Magdalenbrother
December 27th 2004, 03:54 AM
No, Virginia, Matt 18,9 is not Matt 6,5-8: "When thou prayest...enter into thy closet...pray thy father which is in secret...use not vain repetitions (as the heathen do!), the usual "Christian prayer" reference quote. According to a recent Billy Graham poll, Matt 18,9 is in fact one of the LEREBIVs (Least Read Biblical Verses). It says: "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee...You probably know what precedes it even if you probably are one of those Christians who never meditate upon this saying of Jesus' seriously: "Cut off thine hand or thy foot..."
While there have always been quite a number of people willing to become eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of God, there is a singular dearth of believers, both past and present, willing to become halt, maimed or one-eyed...
It's a pity that people don't try to make sense of these verses because in my opinion they contain all the great truths you need to know if you are to meditate the right way. There is no need to buy any books from some Japanese or Cambodian wise man: it's already here, in this old book you thought was "just a useless heap of Judeo-Christian propaganda" (I'm speaking for the average disappointed Westerner in search of "enlightenment").
Let us start with the eye. The text says: "If thine eye offend thee..." If you meditate and have read the exotic literature about it, chances are that whenever you meditate, your (inner) "eye" starts playing tricks with you. How? What happens is this: being accustomed to see things out there, when we close our eyes to meditate, we usually continue to use the same habit/reflex, but with our mind as the object of contemplation. IOW, we try to stand at a distance and start "watching the thinker". Most meditation books I have read just teach that: "observe your mind", "disidentify yourself from your thinking", etc.
People who teach such things are either swindlers or enlightened people who have ben fooled by the formulas used by other people who are less enlightened. This happens very often when disciples gather around someone who has awakened to the Light within. "Tell me how to get it", they say. The poor chap, who has had his peak experience quite spontaneously, then has to resort to the religious literature to explain "how to do it" and in the process of making it accessible to other people he forgets how he got it in the first place. Or he may just not be very good at articulating his own experience...
Now the truth is that there is nobody who observes the thinking. If you think you are watching the thinker, then know that the entity who is watching is part and parcel of the thinking machinery: you can't jump out of your own mind!!! The observer is the observed. Nobody is in control. In Buddhist terms, I could call this truth: "anatta", no-ego. There is no permanent, "superior" entity who could observe or control the mind. The mind works completely on its own. Thinking just happens. This spontaneous, mechanical happening is what you call "I". But this not a person as we understand it. It's just a mechanical process. (The consequences are enormous and many but let me just point out one here: if there is no "I", our actions are all devoid of will. Only a real self has will. We may have the illusion that we are making efforts and exercising our minds as free, independent beings, but in fact we are just being moved by past patterns. There isn't a single atom of real will-power in all our striving. )
Now listen to what the Gospel says: If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. In fact there is no "if", our mental eye always "offends" us. This is the age-old game of the mind: splitting into subject and object. Hence the perpetual conflicts, the efforts to control, etc. As soon as you realize that there is indeed no observer inside but just mind in movement projecting a false subject/object film, the "offending eye" is "plucked out" quite effortlessly and your state of mind, depending on the depth of your realization, undergoes an important qualitative transformation, which is the beginning of true meditation, a meditation in which there is no meditator.
Note that only one eye is plucked out, the remaining eye symbolizing self-less awareness. Interestingly, the maimed state stands for the whole mind, the mind which has become whole, whereas the normal state is the fragmented state of duality and conflict.
The Gospel also teaches us to cut off our hand. For me, the hand symbolizes our desire to work on things, to improve or change them. While it is certainly possible to transform the material world outside us by exerting our physical and mental strength, the bad news is that we have no muscles inside our spirit which could help us to refashion our inner being. Unfortunately, because we are so used to influence the outside world through our efforts, when we enter a spiritual path we carry on the old routine. The truth is: we cannot change our minds through effort.
In fact, there is no need to do anything about our mind.
This is an awfully neglected truth: most people, even the Buddhists, think that there is something awfully wrong with their minds and because they are convinced that something is wrong with themselves, they try to improve it. The good (and maybe incredible news) is that our minds are fundamentally OKAY, thank God !!! Whatever happens in our minds is exactly what we need. If there is total awareness of what happens from moment to moment, our Being will unfold naturally. But if we meditate with an aggressive spirit ("I'm going to dispel the illusions of my mind and become a Buddha"), we will never make any progress. Never. So let us cut off our industrious, buzy, grasping, discontented hand and keep the quiet, receptive, grateful hand. Let us receive ourselves from moment to moment as a divine gift.
What happens when one thinks that one is in deep trouble and must therefore change is that one gets caught in psychological time (which is different from clock time): there is my perceived miserable state in the present on the one hand and the imagined (illusory) state of liberation in the future on the other. All these perceptions and imaginations are based on prejudice and on past knowledge, obviously. This alluring future, which is totally illusory, sets us running towards our goal. Running towards a goal, specially a lofty one like Enlightenment, is one of our favorite ego-ic games.
This running brings me to the third thing that we need to cut off according to the Gospel: we need to cut off our foot. The foot that helps us to travel in illusory, psychological time. This foot must be discarded and the remaining foot must be firmly grounded in the present moment. In the NOW.
