If by bathing daily God could be realized
Sooner would I be a whale in the deep.
If by eating roots and fruits He could be known
Gladly would I choose the form of a goat.
If the counting of rosaries uncovered Him
I would say my prayers on mammoth beads.
If bowing before stone images unveiled Him
A rocky mountain I would humbly worship.
If by drinking milk the Lord could be imbibed
Many calves and children would know Him.
If abandoning one’s wife would summon God
Would not thousands be eunuchs?
Mirabai knows that to find the Divine One
The only indispensable is Love.
– Mirabai, as translated by Yogananda

If indeed you keep the Royal Law according to the scripture: You shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well.
But if you show partiality, you are committing sin, being convicted by the Law as transgressors.
For whoever shall keep the whole Law, but shall stumble in one point, he has become guilty of all.
For the One having said: You shall not commit adultery, also said: You shall not murder. But if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the Law. – James 2:8-10 (Berean Literal Bible)

Vimalakirti:

At that time Manjusri asked Vimalakirti:
How does the Bodhisattva regard living beings?

Vimalakirti replied:
As a conjurer looks upon the beings he conjures up
Thus does the Bodhisattva regard living beings.
As the wise view the moon in the water
Or a face or form seen in a mirror,
As shimmers of heat in a torrid season,
As the echo that follows a cry,
As clouds in the sky,
As foam on the water, bubbles on the water,
As a thing no more substantial than the trunk of the plantain,
No longer-lasting than a flash of lightning,
As a fifth element, a sixth skandha, a seventh sense–
Thus does the Bodhisattva regard living beings.

Manjusri said:
If the Bodhisattva looks upon beings in this way, how can he treat them with compassion?
(Burton Watson, The Vimalakirti Sutra, 1997)

D. T. Suzuki: (1929)

Before proceeding, a question may be raised as to the value of doing anything for others inasmuch as, according to the doctrine of Svacittamatram or self-mind-only, or to that of Sarvadharmanam sunyata-anutpada-advaya-nihsvabhava-lakshanam—“There is nothing or nobody in the world that can be the object of salvation, or upon whom any kind of benefit may be bestowed.” From the absolutely idealistic point of view, we may even ask if life is at all worth living. Is it not really much ado about nothing that the Bodhisattva should try to save the world when the latter is no more than the illusion of his own mind?

This is what the Mahayanists call nihilism, which does not understand yathabhutam, the truth of things. That the world is like a mirage, that it is thus empty, does not mean that it is unreal in the sense that it has no reality in any sense. What it means is that its real nature cannot be understood by a mind that cannot rise above the dualism of ‘to be’ (sat) and ‘not to be’ (asat). Therefore, the Lankavatara opens with this stanza recited by Mahamati: “The world transcends birth and death, it is like a hallucination; the wise are free from being and non-being, yet a great compassionate heart is awakened in them.”

The last sentence: “Yet a great compassionate heart is awakened in them” is repeated in the first four verses. This is the most important passage not only in the philosophy of the Lankavatara but in the whole teaching of Mahayana Buddhism. Therefore says the Ashtasahasrika-prajna-paramita Sutra:

Sariputra asked Subhuti, “If, as you say, the Bodhisattva is unborn, how is it that he works hard and suffers much for the sake of all sentient beings?”

To this answers Subhuti: “I do not wish the Bodhisattva to think that he is working hard and suffering much. If he does, he is no Bodhisattva. Why? If he does so it is only to benefit sentient beings whose number is beyond calculation. Rather let him rejoice over his doings and towards all sentient beings feel like mother or father, son or daughter, and let him, feeling like this among men and women, walk in the path of Bodhisattvahood. Further than that, let him feel towards all beings as if they were himself, and think, ‘If I am to be completely free from all woes, let them also be so in the same measure. I cannot leave them to their fate. I must save them from the innumerable pains they suffer, and even if I were cut to pieces many times over, I would not hold any uncharitable feeling toward them.’ This is the way a Bodhisattva, a great being, should feel toward all beings, and he will have no thought of hardship.”

The doctrine of the effortless or purposeless life (anabhogacarya) is rooted in the possibility of awakening . . . a loving heart for all beings even though they have, from the metaphysical point of view, no self-substance and are therefore only relative in existential value. That is to say, the world is only a temporal phenomenon, and whatever the evils and sufferings we encounter, they have no finality as far as they go; but the pitying heart that transcends the cold and severe reasoning of the philosopher has no inclination to ignore the reality of particularisation; it is determined . . . to save all the suffering ones in the sea of transmigration. This compassionate heart has no ulterior motive except that it moves spontaneously and universally, like the sun that shines on the righteous and on the unrighteous. This heart is called pure and undefiled because it is above the relativity of being and non-being, and yet it never ceases to function out of its overflowing goodness. (pp. 215-216)

Yeshua:

You have heard it said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth; but I tell you, do not fight against the person who does evil unto you. Instead, whoever would strike you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. And to the one who would sue you and take your tunic, surrender to him your cloak as well. And whoever shall compel you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to the one asking of you, and do not turn away from the one desiring to borrow from you.

You have heard it said: You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those persecuting you, so that you may be sons of your father in the heavens. For he makes his sun rise on evil and good, and he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what extraordinary thing are you doing? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You shall be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.

(Matthew 5:38 Berean Literal Bible)

Lester Levenson:

Human love is what we think love is. Divine love is a constant, persistent acceptance of every being in the universe, fully, wholly, totally as the other being is, and loving them because they are the way they are. Divine love is allowing the other one to be the way the other one wants to be.

Divine love is seeing everyone equally. I think that is the test of how divine our love is: is it the same for every person we meet every day? Is our love for those who are opposing us as strong as our love is for those who are supporting us? Divine love is unconditional, and is for everyone alike.

Love itself is something we can’t turn on and turn off—either we have it or we don’t have it. And it’s impossible to love one person and hate another. We can only truly love people to the degree that we love our enemies; hatred for even one person limits our capacity to love others.

What we usually call love is simply need for that person. When we say, “I love this person but not the next,” we feel that we need this person, and therefore we’ll be nice to this person so we can get what we want. But that’s not love. Human love is selfish; divine love is completely selfless.

D. T. Suzuki:

Hui-neng taught that human nature in its beginning as well as in the end is thoroughly good and does not require any artificial purification, for it has its root in that which is serene.  (1949, p. 227)

Lester Levenson: (1993)

Loving God, loving All, loving everyone is the easiest and most natural way to attain full self-realization. It requires no giving up. It is an expansion of our inner feeling of love to encompass and embrace all, everyone, everything. Expand your love, for your family, for your friends, for those of your country, for those of the entire world. Expand it until there is no more room for expansion and then remain eternally intoxicated and one with God!

Hakuin:

The lotus, while its roots lie in the mud, is in no way soiled by the mud, nor does it lose its wonderful scent. When the time comes for it to bloom it puts forth beautiful blossoms. The Buddha-mind is neither soiled nor does it decrease within sentient beings and it is neither purified nor does it increase within a buddha. In the buddha, in the ordinary person, among all sentient beings it is in no way different. To be sullied by the mud of the five desires is to be just like the lotus root lying covered by the mud.

* * *

Nyanaponika Thera:

Four sublime states of mind have been taught by the Buddha:

• Love or Loving-kindness (metta)
• Compassion (karuna)
• Sympathetic Joy (mudita)
• Equanimity (upekkha)

In Pali, these four are known under the name of Brahma-vihara (Brahma abodes). This term may be understood as excellent, lofty or sublime states of mind; or alternatively as Brahma-like, god-like or divine abodes. These four attitudes are said to be excellent or sublime because they are the right or ideal way of conduct towards living beings.

The Brahma-vihara are incompatible with a hating state of mind, and in that they are akin to Brahma, the divine but transient ruler of the higher heavens in the traditional Buddhist picture of the universe. Brahma is free from hate, and one who assiduously develops these four sublime states, by conduct and meditation, is said to become an equal of Brahma.

They are called abodes (vihara) because they should become the mind’s constant dwelling-places. They should become our inseparable companions, and we should be mindful of them in all our common activities. As the Metta Sutta, the Song of Loving-kindness, says:

When standing, walking, sitting, lying down,
Whenever he feels free of tiredness
Let him establish well this mindfulness;
This, it is said, is the Divine Abode.

These four—love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity—are also known as the boundless states, because, in their perfection and their true nature, they should not be narrowed by any limitation as to the range of beings towards whom they are extended. They should be non-exclusive and impartial.

Contemplations on the Four Sublime States

I. Love (Metta)

Love, without desire to possess, knowing well that in the ultimate sense there is no possession and no possessor: this is the highest love.

Love, without speaking and thinking of “I,” knowing well that this so-called “I” is a mere delusion.

Love, without selecting and excluding, knowing well that to do so means to create love’s own opposites: dislike, aversion and hatred.

Love, embracing all beings: small and great, far and near, be it on Earth, in the water or in the air.

Love, embracing impartially all sentient beings, and not only those who are useful, pleasing or amusing to us.

Love, embracing all beings, be they noble-minded or low-minded, good or evil. The noble and the good are embraced because love is flowing to them spontaneously. The low-minded and evil-minded are included because they are those who are most in need of love. In many of them the seed of goodness may have died merely because warmth was lacking for its growth, because it perished from cold in a loveless world.

Love, embracing all beings, knowing well that we all are fellow wayfarers through this round of existence—that we all are overcome by the same law of suffering.

Love, but not the sensuous fire that burns, scorches and tortures, that inflicts more wounds than it cures—flaring up now, at the next moment being extinguished, leaving behind more coldness and loneliness than was felt before.

Rather, love that lies like a soft but firm hand on the ailing beings, ever unchanged in its sympathy, without wavering, unconcerned with any response it meets. Love that is comforting coolness to those who burn with the fire of suffering and passion; that is life-giving warmth to those abandoned in the cold desert of loneliness, to those who are shivering in the frost of a loveless world; to those whose hearts have become as if empty and dry by their repeated calls for help, by deepest despair.

Love, that is a sublime nobility of heart and intellect which knows, understands and is ready to help.

Love, that is strength and gives strength: this is the highest love.

Love, which by the Enlightened One was named “the liberation of the heart,” “the most sublime beauty”: this is the highest love.

And what is the highest manifestation of love? To show to the world the path leading to the end of suffering, the path pointed out, trodden, and realized to perfection by Him, the Exalted One, the Buddha.

Levenson, Lester (1993). keys-to-the-ultimate-freedom: Thoughts and Talks on Personal Transformation. Phoenix, Arizona: Sedona Institute. (http://www.freespiritualebooks.com/keys-to-the-ultimate-freedom.html)

Levenson, Lester (2006). The Power of Love: Learn How to Be in the Now. Sherman Oaks, California: Lawrence Crane Enterprises, Inc., ISBN No. 0-9778726-090000

Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro (1953). Essays in Zen Buddhism (Second Series). London: Rider and Company.

Suzuki, D. T. (1998). Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers (originally published in 1929).

Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro (1932). The-Lankavatara-Sutra: A Mahayana Text. Translated for the first time from the original Sanskrit. (http://lirs.ru/do/lanka_eng/lanka-nondiacritical.htm)

Nyanaponika Thera. “The Four Sublime States: Contemplations on Love, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity.” Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel006.html

M. O’C. Walshe (1987). Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises Volume II. UK: Element Books Limited.

Watson, Burton (2000). The Vimalakirti Sutra. New York: Columbia University Press. (https://www.wisdomlib.org/buddhism/book/vimalakirti-sutra)

Paramhansa Yogananda (1946). Autobiography of a Yogi. New York: The Philosophical Library.

Love is absolutely necessary if we ever expect to get full realization

A talk by Lester Levenson

Given in California on February 25, 1965

I thought tonight I might talk on the subject of love.  Love is one word I seldom use, mainly because it’s so misunderstood.  And I also believe that only through growth do we understand what love is, that by defining it we just add some more words to the usual words and it doesn’t really convey the meaning of the word, love.  But love is an absolutely necessary ingredient on the path.  If we ever expect to get full realization, we must increase our love until it is complete.

Now, the love I talk about, of course, has nothing to do with sex. Sex is a bodily gratification. However, most of us have confused it—most of us very much—with love.  And the majority of us still tie it in with love, although when you see what sex is and what love is, you’ll see there are two different things. They can be tied together, and they don’t have to be.  The love that we talk about here is the love of Jesus Christ.  It’s the love complete, which expressed in the extreme is: Love thy enemy.

I think the best definition of the word, as it seems to me, is: Love is a feeling-ness of giving-ness with no expectation of receiving for the giving.  It’s a very free giving.  And it’s an attitude that is constant: love doesn’t vary, at least the type of love we’re talking about.  The amount we have, we apply to everyone.  We love our family as much as we love strangers.  This might sound odd, but this is the truth.  To the degree we’re capable of loving strangers, to that degree we’re capable of loving our family.

There are in this life two kinds of certainty of eternal life.  One is when God tells a man Himself or through an angel or shows him by a special illumination.  This happens seldom and to few.  The other kind of knowledge is incomparably better, and this often comes to people who have perfect love.  It is when a man’s love and intimacy with God are such that he has such perfect trust and security in Him that he cannot doubt and is thus quite assured, loving Him without distinction in all creatures.  And even if all creatures rejected him and forswore him, though God Himself rejected him, he would not lose his faith, for love cannot lose faith but always trusts in the good. – Meister Eckhart, “The Talks of Instruction”

The concept of possession is just the opposite of the meaning of love.  In love there is never a holding on to, a fencing in, or anything like that.  Love has a sense of freeing the ones we love; when we are giving, an attitude that we want the other one to have what the other one wants.  I guess the best example of this type of love is the love of a mother or father for a child.  A mother will sacrifice and give everything to the child without considering herself.

There are many other definitions for love—I’m just trying to think what they are.  I think acceptance is a good word. When we love people, we accept them the way they are.  If we love this world, we accept the world the way it is. We don’t try to change it.  We let it be.  We grant the world its beingness the same way we should grant every other person his or her beingness.  Let them be the way they want to be.  Never try to change them.  Trying to change them is injecting our own ego—we want them to be the way we would like them to be.

So, love is a feeling, first of all, of oneness with, of identity with the other, or all others.  When there is a full love, you feel yourself as the other person.  Treating the other person is just like treating your very own self.  There’s complete identity.

Love is the most powerful force in the universe

Love is not only a feeling: love is a tremendous power, which is so little understood in the world today.  We have an example of this type of love being expressed today by Martin Luther King.  No matter how much he’s attacked, he will give out nothing but love to his attacker.  He teaches non-violence.  Now, the biggest demonstration of this type of love was Mahatma Ghandi’s winning a war against Britain without any arms, through teaching: “The British are our brothers; we love the British.  Nonviolent resistance to the British and to the British soldiers—only love for them.”  Ghandi understood this and was able to win over enough followers in India to make this effective.

The power behind love, without question, is far more powerful than the hydrogen bomb, once you see what love is.  Love is the most powerful force in the universe, when we express love as love is, not as we have been taught to think what love is.  It is said sometimes that God is love, and I say one with God is a majority.  One individual with nothing but love can stand up against the entire world because this love is so powerful.  Which I think leads us into seeing that this love is nothing but the Self with a capital ‘S’.  This love is God, and God is love, and God is all-powerful.  So there’s some authority for what I’m saying besides my saying it.  Love will give not only all the power in the universe, it will give all the joy and all the knowledge.

Now, how to make this practical?  The best way of increasing our capacity to love is through wisdom, understanding.  However, we can do things in our everyday life that will raise our level of love.  The first place to practice love is at home with the family.  We should try to love our family more and more and more.  I think everyone knows the wonderful experience of love, and loving one person.  So you can imagine what it’s like if you loved three billion people—it would be three billion times more enjoyable.  So, home is the first place to keep trying to increase our love for the ones around us, by granting them their beingness.  That’s the most difficult thing, I believe, to do in a family—to grant others their beingness, especially if the other one is a child.  But every child is a whole, complete, infinite individual.

Next, after loving the ones in our home, we should try to love our neighbors.  Then our larger group—our state, our country.  Then we should try to love all people, all over the world—even Russians.  And I heard Oral Roberts say something on that some Sundays ago.  He said, “People ask, what would Jesus be like if he came back today?”  He said, “Jesus wouldn’t be the way people expect.  He wouldn’t have anything against anyone.  He wouldn’t hate the communists.  He would talk against doing wrong, doing evil, but he would never say anything against any human being.”  I believe that if we understood the power of love, that if the majority of Americans loved the Russians, Russia would be conquered by the Americans without any arms.  And after we learn to love all the people in this world, there are many more people outside of this world.  I think loving all the people in this world would allow us to meet with our brothers and sisters of other worlds, because in this universe there are many, many mansions; many, many places of abode.  And because of our incapacity to love on this planet, we have cut them off.

So, to come back to that point of being practical, the more we practice love, the more we love; and the more we love, the more we can practice love.  The more we develop love, the more we come in touch with the harmony of the universe; the more delightful our life becomes, the more bountiful, the more everything.  It starts a cycle going where you spin upwards, this loving and receiving.

That’s another thing: if we want to be loved, the way to do it is to love.  It’s not only the very best method, but it’s the only method of receiving love, is to love, because what we give out must come back.  But looking for love without loving does not bring love to us, does not satisfy us.  The happy one is the one loving, the one giving.  Blessed is the giver, because he’s so much happier—if he gives from his heart.  Are there any questions on this concept of love?

(16:31)  I think before that, though, I’m reminded of another point.  When we say we love one person more than another, if we will trace it through by going inwardly, we will find that the one that we love more is a person that we think we need, that has something that we would like to have, and therefore we say we love that person more.  Actually, love cannot be chopped up.  If you want to test your own love, look at your enemies—this is the real test.  Or, if you don’t want to go that far, look at strangers; examine your attitude towards strangers.  It should be one of, “Well, they are me.  They are my family.”  Every mother should be our mother.  Every father should be our father.  Every child should be our child.  This is the attitude we achieve through understanding.  This is the real sense of the word love.

(18:26)  Question: Lester, it seems to me that you’re talking about love as giving—giving of yourself and so forth. It seems like as you give of yourself, that people tend to take more and more, and eventually it seems like they can, if you don’t put a stop to it, they bleed you dry emotionally, mentally, financially, and they use you as a crutch.

Lester:  Paul, I say no, that’s impossible if we feel the real love. If we have the correct attitude of love that doesn’t happen.

Paul:  The impression I get is that to other people love is a sign of weakness, perhaps. It seems there’s a loss of respect.

Lester:  The giving-ness is not in things, number one. The giving-ness is an attitude. We can always maintain an attitude of love. Now, most people who give are not giving lovingly; they’re giving because of the credit they will get for giving—Look at me; I’m doing good. You see, that type of love will get us into trouble. People will drain us on that, because we’re looking to put ourselves up in the process, and therefore they’ll pull us down.

Question: Don’t you think though, it’s easier to love somebody 5,000 miles away than somebody next door to you? [laughter]

Lester: The easiest thing in the universe to do is to love everyone; this is what I think; this is what I’ve discovered. Once we learn what love is, that’s the easiest thing to do. It takes effort and agony not to love. It takes tremendous effort not to love everyone. And you see the effort being expended every day. But when we love, we’re at one with them, we’re at peace. Everything falls into line beautifully. Paul, the main thing is to see love in the sense that I’m trying to define it; then those things don’t happen. But when we love in the sense that humanity understands the word to mean, then you’re right. But I don’t call that love.

Paul: What do you call it?

Lester: Selfishness. We are doing things to help ourselves. And yet, in the high love, in the spiritual love, there is no self-abnegation. We don’t have to hurt ourselves when we love everyone, and we don’t. You see, in love there’s a feeling of mutuality. That which is mutual is correct. If you love, you hold to that law, and therefore people won’t take advantage of you. If you love, you’re applying the most powerful fore in the universe. But it’s the love of a Jesus I’m talking about.

(24:20) It’s a constant attitude that evolves in us when we try to develop it. However, we should try practicing the love, as I said before, first on our family. Grant everyone in the family their own beingness, if you can. If you can’t, keep trying; keep trying until you can. Then, apply it to friends, then strangers, then everyone. See, by doing this you will develop it. Although, as you say, it isn’t something you can turn on just like that.

Question: It’s just like beingness. All of us have it, but it’s just layered over by many attitudes.

Lester: It’s smothered by wrong attitudes. Now, this love I talk about is our basic nature. It’s a natural thing. That’s why it’s so easy. The opposite takes effort. We move away from our natural self, cover it, smother it with concepts of the opposite of love. And then, because we’re not loving, unloving comes back at us and proves to us the concepts like Paul brought out, which we all experience when we first start practicing this love. You’re not alone, Paul.

Question: Isn’t love almost like a selfishness? Because when you love somebody it’s such a wonderful feeling for you. I know when I love somebody, I feel so good.

Lester: It’s true, after you discover what love is. It’s the greatest thing in the universe. It’s a thing that everyone wants only because it’s our basic nature in the first place. Every human being is basically an extremely loving individual.

(26:53) Harry: Is it the same type of thing [as the stilling of desire] where your mind becomes still in one avenue of thought, of concentration, of acceptance of the other person, and therefore the mind is still . . .

Lester: Yes.

Harry: . . . and your true nature comes through, which is the love, the feeling of love?

Lester: Yes. The more we love, the less we have to think. If I’m not loving you, I have to be on guard, I have to protect myself. If I’m not loving the world, I’m always protecting myself from the world, which causes more and more and more thoughts. It puts me extremely on the defensive, and subconsciously it builds up, year in and year out, and then I’m a mass of thoughts, protecting myself from the world. Now, if I love the world, the world can’t hurt me. My thoughts get quiet. The mind gets peaceful. And then that infinite Self is right there. And that’s the experience of this tremendous joy.

Harry: In other words, it’s not the object that brings this out; it’s the quieting of the mind that lets being come through. It really is the love experience, more than the object.

Lester: You’re taking it right from the top now. What Harry is saying is that we take our infinite beingness, our infinite joy, and we cover it over with thoughts. We take the natural state, which is unlimited, we cover it up with thoughts of limitation. The thoughts smother this infinite self that we are. It smothers the capacity to enjoy. And so all we need to do is to quiet the thoughts—or rid ourselves of all thoughts—and what’s left over is the infinite, glorious being that we are, which is our natural state. Isn’t that odd? It’s our natural state. That’s the way we were, that’s the way we’re going to be. We are actually that now, but we don’t see it. This infinite glorious being that we are, being absolutely perfect, can never change. It’s always there. We just don’t look at it. We look away from it; we look far away from it. What we should do is turn our mind inward and begin looking at it, and the more we look at It, with a capital ‘I’, the more we see It.

(30:40) Everything seems to point to the same direction, doesn’t it? That happens as we get more understanding of what life and the universe is. Everything fits together more and more, until it gets simpler and simpler, until there’s just one absolute simple, called God. God is simple, everything else is complex. The greater the complexity, the further we are from God. That’s why God is one, and only one, or one without a second.

Have I covered the subject of love?

[Comment to the effect that whatever is in someone else’s interest is in one’s own interest.]

(32:32) There’s a word for it today called togetherness. It’s a very good word. Doesn’t that fit what you’re saying? Togetherness. Together we see one and the same thing, we want the same thing. I think we’d be better off if we dropped the word, love: and used words like togetherness, oneness.

[Comment regarding trust, or the feeling that others cannot harm you.]

(34:50) Lester: It’s impossible to be hurt when we love fully. We are never hurt when we love. We only feel wonderful when we love. In fact, we feel the greatest when we love.

Bob: If we differentiate, though, if we feel a sense of togetherness with one person more than another, then we begin to separate ourselves.

Lester: It’s not full love; it’s partial love. And the more partial it is, the less good it feels. When we love all the time, we love every being. We have nothing but a tremendously wonderful warm attitude of “everything is fine; every person is just right.” We wear our rose-colored glasses. That’s the way we see the world when we love. When we hate, we see the same world in just the opposite way. So, it’s a tremendous thing to learn this little secret of the power of love.

(36:36) I just wonder if I shouldn’t read off some of the definitions in the book. There are so many ways it’s been said. I’ve got just five pages on it. I remember before this book came out, I said to Frances, “I never know what to say on love. There isn’t much you can say about it.” And she laughed at me and she showed me all this. But this was gathered over many, many talks. And I could see it’s an attempt to convey the concept of the real love by saying it in as many ways as possible.

Well, the first one, “Love is a feeling of giving-ness, with no thought of receiving any return for it.” That’s the one I started with.

“Love is giving with no strings attached.”

“Only by loving does love come to us. The more we love, the more love comes to us.” I know this is a basic error in many, many people’s thinking. They go through life wanting to be loved, never feeling that they are, even when they are really getting the love. Because the feeling has to be in us. If I love you, I feel wonderful. If you love me, you feel wonderful. As you said before, it’s the one who loves that feels great. So, wanting to be loved is getting into a direction that can never be satisfied.

“Love is a feeling, an attitude, and requires no action.” It requires no action. It might have action. You might give away everything you have, but it’s not necessarily so that you should or would give away everything. The main thing is the attitude.

Paul: Does a child love?

Lester: A child loves a little more than we do, but not too much more. Because a child comes into the world with attitudes developed over the millennia. A child is not a new thing at birth; it’s a sum total of the entire past. . . . (44:17) Shall I go on reading this thing?

“Love is Acceptance.”

“Love is taking people as they are.”

(44:31) “Love is loving the other one because the other one is the way the other one is.”

“Love is trust.” When we love people, we will always trust them. You can use these things as a check upon yourself. If you don’t trust someone, you don’t love them. Now, that’s not an easy one to see and I suggest you work that out yourself. If you don’t trust someone, you don’t love them. I say, trust the most crooked person in the world and that person will be honest with you.

“Love is a feelingness of peace.” As we said before, when we love, we have no enemies, we don’t have to be on guard, and we’re at ease.

(46:00) “Love is identification. It is being the other one by identifying with the other one.”

“Love is what every being is seeking through his every act.” That’s a powerful one.

[Lester is asked to go back to “Love is identification.”]

“Love is identification. It is being the other one by identifying with the other one.” You feel as though the other one is you. You identify with them.

Bob: What I was saying before, though, if I realize my beingness, and that only good can come to me, that I am in this sphere, in this love, and so on, then why is it necessary to identify with anyone?

Lester: If you’re in that sphere, you automatically identify with everyone. It goes together.

Question: Are we talking mainly here about physical bodies?

Lester: Well, when I say identify, you are me. When I know that, that’s identification complete. I also know your every thought and feeling, if you are me. That’s how complete the identification becomes. This actually happens.

(47:24) Bob: Put into practice, if Paul and I are after the same piece of real estate, for example, bidding against each other, my thought would have to be, or my feeling would have to be, it doesn’t really matter who gets it, because we’re one and the same.

Lester: No. [Your attitude should be that] Paul should have it.

(49:48) Paul: You know I think that point is really good about accepting people as they are and not by any virtue of anything. I guess the question I have is, what happens when these people have an effect on your life that to your way of thinking affects you adversely? Isn’t there room here for constructive criticism or pointing out the truth as you see it and still accepting them as they are? This is something I, just in the last few weeks, have done a great deal of thinking about. I think in the past I’ve accepted people for what they are. I’d say, Well as a human being, if I was raised like he was and taught like he was, I’d do exactly the same thing. But I guess I would say that I tolerate them perhaps more than accept them.

Lester: Right.

Paul: But I can’t appreciate them when they do something that affects me in an adverse manner.

Lester: Paul, we shouldn’t look upon them as human beings subject to error. If you saw the absolute truth, you’d see infinite, perfect beings. Now, I say this is the truth: everyone is an infinite perfect being. That when we see them otherwise, we’re not seeing the truth. So, you see what it does to your concept? I say you’re looking at them wrongly, and you’ll be hurt because of that.

Paul: But what happens if you see them as a perfect being, perfect in their own right and so forth, and yet something happens that, by appearances at least . . .

Lester: By appearances, yeah.

Paul:  . . . it looks like it’s affecting you or your family adversely? Then, what do you have to say then? I’m just not seeing right, huh?

Lester: Change your view. Change your thought. Change something in you and it’ll change out there immediately. If you don’t like the world out there, you must change yourself. And immediately the world rightens, gets the way we want it to be.

(53:14) Paul: But isn’t all the so-called progress brought about by dissatisfaction with people or situations as they exist?

Lester: No, just the opposite. Dissatisfaction throws a monkey-wrench into the works. I just read one here: “Love is what every being is seeking through his every act.” If will trace through all your behavior, or the behavior of people, what are they looking for? They’re looking for love. That’s the ultimate. That’s the greatest of all progress is love. Our life is getting far too complex, and it’s not progress, because people are not happier today. I think that [how happy people are] is the proof of progress,  . . . There’s more anxiety and dissatisfaction today than there ever was.

(2:21) To me, all these words mean the same thing. Love is acceptance, identification, understanding, communication, truth, God, you, me—it’s all the same thing. And it will be to everyone if they’ll look at it from the same point, from your very own center. If you look at it from your very own center, you’ll see that it’s all the same. Your very own center being your very own self with a capital ‘S’, the real you that you are, not this fake ego that we’re trying to make a big thing of.

[Discussion about giving]

Lester: But I’m trying to make a point that it’s not important whether you give money to them or not. The important thing is your attitude. You can give for the glory of giving or
being put up as a giver. That does you no good. Or you could have the attitude of what you just said and actually give no cash, and you’re doing far more good. So, it’s the attitude that’s important.

(10:35) “Love is the answer to all problems.” No matter what the problem is, if you will just apply love to the fullest extent possible and succeed, that problem will drop away immediately. Just don’t get aggravated, just know that everything is fine, everything is all right, and just feel love and you’ll see that problem resolve itself, no matter how difficult a problem it is. When there are problems, if we would love more, they would disappear. When the love is complete, the problem dissolves immediately.

(17:07) “Love is the cohesive force of the universe.”

(18:20) “Almost all people mistake ego-approval for love.”

“Love is not an emotion.” When I say love is not an emotion, emotion is energy in motion. It’s an intense, active, disturbing thing, an emotion is. The emotion of love is the most peaceful of feeling. And in that sense I mean that love is not an emotion.

(19:25) “People need each other and think it is love. There’s no hanging on to, or fencing in of the other one when one loves. Human love does not want to share its love with others, but rather wants its own personal satisfaction. Real love wants to share its love, and the more it is shared the more joyous it is.”

“There is no ‘longing for’ in love, because longing is separation. Love being oneness, it does not allow separation.”

(20:20) “Love cannot be applied to one and not to another. It is impossible to love one and hate another.” When we love one more than another, that one is doing something for us. That is human love. When one loves people because they are nice to him, that, too, is human love. True love is unconditional. In true love, one loves even those who oppose him.

See, the next sentence is a real test of where we stand on the subject of love: “We should love everyone equally.” This is a tremendous yardstick for measuring your growth. Equal-mindedness towards all beings, loving everyone equally, is actually the top state.

(25:45) “It is impossible to get love. Only by loving can one feel love. The more one looks for love, the more one doesn’t love”. It’s kind of indicting.

“One should strive to love, never to be loved. To be loved brings temporary happiness, ego inflation. When one loves fully, one can have no concept of not being loved.

(27:23) “One does not increase his love—one merely gets rid of one’s hate.” We can’t increase our love because that’s our natural state. Behind these concepts of non-love is always the infinite love that we are. We can’t increase it. All we can do is peel away these concepts of hatred so that this tremendous loving being that we are is not hidden.

Actually, we don’t keep increasing our love; we just keep doing away with the limited concepts of hate that we had before. And by hate I mean anything that’s not love—fear, envy, jealousy, [indifference]—all those attitudes are different degrees of hate. At least the way I use it they are. And so we really don’t increase our love; we undo our attitudes of hate. Our attitudes of hate, our thoughts of limitation. The greatest sin of all sins, the downfall, is the ego-sense, ‘I am an individual separate from the all.’ That’s the real fall into mankind. (33:30) Some day you’ll look around and you’ll just see yourself everywhere you look. You’ll have a feeling: You are me.” Without a question. Without a doubt: “You are me.”

Question: I’m trying to piece it together, but I haven’t seen that one yet.

Lester: You could. That word, I, is the exact same I no matter who uses it. When you get to the top state you have a consciousness: there’s a constant “I, I, I” that goes on in the top state. That’s all you see, hear, feel, think, know, just “I, I, I, I,” which is your beingness. And it’s beingness that never changes. Beingness always is.

