Wholeness

Should We Be Seekers?
~ Question, Quotations, and Comments

“He is born in vain,
who having attained the human birth,
so difficult to get,
does not attempt to realize God
in this very life.”
~ Sri Ramakrishna
“Seek first the kingdom of heaven,
which is within.”
~ Matthew 6:33; Luke 17:20-21
“Seek and ye shall find.”
Matthew 7:7; Luke 11.9-13
“What you seek is seeking you.”
~ Rumi
“What we are looking for is what is looking.”
~ St. Francis of Assisi
By letting it go it all gets done.
The world is won by those who let it go.
But when you try and try,
the world is beyond the winning.
~ Lao Tzu
“Remember God; forget the rest.
Forget who you think you are,
to remember what you really are.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings





Introduction

This posting asserts and explains, with quotations and comments, that consciously or unconsciously we are all spiritual seekers.

Should We Be Seekers?

Q. Should we be seekers?

A. Knowingly or unknowingly everyone’s a seeker.
Knowingly or unknowingly everyone seeks Self.

But seeking’s then,
while Self is NOW.

So, to find Self,
BE Self –

NOW!



Ron’s audio recitation of “Should We Be Seekers?”

Listen to



Ron’s comments and explanation of “Should We Be Seekers?”

Dear Friends,

Are you a spiritual seeker – a seeker of Eternal Truth?

Nowadays, few humans consciously seek spiritual Truth. Almost everyone wants to be happy. But most people seek happiness in worldly pursuits and pleasures, not within.

For millennia mystics, saints and sages have counseled us to focus on spiritual rather than worldly goals. They tell us that worldly pleasures and attainments can merely bring transient satisfactions, whereas lasting happiness can only be found within.

Thus Jesus advised:

“Seek first the kingdom of heaven, which is within.”
“Seek and ye shall find.”

~ Matthew 6:33; Luke 17:20-21; Matthew 7:7; Luke 11.9-13


Similarly, 19th century Indian holy man Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa said:

“He is born in vain, who having attained the human birth, so difficult to get, does not attempt to realize God in this very life.”
~ Sri Ramakrishna

From my experience, knowingly or unknowingly, everyone is a spiritual “seeker” because everyone longs for a state of being which transcends inevitable Earthly cares and suffering, bringing eternal happiness as LOVE. But rare are those who attain it.

Background

In memoirs titled “Transcending Transcendence” I’ve told how soon after becoming a “born-again Hindu”, I learned that that the object of Sanskrit Hindu practices given by my Guruji was to achieve “mukti” or “moksha”, a state of Divine illumination, where the Self, soul, or “Atman” would experience its Oneness with “Brahman” [Supreme Reality] – the pinnacle of human experience.

Thereafter, I began considering and seeking “self realization”, or “enlightenment” as a spiritual goal, until gradually I abandoned goal oriented spiritual seeking, and – as “An Uncertain Undo” – intuitively began surrendering to the Infinite, with ever expanding heartfelt faith in God.

Explanation

Mystics say that by resolutely looking within we can discover ultimately that we are imprisoned by illusionary mental tendencies and mistaken beliefs about self identity and reality which wrongly reify our limited perceptions of ephemeral forms, in an ever impermanent illusory reality, where mortality and suffering are karmically inevitable.

So, how can we find divine happiness within?

Non-dualist masters tell us that effortlessly – with resolute intention, intense aspiration and focused observation we can discover our eternal Self, as a joyous state of spiritual freedom beyond belief.

“What is the worth of a happiness for which you must strive and work?
 Real happiness is spontaneous and effortless.”

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.”

~ Chuang-Tzu

By letting it go it all gets done.
The world is won by those who let it go.
 But when you try and try,
the world is beyond the winning.

~ Lao Tzu

“In the pursuit of learning every day something is gained.

In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.”

~ Lao Tzu

“Don’t seek happiness.  If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking
is the antithesis of happiness.  Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from
unhappiness is attainable now, by facing ‘what is’ rather than making up
stories about it.  Unhappiness covers up your natural state of well-being  and
inner peace, the source of true happiness.”

~ Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Do not search for the truth;

only cease to cherish opinions.

Do not remain in the dualistic state.

Avoid such pursuits carefully.

If there is even a trace of this and that,

of right and wrong,

the mind-essence will be lost in confusion.”
~ Seng-Ts’an, The Third Patriarch of Zen


Dedication and Invocation

May the non-dualist mystic masters inspire us –
each from our unique perspective –
to prioritize spiritual rather than worldly goals,
and so to seek and find relief from belief –
relief from mistaken mental tendencies
from which we inevitably and repeatedly suffer
until we find –
beyond the mind –
our true immortal Self.
And thus discover that:

We are what we seek!

And so it shall be!

Ron Rattner

Dreamers Awake
~ and End Double Bubble Trouble

“Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”
~ Buddha: Diamond Sutra
“We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.”
~ Aitareya Upanishad
I am, you anxious one.
I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am waiting.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
“The essence of all wisdom is to know the answers to ‘who am I?’
and ‘what will become of me?’ on the Day of Judgment.”
~ Jalaluddin Rumi
“Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.”
~ Lao Tzu

 

Bubbles

Dreamers Awake, and End Double Bubble Trouble

Eastern mystics say that this world is like a mirage,
an illusion which they call maya or samsara;
that “all that we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream”
…*

Science now agrees that our material world,
and all in it, are impermanent
ever changing quantum energy systems or processes;
that “Matter has melted into Mystery.”

Our ego says we are a person,
living in a solid, material universe.
But science says that we are a conscious
quantum energy process.

So, we live in a double bubble of imagined solidity:
an ego bubble of imagined personal identity,
within a paradigm bubble of imagined world “reality”.