Be attentive: all the plucking out and cutting off and casting away has to happen naturally. This means that we must start with all the wrong things. It is no use trying to remain grounded in the Now. What is useful is to become more and more aware that one is NOT grounded in the living Now but perpetually living in psychological time. Awareness of that which is false brings naturally that which is real and true.
Did Jesus really have all these things in mind when he uttered his injunctions?
Does it matter? :sigh:
While there have always been quite a number of people willing to become eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of God, there is a singular dearth of believers, both past and present, willing to become halt, maimed or one-eyed...
It's a pity that people don't try to make sense of these verses because in my opinion they contain all the great truths you need to know if you are to meditate the right way. There is no need to buy any books from some Japanese or Cambodian wise man: it's already here, in this old book you thought was "just a useless heap of Judeo-Christian propaganda" (I'm speaking for the average disappointed Westerner in search of "enlightenment").
Let us start with the eye. The text says: "If thine eye offend thee..." If you meditate and have read the exotic literature about it, chances are that whenever you meditate, your (inner) "eye" starts playing tricks with you. How? What happens is this: being accustomed to see things out there, when we close our eyes to meditate, we usually continue to use the same habit/reflex, but with our mind as the object of contemplation. IOW, we try to stand at a distance and start "watching the thinker". Most meditation books I have read just teach that: "observe your mind", "disidentify yourself from your thinking", etc.
People who teach such things are either swindlers or enlightened people who have ben fooled by the formulas used by other people who are less enlightened. This happens very often when disciples gather around someone who has awakened to the Light within. "Tell me how to get it", they say. The poor chap, who has had his peak experience quite spontaneously, then has to resort to the religious literature to explain "how to do it" and in the process of making it accessible to other people he forgets how he got it in the first place. Or he may just not be very good at articulating his own experience...
Now the truth is that there is nobody who observes the thinking. If you think you are watching the thinker, then know that the entity who is watching is part and parcel of the thinking machinery: you can't jump out of your own mind!!! The observer is the observed. Nobody is in control. In Buddhist terms, I could call this truth: "anatta", no-ego. There is no permanent, "superior" entity who could observe or control the mind. The mind works completely on its own. Thinking just happens. This spontaneous, mechanical happening is what you call "I". But this not a person as we understand it. It's just a mechanical process. (The consequences are enormous and many but let me just point out one here: if there is no "I", our actions are all devoid of will. Only a real self has will. We may have the illusion that we are making efforts and exercising our minds as free, independent beings, but in fact we are just being moved by past patterns. There isn't a single atom of real will-power in all our striving. )
Now listen to what the Gospel says: If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. In fact there is no "if", our mental eye always "offends" us. This is the age-old game of the mind: splitting into subject and object. Hence the perpetual conflicts, the efforts to control, etc. As soon as you realize that there is indeed no observer inside but just mind in movement projecting a false subject/object film, the "offending eye" is "plucked out" quite effortlessly and your state of mind, depending on the depth of your realization, undergoes an important qualitative transformation, which is the beginning of true meditation, a meditation in which there is no meditator.
Note that only one eye is plucked out, the remaining eye symbolizing self-less awareness. Interestingly, the maimed state stands for the whole mind, the mind which has become whole, whereas the normal state is the fragmented state of duality and conflict.
The Gospel also teaches us to cut off our hand. For me, the hand symbolizes our desire to work on things, to improve or change them. While it is certainly possible to transform the material world outside us by exerting our physical and mental strength, the bad news is that we have no muscles inside our spirit which could help us to refashion our inner being. Unfortunately, because we are so used to influence the outside world through our efforts, when we enter a spiritual path we carry on the old routine. The truth is: we cannot change our minds through effort.
In fact, there is no need to do anything about our mind.
This is an awfully neglected truth: most people, even the Buddhists, think that there is something awfully wrong with their minds and because they are convinced that something is wrong with themselves, they try to improve it. The good (and maybe incredible news) is that our minds are fundamentally OKAY, thank God !!! Whatever happens in our minds is exactly what we need. If there is total awareness of what happens from moment to moment, our Being will unfold naturally. But if we meditate with an aggressive spirit ("I'm going to dispel the illusions of my mind and become a Buddha"), we will never make any progress. Never. So let us cut off our industrious, buzy, grasping, discontented hand and keep the quiet, receptive, grateful hand. Let us receive ourselves from moment to moment as a divine gift.
What happens when one thinks that one is in deep trouble and must therefore change is that one gets caught in psychological time (which is different from clock time): there is my perceived miserable state in the present on the one hand and the imagined (illusory) state of liberation in the future on the other. All these perceptions and imaginations are based on prejudice and on past knowledge, obviously. This alluring future, which is totally illusory, sets us running towards our goal. Running towards a goal, specially a lofty one like Enlightenment, is one of our favorite ego-ic games.
This running brings me to the third thing that we need to cut off according to the Gospel: we need to cut off our foot. The foot that helps us to travel in illusory, psychological time. This foot must be discarded and the remaining foot must be firmly grounded in the present moment. In the NOW.
Be attentive: all the plucking out and cutting off and casting away has to happen naturally. This means that we must start with all the wrong things. It is no use trying to remain grounded in the Now. What is useful is to become more and more aware that one is NOT grounded in the living Now but perpetually living in psychological time. Awareness of that which is false brings naturally that which is real and true.
Did Jesus really have all these things in mind when he uttered his injunctions?
Does it matter? :sigh: