The Meaning of No Meaning

[deci belle]

I once showed someone a simple hand scrawled diagram that changes from a pentagram into a pyramid before your eyes, and his only reply was “What does it mean?”

 

I knew at that moment that there is no elaborating this condition.

 

*****************************************************************************

Someone wrote via PM:

I was reading one of your recent blog posts and I am interested to get an elaboration on the following passage:

"Reality itself has no meaning. It never has and it never will. It just is. So be it. Awaken to it now as is, no different than your own everyday mind without making arrangements beforehand."

 

******************************************************************************

Reality has no meaning, it just is as it is. Seeking meaning in things (body, mind, society, events— the four empty names) is just the perpetual result of mental agitation of the intellectual apparatus.

 

Seeking anything is simply over-stepping upright immediate acceptance and selfless response to reality as is. By virtue of this psychological momentum, habit-energy provides an arbitrary construct based on the personality’s endless quest to seek ascendancy over the fundamental reality of causeless unity.

 

It is just evidence of self-servility habituated to death-seeking energy constituting karmic bondage. Living sane energy is open awareness no different than your own mind. That which is self-evident is immediately known without discriminatory awareness habitually seeking reasons for meaning.

 

Knowing the taste and temperature of water as you drink it is experience beyond the ken of meaning. Further removed is speculative processes rationalizing (comparing) data. Eschewing habitual intellectualism until it ceases to be a psychologically compulsive activity is the basis of self-refinement.

 

Effective self-refinement transcending rote moral imperatives, renunciatory precepts and dogmatic sectarianism is a matter of working with essence directly without bothering with the symptoms of the disease— which is compulsive psychological behavior based on the mental patterns learned and inherited by the being that is going to die.

 

Perpetual refinement of enlightening being is just dealing with what is, based on presence in terms of the situation— therefore, one gradually stops following ramifications based on circumstantial temporalities internally and externally because one can see (acting or not) independently of one’s internal and external milieu of habit energies.

 

Once the habit is forgotten, there is no compulsion to act in accordance with it. In the interim, the ancient admonition that excessive insight destroys potential says the same thing: to wit, fixation on sense blinds one to essence.

 

What I define as meaning is a description relative to circumstantial bias.

 

Bias lodges in extremity whereby one looses the balance of light and dark, yin and yang, hard and soft, firmness and flexibility, sense and essence, self and other. The subtle operation which partakes of the supreme vehicle founded in the stability of Complete Reality, Suchness, by enlightening being is simply dealing with what is, as is, presently.

 

Reality is neither emptiness nor formality; so what can be grasped? When one sees sameness in the midst of difference, there is no determining where the self begins, therefore there is no determination based on the existence of the self-made personality’s historicity in terms of any present situational responsibility. Response is precise in terms of the situation’s potential independent of emotional or personality issues.

 

The subtle consistency of reality isn’t based on anything beyond an inherent incipience with respect to the present situation itself in terms of potential, the very root of sameness within difference which is what seeing reality is.

 

Resting in presence without bias or inclination is the authentic foundation of the nondoing of enlightening being. Resting in the highest good is activation of one’s unborn Mind without dwelling on its relative contents.

 

The meaning of subtle observation is knowledge not devolving into ramifications. Consciously aware is the root, not following the branches is resting in the highest good.

 

The Unborn never having begun, what therefore would be the point of making arrangements beforehand? Knowledge is already immediate.

 

Meaning is how we construe arrangements in terms of before and after, self and other. Whether or not others make arrangements, just the same, there it is. Seeing this is being, based on nonbeing. Here, spirit is untrammeled, already alight. Why would anyone go on to dredge up stultified causes of mental agitation in order to follow ramifications based on karmic awareness?

 

Who awaits? Arrival is meeting as it is. Everything is apparent; there is nothing left. Even the heart of the Mystery of Mysteries amounts to open awareness without traces. Stroking woven hairs, or even braiding them myself to suit circumstances, I do not avoid impurity nor do I take it up unknowingly— only adapting intimately according to the time and the situation, not the person.

 

Neither still nor moving, though conditions are the product of circumstance, what can I say other than I don’t know anything beyond the fact that there is nothing to know in terms of reality— and the particular is only an energy-sucking trap. If you know that, you can come and go at will without seeking outcomes.

