The Two Truths

Buddhism talks about 2 Truths, the relative and the absolute.

The relative truth in the world of relativity, duality. Of Form. Of movement. Our physical form, body the world, ourselves, our individuality. The world of mind, of thoughts, of feelings, where we can compare, differentiate between individual person, place and things. The relative truth always has an individual 'me' (I am) in relation to something 'else'. A subject and objects in space and time. I call it the head realm and its been oh so familar to the 'me'. What We Witness. What we are Aware Of. What we are conscious Of.

The absolute truth is headless, not just the Witness, or Awareness, or Consiousness or God, there is no name for it, no state for it. Where all things, me, you, inner, outer, subjects, objects are empty of inherent existence in themselves. There is no actual person, place or thing. No space or time, ultimately. All that exists only in the context of our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, in the head realm. The relative realm.

Some accept these Two Truths as One Truth. Not Two. Where the two worlds, the two truths, are inter-dependant and inseparable, paralleling the tenets of the Heart Sutra "form is emptiness, emptiness is form". The two is One, not two.

Another way of seeing the two truths, which resonates with me, is like bubbles and waves of the ocean. The bubbles represent the relative world of mind-body-form, which is still water, still the ocean, but not independently, not inherently existing.

The irony is despite knowing all this, despite all the enlightenment practices one can carry on for decades, or lifetime, we almost never get hooked onto the Absolute Reality. We are almost always hooked on the relative and on what we are Aware of, looking at, searching for, striving towards, struggling to improve, to evolve, to get somewhere, spiritually, materially, or both.

So even striving to be with God, or merge into God or Spirit or awake or be enlightened or ascend or whatever, is still a condition of mind, of thought, of visioning a goal. Of the Relative world.

Like someone once said "You need to have a self before you can lose one" and eventually the "I am" lets us go.

Richard Rose put it very well. "You need to fatten your head before you chop it off".

Message From Monica

Today, unexpectedly, came across a a message from Monica in her blog and think its an important message that I'm grateful for and essentially agree with.

Too many of us are stuck on seeking something else other than what is here. For a lot of spiritual seekers it is often enlightenment or awakening and thus the inevitable search for a teacher or guru, Yes, I have also been there. Still, some awakened teachers, I do believe help, such as chip, no1, that I have come across can help.

There are countless others, such as Richard Rose, The Dalia Lama, 16th Karmapa, and many others many have shared it as a mysterious acausal accident. It reminds me of the "many are called, few are chosen" mantra that Richard Rose went on about. A deathly strike that shatters the illusory conceptions of reality. A death to who we thought we were, a death to the limited boundaries of the personal self. A bolt of lightening that traumatises the concrete ceilings of our personal conceptions, shattering the commonly held idea of a personal self. There is none, only the idea of such.

Yet despite all this, awakening, enlightenment and despite undying awareness, which survives death of the body, all that is is inseparable from what is experienced. So there's still a body or vehicle that functions and we don't escape the physical, pain, experiencing, thoughts, feelings and yet it has no concrete absolute undying reality to it and dies. Even the awakening experience is dead.

blessings