Question: Is becoming the opposite of being? Don’t you have to become before you can be?

Lester: No. The becoming is an apparency. You are. I am what I am. It’s an am-ness.

Question: But before you can be, you have to take off these . . . blinders. But isn’t that the becoming?

Lester: It’s the apparent becoming, yes. But you are, so how can you become? It’s only an apparency that you are becoming.

Question: It seems like to me that you’re not there yet, so you have to . . .

Lester: It seems that way; you’re right. So therefore, it seems as though you’re becoming. But that’s a seemingness; that’s not the truth. The truth is you are, here and now.

Question: I’m in West Covina. I just haven’t gotten there yet.

Lester: No, you are there now, but you’ve got the silly limited concept that you’re only here, that you’re only that body and only through that body can you be somewhere. That’s not true. If you would see the truth, you’d see everything going on at home right now as you’re talking with me.

(37:20) But these are things that we cannot talk ourselves into: these are things we have to realize on our own. We have to see it through our own mind’s eye, so to speak—otherwise it’s just words. Someone who doesn’t think he’s omnipresent says: Well, that’s ridiculous. I’m right here. So until we realize this, it has no meaning, really, for us. But I say, try to realize it, and boy, what meaning it’ll take on when you find you are, always have been, always will be omnipresent.

(39:10) So, love is a thing the world sings about, writes about, has moving pictures about, and knows very little about. Love is portrayed in the movies as always a male and a female winning each other. The real love is winning the universe, not just one person, but every individual in the universe.

In the practical end of it, I left out, “Square all with love.” This is an excellent practice. During the day, if we try to fit everything into love, whatever we’re doing, it will make for rapid and tremendous progress. Square all with love—am I doing this with love? No matter what it is, do it with love.

Question: I was wondering, in your own experience, what were the steps, what breakthrough did you have that lead up to seeing yourself as all?

There is a shortcut: knowing who you are. How long does it take an omnipotent, omniscient being to know he is omnipotent and omniscient? He’s got all power, all knowledge. Now, how long should it take him to realize that he has it, if he’s got it? It could be done in a second.

 

A Love Exercise

Look at people around you and think to yourself, “I am that person; that person is me.”

LOVE

Love is a power. It is the cohesive force of the universe.

Love is a feeling of givingness with no thought of receiving any return for it.

Love is the natural inherent state of man.

Love is a feeling, not a passion or an emotion.

There’s no clinging to, or possessing another when one loves.

Love is an attitude, and requires no action.

Only by loving can one feel love.

Whenever one feels good, one is loving. Whenever one feels bad, one is not loving.

Giving love brings happiness: the more we love, the happier we are.

One should strive to love, never to be loved. To be loved doesn’t bring happiness.

True love is unconditional: it is to love even one’s adversaries.

To love one’s enemy is the epitome of love.

Love is acceptance.

It is to love people because they are the way they are.

Love is taking people as they are.

Love is trust, because it expects nothing in return.

When one really loves, one can never be hurt.

Love is identification: it is being the other by identifying with the other.

Love is the answer to all problems.

One does not increase one’s capacity to love—one merely gets rid of unloving feelings.

We should love everyone equally.

Love and egoism are opposites.

Love is selflessness.

Love is a feeling of peace.

Loving others eliminates fear, anxiety and insecurity.

Loving others eliminates loneliness.

Loving others eliminates unhappiness.

Love is the means and the end.

Love is its own reward.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful. It is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Lester Levenson

“Everywhere” – Fleetwood Mac

This is a compilation of teaching on the subject of healing the body, taken from two sessions in Keys to the Ultimate Freedom (1993), and some unidentified sessions posted to Youtube. When asked about how to deal with injury and illness, Lester explains what people can do depending on their spiritual level.

1. Welcome the pain (Releasing)

2. See the perfection (after attaining very high state of self-realization)

3. Be not the body (complete self-realization)

The Bible says: Take no thought for the body.

The time of our death is predetermined

Lester: When a person decides to die, no one, but no one, is going to keep him alive. We can’t keep anyone here who has really decided to leave. And you’ve seen the opposite, where the body has had very little chance of surviving yet the person lived. See, it’s the individual who’s running the body who really makes the decision.

Q: Is there a subconscious desire to leave?

Lester: Yes. Also, we all have predetermined the time when we’re going to leave.

Q: Oh, we’ve already predetermined it. Can we change that?

Lester: No, but you can transcend it. When you transcend it, you do not die. You consciously and by choice leave the body in a manner that you choose. You can’t change the karma of the body: that’s a law we set up and it goes on and on. In trying to work out karma, we are creating karma. The only thing we can do is rise above it. When we get above it, if we want a body, we can make a hundred bodies. But when you get above it, you’re not so foolish as to limit yourself to a little physical body. The most extreme limitation that you can impose upon yourself is the state we call physical. And when you get above it, there’s no need for it—you’ve had your lesson. If you want a body you’ll use an astral body, which moves around instantaneously, and if it is damaged you will instantly straighten it out.

When you get above the physical body, unless there’s a reason for you to maintain one you won’t maintain a physical body. So, to answer your question, you can’t change a preset course, but you can get above it where the body becomes like a puppet to you.

Everything in the physical is cause and effect, action and reaction, and this is called karma, the law of compensation. When we know this, it makes life easy because we do not fight it. Everything is going to be exactly as it has been predetermined by us. We can’t change anything in this life; we can only change our attitude toward it. (1993, “Healing”)

Welcome the pain

Question: How do we handle pain?

Lester: The best way you possibly can. If I begin at the lowest level, if the only means you want to do it is through the material, it’s drugs. The next level is to handle it mentally. One simple method is to feel it.

What is pain? Pain is an alarm in a certain part of the body that there’s a danger there, and if we mentally recognize the alarm, the pain, it turns off. But because of a longtime habit of trying to run away from pain, we mentally try to flee from the pain, to get away from it. And the alarm stays on and the pain stays on. You watch animals—they don’t suffer the way we do. When something hurts they’ll feel it, and the pain goes. We can do the very same thing. Another way of putting it might be, “Face the pain.” Now, it’s difficult for most people to face the pain because by habit they’re used to running away from it mentally, so I suggest to them that they make it hurt more.

God wills this way and no other, and so this way is bound to be the best for you. Sickness or poverty, hunger or thirst—whatever God sends you or does not send you, what He grants or withholds, that is the best for you. Now you might say, How do I know whether it is God’s will or not? Be sure, if it were not God’s will it would not be. You have neither sickness nor anything else unless God wills it. And so, knowing it is God’s will, you should so rejoice in it and be content that pain would be no pain to you. Even in the extremity of pain, to feel any pain or affliction would be altogether wrong, for you should accept it from God as the best of all, for it is bound to be the best for you. Let me then will it too, and nothing should please me better. – Meister Eckhart, Sermon Forty

See the perfection

Q: When you were in New York and you accomplished so much, did you do it systematically? Did you just see perfection so completely, or did you realize the power of your mind? Just exactly what method did you use?

Lester: Well, when I did it, it was almost incidental. I sat down with a determination to get the answers to the questions, Who am I? What am I? What is this world? What is my relationship to it? And in the process of this I saw the perfection, and that this universe, including this body, was a product of my consciousness, my thinking. I therefore imagined the body as perfect, and instantly it was. Gone were the ulcers, the jaundice, the coronary trouble and other imperfections. It was very easy; it was like an almost effortless thought. (1993, “A Perfect Body”)

(4 hours: 1 min.) I saw that there’s as much life in this body as there is in a piece of wood. It’s carbohydrates, the same chemicals as a piece of wood. That the only life in this body is me. I put the life in the body. I saw that the body is my consciousness. And my consciousness puts the life in the body. When you see that you make the body, you can change it. You can mentally change it.

Now, the body we have right now is the education, body-wise, that we have accumulated up today. This is my concept of a body, that’s your concept of your body. It’s deeply subconscious right now. This is why it’s difficult.

This picture of the perfect body must be more powerful than the sum-total of all the pictures in the past of an imperfect body. Right now, you have to get that picture of a perfect body with a thought that’s stronger than the sum-total of all the thoughts of imperfect body of the past. When you’re able to do that, your body will immediately change to this new thought of perfect body, which is more powerful than all the past thoughts. This is the mechanics of it.

All right, now what’s a powerful thought? A powerful thought is a concentrated thought. The more concentrated, the more powerful the thought. A concentrated thought is a thought without other extraneous thoughts present at the time. The very best way to get a most powerful thought is to let go of yourself, your little self. Let go of your feeling, “I am Bob.” “I have this; I have that.” And say, “Yes, there is only perfection, including this body.”

So, I say your thinking mind is your biggest obstacle. Your mind is going faster than the speed of light all the time whether you’re aware of it or not. If you’re not conscious of it, it’s going on subconsciously. You’ve trained yourself to think, think, think, think, think, and you’ve got it spinning with all these thoughts. You’ve put a lot of importance on this thinking in the past. The importance is also subconscious, so it’s not easy to let go of the importance of thinking. And these are obstacles to your letting go of thinking—which, if you could let go of thinking, and [have] just one easy thought, with no other thoughts around, “I am perfect,” instantly you’d be perfect. I’m talking about the body.

So, it will take a continuous trying until you achieve it. And some day, through an almost effortless thought is the way it feels because your mind is so quiet at the time, it will happen. And you might not even be aware of it when it happens: you might become aware of it later on.

Be not the body

Facing the pain is a very simple, practical way to alleviate pain. Coming up higher, “Be not the body.” If you’re capable of doing that, of saying, “I am not the body,” what was a severe pain becomes a very dull pain in the distance, way down there in that body. And you can function as though there’s no pain there and it doesn’t bother you anymore. By not being the body you step away from pain. If you can “Be not be the body,” you can let a doctor operate on your body and you wouldn’t feel it.

(3 hours: 52 min: 15 seconds) If we don’t have a perfect body, and we want a perfect body, that means we do not believe or have the conviction that we can make the body perfect. It means we are holding in mind a consciousness of an imperfect body. Because the body is an exact copy of the mind. The body is our consciousness projected outwardly.

Now, is it necessary to have a perfect body? It’s not. It’s necessary to have a perfect understanding. Everything else being equal, if you can’t have a perfect body, make your body perfect. However, you can go beyond the necessity of a perfect body by getting the spiritual understanding of “I am not the body; therefore, the body does not affect me.” And this is a much higher state. In fact, I think this is one of the highest of states. To be able to maintain your spiritual equanimity regardless of what happens to the body. Because we are not this body. This body is not infinite. It’s an extremely limited vehicle. Very, very delicate. Change the temperature, it dies. Cut off the oxygen, it dies. So, this body is an extremely limited vehicle. And it is much better to not be the body.

The spiritual discipline of having an imperfect body and not having it bother you is a very high spiritual discipline. Many fully realized masters will go through life with a sick body, setting an example of non-emphasis on the body. Because the body is our biggest, biggest trap into limitation—“I am this body.” Not only is the body a limitation, but associated with it are thousands of other limitations. So, for myself, I prefer not to correct the body now, but to have it touch me not, not even in the slightest, regardless of what happens to it.

I can tell you what happens when you do not identify with the body. Just thinking of the time I was loading trees for firewood onto a truck and one tree wouldn’t go. I said, “I’ll make this go,” and I gave a tremendous push while I had my shoulder against a tree trunk. The tree went on and I slipped a disc at the bottom of my spine. The reason why I mention this incident is that this was an excruciatingly painful one. Immediately, I almost collapsed from the pain. Then I said, “Lester, be not the body.” Now what happens is that the body doesn’t bother me if I’m not the body. I was aware that there was a pain, but it was like a weak distant pain and did not bother me. I could immediately load other trees. The body acted just as though it were not imperfect.

When I had that slipped disc, I’d awaken in the morning and, forgetting, I would not immediately “be not the body” and the pain would be severe. To get out of bed I’d actually have to fall out on hands and knees. I remember doing this the first day or two. Then I’d shake my head and say, “Wow, what is this?” Recognizing the situation, I would say, “Oh, I am not the body.” Then I’d stand up, move through the day as though the body were okay, and the body could do anything and everything. And yet there was a weak distant pain that I knew was there, but it didn’t bother me. Now, this type of discipline is excellent if one can do it. Be not the body.

Q: Wouldn’t it be so much simpler to simply say, “The body’s perfect,” and then have a perfect body? After all, you control your body. Why even have the pain or feel uncomfortable when you get out of bed?

Lester: Well, when I got out of bed I was identifying with the body; that’s why it pained so. But the moment I didn’t, everything was all right. I’d stand up and the body would do anything. Now, this is a test of your spiritual level. This is much higher. This is being not the body.

Q: How can the body be imperfect? You said before that your body is a reflection of your mentality. If you know that there’s only perfection, how can you have an imperfect body?

Lester: At first I identified with the body, and then after a few minutes I did not. Do you want me to come down a step or do you want me to stay where I am?

Q: All right, go ahead and stay up where you are.

Lester: A perfect body is not the highest state. A body is a limitation, even when it’s perfect. It’s a perfect body. It’s still a body, but perfect. A higher state is not being the body.

So, again, it’s a matter of level. But because we’re into a level that is high, I’ve got to stay up there. Be not the body. Be what you really are. Be infinite. Perfection is not a perfect body: perfection is absolute perfection. Although you have a tendency to bring it down to perfect things. Perfection does not relate to things. No thing is perfect. Every thing is a thing of limitation. So, the top state, the absolute, is a state of no things. It’s just beingness, or pure consciousness, pure awareness—the top state. That’s not being a thing, a body—it’s just being.

So, to sum it up, of course we should have perfect bodies. If we have bodies that pull on our attention all the time, it’s difficult to meditate. So, rid yourself of body-demands. Make the body as perfect as you can. However, it is a higher state when the body does not affect us, because of not identifying with the body. But the top state is just beingness—only beingness. Or, consciousness—only consciousness.

Physical disorders exist only in the mind

The body is our consciousness projected outwardly.

Question: You say pain is in the mind; it’s strictly in the mind.
Lester: Yes. The only place we feel pain is in the mind. We think we feel it in the body, but we don’t. The body doesn’t feel anything; the body is inert, the body is just matter. The pain we feel is in our mind. It’s all mental.

I can’t have a sick body without having a mental picture of sickness. It’s impossible to hold anything in the body that’s not in the mind. The body is only matter, it has no intelligence. We are the intelligence. We imagine and hold the life of the body. It’s impossible to be sick without holding that sick picture in our minds—unconsciously, of course. If it were conscious, we would correct it immediately. But being unconscious, it’s difficult, because we are not looking at it.

Question: So how could you get a child to see this?

Lester: That’s very difficult, and yet it isn’t. You’d be surprised at how children can accept these ideas much more easily than we grownups can, because they haven’t been so thoroughly indoctrinated in the wrong direction as we have been. The younger we are the more easily we accept these ideas. So the way you do it is by teaching it to them—treating them as an equal and talking to them as though they can understand this. You’d be surprised how they’ll pick it up.

Question: Well, actually many mothers are doing this in diverting children. As soon as they have a . . . they run and they bump themselves or something, why they immediately—it just seems automatic to divert them, to get them thinking of something else or doing something else, and forget about the bump.

Lester: Yeah, you can see it in children sometimes—they get a terrible knock and when they’re with their playmates, they’re ready to cry, and they look and then they forget about it and they go off playing, whereas if the mother’s around sometimes you get a much different reaction. So you see how children can have pain one moment and let go of it the next moment.

Question: Would you cast pain and a rash all over the body as the same?

Lester: No, rashes are not necessarily painful. A rash over the body is due to a mental irritation that is superficial, and it comes out on the skin. Mental irritations that are deep come out on the inner organs.

The mind thinks in images, not words

The mind thinks in pictures. People think it thinks in words, but whenever you say, “house,” you don’t see h-o-u-s-e, you have a picture of a house. Or a man—it’s a picture of a man, it’s not the letters m-a-n. And this why people are able to talk telepathically to people who don’t speak their language. If we could speak telepathically and you knew only Greek and I knew only English, you would talk to me in Greek and I’d be picking up all your pictures; I would talk to you in English and you’d pick up all my pictures, and we could converse that way.

It is simple. It’s simple and everyone uses it, but because we have talked ourselves out of the idea that we can talk telepathically, we think we can’t. But we do read each other. Unconsciously we’re always reading each other. It’s a natural ability—all beings have it. All animals have it. They use it much more than we do. An animal knows your thinking and your feeling; babies know it. Only educated adults don’t. You’re educated out of it.