But what happens if our bubbles burst?

If our ego bubble bursts, what’s left of us?

If our worldview paradigm bursts,
what’s left of our “reality”?

If the universe is like a dream,
who is the Dreamer?

If each being is like a dream,
who is the dreamer?

If we are just a dream within a dream,
what will be if we awaken from our dreams?

The answer to each bubble bursting,
dreamer awaking question is the same:

“ETERNAL AWARENESS”

NOW!

*Edgar Allen Poe.

 

Ron’s Comments on “Dreamers Awake, and End Double Bubble Trouble”

Dear Friends,

For millennia Eastern mystics and sages have likened our supposedly awakened earth life to nocturnal dream life, suggesting that we are not truly awake as long as we self-identify as entities separate from God, Nature and all else in our perceived world of forms.

And to help us awaken from this ‘dream-life’ they have counseled “know thyself”.
 
So, in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3, supposed sage Polonius counsels his son, Laertes:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

What is the deep meaning of Polonius’ advice?
Who or what is the Self to which we must be true?
And how can we be true to ourself, unless we  first know ourself?

According to Rumi,

“The essence of all wisdom is to know the answers to ‘who am I?’

and ‘what will become of me?’ on the Day of Judgment.”

Yet most people don’t reflect on these questions.  Instead, we self-identify only according to our perceptions of physical separateness and mortality in an apparently objective ‘solid’ world.

After years of ruminating on “who am I”, what is death, and what is ‘reality’,  I have increasingly self identified – rather than only  as a mortal physical body in a seemingly ‘solid’ universe – as timeless Awareness in an ever impermanent holographic universe – a dream-like kaleidoscopic  theater of the mind. 

This radical – yet simple – change of perspective, has greatly helped me live a happier life, often as an observer of my own “soap opera”, accepting it with less and less fear of adversity and inevitable physical mortality.  This changed perspective has revealed to me that:

“As we lose our fear of leaving life, we gain the art of living life.”  

Based on that realization, I have composed and posted above “Dreamers Awake, and End Double Bubble Trouble” to explore the perennial questions : “Who am I?”;  “What is ‘reality’”? and “What is ‘death?”

May these writings help us lead ever happier lives by encouraging our deep reconsideration and reflection upon our own self-identity, and supposed mortality, in accordance with revelations of quantum physicists and ancient saints and sages.  

May everyone, everywhere be happy!

And so may it be!

Ron Rattner


Life Is But A Dream

“This place is a dream.
Only a sleeper considers it real.
Then death comes like dawn,
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought was your grief.”
~ Rumi
“The world, indeed, is like a dream
and the treasures of the world are an alluring mirage!”
~ Buddha (The Awakened One)
“A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion,
does not act as if it is real,
so he escapes the suffering.”
~ Buddha
“Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”
~ Buddha: Diamond Sutra
“We are like the spider.

We weave our life and then move along in it.

We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.

This is true for the entire universe.”
~ The Upanishads




Life Is But A Dream

Q. “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?”

[*See footnote]


A. Yes. Each person’s life is like a dream story within a dream of space/time reality.

For millennia, mystics have revealed that all we see or seem is mental illusion, ‘samsara’ or ‘maya’ – like a very persistent day dream from which we can awaken, just as we awaken from nocturnal dreams. And scientists like Einstein confirm the mystics, saying e.g. that

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one”; “space and time are not conditions in which we live, they are modes in which we think”; and, that “our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.”


Just as nighttime dreams are mental images arising during sleep on a ‘screen’ of formless awareness, our daytime “reality” arises from mental images projected on the same screen of formless awareness that perceives nocturnal dreams.

Both mystics and scientists say that all the forms we perceive as “reality” are impermanent – ever appearing and disappearing in timeless formless awareness; awareness which is universal and beyond time and space, beyond birth and death. That formless awareness is in the Bible called “everlasting life” [Daniel 12:1-3] and “eternal life” [e.g. John 17:1-2] And it is our Essence and Ultimate Identity.

We can realize the biblical/mystical promise of eternal life upon awakening from illusory egoic self identification as mere mortal bodies, their thoughts and their stories, and thus awakening to self identification with that timeless, formless awareness in which we perceive our lives and all we call “reality”.

AND SO IT SHALL BE!


Footnote.
*Edgar Allan Poe, “A Dream Within A Dream”, 1849


Ron’s Commentary on Life Is But A Dream.

Dear Friends,

Have you ever yet thought about a “dream” as other than a nocturnal sleep experience?   Or as an unfulfilled ‘utopian’ aspiration such as expressed in Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legendary  “I Have a Dream” speech,
John Lennon’s “Imagine” lyrics,

“You may say that I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one”


or by master lyricist Oscar Hammerstein in “Happy Talk” from “South Pacific”:

“You got to have a dream, 
If you don’t have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?”

To help us validate and actuate those “new age” ideas, I have explained in the above essay why “all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream” in response to an insightful 1859 rhetorical question by poet Edgar Allan Poe; and why – as mystics and seers have told us for millennia – what we believe to be reality is, like a dream, just a play of universal consciousness. 

From my “dreamlike” perspective, the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as 45th US president was a major disguised blessing which wouldn’t have happened if Hillary Clinton had been declared the US election winner.   It has sparked an unprecedented mass political awakening to insanely dystopian secret government threats to everyone everywhere.

Because a critical mass of awakened Humankind worldwide are now adamantly demanding and intuitively envisioning a new era of peace and justice for all life everywhere – an era which ends and transcends unconscionable and unsustainable exploitation of our societies and planet to obscenely enrich a tiny group of psychopathic billionaires – I see this as beginning of a new era which will advance the highest good for all life on our precious planet.  

In a recent Happy New Year posting, I said that:

“The personal and planetary are intimately connected.
Just as dreamers ‘create’ their dreams,
together we are a ‘dream-team’,
dreaming our world into being; and,
consciously or unconsciously creating a ‘common dream’”

Quotations from Rumi, Buddha (The Awakened One), and ancient Upanishads which precede the essay, elucidate and illuminate our common dream “reality”. And here are more quotations which can help us realize why our supposed waking life is like a dream:

“As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other more real life and then return after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the very real the life of God.”
~ Leo Tolstoy


A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream?
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky


“This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.” 
~ Carl Gustav Jung


“To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil…”
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet (c. 1599), Act 3, sc. 1. 

Especially since modern medical technology has begun resuscitating apparently dead heart attack victims, many survivors have recounted amazing near death experiences (NDE’s) helping us to learn societally about what happens  “when we have shuffled off this mortal coil”.  And such NDE’s have been portrayed in movies like the 1998 Robin Williams film, “What Dreams May Come”, which paradoxically dealt with post-suicide experience.

Paramahansa Yogananda poetically observed:

“The mysterious soul abides forever’ changing never…. 
It loves to live in the grottos of change, ever steadfast and immovable. It never dreams ought but eternity.” 


May our awakening Human ‘dream team’ ever more self-identify as “the mysterious soul [which] abides forever” .  And may we apprehend as adults the esoteric meaning of this nursery rhyme we recited as children:

“Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream,
Merrily merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream”


Thereby may we at long last create an ever nobler ‘common dream’ that honors the equality and divinity of everyone everywhere, thus transcending exploitation and discrimination against the most vulnerable people and other sentient beings, by using our common sense and our common wealth for our common weal, and to end the iniquity of inequity in our society.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

Awakening to the “Secret of Secrets”

“If you could get rid of yourself just once,
the secret of secrets would open to you.
The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe
would appear on the mirror of your perception.”
~ Rumi
“You will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.”
~ John 8:32
“You are “gods”;
you are all children of the Most High.”
~ Psalm 82: 6
“You cannot teach an ego to be anything but egotistic,
even though egos have the subtlest ways of pretending to be reformed.
The basic thing is therefore to dispel, by experiment and experience, the illusion of oneself as a separate ego.”
~ Alan Watts
“People can’t be talked out of illusions. If a person believes that the earth is flat, you can’t talk him out of that, he knows that it’s flat. He’ll go down to the window and see that its obvious, it looks flat. So the only way to convince him that it isn’t is to say, “Well let’s go and find the edge”
~ Alan Watts
“The individual is separate from his universal environment only in name. When this is not recognized, you have been fooled by your name. Confusing names with Nature, you come to believe that having a separate name makes you a separate being.
This is—rather literally—to be spellbound”.
~ Alan Watts
“Consciousness is always Self-Consciousness.

If you are conscious of anything,
you are essentially conscious of yourself.”

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi



Awakening to the “Secret of Secrets”

For millennia there has been a tacit taboo or ‘conspiracy of silence’ against disclosing to all Humankind our true spiritual and immortal identity.  

Except for those raised in so-called ‘primitive’ or indigenous societies, or those imbued with Eastern religious philosophy, most people have been acculturated from time immemorial into societies with “an unrecognized but mighty taboo — our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are.” (Alan Watts: The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Preface.)

From childhood we are taught to self-identify only with an illusory and disempowering ego image; with a separate name, gender, and story about who and what we are. We are taught that we are each born into Nature as limited beings; but, not that Nature is our nature, or that we are Beings of Light sharing limitless immortal common consciousness with all life-forms.

Nor are we ever taught the greatest “secret of secrets”: that we are not mere powerless perceivers of our “reality”, but also its co-creators – that we co-create our reality with our thoughts, words and deeds; that everything we think, do or say changes this world in some way; and, that this worldly “reality” is dependent upon the awareness with which we envision, experience and co-create it.

To experientially realize that greatest “secret of secrets” is to Know Thyself. And to Know Thyself, is to know the Whole – the Truth that will set us free.

For countless ages sages, seers and mystics have been trying to tell us that we are not what we think we are!  That we suffer from perception-deception – with self-identity and reality not what they appear to be; that it is possible to experientially transcend the inevitable suffering of ordinary human existence through self-realization of and self-identification with an undivided eternal spiritual reality – which is the common essence of all space-time causality reality.

Mystics say that we share common Self identity – as Cosmic Consciousness or Non-Duality Reality; that we are not merely our mortal bodies – their names, genders, features, colors, religions, beliefs, emotions, habits or stories – or the ‘voices in our heads’.  We are non-dual immortal spirit experiencing fleeting earth lives from infinite perspectives in transitory physical vehicles.  But we’re all the same ‘under the hood’.  

Yet until now that greatest secret has been mostly concealed or denied: predominantly by subconscious suppression or psychological inability of humankind to accept or entertain non-experienced facts which contradict or threaten their cherished illusionary beliefs about “reality”; sometimes by institutions and individuals seeking selfish hierarchical exploitation of our precious planet and all its life-forms and resources.

Until now ignorance of our true identity and immortality, has resulted in humanity’s hallucination of separation from Nature, from each other, and from our sole Self and spirit, with consequent destructive insanity, selfishness and suffering.   

But now, facing ominous and enormous ecological, interpersonal and international crises which cannot be resolved from the same levels of consciousness which created them, we are at long last being awakened from our delusion of separateness and powerlessness. Spurred by increasing suffering and awareness of imminent catastrophe, we are finally dispelling the ignorance which has spawned these crises.

And we shall soon reach a tipping point, when a critical mass of Humankind will have awakened to the “secret of secrets”, uplifting all human consciousness and resolving harmoniously and compassionately the critical mess created by our prior unawareness of that “secret”.

Thus awakened, we shall harmoniously, cooperatively and lovingly resolve our common crises for our common good.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

Ron’s commentary on the taboo against knowing who we really are.

The foregoing essay was inspired by the above Rumi “secret of secrets” quote, and by Alan Watts’:
“The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, ©1966.

Watts was a brilliantly insightful, erudite and articulate UK philosopher, author, and teacher, with post-graduate degrees in Theology and Divinity. After five years as an ordained Episcopal priest, he ‘converted’ to Zen Buddhism and in 1951 moved to Marin County, California from the UK. Thereafter, until his death in 1973, Watts became a counterculture icon,
best-known for introducing Eastern philosophical and religious thought to Westerners.

I first learned about Watts’ teachings listening to KPFA Pacifica radio, Berkeley, which posthumously broadcast his lectures on Sunday nights, while I was driving for visits with my aged parents. Those broadcasts helped me to learn about Eastern wisdom and philosophy of spiritual evolution – of which I was previously ignorant.

Only after launching the Silly Sutras website in 2010 did I discover and read Watt’s 1966 “The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”. By then I concurred with Watts’ assertions about origins of the illusion of a separate ego self, and how that illusion is central to our ominous and enormous ecological, interpersonal and international crises.

Moreover, before 2010 I’d already learned about extreme psychological reluctance of most people to entertain or accept true facts contrary to their cherished beliefs about “reality”. And soon after President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, I’d become quite aware of powerfully insidious Orwellian propaganda techniques used to ‘brainwash’ people about alleged truth of outrageous government lies, and to marginalize truth-telling dissidents by ridiculing them as “conspiracy theorists”, “kooks”, “foreign agents”, “communists”, or “socialists”, and blatantly censoring or dishonestly denying their ‘inconveniently’ truthful revelations.

So I concurred with Alan Watts’ contentions concerning a tacit taboo or conspiracy of silence against revealing our true identity and infinite potentiality. Thus I have composed the foregoing essay, and endorse Watts’ book “On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, linked below as an audio book file.

Invocation

May these writings inspire our awakening to “the secret of secrets”, and thereby to irreversibly realize ourselves as uniquely interdependent expressions of ONE universal, ineffable and eternal Reality – the cosmic Self matrix of all Life everywhere.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner


Audio: Alan Watts: The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.



Other links:
https://binged.it/2E3SoYK
https://binged.it/2GzTYmG

Let’s Leap To Quantum Consciousness

“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong.
What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.”
“There is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the [Quantum] field is the only reality.”
~ Albert Einstein
“With quantum theory we have to leave behind our naive picture of reality as an intricate clockwork. We are challenged by quantum theory to build new ways in which to picture reality, a physics, moreover, in which consciousness plays a central role, in which the observer is inextricably interwoven in the fabric of reality.”
~ Adam McLean
“Our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.”
~ Albert Einstein




Ron’s Introduction to Let’s Leap To Quantum Consciousness

The following visionary poem was composed many years ago as I was imagining blessings to be enjoyed when, at long last, with elevated quantum consciousness human societies, institutions and enterprises function democratically, holistically and cooperatively for the benefit of all life everywhere.


Let’s Leap To Quantum Consciousness

Imagine how blessed our lives would be
If everyone could really See

How everything is energy.

So, let’s take a quantum leap:

From particle to wave,
From lost to saved,

From I to Thou,
From then to Now,

From doing to Being,
From having to Seeing,

From ego to Soul,
From part to Whole.



Ron’s audio recitation of “Let’s Leap To Quantum Consciousness”

Listen to



Ron’s explanation and dedication of
“Let’s Leap To Quantum Consciousness”


Dear Friends,

For millennia mystics have recognized the permanent impermanence of all forms and experiences in our space/time energetic ‘reality’ – an insight now confirmed by quantum physicists.

Quantum science shows us that everything in space/time is energy (e=mc2); that all forms and phenomena are merely vibrating and radiating immaterial energies endlessly and inevitably appearing (from unknown causes and conditions) out of and disappearing into an ineffable matrix of mystery.

A century has passed since Einstein’s revolutionary relativity theory revealed to us that “reality” can’t be reduced to objects or entities in space. Yet culturally we’ve kept acting as if this is so – habitually clinging to a false Newtonian materialistic worldview that sees everyone and everything as discrete and separated by apparently immutable boundaries.

Nonetheless, we are inevitably evolving into the light of creation: from a Newtonian “reality” of polarized duality, to a quantum “reality” of holistic connectedness; from either this or that, to this and that are ONE.

Synchronistically, current unprecedented worldwide dystopian restrictions of civil and human rights, and threats of imminent ecological, biological or nuclear catastrophe jeopardizing earth-life as we’ve known it, also provide to our species (which allowed or caused these dire problems) exceptionally urgent incentives to resolve them forthwith from elevated heart levels of quantum consciousness.

Invocation.

May the above poetic vision help inspire and encourage our evolutionary transformation and realization of open-hearted human societies infused with loving quantum consciousness, blessing and benefiting all life everywhere.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

What is “Reality”?

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
“Our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.”
“There is no place in . . [Quantum] physics both for the field and matter, for the field is the only reality.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Consciousness is always Self-Consciousness.
If you are conscious of anything, you are
essentially conscious of yourself.”
~ Ramana Maharshi
“This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.”
~ Carl Gustav Jung
“The world, indeed, is like a dream
and the treasures of the world are an alluring mirage!”
~ Buddha
“A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion,
does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.”
~ Buddha
“What appears to be a stable, tangible, visible, audible world, is an illusion.
It is dynamic and kaleidoscopic — not really “there”.
What we normally see is the explicit, or unfolded, order of things, rather like watching a movie.
But there is an underlying order that is mother and father to this second-generation reality.”

