Chapter 2, Verse 45
"The scriptures dwell in duality.
Be beyond all opposites, Arjuna.
Poise your mind in tranquility,
Anchored in the real,
And free from all thoughts of wealth and comfort."
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi:
"Arjuna's dilemma is how to reconcile love of kinsmen with the necessity to root out evil. On the plane of relative life, dilemmas like this can be irreconcilable. That is why, having explored all the avenues of his heart and mind, Arjuna could not find any practical solution and thus could not decide on any line of action. Krishna, however, shows him the field where righteousness and love merge in eternal harmony, the eternal life of Being. The relative field of life is full of conflicting elements: heat and cold, pleasure and pain, gain and loss, and all the other pairs of opposites which constitute life. Under their influence, a life gets tossed about like a ship on rough seas. To be freed from duality is to rest in the field of non-duality, the state of Being. It is like an anchor for the ship of life amidst a sea of change. Steadiness is gained."
Stephen King (from The Shining):
"'Daddy's worried about us,' said Danny [the five year-old son who is gifted telepathically] to his mother. 'He thinks maybe we'll be lonely. And then he thinks that he likes it here and it's a good place for us. He loves us and doesn't want us to be lonely...or sad...but he thinks even if we are, it might be okay in the long run.' It was hard to explain, he understood so little of it himself. Grownups were always in a turmoil, every possible action muddied over by thoughts of the consequences, by self-doubt, by self-imag, by feelings of love and responsibility. Every possible choice seemed to have drawbacks."
[Those who rest in Being and are “anchored in the real” are free from the muddying quality of a thought process preoccupied by past and future…]
Eckhart Tolle:
“When anything arises out of Presence, it means that this moment is not a means to an end. The doing becomes fulfilling in itself every moment. You are no longer reducing the Now to a means to an end, which is egoic consciousness.”
Posts
2 comments:
I believe it is necessary to keep one's mind fixed, single-pointedly on the goal of the Absolute, throughout the day, keep God in your mind's-eye as we move through being. However, I think it is just as important to recognize and not deny the relative truth - we are human, we are encased in a physical body, we have to eat, sleep, and sh*t. I mean someone's gotta grow the tomatoes... With this very human-ness, comes the duality of our material world. Pleasure and pain, light and dark, male and female. We mustn't deny this, but embrace it, for within It is God. It's essential to know where you're at, to get where you're headed. Start where you are. Breathe... As long as we breathe the air of this Earth, we are bound to this physical plane, this body. It's not good or bad. It simply is. The catch is to engage in duality while "Anchored in the real", with the awareness that God is the doer. AUM Shanti.
Welcome here Seth and thank you for contributing. Yes, it is just as important to recognize the relative truth. I sometimes think of this in terms of... "I am this body, but so much more, too."
Paul Brunton was a Britisher who went to India to find a bona fide Yoga Master (he relates his experiences in the book "A Search in Secret India") and he found one: Ramana Maharshi. He spent only a couple of weeks at Maharshi's feet, but it was enough. He went home and wrote many books about the Way. As I was reading your post with its emphasis on balance, it reminded me of something Paul Brunton wrote:
“We can make sense of our experiences only if we apply to them, and to our understanding of them, the double standpoint: Immediate and Ultimate, or Appearance and Reality, or Relative and Absolute. The ordinary, normal point of view takes the world as the five senses find it, that is, as it appears to be. This is easy for everyone to understand and accept. But the deepest possible examination presents a totally different result: The One, That which IS, has undergone no change at all.
Let us see through the multitudinous forms of the world into the unity upon which they are grounded, without, however, letting our consciousness lose the forms themselves.
From the first standpoint, we see the necessity and must obey the urge of undertaking this quest in all its practical details and successive stages. From the second one, however, we see that all existence, inclusive of our own and whether we are aware of it or not, dwells in a timeless, motionless Now and a changeless, actionless Here. The first bids us work and work hard at self-development in meditation, metaphysics, and altruistic activity, but the second informs us that nothing we do or abstain from doing can raise us to a region where we already are and forever shall be. Because we are what we are, it is helpful to hold both these standpoints side by side.
These two views need not oppose themselves against each other but can exist in a state of reconciliation and harmony when their mutual necessity is understood. We have to remember both that which is ever-becoming and that which IS. We are already as eternal, as immortal, as divine as we shall ever be. But if we want to become aware of it, then we must climb down to the lower standpoint and pursue the quest in travail and limitation.
There is the immediate view and there is the ultimate viewpoint. The first offers us a convenient way of looking at our activities in the world and of dealing with them whilst yet holding firmly to the Truth."
(from his Collected Works)
Post a Comment