But that is the absolute truth, that we are infinite beings. And when we see the infinity within ourselves, we see that everyone is me. There’s no more separation. But until you see it, it doesn’t make sense. And yet anyone here could get glimpses of it. By getting the mind quiet enough, you’ll see it, and you’ll see that you are me.

Question: These, you say, “glimpses”—usually that’s all they are, isn’t it? Glimpses?

Lester: Not all . . .

Question: Well, I mean, [for] most of us.

Lester: It starts off that way. And as we stick to the path, these glimpses get longer and longer until they become fully established all the time. And that’s the ultimate goal: never forgetting God, never forgetting who we are.

Question: Is it sometimes that we only get glimpses because we’re afraid to go any further than the glimpses?

Lester: No, it’s because the ego takes over again. There’s still a lot of ego left. And then the moment we express as an ego, we have to let go of what we saw in order to be an ego, to be a limited being. So, the moment we choose again to be a limited being, we don’t see the limitless being that we are. Yet you haven’t lost anything, because to get the glimpse in the first place you had to let go of quite a lot of ego.

Between sleep and waking

Question: It seems like whenever I’ve gotten a glimpse of feeling the state of not being unconscious, not being asleep—not being exactly conscious either, some state in-between—then as soon as I’ve reached this conscious state, why then it disappears.

Lester: Yeah, this conscious state is the state of ignorance. And there’s a state between sleep and waking, where as we come out of the sleep state and before we identify with the waking world, we’re the real Self that we are. If you could stay there, you would be the God that you are.

Question: Well, before I realized what was going on, I had a few little glimpses, but I never knew what they were. But there was complete joy.

Lester: You can use them to establish it more and more. You’re not thinking in that state, if you’ll take a look at it. You’re not thinking.

Question: Just a complete quietness, but there’s no thinking at all.

Lester: You’re just being. And it is in beingness that we are God. And we can only be God. Before that happens, we say we have to get to know God. When we get to know God we discover that we are God, and that it was our pure simple unadulterated beingness. Not being a body, but just being. It’s just pure beingness.

Everything should be conscious

Question: One more question: how much of the unconscious mind should one have, or follow?

Lester: Follow? None. Everything should be conscious. The unconscious mind is the automaton that we are. Someone says blue and we move this way; red, we move that way; or says a word we don’t like, we feel bad; says a word we like, we feel good. That’s all the unconscious operating. We’re like puppets when we follow the unconscious.

Question: Are those habit-patterns?

Lester: Yes, all habit-patterns are the unconscious mind. No one can be fully happy until he or she realizes that there are no limitations, that this body is no limitation.

* * *

“Lester Levenson: Keys to Ultimate Freedom – Part 1” https://youtu.be/_Y_ODbzXrGo

“Mastering the Body” https://youtu.be/40t381zWaDg

Levenson, Lester (1993). Keys to the Ultimate Freedom: Thoughts and Talks on Personal Transformation. Phoenix, Arizona: Sedona Institute. ISBN 0-915721-03-1 (download pdf)

“When we are established in Being, the mind, body and the senses are playthings.” – Deepak Chopra

Jill Bolte Taylor:

And then I lost my balance, and I’m propped up against the wall. And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can’t define where I begin and where I end, because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy—energy.

And I’m asking myself, “What is wrong with me? What is going on?” And in that moment, my left hemisphere brain chatter went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button. Total silence. And at first I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind, but then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of the energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there.  My Stroke of Insight

Lester Levenson: (1993)

Q: What happens to this body when that happens?
Lester: To really know that you should experience what you are. Otherwise the reality of the body can’t be understood. When you see what you are, only then do you know what the body is. It turns out to be a thought. A thought just like in a night dream when you dreamt about being a body in a situation. And when you awoke you said, “Oh, my gosh, that was all in my mind.” The same thing happens to this body when you wake up from this dream called the waking state. You see the body, but you know it to be the dream-nature that it is.

Hakuin: 

We skirted the shores of the Inland Sea at Maiko, over the beaches of Suma. We passed the burial mound of the poet Hitomaru and the grave of Atsumori. We walked through the fields of Koyano and beside the woods of Ikuta. But my eyes were not open to any of those famous sights. All the way home (eastward), it seemed as if I were not moving at all but standing in the road alone, and the people, houses, and trees that lined the way were all moving westward. (Waddell, 2001, p. 24)

Lester Levenson (1993):

When a person decides to die, no one is going to keep him alive. We can’t keep anyone here who has really decided to leave. And you’ve seen the opposite where the body has had very little chance of surviving, yet the person lived. See, it’s the individual who’s running the body who really makes the decision. We can only guide and support that.

Q: Is there a subconscious desire to leave?

Lester: Yes. Often we have preset the time when we’re going to leave.

Q: Oh, we’ve already preset it! Can we change that presetting?

Lester: No, but you can transcend it. Wen you transcend it, you do not die. You consciously and by choice leave the body in a manner that you choose. You can’t change the karma of the body: that’s a law we set up and it goes on and on. In trying to work out karma, we are creating karma. The only thing we can do is rise above it. When we get above it, if we want a body, we can make a hundred bodies. But when you get above it, you’re not so foolish as to confine yourself into a little physical body. The most extreme limitation that you can impose upon yourself is the state we call physical. And when you get above it, there’s no need for it. You’ve had your lesson. If you want a body, you’ll use an astral body, which moves around instantaneously, and if it is damaged you will instantly straighten it out.

When you get above the physical body, unless there’s a reason, and there could be, for you to maintain one, you won’t maintain a physical body. So, to answer your question, you can’t change a preset course, but you can get above it where the body becomes like a puppet to you.

Everything in the physical is cause-and-effect, action and reaction, and this is called karma, the law of compensation. When we know this, it makes life easy because we do not fight it. Now this can help you in your profession. Everything is going to be exactly as it has been predetermined by us. We can’t change anything in this life; we can only change our attitude toward it.

However, there is a free choice: it is to identify with this physical body or to identify with our real Self—that’s the free choice. When you identify with your real Self, everything is perfect. When you identify with the body, you necessarily subject yourself to untold body-misery. Worldly life entails pounds of misery for every ounce of pleasure; but we’re so steeped in the misery we don’t know really how much misery we’re in. We reach a tolerance point at which we can tolerate very much. I guess you know that from your experience.

So the thing to do is to properly identify with the infinite Beingness that you are. Try to accept the physical state as an illusion until you actually see it that way. When you see it that way, you see it as a game, and you play that game knowing that it’s only a game. (“Healing” pp. 186-187)

Lester Levenson: (Seretan, 2008)

There is life all over the universe, and goes on forever. After I went free, I parked my carcass on land outside of town and decided to take a look at space. What I found is that humans are the highest form of life. They only differ in three things: body size, body density, and spiritual awareness. There are some planets so large that the people living there are one mile tall; of course, they are relative in size to the world they live in. My body died a few times out there while I was out of it, and I had to start it up again. I maintained just a little identification with it I could re-inhabit it.

 

Paramhansa Yogananda:

One afternoon during my early months at the ashram, found Sri Yukteswar’s eyes fixed on me piercingly.

“You are too thin, Mukunda.” (Yogananda’s birth name)

His remark struck a sensitive point. That my sunken eyes and emaciated appearance were far from my liking was testified to by rows of tonics in my room at Calcutta. Nothing availed; chronic dyspepsia had pursued me since childhood. My despair reached an occasional zenith when I asked myself if it were worth-while to carry on this life with a body so unsound.

“Medicines have limitations; the creative life-force has none. Believe that: you shall be well and strong.”

Sri Yukteswar’s words aroused a conviction of personally-applicable truth which no other healer–and I had tried many!–had been able to summon within me.

Day by day, behold! I waxed. Two weeks after Master’s hidden blessing, I had accumulated the invigorating weight which eluded me in the past. My persistent stomach ailments vanished with a lifelong permanency. On later occasions I witnessed my guru’s instantaneous divine healings of persons suffering from ominous disease–tuberculosis, diabetes, epilepsy, or paralysis. Not one could have been more grateful for his cure than I was at sudden freedom from my cadaverous aspect.

“Years ago, I too was anxious to put on weight,” Sri Yukteswar told me. “During convalescence after a severe illness, I visited Lahiri Mahasaya in Benares.

“‘Sir, I have been very sick and lost many pounds.’

“‘I see, Yukteswar, you made yourself unwell, and now you think you are thin.’

“This reply was far from the one I had expected; my guru, however, added encouragingly:

“‘Let me see; I am sure you ought to feel better tomorrow.’

“Taking his words as a gesture of secret healing toward my receptive mind, I was not surprised the next morning at a welcome accession of strength. I sought out my master and exclaimed exultingly, ‘Sir, I feel much better today.’

“‘Indeed! Today you invigorate yourself.’

“‘No, master!’ I protested. ‘It was you who helped me; this is the first time in weeks that I have had any energy.’

“‘O yes! Your malady has been quite serious. Your body is frail yet; who can say how it will be tomorrow?’

“The thought of possible return of my weakness brought me a shudder of cold fear. The following morning I could hardly drag myself to Lahiri Mahasaya’s home.

“‘Sir, I am ailing again.’

“My guru’s glance was quizzical. ‘So! Once more you indispose yourself.’

“‘Gurudeva, I realize now that day by day you have been ridiculing me.’ My patience was exhausted. ‘I don’t understand why you disbelieve my truthful reports.’

“‘Really, it has been your thoughts that have made you feel alternately weak and strong.’ My master looked at me affectionately. ‘You have seen how your health has exactly followed your expectations. Thought is a force, even as electricity or gravitation. The human mind is a spark of the almighty consciousness of God. I could show you that whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely would instantly come to pass.’

“Knowing that Lahiri Mahasaya never spoke idly, I addressed him with great awe and gratitude: ‘Master, if I think: “I am well and have regained my former weight,” shall that happen?’

“‘It is so, even at this moment.’ My guru spoke gravely, his gaze concentrated on my eyes.

“Lo! I felt an increase not alone of strength but of weight. Lahiri Mahasaya retreated into silence. After a few hours at his feet, I returned to my mother’s home, where I stayed during my visits to Benares.

“‘My son! What is the matter? Are you swelling with dropsy (edema)?’ Mother could hardly believe her eyes. My body was now of the same robust dimensions it had possessed before my illness.

“I weighed myself and found that in one day I had gained fifty pounds; they remained with me permanently. Friends and acquaintances who had seen my thin figure were aghast with wonderment. A number of them changed their mode of life and became disciples of Lahiri Mahasaya as a result of this miracle.

“My guru, awake in God, knew this world to be nothing but an objectivized dream of the Creator. Because he was completely aware of his unity with the Divine Dreamer, Lahiri Mahasaya could materialize or dematerialize or make any change he wished in the cosmic vision.

Adi Shankara: “Self-Realization”

17. Atman is verily one and without parts, whereas the body consists of many parts, yet people see these two as one. What is this if not ignorance?

18. Atman is the ruler of the body and is within, the body is the ruled and is without, yet people see these two as one. What is this if not ignorance?

19. Atman is all consciousness and holy, the body is all flesh and impure, yet people see these two as one. What is this if not ignorance?

20. Atman is the illuminator and purity itself; the body is said to be of the nature of darkness, yet people see these two as one. What is this if not ignorance?

21. Atman is eternal, since it is Existence itself; the body is transient, as its essence is nonexistent, yet people see these two as one. What is this if not ignorance?

22. The luminosity of Atman consists in the manifestation of all things. Its luminosity is not like that of fire or any [worldly] thing, for darkness prevails at night (i.e., even sunlight has its limits)

23. Strange it is that a person ignorantly accepts the idea that he is the body, knowing it as a thing belonging to him even as a person possesses a pot.

24. I am verily Brahman, undifferentiated and quiescent by nature; absolute Being, Knowing, and Bliss. I am not the body, which is itself nonexistent. This is called true Knowing by the wise.

25. I am immutable, formless, free from all stain (of fault) and decay. I am not the body, which is itself nonexistent. This is called true Knowing by the wise.

26. I am not subject to any disease; I am beyond all comprehension, free of all dualisms and all-pervading. I am not the body, which is itself nonexistent. This is called true Knowing by the wise.

27. I am without any attribute or activity; I am eternal, ever free, and imperishable. I am not the body, which is itself nonexistent. This is called true Knowing by the wise.

28. I am free from all impurity; I am immutable, unlimited, holy, not subject to decay, immortal. I am not the body, which is itself nonexistent. This is called true Knowing by the wise.

29. O you ignorant one! Why do you assert that the blissful, ever-present Atman, which resides in your own body but is different from it, which is known as Consciousness and is established by the scripture as identical with Brahman, is nonexistent?

30. O you ignorant one! Try to know, with the help of the scriptures and reasoning, your own Self, Consciousness, which is being itself and very difficult for persons like you to realize.

31. The absolute known as “I” is but one, whereas the gross bodies are many. How can this body be Consciousness?

32. “I” is well established as the subject of perception whereas the body is the object. This is learnt from the fact that when we speak of the body we say, “This is mine.” So how can this body be Consciousness?

33. It is a fact of direct experience that the “I” is immutable, whereas the body is always undergoing changes. So how can this body be Consciousness?

34. Wise men have stated the nature of Consciousness in that scripture, “Nothing higher than He,” etc. So how can this body be Consciousness?

35. Furthermore, the Purusha Sukta states: “All this is verily from Consciousness”. So how can this body be Consciousness?

36. So also it is said in Brihadaranyaka: “Nothing attaches itself to Consciousness”. How can this body, with innumerable impurities attached to it, be Consciousness?

37. There again it is clearly stated that “Consciousness is self-illumined”. So how can the body, which is inert and illumined from without, be Consciousness?

38. Moreover, the Karma-kanda also declares that the Atman is different from the body and permanent, as it endures even after the demise of the body and reaps the fruits of karman. (i.e., karman are not lost when the body dies)

39. Even the subtle body consists of several parts and is impermanent. It is also an object of perception, is changeable, limited and non-existent by nature. So how can this be Consciousness?

40. The immutable Atman, the substratum of the ego, is thus different from these two bodies (gross and subtle), and is Consciousness, Ishwara (God), the Self of all. It is present in every form and yet transcends them all.

* * *

Adi Shankara. Aparokshanubhuti. Translated by Swami Vimuktananda
Published by Advaita Ashram, Kolkatta. https://www.shankaracharya.org/aparokshanubhuti.php

Deepak Chopra and Adam Plack (2011). “The Secret of Healing: Meditations for Transformation and Higher Consciousness.”

Levenson, Lester (1993). Keys to the Ultimate Freedom: Thoughts and Talks on Personal Transformation. Phoenix, Arizona: Sedona Institute. (http://www.freespiritualebooks.com/keys-to-the-ultimate-freedom.html)

Levenson, Lester (1998). The Ultimate Truth. Sherman Oaks, Calif.: Lawrence Crane Enterprises, Inc.

Paramhansa Yogananda (1946). Autobiography of a Yogi. NY, The Philosophical Library.

Waddell, Norman (2001). Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin. Shambhala Publications.

Ma-tsu (709-788):

All phenomena are of the mind; all names are attached to them by the mind. All phenomena arise out of the mind; the mind is the source of all phenomena. A sutra says, “When you know the mind and arrive at its root source, you may be called a devotee.” (Cleary)

Lester Levenson: (1998)

Mind is consciousness that has assumed limitation. We are naturally unlimited until we assume a mind. Then the evolution begins of progressively limiting ourselves until we can no longer bear it. When life becomes altogether unbearable, we then start the devolution. We reverse the process by letting go of thoughts more and more until the complete peace and total freedom from thought is reestablished.

Jill Bolte Taylor:

So this is a real human brain. This is the front of the brain, the back of the brain with the spinal cord hanging down, and this is how it would be positioned inside of my head. And when you look at the brain, it’s obvious that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from one another.

For those of you who understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor, while our left hemisphere functions like a serial processor. The two hemispheres do communicate with one another through the corpus callosum, which is made up of some 300 million axonal fibers. But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely separate. Because they process information differently, each of our hemispheres thinks about different things, they care about different things, and, dare I say, they have very different personalities.

Our right human hemisphere is all about this present moment. It’s all about “right here, right now.” Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information, in the form of energy, streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems and then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like, what this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like. I am an energy-being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy-beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect, we are whole and we are beautiful.

