentioned in the school of Complete Reality (Quanzhen).

I can recommend a small manual which has passages discussing gradual practice leading up to and in the aftermath of the sudden called Minding Mind. It is translated by Thomas Cleary, the ISBN is 1-57062-004-0.

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In the knowledge of nonoriginated sameness within difference…

this is a place… it is just where you are, not a property of intellect. Its expression is one's relationship with reality.

Yes, knowledge is a place, yet who can say it has a location?

 

 

ed note: change first word; typo, 5th paragraph

Edited December 27, 2023 by deci belle

[deci belle]

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I had a very important realization a few weeks ago (important for myself, I should say, maybe most other people know this already). I was sitting in the parking lot of a store and I saw some beautiful boys walk by. I've always had little pangs of longing when I see beautiful people, and I decided to sift through the feelings and see what they actually were. One of them was sexual, one was a desire to be like them, another was a craving to posses them. The last one caught be by surprise! Sexual desire is obvious - I'd thought through that before - and desire to be like a beautiful person is an expression of vanity (I think I'm a very vain person most of the time haha), but I'd never thought of people as actual possessions before. Or, I should say, I've always thought of people as possessions, but I never realized it. This was the true root of the feeling, and it changed my whole viewpoint just by knowing about it.

Suddenly their beauty was something I could enjoy completely, in and of itself, as an expression of my humanity rather than as a desire for any kind of possession. I thought of them like wild birds, more beautiful in their freedom from my clinging mind than they were when I had tried to posses them. I thought about all the beautiful people in the world, and I realized that, by wishing nothing about them, I suddenly could posses them all in whatever contact I had with them, and when the contact was over, there would be no loss. Longing and desire comes from wanting more than we have and missing the whole that's already there. There was no competition all of a sudden, no need for any relationship in specific, no anger at the ugliness of one person because the person next to them is beautiful. It had all been there before and was suddenly erased.

 

This is wonderful, ma cherie~ and so it goes on and on. It's like this forever. It has no fancy sanskrit title. In the center of essence is the wholeness of desire, the spark of the erotic, hovering in stillness on the verge of going into action in perpetuity. With this perspective, we can follow our heart's desire and witness longing for what it is— a consensually and necessarily instinctual bit of pattern-consciousness revolving  lifetime after lifetime… some people say it's what makes the world go 'round —an intoxicating sense of anticipatory consciousness certainly does keep the karmic world turning, without a doubt. Ask me why I know ~~❤︎

 

 

 

ed note: fluff and buff last paragraph

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by deci belle

[deci belle]

What follows, depending on one's degree of subsumption in acknowledgement of selfless awareness; then gradual sublimation and stabilization in this enlightening perspective, is basically the same old thing. Sorry, but it's no catwalk. Nobody knows. I didn't say a word of it to anyone for fifteen years and have only been divulging the mechanism anonymously for fifteen years now, for the benefit of those who are ready to hear of its secret potential.

What is significant is that enlightening  perspective is itself the means to adapt to conditions based on primal nonoriginated potential wholly inherent in conditions themselves. Therefore one's adaptive exigency is derived of the essence of the situation itself, not one's own power. One's action based on inconceivably sourced energy is not dependent on societal convention or personal prerogative, bias or inclination. Obviously, one has no doubt, hesitation, personal ego investment or second thoughts in carrying out spontaneous adaptive response to potential. In the aftermath of such pivotal situational movement, one certainly doesn't look back in terms of any rational perspective— again, it's not a matter of anyone knowing.

Who knew? If, due to conventional situational ramifications or residual anticipatory consciousness relative to karmic momentum, there are traces, well, just ask Jesus. It's not over until one ascends into heaven in broad daylight. Just that term entered into the lexicon of ancient Chinese folklore since time immemorial and beyond. Certainly, such an event is noteworthy, but evidently such occurrence is not that rare. I digress. "Ascension into heaven in broad daylight" is a reference to relative culminations of sorts, in terms of going through endless transformations based on inherent potential. When I say "traces", it is a reference to people, in general terms, and thought, in particular. As for transcending created cycles,I only speak of Jesus' actions, not any teachings attributable to the selectively highlighted historic personage. 

The point of such spiritual (selfless) adaption is absorption of potential. Absorption is automatic, natural. One doesn't do anything. Fact: enlightening being, beings and situations in the world, not to mention the world and creation en total, is comprised of the essence of potential in terms of nonorigination. Since just this is the essential nature of human being, absorption of situational potential by virtue of seeing it is the means of freeing karma from the bondage of duality and returning it to unity. Just sayin'. It is what it is and it does what it does. NO ONE KNOWS WHY.

For those who resonate with this potential, a gradual assimilation in its inconceivable characteristics is natural. Such naturalness has nothing to do with levitation, trance-states, coddling lions, riding lactating tigresses, entertaining bunnies and birdies (depending on the season) or leading processions of venomous snakes. Doing so, at any rate, is certainly the stage some individuals seem to need to go through— but such is not natural. As in all things pertaining to the perpetual and gradual path of self-refinement, it is best to neither rush through nor tarry in such instances.

The bottom line is that enlightening perspective in terms of adaption to the use and experiential power of selfless desire is not a view relative to the person. I only bring it up as a device to introduce the matter of seeing potential in everyday ordinary situations unbeknownst to anyone, so that those who are naturally disposed to such potential can hope to familiarize themselves with refining the various vulnerabilities attuned to such psychological/nonpsychological terrain.

 

 

ed note: a few "clarififications" (uh-huh), and typos

Edited January 12 by deci belle