Who is writing and who is not?
2012/12/08 5 Comments
“Life” is a concept.
The disciple tells the master ” I do not exist”.
Stop trying to be someone – just be yourself for a change
2012/11/13 14 Comments
Everyone tries hard to be someone. If I am so self-important, someone else wants also to be important,
so obviously everything becomes a constant conflict. Yes, the same goes for conflict between families, casts, groups of interest, nations – in short, everything in this life is a constant series of struggles and conflicts between different people who want to be someone empowered by a certain belief.
If I have a certain viewpoint, whenever I stubbornly hold to my ideology – be it Christianity, Buddhism, Marxism, Atheism, Freud, Jung or whatever -, this will enhance my ego and surely create conflict with another person holding another ideology.
In our present world, my belief is your threat. Your belief creates walls around you so I can´t reach you. Can you recognize and honestly question this?…
Can you see that whatever “belief” is the very ground for arguments, fights and wars…?
Can you see that your avid attempt to find “your way” is often nothing more than vain conflictuality?
Whenever you work hardly to be “someone” you stress your belief, you create disharmony, imbalance, violence…Whenever you create something out of personal interest, “something else” will be the other´s answer to you.
I repeat, you are always a threat for me, and me to you, as long as I hold to “mine” and you to “yours”.
Your specific way in life is given, but you cannot look for it, it´s nothing you can deliberately find. Searching creates isolation and violence. Only when you cease “trying to be” and instead, peacefully know yourself in harmony, yes, in swift tacit accord with the other, then and only then, you will find ”your real way”.
It is the natural non conflictual way, something that is both your and the other´s gain.
Do I believe in something?…I like Christ, Buddha, Homer, Scriabin, Rembrandt, Rilke, Kandinsky and many others,
but I don´t believe in any of them.
I used to be a Julien-ist but I have given up that too 
No standpoint – a koan for you
2012/11/09 3 Comments
For the ones who don´t know:
A koan is a special kind of Zen riddle. Koans are not to be solved with the mundane, limited logical mind,
they are meant to suspend the intellect, to put it in a state of vacuum, out of which the secret totality of life can emerge.
A koan is indeed an opportunity to look deeply into one´s real nature, and “think” without thinking.
So let us consider this:
Your standpoint makes your perspective. My question to you is:
WHAT IS THE PERSPECTIVE OF NO STANDPOINT?
Our factual and perceptual knowledge is pure vanity
2012/10/13 1 Comment
She writes:
But it isn’t seizing is it? What you describe is letting things wash over me, through me, choosing to be passive. Perhaps I have a difficult time assimilating what is meant because I do not have my definition of happiness yet. I do accept that projection is not reality but what you have described to me about happiness sounds a lot like the expanding universe. Let me try to explain what I mean, I have never understood what they mean when they say the universe is expanding, what is the space it is expanding into? Do you understand where I am coming from? If, when I reach this state of happiness, I am more than my thoughts and emotions, what is that exactly? Lets say I am disconnected from everything and there is no ebb and flow and just a stream of constant non reaction, how is that happiness? I agree that it is freedom to an extent, from pain and loneliness perhaps, but is it happiness?
Me:
Just linger a second with this question:
Who is the inner authority wanting to find the definition of happiness?…I am not playing with words?…Who is it…?
Every definition deals with “the known”, doesn´t it? Just consider: Whatever is “known” is an invariable reiteration of the old, can you see this…? Happiness belongs to the “unknown”, as it is ever “new” – It is as fresh as every single breath of yours. Thus, how can something old grasp something vividly immediate which escapes name…?
Is there any definition to be applied to Happiness…? Let´s face it – there is not. Understand that every definition is the derivative of knowledge, and whatever we know is outmoded and conditioned.
The known is constant boundary whereas the unknown is blissfully boundless. Our actual perception fails to rightly connect with “the unknown” – it´s like trying to measure the ocean with a cup of tea…not so wise…isn´t it? And yet that´s what we and our science invariably endeavour…
You come to realize more and more that our factual and perceptual instruments to measure The Unknown are totally ineffective…If you use your cup to drink tea it´s all fine, but the moment we try to empty the ocean with it, transforming the cup into The Only Instrument of knowledge, we obviously have a serious problem.
It can be fun maybe to try to empty the ocean with a cup – after all,
it gives many something to do – but if you go on trying ” to reach this state of happiness” through definitions, through purposely inquiring helped by your intellect – your cup of tea -, even in 10 lifetimes you will be still searching in vain…
Very few are willing to admit this – out tools to understand Life or Happiness, are preposterously inadequate. We are caught in a paradoxical hopelessness: if our knowledge and its factual and perceptual instruments are pure vanity, do we then have any ability to fathom anything at all?…
This hopelessness is a real blow for the ego…I have faced it…it is utterly disconcerting. Many cannot take it, cause who would they be if it shows that whatever they consciously believed in and struggled for shows to be nothing but futility…?
In this state of realizing the vanity of whatever “conscious strife” something happens within…You realize your impuissance, and let everything crumble. Realizing your powerlessness means “to let go”…This can cause tremendous pain, or not…It is all depending of how “heavily armed” your ego is…your so-called inner authority.
Having faced this hopelessness you begin to be quiet inside of you – there is nothing to do…You start maybe realizing that ” thy will be done” are not mere words…You begin to quietly and efficiently observe you egotic “emptiness”. You understand that life or happiness is not about being either passive ar active. All concepts begin to dissipate. Neither action or inaction. Neither thought or emotion. Neither ebb nor flow…No pain, no loneliness.
But!
You´ll also realize that Life is also a sum of all these things too. Both the presence and the absence of everything there is…Immediate comprehending this is also part of the deal…
Accordingly, Happiness is not freedom “from something”…Happiness embraces all there is, and yet it has no thought, it has no mind…
It is nothing to reach. as it is there all the time…
http://julienmatei.com/2012/10/09/happiness-is-the-real-you/
Empty your cup
2012/09/19 Leave a comment
A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. “It’s overfull! No more will go in!” the professor blurted. “You are like this cup,” the master replied, “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.”
What is living – a dialogue between me and Richard
2012/09/18 20 Comments
In my opinion this is one of the most essential posts I have written. Reading this carefully can bring a major change in your perception.
Richard:
What I’ve learned from the Buddhists and which is really hard to understand: there is no I or me. So the question of yours might be more precise if we say “Living is finding out WHAT YOU ARE”. One of the milestone steps towards this is to get rid of all conventional definitions. I know, this seems so be contradictory and it surely is sometimes. But that’s also a part which has to be learned. You got to skip all the sometimes so hardly learned patterns. You got to skip all thoughts about the past and the future. You got to skip the gossip in your mind. You got to skip the judge and the lawyer in your mind.
My answer:
You say:
“One of the milestone steps towards this is to get rid of all conventional definitions.”
Indeed, perfectly put.
Now, the huge problem with names, conventions and definitions is that they are basically the outcome of Fear. Ego – which is fear – loathes the unknown, hence it tries perpetually to ensure its safety through creating symbols for its insecurity – names, definitions, tradition, “knowledge”. It cannot function outside Habit. Habit is obsessively reinforcing repetition, it is fear of looking outside the pattern. Ego can never be free as its intrinsic symptomatic nature is conditioning and resistance to Life.
To put it bluntly, ego hates – and struggles constantly against Life…
It is contradictory to try to rid ourselves of conventional definitions cause – WHO ARE WE WITHOUT THESE PREVALENT DEFINITIONS AND PATTERNS? For most humans, this is the most nightmarish undertaking namely ” to skip all the sometimes so hardly learned patterns”.
“If I skip thought, pattern, currently accepted methods and procedures WHO, OR WHAT AM I THEN…?
I have nothing left, all my “serious” pursuits show to be naught…” This – for sure – is the most fearful challenge for most humans. This process equals death in most people´s mind – ego confronting its own nothingness.
Fearing death is but a projection based on apprehension of losing this futile identity build on separation and fear.
Ego is Absence. Ego tries desperately to protect itself – its nothingness – through constant struggle, harsh dominion, aggressiveness, ubiquitous conflict, competing and punishing all “other” egos. What else can it create other than pain and suffering?…
What is most preposterous and contradictory is that Ego hates Joy. And that because true joy is participation – feeling always inferior, it refuses to participate, seeking invariably supremacy, trying vainly to be “special”. The same goes for real Passion – passion makes the ego utterly fearful of its own dissolution.
So obviously, when you skip all these ego´s “prerogatives” what remains after all that is an ineffably simple joy for living. No fears, no sorrows.