My left hemisphere, our left hemisphere, is a very different place. Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past and it’s all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment and start picking out details, and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information, associates it with everything in the past we’ve ever learned, and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It’s that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It’s that little voice that says to me, “Hey, you’ve got to remember to pick up bananas on your way home: I need them in the morning.” It’s that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps most important, it’s that little voice that says to me, “I am, I am.”

And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me “I am,” I become separate. I become a single solid individual, separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you. And this was the portion of my brain that I lost on the morning of my stroke. (My stroke of insight)

Chuang-tzu:

“The universe came into being with us together; with us, all things are one.” (Watts, p. 55)

Hui-k’o:

Another question. You have said: This Way is entirely a creation of the imagination. What is creation by imagination?

K’o: The Dharma has no great or small, forms or attributes, high or low. It is just as if there were a great slab of stone in the front of the courtyard of your home. Should you fall asleep on it or sit on it you would not feel apprehensive about it. Suddenly you decide to create an image, so you hire someone to carve the image of the Buddha in it. Your mind, interpreting it as being the Buddha, fears committing a sin and you no longer dare to sit on it. It is the same stone, but this Buddha interpretation was created by your mind.

What sort of thing, then, is the mind? Everything is painted by the brush of your thoughts (manovijnana). You have made yourself apprehensive; you have frightened yourself. In reality, there is neither sin nor merit in the stone; your own mind creates these interpretations. It is like a man who paints the figures of yaksas and ghosts, and who also paints the figures of dragons and tigers. When he sees what he has painted, he becomes frightened. In the paint there is ultimately nothing to be afraid of; it is all created by the discrimination of the brush of his thoughts. How can there be anything that is not created by your imagination?

 (J. 337-338) (Broughton pp. 43) Second Patriarch Hui-k’o

Lester Levenson: (1998)

THE MIND

The world is an out-projecting of the mind. When we realize this, we can change the projected picture.

Mind is an instrument used by the ego-self to create and then to reflect back the physical universe.

The way to make your life easier is by recognizing the laws of nature, which are only the laws of cause and effect. When you recognize that mind or thinking is the cause, and what happens in the world is the effect, you can take control of your life.

Every thought is causative. That which we think, we create; that which we hold in mind, we sustain; that which we let go of in the mind, we dissolve.

Whatever happens to us originates in the mind.

Think only positive thoughts. Do not think of something as wrong, but see everything as right. Thinking of something as wrong holds the negative in your mind, thereby sustaining it.

That which your mind is on, you become!

Thinking is rationalizing, usually our emotions and desires, and has its source in the ego.

The most correct thinking is “no thoughts.” Truth is in the realm of knowingness. It is when all thoughts are stilled that we remove the blanket covering the omniscience that we all have now.

The only thing that blinds us to the Self is mind activity.

Pure Mind is mind with no thoughts. It is knowingness.

Pure Mind allows the omnipresent omniscience to flow through us.

Real knowledge lies just behind thought, which is relative knowledge.

Intellectual knowledge is like a tape recording. Real knowing is understanding and can be tested by the fruits.

The mind will never know God because the mind is a thing of limitation. The finite can never know the Infinite.

Mind gives rise to thoughts of desire, which lead to attachments and aversions, which cause bondage. Eliminate any link in this chain and be free!

Habits of thought are latent tendencies and are the greatest enemy to realization. They are most stubborn and adamant. However they must be let go of if one wants to realize the Self.

The mind never forgets—it just doesn’t recall at the moment.

Mind is about 90% subconscious. The 10% must be used to make it all conscious.

A concentrated mind is one that can keep its attention on one thing at a time without other thoughts coming in.

A concentrated mind is the secret of success in the realization of Truth.

* * *

Cleary, Thomas. The Zen Teachings of Mazu. (https://terebess.hu/english/mazu.html)

Jorgensen, John A. (1979). The Earliest Text of Ch’an Buddhism: The Long Scroll. The Australian National University. (download JorgensenBodhidharma)

Levenson, Lester (1993). Keys to the Ultimate Freedom: Thoughts and Talks on Personal Transformation. Phoenix, Arizona: Sedona Institute. (http://www.freespiritualebooks.com/keys-to-the-ultimate-freedom.html)

Levenson, Lester (1998). The Ultimate Truth. Sherman Oaks, California: Lawrence Crane Enterprises, Inc.

Watts, Alan (1957). The Way of Zen. New York: Vintage Books. (https://terebess.hu/english/AlanWatts-The%20Way%20of%20Zen.pdf)

This is a transcription of an audio recording that Deepak Chopra made with musician Adam Plack. To get the benefit of it, one should listen to the recording many times.

 

I am space. I am the sun. I am the directions, above and below.

I am the gods, I am the demons, I am all beings.

I am darkness. I am the Earth. I am the ocean. I am the dust, the wind, the fire, and all this world. I am omnipresent. How can there be anything but me, me the spirit?

You will rise beyond joy and sorrow.

The world exists in me, the Self, the Infinite Consciousness, even as a reflection seems to exist in the mirror. I am the fragrance in flowers, the light in radiance, and even in that light I am the experience.

Whatever mobile or immobile beings exist in this universe, I am their supreme truth or consciousness, free from conceptualization. I am the very essence in all things in the universe. Just as butter exists in milk and liquidity exists in water, even so, as the energy of Consciousness, I exist in all that exists.

When we are established in Being, the mind, body and the senses are playthings. Purity, total fulfillment of all desires, the absence of cravings, friendliness to all, truthfulness, wisdom, tranquillity and blissfulness, sweetness of speech, supreme magnanimity, lustrousness, one-pointedness, realization of cosmic events, fearlessness, absence of divided consciousness—these are the constant experiences of one who is established in Being.

 

He sees the truth who sees that there is no division at all between the self and the other, and that the one infinite light of Consciousness exists as the sole reality.

Whatever is in the mind is like a city in the clouds. The emergence of this world is no more than thoughts manifesting themselves.

Be firmly rooted in the non-existence of your ego-self. It came into being through ignorance and delusion. When we lose this false identity, we will realize our essence as the Supreme Being or Infinite Consciousness and we will be freed from all conditioning and all limitations.

The universe is but a long dream. The ego-sense, and also the fancy that there are others are as real as dream-objects. The sole reality is the Infinite Consciousness, which is omnipresent, pure, tranquil, omnipotent.

He sees the truth who sees that the nondual Consciousness, which dwells in all beings, is omnipotent and omnipresent.

When bondage is nonexistent, surely liberation is false, too.

All these worlds are no more than modifications of Consciousness.

In the Infinite Consciousness, we have created each other in our fancy.

We create worlds as the natural expression of our own Being.

Hallucinations become reality when experienced by many, even as a statement made by very many people is accepted as true. When these are incorporated into our own lives, they acquire their own reality. After all, what is the truth concerning the things of this world except how they are experienced in our own consciousness?

Enlightened beings, though they are constantly engaged in activity, do nothing. The enlightened being’s inner state is: “Even though I am constantly engaged in activity, I do nothing—all happens. Living happens. There is nothing to cling to or grasp, nothing to renounce or run away from.”

 

What is the duration of a lifespan in eternity? This lifespan of ours is but a trivial moment; eternity stretches before and after it. Existence is the Infinite Unbounded Consciousness; a lifespan is just a single thought in that Consciousness.

That which is known as a person is nothing other than the self-experiencing of the Infinite. In truth it is the magnificent and infinite ocean of Consciousness, in which numerous universes appear and disappear like ripples and waves.

Just like the silkworm spins its cocoon and is caught in it, so do humans weave the web of their own concepts and are caught in them.

When we turn away from the notions of ‘I’ and ‘the world,’ we are liberated. The notion of ‘I am this’ is the sole bondage here.

If the mind is elsewhere, the taste of food that is being eaten is not really experienced. If the mind is elsewhere we do not see what is right in front of us.

The suns are born of the Mind, but not the other way around.

When the mind ceases its agitation, all the good and noble qualities blossom. There is peace and purity of heart; we do not fall into doubt or error. There is friendship, which promotes the happiness of all. Worries and anxieties dry up. When the darkness of ignorance is dispelled, the inner light shines brightly; mental distractions and distress cease, just as the ocean becomes calm when the wind ceases to agitate its surface. Infinite Consciousness alone shines.

Just as space is unaffected and untouched by the clouds that float in it, this Infinite Consciousness is unaffected and untouched by the universe that appears in it. Just as light is not seen except through the refracting agent, even so the Infinite Consciousness is revealed through these various bodies. It is essentially nameless and formless, but names and forms are attached to its reflection.

When many candles are kindled from one another, it is the same flame that burns in all candles; even so, the one Brahman appears to be many. When one contemplates the unreality of this diversity, she is freed from sorrow.

 

The self does not go, nor does it come, for space and time derive their meaning from Consciousness alone. Where can the self go, when all that is, is within it. If a part is taken from one place to another, the space within it does not move from one place to another, for everything is forever in space.

If the mind is fully saturated with something, whatever happens to the body does not affect the mind. The mind even unaffected by the good and bad intentions of another, even as the firmly established mountain is not moved by the horns of a little beast.

The body does not create the mind, but the mind creates the body. The mind also is the seed for the body. When the tree dies, the seed does not, but when the seed perishes the tree dies with it. If the body perishes, the mind can create other bodies for itself.

When we are bound by the ego-sense, ‘me’, and by the conditioning of the mind, even if we are regarded as a great person, or a person of great learning, we can be defeated even by a child.

The unreal has no existence, and the real does not cease to exist.

When the infinite vibrates, the worlds appear to emerge; when it does not vibrate, the worlds appear to submerge; even as when a torch is spun fast, a fiery circle appears, and when it is held steady, the circle vanishes. Vibrating or not vibrating, it is the same everywhere at all times. Not realizing it we are subject to delusion; when it is realized, all cravings and anxieties vanish.

In everyone’s consciousness there is a different idea of the world. Death and other such experiences are like cosmic dissolution, the night of cosmic Consciousness. When that comes to an end we wake up to our own mental creation, which is the manifestation of our ideas, notions and delusions. Even as the Cosmic Being creates the universe after cosmic dissolution, we create our own world after death.

 

When the intelligence is established in the conviction of its ethereal nature, the physical body is forgotten, even as in youth one forgets life as a fetus.

In truth, the Cosmic Mind, the personal mind and the infinite space are all of one substance, pervaded by the Infinite Consciousness. Therefore, regardless of what you have created, you can create as many worlds as you like.

Individualized Consciousness appears as the subtle or ethereal body, and when it becomes gross, that itself appears to be the physical or material body.  That individualized Consciousness itself is known as the soul, where the potentialities are in an extremely subtle state; and when this juggling of the soul ceases, that itself is the Divine or Supreme Being.

The one Infinite Consciousness alone shines in all names and forms.

The individualized Consciousness perceives what it thinks it perceives on account of its conditioning. On account of ignorance, when the notion of an ego-self arises, at that very moment a delusion of a beginning, a middle and an end also rises.

Millions of universes appear in the Infinite Consciousness, like specks of dust in a beam of light streaming into a room through a hole in the roof.

Just as in this universe there are countless beings of various species, in other universes too there are similar beings with different bodies suited to their universe.

The inexorable passage of invisible and intangible time eats up all creatures; knowing this, the wise keep their attention on the timeless.

You are at peace when you are established in witness consciousness.

The mind only knows its own point of view, which it considers the truth.

I am the Infinite Consciousness, whose kinetic state alone appears as the whole universe.

The ignorant man’s body is composed and decomposed on account of his mental conditioning; in the case of one who has no such conditioning, there is no momentum for decomposition.

 

If you do not have the notion, “This I am, and this I am not,” then you will not limit your consciousness.
If your ego-self is dead, you will not limit your consciousness.
If in you the very notion of calamity, poverty, elation, pride, dullness and agitation do not arise, then your ego self is dead; then you will be liberated while living. Utter purity will prevail in you because you will be a liberated sage whose ego-mind is dead. Such a mind of the liberated sage is full of noble qualities: intense friendliness, love, compassion and natural goodness will alone remain in you.

What is the truth? I have nothing to do with sorrow, with actions, with delusion, with grasping or clinging. I am at peace, free from sorrow. I am Brahman: such is the truth.

I am free from all defects. I am the All. I do not seek anything, nor do I abandon anything. I am Brahman: such is the truth.

I am blood, I am flesh, I am body, I am Consciousness, I am the Mind also. I am Brahman: such is the truth.

I am the firmament, I am space, I am the sun and the moon and the stars and the galaxies. I am all things. I am Brahman: such is the truth.

I am a blade of grass, I am the earth, I am a tree stump, I am the forest, I am the mountain, I am the ocean. I am the nondual Brahman: such is the truth.

I am the Consciousness in which all things are strong, and through whose power all beings engage in their actions. I am the essence of all things: such is the truth.

In the Infinite Consciousness in every atom, infinite universes come and go, like particles of dust in a beam of sunlight that shines through a hole in the roof. These come and go like ripples on the vast ocean of Consciousness.

 

Renounce all notions and then renounce the renouncer of those notions. When even the notion of the ego sense has ceased, you will be like infinite space: free, unbounded, eternal. As long as there is a “you” and “I,” there is no liberation, no freedom.

Even as movement is inherent in air, manifestation is inherent in Consciousness.

Whatever the mind thinks of, that alone it sees.

We who know the deathless nature of the self are not afraid of death.

Egotism is but an idea based on a false association of the self with the physical elements; in reality, this egotism does not exist any more than water exists in the mirage.

This lifetime of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky; rushing by like a torrent down the steep mountain. But now I am free. I’m grounded in Being. I am grounded the Infinite Consciousness, and I can see lifetimes ripply by, like waves in the vast ocean of Consciousness. I am free, I am awake, I am liberated.

 

Deepak Chopra and Adam Plack. “The Secret of Healing: Meditations for Transformation and Higher Consciousness.” Play It By Ear Music, 2011.

 

 

Question: What does it feel like to be infinite?
Lester: Absolutely no limitation in any direction whatsoever. No limitations, total freedom from everything. Needing no food, no oxygen, no job. Instantly materializing anything you want. Being anywhere in the universe. Being as tall as you want or the size of an atom. Being at perfect peace and contentment. Being in the most delightful state possible. (1993, “Thou Art That.”)

Realization through dropping the unconscious

Our subject is called many things by many schools. I like to call it happiness, and that which gives you the ultimate in happiness is the discovery of the truth of you. When you come to completely know you, you reach this ultimate joy, and with it the peace of satiation. You discover that you are all, and that your former worldly search was you trying to find your real self. But you never could discover the real you, and because of that you were never satisfied.

You are the totality of this universe in your beingness. – Lester Levenson

I have said it repeatedly: you are this thing called happiness. Your basic nature is infinite joy, far beyond anything your mind could comprehend. That is why we are all seeking happiness—we are all trying to return to that wonderful inherent state. However, we do not find it because we are looking away from, rather than toward it. To find it, we must look within. There we find that we are infinite being. We have no limitation. We have all knowledge. We have all power. And we are omnipresent right here and now. There is no one who does not possess these three things.

The difficulty in discovering our purpose and goal in life lies in the fact that because we are infinite, we can make ourselves infinitely small, and this is exactly what we have tried to do. We could not be much more limited than we are right now. In this universe, which is infinite in size, we are at the extremity of limitation. We have imagined ourselves and frozen ourselves into physical bodies, and because of so many millennia of looking at ourselves as bodies, we have become convinced that we are these physical bodies.

Beings are capable of seeing all realms that are denser than their own. In the subtlest realm, the causal world, beings can perceive the denser astral and physical realms. In the astral world, beings can perceive the denser physical world. And because we in the physical realm cannot see a denser realm, we are in the densest, most limited realm possible. The physical body being the extreme end of limitation possible to us, we feel cramped, we hurt, we reach out. We try to express our freedom in the physical world. We try to eliminate time and space, to go faster and farther.

I am pointing out how far we have gone in accepting limitation since we came into a physical body, and that this is the reason why it is so difficult for most of us to discover the truth of ourselves, which is that we have no limits. However, there is an advantage to being in this very limited state. Because we are so cramped, we have more of a desire to get out of it than we would if we were living in a harmonious heaven where everything was easy and immediately available, where life did not prod us into trying to get liberation. We have a very distinct advantage in being here: we are forced to seek a way out.

If the soul were able to know God wholly as the angels do, she would never have entered the body. If she could know God without the world, the world would not have been made for her sake. The world was created on her account, for training. – Meister Eckhart (Walshe, Sermon Fifty-Two)

We are trying in many ways and with many methods to get free. No matter what the methods are, they all must end up doing the very same thing: freeing us of our concepts of limitation. The methodology must quiet our mind, must do away with thoughts. Every thought is a concept of limitation. When thoughts are undone, what’s left over is the infinite being that we are. Unfortunately, we set into motion an automatic way of thinking called the subconscious mind. There, we relegate thoughts to the background and let them operate without needing to pay any attention to them, and we have lost sight of them.

The subconscious mind is the real difficulty when we try to let go of thoughts. It’s difficult because we are in the habit of not looking at it. Not looking at it, we don’t see it. Since we don’t see it, it goes on and on, lifetime in and lifetime out. We are so married to our thoughts that we never even think of divorcing them. And until we do, we will continue, blindly attached to physical bodies and, in the overall, having a miserable life. For every ounce of pleasure we take we get pounds of pain. And it must be that way, because the pleasure we are trying to get is by seeking our very own self externally, in the world and through the body, and it just isn’t there.

The methods, to be effective, must be in a direction of first quieting our thoughts, and then actually getting rid of our thoughts. Make a conscious effort to bring up subconscious thoughts, and when they are brought to the conscious plane, drop them. When they do come up, you want to drop them and you do, because they are very limiting and very negative as a whole.

After you have dropped an appreciable number of thoughts, then you can drop them in large amounts. To drop thoughts in large amounts requires dropping the tendency or predisposition that has evolved from the accumulated thoughts on that one particular thing. Dropping the tendency or predisposition, one drops all the thoughts that caused that tendency or predisposition. In this way you may, at one time, drop a large accumulation of thoughts. For instance, if one has a tendency to like sweets, one could bring up from the subconscious one thought at a time and continue letting go of them until there are no more. This takes much time! However, if one drops the tendency itself, then all the subconscious thoughts that made up that tendency are dropped, and one is totally free from desiring sweets.

“Monks, with the abandoning and destruction of the seven tendencies, the holy life is fulfilled. Which seven? The tendency of craving for the sensual, the tendency of aversion, the tendency of views, the tendency of self-doubt, the tendency of conceit, the tendency of craving for becoming, the tendency of ignorance.” (Letting go of the mind)

Later you reach a point where you can drop all the remaining thoughts at once, because, having infinite power, you will have reached the point where you can see that you have this infinite power, and you then can use it to wipe out the rest of the mind. That is why it is sometimes said that realization is instantaneous. When you get that far that you can see that the power is yours, you wipe out all the remaining thoughts at once. Then you are totally free; you’ve gone all the way.

When this happens, you don’t become a zombie and you don’t disappear or go up in a flash of light. What you do is let the body go through that which you pre-set (programmed) for it. And when you reach the end of the line of the action for the body, you will leave it with joy. You will leave it just the way you leave and let go of an old worn-out overcoat.

You will never die. People around you might say so, but to yourself, you don’t die. You consciously drop the body the way you would drop an old, worn-out overcoat. But, again, you will not do this until you run the course that you pre-set for it. Now, I tell you this so you will not be fearful of dying if you get self-realization.

So, attaining the ultimate state is not disappearing into a nothingness: it’s a moving out into your omnipresence and letting go of confinement to only a physical body. But to do this, you must have a strong desire to do it. The only thing that keeps you from being the infinite being that you are is your desire to be a limited physical body. When your desire shifts into wanting to get free of the extreme limitation, it’s a start, but to go all the way you must have a desire to be totally free that is more intense than your desire to be a physical body.

The reason why so few of us do make it is that most of us have a stronger subconscious desire to be a physical body than we have a conscious desire to be free, unlimited being. Until you confront this and see what your desire really is, it is impossible to achieve total freedom, total realization. You should dig into the subconscious to bring up your desires, because unless you see them, you can’t let go of them. The only reason why you are limited to the physical body is that subconsciously you have a strong desire to be this limited physical body. When your conscious desire to be free becomes stronger than your subconscious desire to be a physical body, then you’ll quickly achieve your freedom, and therein lies your ultimate happiness. I think that is an overall presentation of the subject. Now, if you have any questions, I’d be very happy to do what I can to answer your specific questions.

Q: How do you dig into your subconscious?

Lester: Good question. You do it by first, wanting to do it. It’s very difficult when you begin, but as you do it, the more you do it the easier it becomes. You can actually reach a place where it becomes easy. Practice will do it. By practicing bringing up subconscious thoughts, the more you do it, the more you’re able to do it. There are many aids to doing it. In the little booklet, “The Eternal Verities,” (The Ultimate Truth) there are ways and aids like: “Get to the place where no one and no thing can disturb you.” When someone disturbs you and you don’t know why, the thought is subconscious. Bring up the thought. By constant trying, you will develop the habit of actually getting it up. You’ll see that there’s a limiting thought, an ego or selfish motivation behind it, and you’ll drop it.

I say then: when outward ills befall the good and just man, if he remains in equanimity with the peace of his heart unmoved, then it is true, as I have said, that nothing that happens to the just man can disturb him. – Meister Eckhart (Walshe, “The Book of Divine Comfort”)

Q: Is just seeing the subconscious thought or motivation enough?

Lester: Just looking at it is not enough. You must consciously drop the thought or consciously cast out the tendency or motivation. I’m assuming you’ll want to let go of these thoughts because they’re all limiting and negative. One reason why we don’t like to dig them up is that we don’t like to see how awful we are. But there’s nothing good or bad: there’s just moving in the right direction or the wrong direction. When we move in the wrong direction, we move toward more limitation and that’s what is called bad. But everything is experiencing, and when we don’t judge ourselves we move much faster.

Q: When we don’t judge ourselves?

Lester: Right. When we don’t judge ourselves. Whatever comes up, say “So what?” To get this far in your limitations, you have done the whole range of everything bad. It’ll come up, but it’s from past experiencing. Also, when you wake up, you’ll discover that you never ever were apart from your real self, which is whole, perfect, complete, unlimited; that all these experiences were images in your mind, just like a night dream. You imagine everything that’s going on. But while you’re in a night dream, it’s real to you. If someone is trying to kill you in a night dream, it’s real; you’re struggling for your life. But when you wake up from that dream, what do you say? “It was just a dream; it was my imagination.” This waking state is exactly as real as a night dream. We’re all dreaming we are physical bodies. We’re dreaming the whole thing. However, in order to reach this awakened state, it is first necessary to drop a major part of your subconscious thinking.

It is like a man who, in a dream finding himself in a great river, attempts to get to the other side. He musters all his energy and strives hard with every possible means. And because of this effort and contrivance, he awakens from the dream, and thus awakened, all his strivings cease.

In like manner the Bodhisattva sees all beings drowning in the four streams, and in his attempt to save them he exerts himself vigorously, unflinchingly. And because of his vigorous and unflinching exertion he attains the stage of immovability. Once in this stage, all his strivings are dropped. He is relieved of all activity that issues from the notion of duality or from an attachment to appearance. (Dasabhumika Sutra)

Q: What did you mean by “After you’re realized, you live your life out as you pre-set it?”

Lester: We pre-set (program) the behavior of this physical body before we enter it in order to put us through experiences that we hope to learn from.

Q: Knowing that you would attain realization this time?

Lester: No. In past lives you subjected yourself to the law of action and reaction, cause and effect, karma—they’re all the same thing—and you want to continue that game. You did certain things when you were in a physical body before, so [the] next time you want to set up similar things in a hope of undoing some of the things you don’t like and instigating the things you do like. But you cannot change anything that the body was pre-set by you to do. You’re going to do exactly what you pre-set for that body before you came into it: there is no free will in worldly living. However, there is a free will. The free will we have is to identify with the real being that we are or to identify with the body. If you identify with the body, you’re in trouble. So the free will is one of identity. Knowing this makes life much easier. You don’t fight it. Rather, you aim for proper identity.

Levenson, Lester (1993). Keys to the Ultimate Freedom: Thoughts and Talks on Personal Transformation. Phoenix, Arizona: Sedona Institute. ISBN 0-915721-03-1 (pp. 313-316) (download pdf)

Wisdom Library (https://www.wisdomlib.org/) has the most comprehensive Hindu-Buddhist lexicon that I’ve found. Access to Insight has a glossary of Pali and Buddhist terms (https://accesstoinsight.org/glossary.html). Southill and Hodous have compiled an excellent Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms (download). D. T. Suzuki explains Mahayana concepts in his books on Zen Buddhism, particularly Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (1932). For the Mahaprajnaparamita there is a Sanskrit-English Dictionary of Prajnaparamita Literature (1973) by Edward Conze (download). Williams and Tribe explain Indian Buddhism in an easy-to-understand form in Buddhist Thought.

 

abhisamskara – (lit. unwittingly causing things to happen through expectations) Doing, effort, will, action.

“Finally, in the eighth stage, the Bodhisattva’s activity is practiced spontaneously: without effort (anabhisamskara), without thought (anabhoga), for it is unaffected by things or concepts (dharma or adharma). This is why it is called anabhisaṃskārābhogavihāra . . .” Nagarjuna (Acala)

adharma – Abstract or non-material things, e.g., concepts such as nirvana, buddha and enlightenment (bodhi).

adhitthana (Pali) – Decision; resolution; determination.

AGFLAP – (Lester Levenson) Five hindrances to Self-realization: Apathy, Grief, Fear, Lust, Anger and Pride. “Apathy” is discouragement or pessimism. It is the thought, “I can’t.”

alaya – Abode, e.g., the Himalayas are the abode of snow.

alayavijnana – (Alaya = abode, vijnana = thoughts) Sometimes called Citta, or Mind, the alayavijnana is the repository of all consciousness of existence. All consciousness from the beginning of time is stored in it. It is by nature quiescent and undifferentiated, but when stirred by expectations (samskara), the multitudinous world (vijnana) rises from it. (See Suzuki below on Citta.)

anabhisamskara – (lit. not unwittingly causing things to happen through expectations) The effortless state of non-doing.

Furthermore, the Lord said to the Venerable Subhuti: What do you think, Subhuti? Is there any Dharma (Law) that the Tathagata has known as utmost, perfect enlightenment, or is there any Dharma that the Tathagata has demonstrated?
Subhuti said: No, not as I understand what the Lord has said. And why? This Dharma which the Tathagata has fully known and demonstrated cannot be grasped; it cannot be talked about; it is neither dharma nor adharma (thing nor concept). And why? Because all sages, though they are different from one another, belong to (the realm of) non-doing (asamskara). (The Diamond Sutra, Suzuki, 1935)

anabhoga – Without thought.

animitta – Without attributes, marks or characteristics..

anusaya – Tendencies or obsessions; (the equivalent of samyojana, lit. “fetters”).

1. sensual desire  (kama-raga)
2. aversion  (patigha)
3. views  (ditthi)
4. doubt  (vicikiccha)
5. conceit  (mana)
6. craving for existence  (bhavaraga)
7. ignorance  (avijja)
Source: Access to Insight: A Glossary of Pali and Buddhist Terms

appearances (nimitta, lakshana) – Forms, attributes, marks or characteristics; “apparency” (Lester Levenson).

2. Then, O Mahamati, by ‘appearance’ is meant that which is known as form, shape, distinctive figure, image, attribute, etc. They are seen as appearances.

3. From these appearances, ideas are formed such as a jar, etc. Then it is said: It is this, it is not something else. This is called ‘name’.

4. O Mahamati, what is known as mind or as belonging to mind, whereby a name is spoken as indicating an appearance or objects of like nature, that is discrimination (samjna). (Suzuki, Studies in the Lankvatara, p. 27)

apranihita – Desireless.

aryajnana – Noble wisdom.

asava – Attachment to existence (greed), aversion to nonexistence (anger), and ignorance. See also the three poisonous roots, or klesa.

asrava (Pali asava) – Mental outflows or outflowings. Sensual desires, craving for existence and ignorance are defilements which run or flow out of the mind, pursuing things. (https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/asava) It is because of this outflowing that the skandhas are said to be leaky.

anasrava – Without outflows or outflowings. Supramundane dharmas, such as miracles or powers of the Buddha are free of outflows. (Conze)

assertions – Statements made affirming the existence of nonentities. (1) Assertions about characteristics that are nonexistent; (2) Assertions about views that are nonexistent; (3) Assertions about causality that is nonexistent; and (4) Assertions about things that are nonexistent. (Lankavatara Sutra, Chapter XII)

atman – Self, ego, ego-soul. Anatman (Pali anatta) is no-self, or the doctrine of non-self; (Paramatman is the Supreme Self).

atmatmiya – The notion of an ego-soul that possesses things external to itself: “me and mine” or “self and its possessions.”

attachment, aversion, desire (thirst) – Attachments are things we hold on to. We can hold on to either desires or aversions. The attachment to a desire we hold close to us, and the attachment to a fear we hold away from us.

avidya – Ignorance; lit. not seeing or perceiving.

bhavagra – Summit of existence; ‘reality-limit’.

“The Brahmas of the formless realm are of four types, corresponding to a hierarchy of four formless meditative attainments (samapatti): (i) infinite space; (ii) infinite consciousness; (iii) nothingness, and (iv) neither perception nor non-perception. This last is also referred to as the ‘summit of existence’ (bhavagra)

bodhi – Enlightenment.

bodhisattva – Disciple of the Mahayana school who has taken the great vows.

body-property-abode (deha-bhoga-pratishtha) – Usually found in combination, it means this bodily existence with one’s possessions and physical surroundings. In short, it stands for the world generally. (Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra, 1998, p. 97)

buddha – One who has attained bodhi; a Tathagata.

buddhadharma – (Dharma meaning doctrine, or truth) The doctrine of the Buddha.

buddhadharma – (dharma meaning things) The eighteen qualities exclusive to a buddha (sometimes translated as unshared). (https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/buddhadharma)

Buddha-nature (tathagata-garbha) – The true self-nature of beings (see Suzuki below).

buddhi – Reason, intellect, mind.

cast off, cast away – To dismiss, abandon or let go of, e.g., the mind and body, views.

causation – A chain of events resulting in existence: “From ignorance come expectations (samskara), from expectations consciousness (vijnana), from consciousness name and form (namarupa).” Causation does not obtain between things whose being is conditional, i.e., dependent upon a separate cause (samskrita). That separate cause is akin to the light bulb of a film projector, which casts images upon a screen.

Ch’an – A Chinese school of Buddhism; from ch’an, a phonetic match of the Sanskrit and Pali word, dhyana, the yogic practice of meditation.

citta (pronounced ‘chitta’) (pl. cittam) – 1. Mind. 2. Thought; object of which we become aware or conscious. (See Citta below)

Cittamatra – “Mind-only” (See The Doctrine of “Mind-only”)

contact – Moment in which the senses are confronted with a sensory phenomenon.

dana – The perfection of giving.

defilements – 1. (karma-abhisamskara) – Expectations conditioned by karma, sometimes called merely samskara. 2. (klesa) – Unwholesome mental states, passions, afflictions.

five desires – The desires that arise from the contact of the five sense organs with their respective sense-objects; alternatively the desire for wealth, erotic love, food and drink, fame and sleep.

Dharma – The Law; Buddhist doctrine regarding raising one’s consciousness so that it is in accord with the Law. (see below).

dharma – (Chinese fa 法) Phenomena; physical, mental or spiritual things.

adharma – Nonmaterial things, i.e., abstract concepts such as bodhisattva.

dharmadhatu – Dharma-realm, the realm of the Law.

dharmakaya – A living being who has entered the Dharma-realm.

In order to descend to the dharmakaya, the stream of thought must be cut off just once; then we separate from the rupakaya, and here there is no dwelling of thought anywhere on anything. – Hui-neng

dhatu – Elements. The four elements are earth, water, fire, wind: these comprise the physical body. With space and consciousness there are six elements.

The dhatu of consciousness number eighteen. There are six senses (indriya) and six sense-fields (vishaya). Together these are the twelve senses-domains, or ayatana (sadayatana). There are six kinds of consciousness (vijnana): consciousness of a sight, of a sound, of a scent, of a flavor, of a sensation, of a thought. Altogether these are the eighteen dhatu.

dhyana (Pali jhana) – A trance-like state of meditation or absorption, whence come the words, “Chán” in Chinese, “Zen” in Japanese, “Seon” in Korean, “Thien” in Vietnamese, and “Samten” in Tibetan.

discrimination (samjna) – The mind’s knowledge of and attachment to things according to their characteristics, which leads to passions (klesa). Discrimination is one of the five skandhas, or creative functions of the mind.

drista-sruta-mata-jnata – The seen, the heard, the thought, the known.

dusts (vishaya) – 
sense-fields, i.e., forms seen with the eyes, sounds, scents, flavors, sensations and thoughts.

Senika said: “O Gautama! If there is no self, who sees and who hears?” 
The Buddha said: “One has six faculties within and six dusts without. The inner and outer conjoin and one has the six kinds of consciousness (vijnana). Now, these six consciousnesses get their names through causal relations.

“We gain consciousness by means of the eyes, colour, light, and desire, and we say eye-consciousness. O good man! Such eye-consciousness does not exist in the eye, nor in the colour, nor in the light, nor in the desire, etc. The four things conjoin and we have this consciousness. It is the same with mind-consciousness. If things come into being thus, we cannot say that knowing and seeing are self, that feeling is self.
“O good man! That is why we say that self is the eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, mind-consciousness, and that all things are phantoms. (Mahaparinirvana Sutra)

ekagra – Oneness.

“By tranquillity is meant oneness (ekagra), and oneness gives birth to the highest samadhi, which is gained by entering into the Tathagata-gharba (buddha-matrix), which is the realm of noble wisdom realised in one’s inmost self.” (The Lankavatara Sutra)

Mind-essence – Tathata (Chinese ti). (See below)

existence, six realms or paths – The hellish realms, the realm of beasts, the realm of hungry spirits, the realm of fighting spirits (asura), the realm of human beings, the heavenly realms. The lowest four realms are unfortunate or evil rebirths. (See below for a description of the asura)

fa – Chinese for dharma.

false – Spurious: something which is purported to be true but isn’t.

forms – See ‘appearances’ above.

false imagination (parikalpita) – A view of phenomena as real, as having self-nature.

habit-energy (vasana) – The production of universal memory.

hsin (Chinese) – Heart, mind and spirit; psyche, geist.

jnana (jñāna) – Knowledge or realization of higher truths; gnosis.

kalpa – A very long time.

karma – Action, self-will.

karma-abhisamskara – Expectations conditioned by karma; defilements. Karmic expectations lead to conditioned arising or rebirth, according to the Twelvefold Chain of Dependent Origination:

Living beings are reborn (bhava, become) because of actions of body, speech and mind (karma). The Buddha stated that all samskara (expectations) are conditioned by ignorance of impermanence and the truth of the nonexistence of the self (anatman). It is this ignorance that originates samskara and ultimately causes human suffering. The cessation of all samskara is synonymous with awakening (bodhi), the attainment of nirvana.

kensho (Japanese) – First awakening to the state of samadhi.

klesha, kleśa (Chinese fan nao) – Passions, afflictions; unwholesome mental states. In Chinese afflictions are called fan nao because they vex (fan) and torment (nao) the mind. (Wisdom Library) Three poisonous klesha are at the root of all the others: greed (attachments), anger (aversions) and delusion (ignorance). When the list is expanded to seven, they can be called anusaya, meaning tendencies or obsessions.

七使 The seven messengers, agents, or klesas — desire 欲愛; anger, or hate 瞋恚; attachment, or clinging 有愛; pride or arrogance 慢; ignorance, or unenlightenment 無明; false views 見; and doubt 疑. (Soothill and Hodous, 1937)

ksanti (kshanti) – Patience, forbearance, equanimity in the face of ill treatment or adversity. The perfection of ksanti is to patiently suffer or allow unpleasant things to happen, knowing that all events are for the good. “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day . . . ” Genesis 50:15 “You must take everything for the best.” Meister Eckhart, Sermon 19

lakshana (lakśaṇa) – Attributes, characteristics, differences: “The lakshana of existence thus presented to us are not its real nature, but our own thought-construction. But our reason (buddhi), which chases after the myriad things, fails to understand this fact and causes us to cling to appearances as realities.” Lankavatara Sutra

maha – great

Mahayana – Great Vehicle School of Buddhism

manas – The discriminating mind; the source of thoughts and will. “Manas, meaning ‘to think’, ‘to intend’, is that seat of intellection and cognition corresponding to the Western conception of the mind.” (Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara, p. 250)

manovijnana (manas + vijnana) – Thought-consciousness, or awareness of thoughts. (Bodhidharma: citta vijnana)

mind, the mind – the ego-soul or ego-self; the five skandas

Mind-essence – Tathata (Chinese ti).

Mind-only – Cittamatra (See The Doctrine of “Mind-only”)

mindfulness (smrti) – “To pay attention on purpose non-judgmentally in the present moment as if your life depended on it.” (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

moksha – Liberation from samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth. Moksha is attained by dis-identification with the body and mind, which are temporary and subject to change, and realisation of our true identity. “Moksha” means “mukti”, “eternal freedom from social and natural programming”. Moksha and mukti are both from the root muc, “to let loose, let go”. (Wisdom Library)

nama – (lit. ‘name’) Mental phenomena; used as a collective name for the four nonmaterial skandhas, it means mind.

nama-rupa – Mind and body.

namo – “Be my adoration to” The first two syllables of the Nembutsu mantra, “Na-mu-a-mi-da-bu-tsu,” which is meant to be meaningless, but literally means “Be my adoration to Amitabha Buddha” (Amida, Buddha of Infinite Light).

Nembutsu – See namo, above.

nimitta – Attributes, marks, characteristics. The Absolute is animitta, empty, undifferentiated, plain, devoid of things.

nirmanakaya – Transformation body: allows a buddha to appear anywhere in any form in order to teach beings according to their various needs.

nirvana – ‘Blown out’. As air which has been released from an inflated sheep’s bladder becomes one with the atmosphere, so the breath of life, when it exits a living being, becomes one with God.

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)

outflowings (asrava or asava) – Defilements of sensual pleasures, craving for existence, and ignorance which flow out from the mind towards things.

paramitas – Practices for reaching the opposite shore.

paravritti – Turning-about (See Suzuki, The Lankavatara Sutra)

parikalpita – False imagination; a view of phenomena as real, as having self-nature.

paratantra – Dependent.

prajna (prajñā) (Chinese 般若三藏) – Intuitive wisdom, the Third Eye, one’s true Self; (Abrahamic religions) the Holy Spirit.

pratyekabuddha – Buddhas who achieve enlightenment on their own, who live in solitude and do not widely spread the Dharma. (See below)

prithagjana – A simpleminded or stupid person. (Keep going: you’ll see.)

sadayatana (also ayatana) – Sense-domains. The twelve sadayatana are the six senses and the six sense-fields. The senses, or “gates” (indriya), are vision, hearing, smelling, taste and thinking. The sense-fields, or “dusts” (vishaya), are the sights, sounds, scents, flavors, sensations and thoughts.

Sadhana – Skilful means or devices. Literally “a means of accomplishing something,” sadhana is any ego-transcending spiritual practice.

samadhi – A higher state of awareness, samadhi is the eighth perfection of the Eightfold Path. Samadhi is effortless—it requires effort to not be in samadhi. Christian: ‘inwardness’ (Meister Eckhart), ‘continual prayer’ (Guyon). ‘Uninterrupted meditation’ (Hakuin).

samadhi samapatti – Meditative stage in which samadhi is experienced.

samadhi mayopama – A state of consciousness in which the world appears illusory or dreamlike.

samadhi vajra-vimbopama – The highest samadhi, that of the Tathagata. Vajra means thunderbolt, or bolt of lightning.

samapatti – The four formless meditative attainments beyond the four rupa dhyana.

samata – Sameness; knowing all things to be of the same essence.

What is the characteristic of no-mind (wu-hsin)? The characteristic is no-thought (wu-nien). What is the characteristic of no-thought? The characteristic is non-duality. What is the characteristic of non-duality? The characteristic is the sameness of things. – Tathagatajnanamudrasamadhi (Jan Yun Hua, 1989)

samacittata – Equanimity.

sambhogakaya – ‘Reward body’ or ‘body of enjoyment’ of a tathagata, which functions in perfect harmony.

samjna – Discrimination (lit. knowledge of differences); knowledge of good and evil (Genesis). Samjna is the mind’s attachment to things according to their characteristics.

samkalpa – Right thinking. Samyak samkalpa is the second perfection of the Eightfold Path.

There must not be any negative thought in the mind. “Will it be possible for me to do?” – such a question must not arise in the mind, and whenever there is such a question, it means you will not be successful in your mission. Your thinking should always be positive: “Yes, I must be successful.” There must not be any question regarding your success. Lord Shiva said: Phalisyatiiti vishvasah siddherprathama laksanam – The first factor for attaining success is the firm determination that “I must be successful”. (Shrii Shrii Anandamurti)

Samsara – The wheel or cycle of birth and death.

samskrita – Conditioned events or phenomena, lacking self-substance and therefore dependent on something else for their arising. “All conditioned phenomena have a transitory nature: that is an absolute characteristic. The transitory is unreal.”

samskara (Pali sankhara) –  Expectations. Literally “creators”, they are thoughts that become events. “Sankhara: the forces and factors that fashion things physical or mental.” Expectations lead to events, which are not real things but only mental consciousness of things. Therefore, whenever there are expectations, consciousness arises.

Then, bhikkhus, it occurred to me: What must exist in order for consciousness to come into being? By what is consciousness conditioned? Then, bhikkhus, through careful attention, there took place in me a breakthrough by wisdom: When there are samskara, consciousness comes to be; consciousness has samskara as its condition. http://www.suttas.com/chapter-1-nidana-samyutta-on-causation.html

samyojana – Fetters, hindrances; (the equivalent of anusaya—tendencies). According to Buddhaghosa, there are ten:

1. identification with the self (sakkaya-ditthi)
2. doubt (vicikiccha)
3. clinging to precepts and practices (silabbata paramasa; S. upadana)
4. attachment to the sensuous (desire realm) (kama-raga)
5. aversion (vyapada)
6. attachment to the form realm (rupa-raga)
7. attachment to the formless realm (arupa-raga)
8. conceit (mana)
9. restlessness (uddhacca–a wandering mind)
10. ignorance (avijja)

satori (Japanese) – Sudden awakening.

Seven Feelings – Joy, anger, grief, pleasure, love, hatred, desire. The Seven Feelings were described in the Liji (Book of Rites) as basic feelings of which all human beings are capable. (In Orategama, Yampolsky translates the word used by Hakuin as “misfortunes”)

Four Beginnings – The Four Beginnings (compassion, shame, respect, and the sense of right and wrong) were described by Mengzi (Mencius, 372-289 BCE). (The Four-Seven Debate)

sila – Conduct, moral behavior; one of the paramitas, or perfections.

Six paths or realms of existence: The realm of hell-dwellers, the realm of hungry ghosts, the realm of beasts, the realm of asuras (demons portrayed in Indian mythology as engaged in constant angry warfare, often with the god Indra), the realm of human beings, the realm of devas. (Watson, Lin-Chi)

skandhas – The five creative functions of the mind. These are: form (rupa); feeling (vedana); discrimination (samjna); expectations (samskara); and consciousness (vijnana).

Mahamati, it is like Pisaca, who by means of his magic makes a corpse or a machine-man dance with life though it has no power of its own: the ignorant cling to the non-existent, imagining it to have the power of movement. – The Lankavatara Sutra

smrti – (Chinese nien) recollectedness, mindfulness: the seventh perfection of the Eightfold Path. Asmrti (Chinese wu-nien) – forgetfulness, oblivion.

Sravaka – A disciple of the Buddha; sometimes called “voice-hearers” because they had personally heard the teachings of the Buddha. (See below)

Sunyata – The void, emptiness; quantum physics: when physical matter disappears in the absence of a conscious observer.

Svabhava – Intrinsic nature of phenomena. The trisvabhava are the following (Lankavatara Sutra):

Parikalpita-svabhava – “imagined self-nature” (false nature)

Paratantra–svabhava – “dependent nature” (true nature)

Parinishpanna-svabhava – “perfected nature” (to view dharmas as empty)

Tao – Consciousness, the Dharma, Tathata, Mind, etc.

Tathagata – One who goes in suchness: a buddha.

Tathagata-garbha – Buddha-nature (see Suzuki below).

Tathata (lit. “that-ness”) – Suchness, beingness.

tanha, upadana, bhava – Desire, attachment, becoming.

Upadana, attachment, is both the attempt to grasp something we want and the attempt to push away or get away from something we don’t want. But we never take hold of that which we desire, and we never get rid of that which we are averse to. When we are attached to existence we attempt to avoid nonexistence; this attachment is the cause of our rebirth, or becoming.

Tattva – Suchness, reality.

Threefold World – The desire realm (kamadhatu), the form realm (rupadhatu), and the formless realm (arupadhatu) (See below).

The threefold world is made up of the desire realm, the form realm, and the realm of formlessness, and is equivalent to the six realms of existence in which unenlightened beings transmigrate. Beings in the desire realm are dominated by cravings. Beings in the  form realm have bodies but no desires. Beings in the formless realm are free of the limitations of form but remain within the realm of the unenlightened and are subject to rebirth. (Watson, 1993, p. 64),

Three poisonous roots (asava): Lobha, dosa, and moha: attachment (greed), aversion (anger), and ignorance (delusion).

Triple Emancipation: sunyata, animitta, apranihita: emptiness, formlessness, non-striving or effortlessness.

twofold egolessness –  The lack of self-nature of persons and of things.

twofold hindrance – Passions (klesa) and discrimination (samjna).

twofold passions (klesa) – Craving and the passions which follow from craving.

twofold svabhava – The imagined self-nature of phenomena and the true dependent nature of phenomena.

tun – Sudden, abrupt; the Southern School founded by Hui-neng.

upekkha – Equanimity, one of the Pali perfections.

vasana – (literally ‘perfuming’) “Habit-energy” — consciousness (memories) stored in the alayavijnana.

Vehicles, Three – That of the sravaka (sravaka-yana), that of the pratyekabuddha (pratyekabuddha-yana), and that of the bodhisattva.

vedana – Feeling or emotional sensation born of contact. The awareness of an events is a vijnana; the emotional response to it is vedana. One of the five skandhas, vedanas are of five types:

1. agreeable bodily feeling (sukha)
2. disagreeable bodily feeling (dukkha)
3. agreeable mental feeling (somanassa)
4. disagreeable mental feeling (domanassa)
5. neither disagreeable nor agreeable (adukkha-m-asukha vedana)

vijnana – Vijñāna is composed of the prefix vi, meaning “to divide”, and the root jñā, which means “to perceive” or “knowledge”. When an object is presented before the eye, one is aware of it as a red apple or a piece of white linen; the awareness is called eye-vijñāna. In the same way, there are ear-vijñāna for sound, nose-vijñāna for odour, tongue-vijñāna for taste, body-vijñāna for touch, and mind-vijñāna (manovijñāna) for thoughts. All together, six forms of vijñāna present themselves as the world external or internal. They are often called “thieves” (see below).

viviktadharma – Sole reality: from vivikta, meaning solitude, and dharma, meaning reality. “When I think how one He is with me, as if He had forgotten all creatures and nothing existed but I alone.” — Meister Eckhart (Walshe, Vol. II, Sermon Seventy)

will-body (manomakaya): A body that exhibits various powers of self-mastery and supernatural activity, which can go from place to place according to one’s will.

