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Message |
| Posted By: |
Seeder |
| Date: |
7-Apr-2000 |
| Subject: |
Emptiness |
reprinted firebird
---------------------------------------------
ego may be the cause of all suffering, but its no less illusory than anything else. don't expend too too much energy focusing on it. okay?
might be a good idea now to look into and contemplate the Buddhist concept of 'emptiness'.
from there i think the practice becomes an ongoing process of simply *noticing* the references we make to our'selves'...in defining ourselves and justifying our motivations. example: "i've always been this way. i am like this. i'm not like that. i'm doing this because i wants it, needs it...is justified at having it."
examine these sorts of thoughts that arise, carefully, and as often as you remember to, asking all along...who *am* 'i'? and, from where do these thoughts *originate*? they're bubbling into my field of awareness from *where*?
through this process, we begin to see the ego for what it is...without a solid ground of being, all the characteristics that make up who we believe we are, find their roots in our upbringing, culture, society, education, genes, environment etc. all these things in turn, find their root in something else, or in the qualities of the trends which preceded their present condition.
this is key mindfulness practice. real Buddhist stuff. and you're up to it, i can tell.
the idea, being not to 'kill' the ego, but, as Ram Dass has said, to 'befriend it', without attempting to boost it up into something more, or denigrate it as something less. both of these approaches to ego...are only ego...and tend to further solidify the illusory perception of its independently existent reality.
gradually, it seems even the practice of self-reflection itself begins to cease taking place. the experiential tantric absorption of beingness is thereby rendered more penetrating, limitless and seamless. (tantra means weaving. it's harmony with the Tao.)
the perception of a separate sense of self to be maintained is at the root cause of all our suffering. this is key. the ego-self requires a tremendous amount of energy to be maintained. lose it...and be free. (it's a process...of unfolding.)
but lose it...by noticing it, and being genuinely present and accepting of it, in the awareness of its illusory nature, in the awareness of emptiness.
your sitting practice will help you with this...in that it increases the power/strength and focus necessary to penetrate mind-nature.
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