~ David Bohm, Quantum Physicist




What is “Reality”?

“Reality” isn’t REAL!

“Reality” – like beauty –
is in the eye of the beholder.

It is a mental concept arising in consciousness,
and projected by the beholding self-awareness
onto certain perceived objects.

As rays of sunlight are in essence
the same as the emitting sun source,
perceived “reality” is in essence
the same as the Awareness
from which it originates.

But, because of the “magic mirror” of mind,
“reality” is mistakenly perceived
and objectified as separate and distinct
from the perceiving subject.

So, isn’t it NOW
time to really realize
that “reality” isn’t really real;

That only Awareness is REAL?



Ron’s Reflections on What is “Reality”?

Dear Friends,

Have you ever wondered what is really  “Real”? –  or “unreal”?
These are crucial questions because our beliefs about “reality” determine our Earth-life experiences.

Today’s What is “Reality”? posting focusses on mystical perspectives of “Reality”.  It can help explain how in our world of duality – of apparent opposites – our projected mental perspectives determine our experience of “reality”.  

“Reality” and “the real world” are  common concepts; frequently used but rarely deeply considered. They mean different things to different people.

According to dictionary definitions, “reality” is that which actually exists as distinguished from that which is merely apparent.   So what in this world actually exists?  And what in this world is merely apparent, like a non-existent mirage or a dream? – or a virtual or simulated reality?

Albert Einstein realized that cosmically everything is energy – e=mc2; so that when we experience as reality our perceived separation from other life-forms, it is is an “optical illusion of consciousness”.   And Einstein said that

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”;

“Space and time are not conditions in which we live,
they are modes in which we think”.

Similarly, Eastern mystics have long revealed from inner exploration that this world is not actually real, but an ‘unreal’ illusion: 


“The world, indeed, is like a dream and the treasures of the world are an alluring mirage!”
“A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real,
so he escapes the suffering.”
~ 
Buddha

Also for millennia, indigenous shamans and mystics everywhere have told us that there is only ONE eternal and immutable Source, of the seemingly countless impermanent forms we perceived as “reality”; that  therefore this  world of apparent multiplicity and separation is merely an ever impermanent dream-like mental projection of That ONE matrix.

“All things come out of the One, and the One out of all things.”
~ Heraclitus, 500 BCE

“Reality cannot be found except in One single source,
because of the interconnection of all things with one another.”
~ Gottfried Leibniz, 1670

“Though One, Brahman is the cause of the many.”
~ Rig Veda, 1500–1200 BCE

“We did not weave the web of life. We are merely strands in it.
All things are bound together. All things connect.”
~ Chief Seattle

“At the center of the Universe dwells the Great Spirit and —
this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”
~ Black Elk, Oglala Sioux

“This separation between man and man, between nation and nation, between earth and moon, between moon and sun.
Out of this idea of separation – – comes all misery.
But the Vedanta says that this separation does not exist,
it is not real.
~ Swami Vivekananda


Shakespeare wisely told us that


“there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. 

[ Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2]

Similarly, cutting edge scientists increasingly confirm that what appears to us as “real” or “unreal” depends upon our thinking – the projected mental perspectives of those concepts. Also, that the supposedly ‘solid’ Earth reality of our limited perceptions is an ever impermanent energetic illusion – only a virtual, simulated, or relative ‘reality’. (https://sillysutras.com/our-mentality-is-our-reality-quotations-and-reflections/)

Conclusion.
 
Our spiritual evolution is greatly advanced if we realize and remember our true self-identity and “Reality” as universal Awareness or Eternal spirit, not just as mere separate and mortal physical body/minds. Such realization will dramatically transform our Earth-life experience. If we stop separately self-identifying and labeling everyone and everything, it will bestow happier and more fulfilled human lives, with ever expanding compassion for all other life-forms, and with  less suffering from unhelpful worldly emotions, desires and attachments.

In the current “new normal” era, it is particularly important that we end our immensely limiting illusions of self-identity as merely mortal separate entities.

As presciently explained in 1980 by brilliant quantum physicist and Einstein protege David Bohm, our

“widespread and pervasive distinctions between people (race, nation, family, profession, etc., etc.) .. are now preventing mankind from working together for the common good, and indeed, even for survival.”
~ David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980

Thus transcendence of our “optical illusion” of separation has become especially crucial in the current 2020 “new normal” coronavirus era of unprecedented worldwide human deprivations, suffering and turmoil, with extremely imminent threat to survival of life as we’ve known it.

Dedication and Invocation.

Realization that our precious planet is only a virtual or simulated ‘reality’ need not in any way diminish our immense awe and thankfulness for Earth’s magnificence as part of Nature’s miraculous manifestations, well beyond our comprehension or imagination. 

Nor need it detract from our unspeakable gratitude for our experiences in “space/time soul suits” as precious human body/minds – harmonious life-form manifestations of Nature, to be lovingly and skillfully nurtured from our unique perspectives.

So may we find growing happiness and fulfillment in this precious human lifetime, as we ever evolve toward Self-identity as universal Eternal spirit, not just as mere separate and mortal life-forms.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

Women in Art:
Morphing Madonnas as Metaphor

“Our separation of each other
is an optical illusion of consciousness.”
~ Albert Einstein

Sri Anandamayi Ma


Introduction

The “Women in Art” video (embedded below) sequentially morphs together many images of different unique female beings painted by the greatest Western portrait artists of the past 500 years, with a Bach cello musical background.

Apart from its exceptional artistic beauty and creativity, this award winning video can be deeply experienced as a metaphor for our ever evolving and expanding human consciousness.

From mistakenly seeing everyone and everything as discrete and separated by apparently immutable boundaries, we are gradually realizing that everyone/everything is inseparably connected by our common essence: ever-changing energy in a matrix of immutable Awareness.

Thus, we are evolving into the light of creation: from a Newtonian “reality” of polarized duality, to a quantum “reality” of holistic connectedness; from either this or that, to this and that are ONE.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner


Women In Art video:




Ron’s 2020 Comment on Women In Art video

Dear Friends,

In recent postings I’ve proclaimed my optimistic faith-based opinion that we are evolving from an illusionary and outmoded Newtonian worldview of seeing everyone and everything as discrete and separated by apparently immutable boundaries, into a quantum-connectedness worldview, which will inevitably uplift human consciousness to resolve current “new normal” crises and threatened catastrophes arising from our outdated beliefs and behaviors.

Despite unprecedented worldwide violence and divisiveness, I have supreme faith that Humankind are destined to transcend our mistaken illusions of separation; that our ultimate destiny is Self-identity as Infinite Awareness – the eternal Light of Divine LOVE.

May the above “Women in Art” video help elevate our consciousness
enabling us to envision and implement peaceful, compassionate, and harmonious solutions to current crises, bringing us an awakened new era of abiding peace, justice and goodwill for all life everywhere.

And so shall it be!

Ron Rattner

Bi-Polar Paradigm Disorder

“‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat. ‘We’re all mad here.’”
~ Lewis Carroll
“Our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.”
~ Albert Einstein
“When the world goes mad,
one must accept madness as sanity;
since sanity is, in the last analysis,
nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree.”
~ George Bernard Shaw

Wassily Kandinsky – Black Lines


Bi-Polar Paradigm Disorder

We live in an age of mental malaise.

The world now suffers an epidemic
of bi-polar paradigm disorder.

This condition begins to arise when people
futilely try to divide the Indivisible,
by everywhere drawing imaginary border lines –
like “us and them”, “good and evil”, “God and Satan” etc..

These border-line people then get mentally unbalanced
and feel dis-eased and threatened by people
‘on the other side’ of their imaginary lines.

Their border-line thinking is not logical, but pathological.

Bi-polar paradigm disorder is closely related to another
wide-spread mental disorder now afflicting
most of Humankind – Chronic Belief Syndrome.

Researchers are looking for a common cure for both afflictions;
a cure which will provide Humankind with “relief from belief”.

However, they are presently unable to secure federal funding for their research project and don’t believe that such a cure is imminent.



Ron’s audio recitation of Bi-Polar Paradigm Disorder

Listen to



Ron’s Commentary on “Bi-Polar Paradigm Disorder” and “Chronic Belief Syndrome”.

Dear Friends,

We live in an age of mental malaise.

In some commentaries I have darkly described world society as insanely dystopian and Orwellian – as symptomatic of pandemic societal sickness.  And I’ve attributed  our suffering to human ignorance, fear and greed fomented and exploited by psychopathic world financial, political and corporate billionaire “leaders” selfishly serving interests of power and profits over people for a ‘Big Brother’ “deep state”

But today I offer a sure cure for all such sufferings – a true panacea and formula for alchemically transmuting dystopia to utopia.  Instead of complaining, today I’m explaining how we can and shall resolve our political problems. 

Inspired by Dr. Seuss, I have identified and ‘diagnosed’ above as the fundamental causes of our societal insanity two widespread mental disorders: “Bi-Polar Paradigm Disorder” and “Chronic Belief Syndrome”.

Delusionally believing ourselves separate from and mortally threatened by apparently perceived ‘others’, we compulsively fear them and fight ‘them’.  But we suffer from perception projection deception; what we think we see are merely mental mirages – seemingly apparent but nonexistent.   

Our hallucinatory mental problems cannot be solved from the same levels of consciousness that created them.

So, rather than prescribing new pills for our mental ills – offering only temporary symptomatic relief – today I am privileged to reveal natural and ‘open-source’ mental mood and awareness elevators, which are sure cures for all of Humankind’s illogical psychological problems.

Amazingly these sure cures are freely available – infinitely and eternally – within everyone and everything everywhere.  They are:

Universal Spirit, Being, Awareness, Bliss; Eternal Peace, Life, Light, LOVE.   

By uncovering, accessing and compassionately emanating these sure cures, we will inevitably solve and resolve all world problems and crises arising from Human ignorance and greed.   

And so it shall BE!

Ron Rattner

Voice In My Head?

“If you could get rid of yourself just once,
the secret of secrets would open to you.
The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe
would appear on the mirror of your perception.”
~ Rumi
“Be empty of worrying,

Think of Who Created Thought!

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?”

~ Rumi
Forget who you think you are
to Know what you really are.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.
~ Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth




Voice In My Head?

There’s a voice in my head.
It keeps talking to itself and to me,

Telling me my thoughts,
and telling me what to do,
and sometimes judging me.

What is it? Who is it?  Is it me?

And someone’s always listening to that voice in my head.
What is it? Who is it?  Is it me?

And someone’s always thinking for me.
What is it? Who is it?  Is it me?

If I am that silent voice in my head constantly talking
to itself and to me, am I crazy?

If I was always talking to myself out loud
(without a cell phone at my ear),
I’d be committed to a psychiatric ward.

Sometimes I don’t think at all, and then there’s no voice in my head.
But, I’m still  aware and exist and can listen to other things.

So how can I be my thoughts or the voice in my head,
if I’m still here when they’re not there?

So can someone other than that voice in my head please tell me:
Who’s talking? Who’s thinking?  Who’s listening?

Who am I?



Ron’s recitation of “Voice In My Head”

Listen to


Ron’s Explanation and Comments on “Voice in My Head”.