* * *

D. T. Suzuki:

Citta:

Citta (from the root ci, “to pile up” or “to arrange in order”) is generally translated “mind”, either with the letter ‘m’ capitalised or not. When it stands in the series of citta, manas and vijnana, it means the empirical mind. Besides this, citta has an absolute sense denoting something that goes beyond the realm of relativity and yet lies at the foundation of this world of particulars. When the Lanka speaks of “Mind-only” (Cittamatra), it refers to this something defined here. (Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra, 1998, p. 178)

Citta used in the sense of vijnana:

Citta (pl. cittam) used in place of vijnana means those things of which we become conscious, or thoughts. For example, the high-pitched humming of a mosquito is no more than an ear-thought. If we see it on the skin that is an eye-thought. If we feel the itch of a bite that is a body-thought. Cittam constantly arise and pass away. (Editor)

Six thieves

Bodhidharma: The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion. These three poisoned states of mind themselves include countless evils, like trees that have a single trunk but innumerable branches and leaves. The three poisons are present in our six sense-organs as six kinds of consciousness (vijnana), or thieves. They’re called thieves because they pass in and out of the sense-gates, covet limitless possessions, and mask their true identity. And because mortals are misled in body and mind by these poisons or thieves, they become lost in life and death, wander through the six states of existence and suffer countless afflictions. (Bodhidharma’s Breakthrough Sermon–Red Pine)

Tathagata-garbha

The Parinirvana-sutra once formed the foundation of the Nirvana school in the early history of Chinese Buddhism. Its main assertion is that the Buddha-nature is present in every one of us. Before the arrival of this sutra in China it was generally believed that there was a class of beings known as Icchanti who had no Buddha-nature and were therefore barred from attaining enlightenment. This belief was expelled, however, when a statement to the contrary was found in the sutra, saying that “There is something in all beings which is true, real, eternal, self-governing, and forever unchanging—this is called Self, though quite different from what is generally known as such by the philosophers. This Self is the Tathagata-garbha, Buddha-nature, which exists in every one of us, and is characterized by such virtues as permanency, bliss, freedom, and purity.” (The Lankavatara Sutra, “The Message of the Lanka”)

Asura

Asura are spirits found in Buddhist and Hindu cosmology. They are usually portrayed as power-hungry and lusty. Even the best of the Asura can be unpredictable and prone to mood swings.

Asuras are sometimes classified as demons. Their skin is deep red or blue-green, and their hair is black. Four to six arms sprout from their bodies, as well as three heads, with faces pointing in opposite directions. They are fond of fine clothing, jewelry and elaborate helmets.

Although they are more powerful than humans, the Asura are the least powerful—and least noble—of the deities. Their low rank means that they are envious of the other gods and easily insulted if they are not praised for the powers that they do have. Above all else, the Asura are moody and unpredictable and prone to start wars.

Still, the Asura are not all bad. On one hand, they experience pleasure as deeply as negative emotions, which makes them highly romantic lovers and fun friends. Many Asura have poured their passionate emotions into religion as well, becoming loyal practitioners and even priests. They make sacrifices, perform cleansing rituals, build temples, and make holy pilgrimages with great enthusiasm.

Because of their volatile emotions, Buddhists consider birth as an Asura to be one of the four unhappy births.

Dharma (see David K. Jordan)

Fǎ 法 = Dharma, meaning law or teaching. In Sanskrit Dharma is a complex term referring to the ultimate reality. It is often rendered fǎ in Chinese, which means both “law” and “teaching.”  Fǎ is also the secret teaching given by a Master to his successor; thus, Huì-neng receives from the Fifth Patriarch the symbolic robe and begging bowl of the patriarchate, but also the fǎ.

Sravakas and Pratyekabuddhas:

A Sravaka is a disciple of a buddha. Determined to achieve liberation, he carefully follows and practises the teachings of his master.

A Pratyekabuddha (solitary buddha) is one who achieves liberation on his own. A pratyekabuddha is usually a hermit an only teaches if sought out.

A Bodhisattva is one who strictly follows the Mahayana path laid out in the Prajnaparamita Sutra. This path emphasizes the taking of a vow to return from divine union in order to lead others to liberation.

Svabhava:

“That which appears is called other-dependent (paratantra),
And its appearance is called imaginary (parikalpita),
Because the arising is dependent on conditions,
And the appearance is only a figment of the imagination.
Seeing appearances as empty
Is understood to be perfected nature (parinishpanna) because of its immutability.”
– Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhavanirdesa

“The triple world of existence is no more than thought-construction, discriminated by the twofold svabhava; but when there is a turning-away from sense-objects and the ego-self, then we have Suchness.” (The Lankavatara Sutra, p. 274)

Threefold World

“The desire realm consists of all the realms of rebirth apart from that of the gods. Beings in the desire realm have the five physical senses plus consciousness, and act from a base of sensual experience. A practitioner of meditation who dies without attaining enlightenment is reborn into the the form realm or the formless realm that corresponds to his or her meditative attainment–one of the four dhyana, or one of the four samapatti.

“Technically the gods of the form and formless realms are known not as ‘gods’ (deva), but as ‘Brahmas’. Those of the form realm are . . . divided into four classes corresponding to the four dhyanas, the four ‘meditations’ or ‘absorptions’ . . . Brahmas within the form realm are said to have only two senses: sight and hearing.

“The Brahmas of the formless realm are of four types, corresponding to a hierarchy of four formless meditative attainments (samapatti): (i) infinite space; (ii) infinite consciousness; (iii) nothingness, and (iv) neither perception nor non-perception. This last is also referred to as the ‘summit of existence’ (bhavagra) [Suzuki – ‘reality-limit’]. Brahmas within the formless realm have just consciousness, and so long as they are in that rebirth and have not attained enlightenment they enjoy uninterruptedly the appropriate meditative attainment.” (Williams, p. 77)

* * *

Conze, Edward (1973). Dictionary of the Prajnaparamita. Suzuki Research Foundation.  https://www.scribd.com/doc/175432919/Dictionary-of-Prajnaparamita

Conze, Edward (1975). The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom. University of California Press.

Suzuki, D. T. (1932). The Lankavatara Sutra: A Mahayana Text. (Based upon the Sanskrit edition of Bunyu Nanjo). London. (http://lirs.ru/do/lanka_eng/lanka-nondiacritical.htm)

Suzuki, D. T. (1935). Manual of Zen Buddhism. (https://www.goldenelixir.com/files/Suzuki_Manual_of_Zen_Buddhism.pdf)

Suzuki, D. T. (1998). Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra, New Delhi, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers.

Watson, Burton (1999). The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi. New York: Columbia University Press. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-zen-teachings-of-master-lin-chi/9780231114851

Williams, P. and Tribe (2000). A. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London and New York: Routledge.

Yun-Hua, Jan. “A Comparative Study of ‘No-Thought’ (Wu-nien) in some Indian and Chinese Buddhist texts.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 16 (1989) 37-58. (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6253.1989.tb00730.x)

 

For scholars, there is this Digital Dictionary of Buddhism: English Terms, compiled by Charles Muller and his associates: http://buddhism-dict.net/ddb/indexes/term-en.html

Charles Muller has also digitized the following classic:
Soothill, W. E. and Hodous, L. (1937). A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms. (A-Dictionary-of-Chinese-Buddhist-Terms-Soothill)

Walpola Rahula (1971). “Bodhisattva Ideal in Theravada and Mahayana.”
Voice of Buddhism, Vol. 8 No. 2 June 1971, KDN No.5236, Published by Buddhist Missionary Society, Kuala Lumpur. (https://res.cloudinary.com/di4urm47y/image/upload/v1460298854/articles/Bodhisattva_Ideal_In_Theravada_And_Mahayana.pdf)

有即是無     Existence is instantly nonexistence

無即是有     Nonexistence is instantly existence

若不如此     If you are not experiencing this

必不相守     Do not hold on to yourself
 

一即一切     The One in all

一切即一     All in the One

但能如是     If you only realize this

何慮不畢     You need not worry about attaining your goal
 

信心不二     The believing mind is undivided

不二信心     Undivided is the believing mind

言語道斷     Words go no further

非去來今     No going or coming now
 

My soul rejoices in all the joy and all the blessedness in which God Himself rejoices in His divine nature, whether God would or no: for there, there is nothing but one, and where one is, there is all, and where all is, there is one.
– Meister Eckhart (Walshe, Vol. II, Sermon Seventy)

All things are too small to hold me
I am so vast
In the Infinite I reach for the Uncreated
I have touched it: it undoes me
Wider than wide, everything else is too narrow
You know this well you who are also there
– Hadewijch

One who knows himself as nondual, he knows both the Buddha and the Dharma. And why? He is a being which encompasses all things; for all things are certainly one’s own self-nature. (Conze, 2002)

God becomes and unbecomes.
– Meister Eckhart (Walshe Vol. II, Sermon Fifty Six, p. 80)
 

D. T. Suzuki: (1935)

When the Yogin has all of these mental disturbances well under control, his mind acquires a state of tranquillity in which his consciousness retains its identity through his waking and sleeping hours. The modern psychologist would say that he is no more troubled with ideas which are buried, deeply repressed, in his unconsciousness; in other words he has no dreams. His mental life is thoroughly calm and clear like the blue sky where there are no threatening clouds. The world with its expansion of earth, its towering mountains, its surging waves, its meandering rivers, and with its infinitely variegated colours and forms is serenely reflected in the mind-mirror of the Yogin. The mirror accepts them all yet there are no traces or stains left in it—just one Essence, bright and illuminating. The source of birth and death is plainly revealed here. The Yogin knows where he is; he is emancipated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name—the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea— long intervals of time, years, centuries— are of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is called death. (“Self-Reliance”)

Shen-hui:

Those who see into No-thought have their senses cleansed of defilements. Those who see into No-thought are moving towards Buddha-wisdom. Those who see into No-thought are known to be with the Dharma. Those who see into No-thought are furnished at once with merits as numerous as the sands of the Ganges. Those who see into No-thought are able to create all kinds of things. Those who see into No-thought embrace all things within themselves.

A person who has a most decided realization remains immovable, like a diamond, and having seen into No-thought remains in perfect quietude—even if being cut to pieces by a forest of swords in the midst of battle. Even if greeted by Buddhas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges, not a thought of happiness is stirred in the mind. Even if beings as numerous as the sands of the Ganges are destroyed all at once, not a thought of grief is stirred in the mind. For this strong-willed being has attained Emptiness and Sameness. (Suzuki, 1971, p. 39)

Meister Eckhart: “Sermon Fifty-Six”

When I subsisted in the ground, in the bottom, in the river and fount of Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or what I was doing: there was no one to ask me. When I flowed forth, all creatures said ‘God’. If anyone asked me,’ Brother Eckhart, when did you leave your home?’, then I was in there. That is [why] all creatures speak of God. And why do they not speak of the Godhead? Everything that is in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be said. God works, the Godhead does no work: there is nothing to for it to do; there is no activity in it. It never glimpsed any work. God and Godhead are distinguished by working and not-working. When I return to God, if I do not remain there, my breakthrough will be far nobler than my emanation. I alone bring all creatures out of their reason into my reason, so that they are one with me. When I enter the ground, the bottom, the river and fount of the Godhead, no one will ask me whence I came or where I have been. No one missed me, for there God is undone. (Walshe, p. 81)

The Treatise on Resurrection (The Nag Hammadi Scriptures)

What am I telling you?
All at once the living die.
How do they live in illusion?
The rich become poor,
kings are overthrown,
everything changes.
The world is illusion.
Let me not speak so negatively.
The resurrection is different.
It is real,
it stands firm.
It is revelation of what is,
a transformation of things,
a transition into newness.
Incorruptibility flows over corroption,
light flows over darkness, swallowing it,
Fullness fills in what is lacking.
These are symbols and images of resurrection.
This brings goodness.

Tai-Hui:

The time will come when your mind will suddenly come to a stop like an old rat who finds itself cornered. Then there will be a plunging into the unknown with the cry, “Ah, this!” When this cry is uttered you have discovered yourself. You find at the same time that all the teachings of the ancient worthies expounded in the Buddhist Tripitaka, the Taoist scriptures and the Confucian classics are no more than commentaries upon your own sudden cry, “Ah, this!”  (Suzuki, 1953, p. 102)

Words go no further . . .

 
Conze, Edward (2002). Perfect Wisdom: The Short Prajnaparamita Texts. Leicester, UK: Buddhist Publishing Group (“Perfect Insight” scripture, The Questions of Suvikrantavikramin).

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Self-Reliance. (https://emersoncentral.com/texts/)

Meyer, Marvin (2007). The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. New York: Harper Collins.

Suzuki, D. T. (1935). Manual of Zen Buddhism.

Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro (1953). Essays in Zen Buddhism (Second Series). London: Rider and Company.

Suzuki, D. T. (1971). Essays in Zen Buddhism (Third Series). New York: Samuel Weiser.

M. O’C. Walshe (1987). Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises Volume II. UK: Element Books Limited.

宗非促延     This truth is beyond time and space

一念萬年     A single thought, ten thousand years

無在不在     No existence, no nonexistence

十方目前     It is everywhere before you

 

極小同大     The smallest is the same as the greatest

忘絶境界     Dimension and boundaries entirely forgotten

極大同小     The greatest is the same as the smallest

不見邊表     No borders seen manifest

 

Tai-hui (1089-1163):

Just steadily go on with your koan every moment of your life. If a thought arises, do not attempt to suppress it by conscious effort; only renew the attempt to keep the koan before the mind. Whether walking or sitting, let your attention be fixed upon it without interruption. When you begin to find it entirely devoid of flavour, the final moment is approaching—don’t let it slip out of your grasp! When suddenly something flashes out in your mind, its light will illuminate the entire universe, and you will see the spiritual land of the Enlightened Ones fully revealed at the tip of a single hair and the great wheel of the Dharma revolving in a single mote of dust. (Suzuki, 1953, pp. 103-104)

Deepak Chopra:

What is the duration of a lifespan in eternity? This lifespan of ours is but a trivial moment. Eternity stretches before and after it. Existence is the infinite unbounded consciousness. A lifespan is just a single thought in that consciousness. (“The Secret of Healing”)

Lester Levenson:

Question: What does it feel like to be infinite?

Answer: Absolutely no limitation in any direction whatsoever. No limitations, total freedom from everything, needing no food, no oxygen, no job. Instantly materializing anything you want. Being anywhere in the universe. Being as tall as you want, or the size of an atom. Being at perfect peace and contentment. Being in the most delightful state possible. (1993, “Thou Art That”)

Meister Eckhart:

A day, whether six or seven days ago or more than six thousand years ago, is just as near to the present as yesterday. Why? Because all time is contained in the present now-moment. Time comes out of the revolution of the heavens and day began with the first revolution. . . .

The soul’s day and God’s day are different. In her natural day the soul knows all things above time and place: nothing is far or near. And that is why I say, in this day all things are of equal rank. To talk about the world as being made by God tomorrow or yesterday would be talking nonsense. God makes the world and all things in this present now. Time gone a thousand years ago is now as present and as near to God as this very instant. (Blakney, “In his days he pleased God and was found just,” p. 212)

Lester Levenson:

You went to sleep and you dreamt that you were borne into a little infant body and you went through one year, two years, three years, into youth, middle age and old age, all the way up to ninety years. It took ninety years to get up to that old body. It was a long, long time, right? Ninety years? Until you woke up and you realized it was a dream and it might have taken a second or two. The dream lasted a few seconds and in that time you went through a ninety-year period! And it seemed like ninety years while you were in the dream; it wasn’t until you woke up that you realized it was only a few seconds. Some day you’ll see that creation is instantaneous, with the mental concept of time in it. (1993, p. 84)

Meister Eckhart: Sermon Eight

Suppose a man owned a whole kingdom or all the goods of this world, and that he gave it up purely for God’s sake and became one of the poorest of the poor who ever lived on earth. Suppose that God then gave him as much suffering as He ever imposed on any man and that he bore all this to his dying day. Now suppose that God then gave him one fleeting glimpse of how He is in this power: that man’s joy would be so great that all this suffering and poverty would be insignificant. Yea, though God were never to vouchsafe him any further taste of heaven than this, he would yet be all too richly rewarded for all that he had ever endured, for God is in this power as in the eternal now. If a man’s spirit were always united with God in this power he would not age, for the now in which God made the first man and the now in which the last man shall cease to be and the now I speak in—all are the same in God and there is but one now. Observe, this man dwells in one light with God, having no suffering and no sequence of time, but one equal eternity. This man is bereft of wonderment and all things are in him in their essence; therefore, nothing new comes to him from future things nor any accident, for he dwells in the now, ever new and without intermission. Such is the divine sovereignty dwelling in this power. (Walshe, p. 79)

 

Levenson, Lester (1993). Keys to the Ultimate Freedom: Thoughts and Talks on Personal Transformation. Phoenix, Arizona: Sedona Institute. (download pdf)

Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro (1953). Essays in Zen Buddhism (Second Series). London: Rider and Company.

Blakney, Raymond B. (1941). Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation. New York: Harper & Row. (https://archive.org)

Walshe, Maurice O’C. (2009). The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. (download pdf)