part(ner

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As we return to our senses, we gradually discover our sensory perceptions to be simply our part of a vast interpenetrating webwork of perceptions and sensations borne by countless other bodies – supported, that is, not just by ourselves, but by icy streams tumbling down graphic slopes, by owl wings and lichens, and by the unseen, imperturbable wind, a profoundly carnal field, as this very dimension of smells and tastes and chirping rhythms warmed by the sun and shivering with seeds.

It is, indeed, nothing other than the biosphere – the matrix of earthly life in which we ourselves are embedded. The biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body – by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he, or she, experiences.


—Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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questions

  

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As we return to our senses, we gradually discover our sensory perceptions to be simply our part of a vast interpenetrating webwork of perceptions and sensations borne by countless other bodies. Supported, that is, not just by ourselves, but by icy streams tumbling down graphic slopes, by owl wings and lichens, and by the unseen, imperturbable wind, a profoundly carnal field, as this very dimension of smells and tastes and chirping rhythms warmed by the sun and shivering with seeds. 

It is, indeed, nothing other than the biosphere – the matrix of earthly life in which we ourselves are embedded, the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body – by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he, or she, experiences.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty

 

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Change your ways of feeling and thinking, take stock of them and examine them closely. You are in bondage by inadvertence. Attention liberates. You are taking so many things for granted. 

Begin to question. The most obvious things are the most doubtful. Ask yourself such questions as: 

Was I really born?

Am I really so-and-so?

How do I know that I exist?

Who are my parents?

Have they created me, or have I created them?

Must I believe all I am told about myself?

Who am I, anyhow?

You have put so much energy into building a prison for yourself. Now spend as much on demolishing it. In fact, demolition is easy, for the false dissolves when it is discovered.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

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The body is our general medium for having a world. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty

    

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What we call the body is not feet or shins,
The body, likewise, is not thighs or loins.
It’s not the belly nor indeed the back,
And from the chest and arms the body is not formed.

The body is not ribs or hands,
Armpits, shoulders, bowels, or entrails;
It is not the head or throat:
From none of these is “body” constituted.

If “body,” step by step,
Pervades and spreads itself throughout its members,
Its parts indeed are present in the parts,
But where does the “body,” in itself, abide?

If “body,” single and entire,
Is present in the hand and other members,
However many parts there are, the hand and all the rest,
You’ll find an equal quantity of “bodies.”

If “body” is not outside or within its parts,
How is it, then, residing in its members?
And since it has no basis other than its parts,
How can it be said to be at all?

Thus there is no “body” in the limbs,
But from illusion does the idea spring,
To be affixed to a specific shape—
Just as when a scarecrow is mistaken for a man.

As long as the conditions are assembled,
A body will appear and seem to be a man.
As long as all the parts are likewise present,
It’s there that we will see a body.

Likewise, since it is a group of fingers,
The hand itself is not a single entity.
And so it is with fingers, made of joints—
And joints themselves consist of many parts.

These parts themselves will break down into atoms,
And atoms will divide according to direction.
These fragments, too, will also fall to nothing.
Thus atoms are like empty space—
they have no real existence.

All form, therefore, is like a dream,
And who will be attached to it, who thus investigates!
The body, in this way, has no existence;
What is male, therefore, and what is female!


—Shantideva
The Way of the Bodhisattva

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The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Every vestige of your imaginative self must first die, then the universe is your own, it becomes your body and your expression. Nothing can truly affect you, you are free beyond description. 

—Nisargadatta Maharaj

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Listen for presences inside poems, let them take you where they will

Follow these private hints and never leave the premises

—Rumi

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The body is our general medium for having a world. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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Do you know who God is?

God is not Vishnu, Shiva or Brahma; not the wind, the sun or the moon; not the brahmana or the king, nor I nor you; not Lakshmi nor the mind (intellect). God is without form and undivided; that splendor (devanam) which is not made and which has neither beginning nor end is known as God (Deva) or Lord Shiva which is Pure Consciousness.

I asked the Lord: Pray tell me how this world is transmuted into Pure Consciousness and also how that Pure Consciousness appears as the jiva and other things. 

The Lord continued: Indeed only that cid-akasha (the Infinite Space of Consciousness), which alone exists even after the cosmic dissolution, exists even now, utterly devoid of objectivity.

Even as the duality experienced in dream is illusory, the duality implied in the creation of the world is illusory. 

Even as the objects seem to exist and function in the inner world of Consciousness in a Dream, objects seem to exist and function in the outer world of Consciousness during the Wakeful state. 

Nothing really happens in both these states.

Even as Consciousness alone is the Reality in the Dream state, Consciousness alone is the Substance in the Wakeful state too. 

That is the Lord, 

That is the Supreme Truth, 

That You Are, 

That I Am and

That is All.

—Swami Venkatesananda

Vasistha's Yoga, exerpts

know-the-self

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