The foregoing poem was inspired and composed while I was processing unprecedented experiences and observations after my midlife spiritual awakening.

At age forty two I suddenly realized that I was not merely my physical body, its name and story, or its thoughts – the “voice in my head” – but that my true self identity is universal Awareness. That self identity experience was followed by previously unimagined, transformative and unprecedented experiences of peace, inner light, subtle energies and ecstasy.

Prior to that transformative experience, I was largely ignorant of Eastern or other spiritual teachings. But, spurred by great curiosity about what had happened to me, I gradually discovered that many spiritual teachings identified “ego” – our mistaken mental self image about who and what we truly are – as the principal barrier to spiritual “enlightenment”. And – especially from contemporary mindfulness teachings – I learned that identifying with the “voice in the head” was a major symptom of ego’s mistaken self image.

Though at midlife I temporarily transcended ego identity, it’s kept recurring while steadily diminishing since then. So I have been experiencing gradual ego attrition with ever growing happiness and fulfillment. Today I am happier than ever before, but still learning and transforming and rarely identifying with the “voice in my head”.

Eckhart Tolle.

Of all contemporary spiritual teachings I’ve read about “ego” and “voice in the head”, I especially endorse those of Eckhart Tolle in which he cogently explains how “thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence”. [see e.g. https://sillysutras.com/what-is-ego/ ]

The foregoing poem about “Voice in My Head” was based on my mystical experiences before I discovered Tolle’s teachings. But Tolle’s teachings about “ego” and “voice in the head” are especially powerful and helpful because they are based upon his extraordinarily powerful permanent spiritual awakening experience. (see https://sillysutras.com/eckhart-tolle-spiritual-awakening-story-and-teachings/)

Because often we can best assimilate and actuate spiritual principles through parables and stories, Eckhart Tolle’s awakening stories can help us comprehend the crucial transformative importance of self identification with eternal Awareness rather than with ego’s “voice in our head”.

In Tolle’s noteworthy book, A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Chapter Two, he observes that “Some people never forget the first time they disidentified from their thoughts and thus briefly experienced the shift in identity from being the content of their mind to being the awareness in the background.”

Whereupon he narrates his own such experience which happened several years before his dramatic permanent awakening experience. It is hereafter excerpted, with my sincere recommendation that if interested you read and reflect on Tolle’s teachings.

THE VOICE IN THE HEAD – excerpted from A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

That first glimpse of awareness came to me when I was a first year
student at the University of London. I would take the tube (subway) twice a
week to go to the university library, usually around nine o’clock in the
morning, toward the end of the rush hour. One time a woman in her early
thirties sat opposite me. I had seen her before a few times on that train. One
could not help but notice her. Although the train was full, the seats on either
side of her were unoccupied, the reason being, no doubt, that she appeared to
be quite insane. She looked extremely tense and talked to herself incessantly
in a loud and angry voice. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she was
totally unaware, it seemed, of other people or her surroundings. Her head
was facing downward and slightly to the left, as if she were addressing
someone sitting in the empty seat next to her. Although I don’t remember the
precise content, her monologue went something like this: “And then she said
to me… so I said to her you are a liar how dare you accuse me of… when
you are the one who has always taken advantage of me I trusted you and you
betrayed my trust…”
There was the angry tone in her voice of someone who
has been wronged, who needs to defend her position lest she become
annihilated.

As the train approached Tottenham Court Road Station, she stood up
and walked toward the door with still no break in the stream of words
coming out of her mouth. That was my stop too, so I got off behind her. At
street level, she began to walk toward Bedford Square, still engaged in her
imaginary dialogue, still angrily accusing and asserting her position. My
curiosity aroused, I decided to follow her as long as she was walking in the
same general direction I had to go in. Although engrossed in her imaginary
dialogue, she seemed to know where she was going. Soon we were within
sight of the imposing structure of Senate House, a 1930’s highrise, the
university’s central administrative building and library. I was shocked. Was it
possible that we were going to the same place? Yes, that’s’ where she was
heading. Was she a teacher, student, an office worker, a librarian? Maybe she
was some psychologist’s research project. I never knew the answer. I walked
twenty steps behind her, and by the time I entered the building (which
ironically was the location of the headquarters of the “Mind Police” in the
film version of George Orwell’s novel, 1984), she had already been
swallowed up by one of the elevators.

I was somewhat taken aback by what I had just witnessed. A mature
first year student at twenty five, I saw myself as an intellectual in the
making, and I was convinced that all the answers to the dilemmas of human
existence could be found through the intellect, that is to say, by thinking. I
didn’t realize yet that thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of
human existence. I looked upon the professors as sages who had all the
answers and upon the university as the temple of knowledge. How could an
insane person like her be part of this?

I was still thinking about her when I was in the men’s room prior to
entering the library. As I was washing my hands, I thought: I hope I don’t
end up like her. The man next to me looked briefly in my direction, and I
suddenly was shocked when I realized that I hadn’t just thought those words,
but mumbled them aloud. “Oh my God, I’m already like her,” I thought.
Wasn’t my mind as incessantly active as hers? There were only minor
differences between us. The predominant underlying emotion behind her
thinking seemed to be anger. In my case, it was mostly anxiety. She thought
out loud. I thought – mostly – in my head. If she was mad, then everyone
was mad, including myself. There were differences in degree only.

The above incident not only gave me a first glimpse of awareness, it
also planted the first doubt as to the absolute validity of the human intellect.

A few months later, something tragic happened that made my doubt grow. On
a Monday morning, we arrived for a lecture to be given by a professor whose
mind I admired greatly, only to be told that sadly he had committed suicide
sometime during the weekend by shooting himself. I was stunned. He was a
highly respected teacher and seemed to have all the answers. However, I
could as yet see no alternative to the cultivation of thought. I didn’t realize
yet that thinking is only a tiny aspect of the consciousness that we are, nor
did I know anything about the ego, let alone being able to detect it within
myself.