You see Richard, THIS IS THE HARDEST PART: EGO HAS TO CONSENT TO ITS OWN DEATH!!
Letting go of ego, you are free to meet the greatest and most grandiose being – THE REAL YOU…
How on earth can one bring to life this insight so people can realize this?…
http://julienmatei.com/2012/09/17/what-is-living-a-comment/
http://deepthinkings.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/what-is-real-living/
A dialogue with Paul
2012/08/23 3 Comments
Me:
What is “tomorrow”?…
Does Tomorrow exist, is Tomorrow a real entity?… Who “exists” and who “dies”…? Who wants to continue…?
What is Knowledge…? What is it to learn that you don´t already know…? Wouldn´t it be better if you tried to un-know, yes, to un-learn…?
Again…who lives and who dies…?
You say:
“Can humans even understand death? At least, before it occurs?”
If you want to understand what death is about, – or what LIFE is about – you have to have the courage to “die” now…to empty yourself wholly, completely; to let go of everything – which is not easy – to realize that you neither can “live” or “die”, that Life – that is, You – in the deepest sense, never dies.
Yes, you are this imperishable Life. Ultimately it is not about me uttering this, you have to come to the point of feeling this Immediate Truth.
Paul:
This sounds very Buddhist, which is NOT a bad thing. I am intrigued by your words, and would like to further this discussion. How? That is my big question. I feel like I have the answer inside of me already, but how do I access it? How do I realize Truth? And how do I know if I am right? Or furthermore how do I think not of right versus wrong but only recognize what Is?
I am very inexperienced when it comes to spirituality and even philosophy. Guidance please?
One point I have a lot of trouble with is that of knowing – I value education very highly and I am unsure of what unlearning everything really means. Perhaps you could enlighten me? Or at least give me a better idea.
Me:
What I say probably sounds like many different things…What if we just ceased to label things, at least in this our dialogue…?
It is not so much the question about ” How”, it is more about ” Why”.
When Why is clearly stated, the How just comes by itself.
It is not “you” realizing the truth,… Truth “realizes” you, truth has nothing to do with “right” or “wrong”…What is “right” or “wrong” at the end of the day…? Again, stop labeling and listen…
When you listen, you allow the answer inside you to unfold itself. So linger and listen… you will recognize it beyond doubt…it is your very breath, even nearer…
Experience has nothing to do with ” Knowledge”. It is good that you are inexperienced. Please remain that way
You need no guidance…you are already guided. Imagine that these words might have been uttered by you through me.
What is education at the end of the day? I am not playing with words pondering on this.
“Unlearning” is dropping all notions about this or that…Not easy though…When all ideas are recognized as mere ideas, what is beyond ideas can manifest itself.
I am sure,
that you can take what I say, although you might not be “used” to this way of expressing things.
A surreal dialogue
2012/07/12 4 Comments
This dialogue is between Richard and me regarding this post of mine:
“No matter how long time a monkey spends in a Zen library calling herself a Buddhist, she will still come out as a monkey.”
He: Isn’t a monkey an admirable creature?
Me: Yes, as long as she doesn´t try to be a donkey-professor 
He: Well, this is again only a thing of your personal perception.
I try heavily to find words which do not judge or condemn your statements here, because that doesn’t lead to anything. I would have used words like “snobbish, condescending, etc.”
The easiest way would be to ask questions instead. Let’s give it a try:
1. Why is “your” monkey female?
2. Why do you mix up monkeys and donkeys?
3. Is a professor something admirable?
Me:
1. A monkey can be male too, but the conduct can be similar So, as long as a monkey assumes her being a monkey is all fine. The problem arises when the monkey claims or tries to be an egoless emancipated Buddhist and at the same time steal your bananas.
2. I like the riming…Just the first letter is different…
3. No, most of the professors aren´t.
4. I love donkeys, but when a donkey is trying to become a race horse,
he is no longer a reliable animal The are donkeys too who feign to be Buddhist.
5. Most important: DON´T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY !
not yourself either – for that matter.
Otherwise we tend to become too enlightened…
Do not believe in anything
2012/06/26 2 Comments
I don´t know whether this really was said by Buddha, but nevertheless it does correspond to my level of understanding I have aquired up to this point in Life:
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that everything agrees with reason and is conductive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
—Buddha
