by Buddha's teachings, there appears to be little use for it in awakening western minds. It may care the risk of the common trap of getting "stuck in emptiness." Here's an example:
Excerpts from "The Final Truth," by Ramesh S. Balsekar
What are you when the world is considered as a whole of which you form a minuscule but essential part? What will "you" appear to be when viewed from longer and longer distances? What happens then is that the "you" first merges into the room you stand in, then to the house, then to the city and so on, until you are the world, until you are the universe from the viewpoint of infinitude. The whole point is that "you" just do not exist as an individual entity. You are either "nothing" or "everything". Either way, the startling conclusion is inescapable: I am not what I appear to be; I am not what I thought I was.How can awakened teachers (IF they are really fully awake) assert that we are nothing or everything? Why is this so contrary to my own direct experience of this moment?
Silencing my mind to the place beyond all awareness is a "full" experience, a grounding in an Absolute that cannot be characterized as "not this - not that," emptiness, or fullness. Experiencing my beingness in the context of the world around me, I walk talk, don't bump into things, and discriminate as needed. I am an "I" and there is a "we", and it is perceived with inspiration and curiosity. The flow of divine love is constantly present save occasional worldly distractions, because I am in the world fully.My body knows this love intimately. I am my body, my mind, my name, and every other form of separation that may apply. And all of that, impermanent, arising and falling, grounded in an incomprehensible Absolute that has no point of reference in the use of words like nothing and everything. It is time to expound on the real truth. There is the joy of the impermanent I, existing in the flow of divine love from the only mystery - a great heart. All of it, manifest in the play of consciousness, seeming to be nonexistent, in the moment of deep stillness beyond any awareness, while in fact nothing is ever missing and emptiness and non-existence are also full of love and life. This is a paradox that can't be resolved except by direct wordless experience, and teachings such as that above will be called into question. A miracle that shouldn't be discredited by claims that "I " doesn't exist!
GOING FURTHER ON RAMESH TEACHINGS because they echo many others:
Such a realization of one's phenomenal absence as a separate entity is tantamount to the realization of our subjective noumenal presence with the whole universe as our objective body. And such realization, say the Masters (the Sufi--the Advaitan--the Taoist), is Enlightenment: I exist as phenomenal absence, but the phenomenal appearance is my Self.
Such realization translates itself in actual life as the actionless action of pure witnessing. Pure witnessing is of a dimension radically different from space-time, and is clearly to be distinguished from a mere movement in mind because: a) there is in witnessing no "witnesser" as an individual entity, b) there is no judging of what is witnessed as being "good" or "bad", and therefore, c) there is no desire to change "What-Is" in any shape or form. In other words, such realization leads to an effortless gliding through life with a willing acceptance of whatever life might bring.
COMMENT: "pure witnessing" is but another attribute of mind, and the mind an aspect of the oneness of all things which I call consciousness. Witnessing not a mystery, or a radically different dimension. Perceiving myself as a oneness from the interconnectedness of aggregates - small I, big I, ego, body, all of the things that teachers claim don't really exist - I experience the fullness and the heart in this oneness. Nothing is missing, and nothing is here that is not supposed to be here.
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