Invocation.

May our deep reflections on perennial “voice in the head” questions raised by the foregoing quotations, poem and Eckhart Tolle story encourage our insightful observations and answers, helping us live ever happier and more peaceful lives.

And so may it be!

Ron Rattner


Hsin Hsin Ming: Verses On The Faith Mind ~ by Seng-Ts’an, The Third Patriarch of Zen*

“The more you talk and think about it,
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.”
~  Seng-Ts’an, The Third Patriarch Of Zen
“My teaching is like a finger pointing to the moon.
Do not mistake the finger for the moon”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, quoting the Buddha’s Teachings
“There’s nothing to say,
but words point the way.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings

Zen

HSIN HSIN MING:
VERSES ON THE FAITH MIND

Zen image004
by Seng-Ts’an,
The Third Patriarch of Zen*

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood,
the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

The Way is perfect like vast space
where nothing is lacking and nothing in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject
that we do not see the true nature of things.

Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,
nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things and such
erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

When you try to stop activity by passivity
your very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other
you will never know Oneness.

Those who do not live in the single Way
fail in both activity and passivity,
assertion and denial.
To deny the reality of things
is to miss their reality;
To assert the emptiness of things
is to miss their reality.

The more you talk and think about it,
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

To return to the root is to find meaning,
but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world
we call real only because of our ignorance.

Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.
do not remain in the dualistic state.
Avoid such pursuits carefully.
If there is even a trace of this and that,
of right and wrong,
the mind-essence will be lost in confusion.

Although all dualities come from the One,
do not be attached even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
nothing in the world can offend.
And when a thing can no longer offend,
it ceases to exist in the old way.

When no discriminating thoughts arise,
the old mind ceases to exist.
When thought objects vanish,
the thinking-subject vanishes:
As when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.

Things are objects because of the subject (mind):
the mind (subject) is such because of things (object).
Understand the relativity of these two
and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.
In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable
and each contains in itself the whole world.
If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine
you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.

To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult.
But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute:
the faster they hurry, the slower they go.
And clinging (attachment) cannot be limited:
Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment
is to go astray.
Just let things be in their own way
and there will be neither coming nor going.
Obey the nature of things (your own nature)
and you will walk freely and undisturbed.

When the thought is in bondage the truth is hidden
for everything is murky and unclear.
And the burdensome practice of judging
brings annoyance and weariness.
What benefit can be derived
from distinctions and separations?

If you wish to move in the One Way
do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to accept them fully
is identical with enlightenment.

The wise man strives to no goals
but the foolish man fetters himself.

There is one Dharma, not many.
Distinctions arise
from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind
is the greatest of all mistakes.

Rest and unrest derive from illusion;
with enlightenment
there is no liking and disliking.
All dualities come from ignorant inference.
They are like dreams or flowers in air –
foolish to try to grasp them.
Gain and loss, right and wrong,
such thoughts must
finally be abolished at once.

If the eye never sleeps,
all dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations,
the ten thousand things are as they are,
of single essence.
To understand the mystery of this One-essence
is to be released from all entanglements.
When all things are seen equally
the timeless Self-essence is reached,
No comparisons or analogies are possible
in this causeless, relationless state.
Consider movement stationary
and the stationary in motion,
both movement and rest disappear.
When such dualities cease to exist
Oneness itself cannot exist.
To this ultimate finality
no law or description applies.

For the unified mind in accord with the way
all self-centered striving ceases.
Doubts and irresolutions vanish
and life in true faith is possible.
With a single stroke we are freed from bondage:
Nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.

All is empty, clear, self-illuminating,
with no exertion of the mind’s power.
Here thought, feeling,
knowledge and imagination are of no value.

In this world of suchness
there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To come directly into harmony with this reality
just say when doubt rises “not two”.
In this “not two” nothing is separate,
nothing is excluded.

No matter when or where,
enlightenment means entering this truth.
And this truth is beyond extension
or diminution in time and space:
In it a single thought is ten thousand years.

Emptiness here, emptiness there,
but the infinite universe
stands always before your eyes.
Infinitely large and infinitely small;
no difference, for definitions have vanished
and no boundaries are seen.

So too with Being and non-Being.
Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments
That have nothing to do with this.

One thing, all things,
move among and intermingle without distinction.
To live in this realization
is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.
To live in this faith is the road to non-duality,
because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.

Words!
The Way is beyond language,
for in it there is
no yesterday
no tomorrow
no today.


*Footnote re “
Hsin Hsin Ming”

The Hsin-Hsin Ming is a profound 6th Century non-dualistic perennial wisdom poem, first in the Ch’an (Chinese Zen) Buddhist tradition, attributed to the legendary third Zen patriarch, Seng Ts’an. Long regarded as a masterpiece by Zen practitioners, its essential non-dualistic message (influenced by Taoism) is that “When all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached. No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state”. Thus any attachment, mental exertion or conceptual effort to characterize or distinguish impermanent perceptions precludes living an enlightened life – The Great Way, since words and concepts arise from illusion of duality and cannot describe timeless non-dual Truth, but merely point the way.



Skillfully translated from Chinese to English by Roshi Dr. Richard B. Clarke (1933-2013), founder and First Teacher of The Living Dharma Center near Amherst, MA. this version is available elsewhere on-line and in print. (Currently it is featured in “Teachings of the Buddha”, edited by Jack Kornfield, Shambala 2012, at pp. 143-9).


YouTube recitation of “
Hsin Hsin Ming” by Ben Bigelow: