“Now this is the Buddhist trick: the Buddha said ‘We suffer because we desire.

If you can give up

desire, you won’t suffer.’ But he didn’t say that as the last word; he said that as the opening step
of a dialogue. Because if you say that to someone, they’re going to come back after a while and
say ‘Yes, but now I’m desiring not to desire.’ And so the Buddha will answer, ‘Well at last you’re
beginning to understand the point.’ Because you can’t give up desire. Why would you try to do
that? It’s already desire. So in the same way you say ‘You ought to be unselfish’ or to give up you
ego. Let go, relax. Why do you want to do that? Just because it’s another way of beating the
game, isn’t it? The moment you hypothesize that you are different from the universe, you want to
get one up on it. But if you try to get one up on the universe, and you’re in competition with it, that
means you don’t understand you ARE it. You think there’s a real difference between ‘self’ and
‘other.’ But ‘self,’ what you call yourself, and what you call ‘other’ are mutually necessary to each
other like back and front. They’re really one. But just as a magnet polarizes itself at north and
south, but it’s all one magnet, so experience polarizes itself as self and other, but it’s all one. If
you try to make the south pole defeat the north pole, or get the mastery of it, you show you don’t
know what’s going on.”

– Alan Watts

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Posted in How-To, ISness | Tagged buddha, desire, enlightenment, isness, oneness,

universe | 3 Replies
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
Posted on January 13, 2013
Do not chase, do not wait, do not desire. Instead, be and be aware.
This way, you will accept the unfolding of your life as it is and whatever it may bring.
Be true to yourself. Be true to others.
Rise, like the wind when it hits a mountain edge.
Remain pure in times of confusion.
Find the strength of your true self.

– Zdravko Stefanovic

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Posted in Thoughts | Tagged awareness, desire, truth | Leave a reply

“There is no such thing as existence of anything; it is only transience of everything.”
Posted on January 7, 2013
2
…”All this illusion has been created on account of the attachment of consciousness to the mental
structure. This is a Vedantic touch given by the later thought to the discovery of the Buddha. The
mind is as much a name as a building is, or as any object is. There is no such thing as the mind,
just as there is no such thing as the building, just as there is no such thing as any object or the
world at all. They do not exist. They are only some heaps of molecules; they are heaps of
transitory passages or phenomena – they are processes. They are only passing stages which
look like a solid object; like a cinematographic projection, which is nothing but an illusion
projected before the mind by the quick movement of pictures. The solid things are not there. What
is solid is only a screen behind. Likewise, there is a screen of ego which substantiates the
passages of the various phenomena which constitute this cosmos.

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So, there is no such thing as existence of anything; it is only transience of everything. There is a
momentariness of objects. Everything passes – even this shall pass away – even your body;
even your mind which also is a complexity of structures, of various impressions, or Vasanas.
Various thoughts put together constitute the mind. If the thoughts are pulled out, like threads from
a cloth, the mind does not exist. Likewise, you pull out every brick of everything, and you find no
world exists.

So what is it that you are working for? What is it you are asking for? You understand why you’re
unhappy in this world. You have an illusion before you. You are caught up by a nightmare of the
perception of the world. An incubus is before you. This is the world perception. You are under a
terrible misapprehension of things. This misapprehension is called Avidya, which causes desire,
or Trishna as it is called in Sanskrit. In the language of Vedanta, it is Avidya, Kama, Karma.
Ignorance causes desire. Desire causes action towards the possession of the object of desire,
which brings about a reaction, again, which is called Karma – which brings rebirth. The wheel of
life thus rotates; the Samsara Chakra moves endlessly, as it were, causing bondage and
bondage, bondage after bondage.

buddha-history-pictures-lord-181646 copy

What is the solution? The discovery of the cause of sorrow. The discovery of the cause of sorrow
means the finding out where this misconception has arisen at all. It is in your own mind. You have
got a wrong perception of things, and therefore you have to, first of all, practice a discipline
capable enough to dissect the mind itself into its components, so that it disintegrates and the
personality vanishes, because the personality is nothing but the working of the mind. There is an
extinction of personality.

This extinction of personality by the disintegration of the constituents of the mind is called
Nirvana. You are blown up like the lamp that is blown up by the wind and you reach Nirvana, a
blessed state. What it is Buddha did not say, and no one can tell you.”

- See more at: http://www.consciousness-evolution.org/?tag=desire#sthash.YiZaEjZl.dpuf