Uncovering Buddha’s 8th Fold
- What Is Consciousness?: Consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence; it is going beyond the mind.
- Consciousness in itself is nothing. One is always conscious about something; so the “about” is important.
- Awareness means that the total mind has become aware. Now the old mind is not there, but there is the quality of being conscious. Awareness has become the totality; the mind itself is now part of the awareness.
- Witnessing is a relationship between subject and object. Awareness is absolutely devoid of any subjectivity or objectivity.
- Effect On The Breath: Breathing and thinking are deeply connected, as if they are two poles of one thing.
- Breath Is Life Itself
- Your breath is a bridge between you and your body. Constantly, breath is bridging you to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body. Not only is the breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body is just the universe which has come to you, which is nearer to you.
- Breath is literally the bridge connecting all manifestation, our being and our existence.
- Subject and Object Both Together: Doubt can know the object, trust can know the subject; and intelligence is when both pour their information into one pool and truth is known in both its aspects, as inner, as outer.
- In yoga the effort is to become conscious of both the object and the source. The consciousness becomes double arrowed. You must be aware of the object, and you must be simultaneously aware of the subject.
- Yoga means a total science of man. It is not simply religion. It is the total science of man, the total transcendence of all the parts. And when you transcend parts, you become whole.
- Occupation is An Escape: Don’t assume that by living in the world you are not an escapist. One can escape from reality, one can also escape into reality.
- When one is aware of the present and self-alert it is escaping into reality, not from reality.
- Don’t try to escape in any way from anything – work or family.
- Go on working as you are working. Fix a time for meditation, and then the remaining time is for work; work and meditate.
- Meditation is not escaping from life: it is escaping into life. Mind is escaping from life, desire is escaping from life.
- Brain And Double Arrow Consciousness (DAC): Let your awareness be double-arrowed: one arrow conscious of the act of walking, another arrow going deep inside and aware of the walker.
- We have not known ourselves, we have known only objects and things.
- There is the brain which comes to every life, new, fresh; it is part of the body. There is the mind which is as eternal as life.
- Function of the brain is coordination and replication.
- The first transformation is a double-arrowed awareness, remembering yourself at the very moment that there is something else to be conscious of.
- Buddha’s 8th Fold Right Meditation: RM has got nothing to do with specific time, place or sitting in a corner.
- Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that’s all.
- Emptiness is the unknown. When you are really empty the unknown has descended upon you. It is not that first you become empty and then the unknown enters.
- Utterly Empty and Yet Utterly Full
- Then one lives as an emptiness, utterly empty and yet utterly full.
- RM persuades you towards the formless – how not to be in the form.
