 E-mail
to a Soldier in Iraq on July 4th, 2005
About 30 years ago I spent the 4th of July with my Guru and really experienced
inner fireworks and a sense of liberation as the Kundalini unfolded
and freed awareness of all identification, concepts, beliefs, opinions,
stories and maps of reality. There was simply Awareness without an object,
existing in all places and all times with no center or periphery. This
was not enlightenment but a pretty powerful mystical experience that
shook the very foundations of any sense of a “separate self.”
I tell my students not to share their spiritual stories with anyone
other than me as they just become the story of a separate ego, an embellishment,
another fixation, and yet every 4th of July I can’t help but remember
that special one so many years ago.
True Buddhism, as the Buddha taught, is not really a religion, as it
requires no beliefs and is nontheistic (as opposed to theistic or atheistic).
It is an investigation into how human attention is fixated through desire
and aversion, which causes suffering and delusion, and how it is possible
to overcome fixation, suffering and delusion and Awaken to the Truth of
Being. Ultimately, all of the “Doing” of Buddhist practice
is released into simply “Being.” Nothing to do, nowhere to
go, no one to be. Since everything is Buddha Nature, what is there to
do? Unborn and deathless. If one wants to Awaken to Truth in this lifetime,
then discernment and vigilance appear to be needed. What this amounts
to is simply telling the truth, and if we tell the truth, then we discover
the truth is very often, “I don’t know.” This truth
is very humbling as it tends to keep our mouths shut and our minds open!
How wonderful! When we abide in “don’t know” mind, we
begin to see that there is no one that needs to be fixed, converted, enlightened,
liberated, or convinced of anything, as everything and everyone is only
This.
 And
yet it seems that certain human life streams have the desire to discover
the Truth of who and what they are, and only this one great desire will
go to the very root of all desire, cut that root, and then there is the
Direct Recognition of Truth. Not my truth or their truth or your truth
or anybody’s truth, but this Truth that always stands free before,
during and after any human being ever existed and yet holds everything
and everyone as Its very own. Truth is not predicated on anything or anyone
and is forever Free and eternally Present. Omniscient. Omnipresent. Omnipotent.
You are This!
I’m sure this 4th of July in Iraq is one you won’t forget!
May it be a good one for you!
My best,
Tom
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