Forwarding from Greg Goode

[Guest guest]

Greg Goode <goode one of our brilliant moderators here.

 

There's no way *not* to live non-duality -- everyone is being lived this

way all the time, even if we think we're not. This is the teaching of

non-duality. Non-duality is not something that we must make true. It

can't NOT be so.

 

Here are some slice-of-life descriptions of experience that you might call

mine, say in the last week. And how the being lived has a certain sweet

fragrance that isn't an experience. Skye and I once had a few wonderful

slice-of-life exchanges like this, and I still remember them clearly.

 

Working, commuting on a crowded, hot, muggy, humid subway. Teaching

computers, having to talk 8 hours a day some weeks. Friends breaking

up. Girlfriend with Chicken pox. Friends living with AIDS, some smiling,

some not smiling. Married couple, husband cheating on wife, telling

everyone about it, she in pain. My eating too much too late, waking up

with a stomach ache. Riding my bike through the city, no breaks, no gears,

fixed-gear track bike, Zen-like motion connected to everything going on

around. Taking dance-skating lessons, loving it but not being very good or

having much time to practice. Weekly meditation meeting/satsang. Helping

a friend buy new wardrobe. Attending the Buddha's Birthday celebration at

a local Chan temple. Talking and corresponding with many people on the

phone, in e-mail, in person, about non-duality. Going to the gym. Burning

special Japanese incense. Not getting enough sleep. Paying

bills. Reading Western philosophers who are similar to Nagarjuna in some

respects. ....

 

The basic fragrance is an unbroken totally sweet miraculousness. Totally

unaffected by the details of what happens. Things that happen are not

really things at all, and do not happen by magic, or through a mechanistic

scientific causal process. But a present miraculousness. Nothing left out.

 

It is not all pleasant, but it is all fine, perfect is-ness, because

there's no other way for IS-ness to be. Good day, Fine! Bad day,

Fine! No difference, no distance. The meditation and bike riding can be

seen as metaphors for how everything is, smoothly connected and not

separate from anything. Things that aren't pleasant aren't in any way more

or less separate than things that are pleasant - the difference is the same

as the color red versus green. None of it ever seems like an "I" or "you"

is doing it, it's all very direct, clear, very here and immediate, "things

as it is." There's no thought that things should be this way, or that they

should be some other way. No thought ever of a Greg or any other entity

striving or grasping or letting go of anything. No thought that anything

needs to be maintained or chased after or watched or kept. No thought that

this is separate from what-is. No thought that a gap exists or must be

bridged. Everything taking care of itself, in a smooth, uninterrupted

flow. And the flow isn't even a flow - it is just called a flow, the word

arising in the context of this writing.

 

It's late, I gotta go to bed.

 

With love to all,

 

--Greg