 

Reality itself has no meaning; knowledge has no absolute point of reference other than nonbeing. Seeing nonbeing, the personality has no absolute reference beyond being. So be it. Awake. Act or no, there is no reason for motivation in terms of the personality.

 

Why? Because to do so knowingly is impersonal adaption, which Don Juan Matus calls controlled folly. Because those who do not see ignorant folly in doing so (following circumstances based on the perspective of personality) do so unknowingly (considering the person an existential absolute); delusion is furthermore forgetting one’s own effective ignorance as the basis of karmic bondage in endless creative cycles.

 

There is no meaning. Wonderfully aware, immediately present, just this is it.

 

Meaning is simply a diversion for those who imagine themselves habituated to doing; that is, those whose habitual psychologies go along with the taxing intricacies identifying with the doing of the mechanics of having knowledge do not realize their needless and wasteful bondage to conditionally incremental patterns that can be seen through at once by virtue of instantaneous real knowledge, which is your own everyday mind without the psychological overlay of multifarious momentums driving the horse-heads and mind-monkeys of personal identities throughout time.

 

This is energy that instantly transfers to the development of enlightening qualities once it is freed up by one’s awakening to real knowledge.

 

There is nothing wrong with dealing with intricacies unless you don’t know better. Not knowing better is habituation to psychological patterns perpetually locking away the potential to fuel the natural development of enlightening qualities that in no way hinder skillful manipulation of mechanistic properties pertaining to psychological and physical arts and disciplines (not to mention everyday ordinary situations).

 

Not that one who knows better would ever find it necessary to entertain such manipulative interference even to meet the requirements of temporary circumstance; here, the overarching and subtle issue is of one’s habituation to patterns of adaption to circumstantial requirements that, in fact, interfere with the development and evolution of the sanity one is born with.

 

The nature of creation is such that what amounts to gradual practice is either trapping or freeing energy in the course of one’s lifetime. Trapping energy is personally compiling karmic debts of endless cycles of birth and death, both of which do not exist in reality— yet bondage to delusional existence is your own mind. Therefore ignorance of Complete Reality is bondage to karmic illusion.

 

Freeing energy is freeing potential from the matrix of karmic evolution grain by grain by virtue of everyday ordinary situations whereby one gathers the medicines of the elixir of immortality. Unborn Mind alone is real, it is one’s true identity.

 

Birth and death are unreal because Mind is unborn. Awakening to reality, one ceases following relative perspectives in the midst of phenomena while not denying characteristics comprising the situational continuum.

 

Unfortunately, intellectualists fear that anything that threatens their carefully cultivated and clinging relationship with a mechanical understanding of meaning will cause them to somehow miss out on something, as yet un-categorized within their acquisitive conceptual inventories of what passes muster as manipulable knowledge.

 

The fact that nonpsychological awareness is un-categorizable is totally lost on them, it seems. Rationalists cannot grasp the fact that it is impossible to utilize the rational aspect of the human mentality to acknowledge the un-categorizable function and capacity of the inherent mind of tao.

 

Relying on conceptual knowledge, speculative pastimes are all that recreational philosophers can compound daily. It is extremely pathetic and wasteful for people to carry on as if they were immortal when they are themselves unable to recognize their own immortal nature.

 

Real Knowledge is absolute and neither applies nor is accessible to personalistic psychological capacities. Intellectualists are perennially limited by an inability to assess reality in terms of an habituation to reason and the fear of venturing beyond reasoning’s confines which are by definition strictly relative to a personalistic interpretation.

 

The boon of accessing Real Knowledge is o b j e c t i v i t y , in terms of the real’s application within delusional existence. Dogen says that the hallmark of illumined qualities is the grounded consciousness of one’s function being “deluded within delusion”, which has no place in the pastime or lexicon of recreational philosophical discussion.

 

Why? Because there are people dabbling recreationally within “realization upon realization” without ever experiencing the basis of the economy of its application (much less its power), who can never see that the reality of noumenon cannot be played with as a thing out there. Reality has no wiggle-room because it is an undifferentiated unity-field comprised of one’s own mind-ground in terms of creation itself. It is what it is.

 

Buddhas don’t discuss interpretations of reasoning out of habit or for pleasure. Why? Because relativity is not the basis of anything but suffering and endless rounds of birth and death. Buddhas don’t discuss interpretations of nonpsychological awareness either— not only because there are no characteristics to discuss, but because there are no words to discuss it.

 

It is a matter of seeing it for oneself. The authentic transmission outside of doctrine (meaning) has its application and that is the reason for teachers in the first place. Wordless essence is one’s own mind already, therefore in terms of mind, there is nothing to teach.

 

"See essence on your own, then seek a teacher.”

 

The real dance is a swirling churning sea of endlessly chaotic interplay; impersonal whitecaps spray at leisure, yet froth at the cusp and command of the leaden abyss, even while coolly equivocal and randomly indifferent clouds surpassing the vaulting horizon briskly sail aloft, aimlessly and ephemerally direct.

 

Or perhaps there is an approachment. A point of light, glimmering, an infinitesimally jeweled tai-chi hovering silently in the center of cosmic space.

 

Seeing the grains of glowing liquid pearl amidst even brighter black points defining a living vortex within an empty vessel—a pot pairing water and fire eternally traversing the dim primal void, there is no one knowing the singularity of arising and subsumption in reality. Why? Because Primal Unity being selfless, there is no one, whose living potential essence, the complete and pure miraculous impersonal awareness, ever witnesses itself with a knowledge of self. Knowledge has no such knowledge: there is no known self. The unknown self has no knowledge. It is knowledge.

 

This is entry into the inconceivability of mysteries.

 

Abiding within mystery is expressing unique power which does not add to or take away from anything because inherent sameness is the mind-ground of inconceivably aware essential nature.

 

This is not dwelling in a relative socialistic “hope and change” sameness and its culture of emotionalism designed to hopefully screen any visage and exhibition of the exemplary (not a value-judgement) from its midst in order to create and maintain a purity of any sort, much less one of mediocrity (that might threaten the purveyors and the cultivated beneficiaries of this social engineering). And for what purpose, one might wonder, this purity…

 

Revelations of the basis of Complete Reality are for those whose capacity is equal to the inconceivable celestial mechanism in terms of a unified (interchangeable with “selfless”) subtle adaption by virtue of the inherent potential (unity) comprising everyday ordinary situations.

 

There is no meaning in terms of what never has and what never will. The essence of creation is selfless aware potential energy. Awareness is itself uncreated~ and there is no other awareness: it’s your nature. If one can see this, one’s own function in terms of potential in the mist of creation is enlightening being by virtue of the nature of awareness itself.

 

Seeing the light changes nothing, starts or ends nothing, and reveals nothing other than one’s own seeing. One’s Dharma-eye is the world inseparable from the perspective of the true identity of mind. Therefore enlightenment and delusion look the same because they are the same in reality. But for those who do not see reality, its sameness has no power.

 

Acting or not, in accord with the timing of reality, is partaking of the Supreme Vehicle, in terms of Suchness, by virtue of one’s awakened Dharma Eye. The power of seeing is in its selfless perspective. Activating the open sincerity of the objectless intent of the spiritual potential of the being that is going to die is what transcends karmic evolution.

 

If you see reality with karmic vision, you are bound to creative cycles. If you see reality with the Dharma-eye, you function freely within karmic cycles as a partner of creation.

 

Why is there no meaning in terms of what never has and what never will? Because unity (selflessness) is all-at-once in the midst of the gradual. It is possible (and real) to treat absolute and temporal as the same breath. In transforming endless cycles, the result of this fact and this perspective is perpetual incipience. Of course one is not going along with creation. Why? There is never anything left. Nothing ever happens, ultimately. Presence is simply what your own unified free potential within the matrix of karmic evolution is. This is how sages end up doing nothing. There is no other way to describe it in words.

 

The multifarious strangenesses that permutate and permeate conditions are not reflections of anything~ they just are as they are. Don’t react. They are all ultimately meaningless. It’s no different than formal meditation in this regard: just note the characteristics of phenomena without loosing yourself in the present continuum. It will all amount to nothing, unless of course you are seduced into going along because you are afraid you will miss out on something.

 

This is not to say that a purity of insularity is effective practice. Not at all! It is imperative to find out what happens (in terms of subtle practice) because existential reality is already karmic— you have to deal with it, but getting involved in influencing outcomes is bondage, not freedom. Simply maintaining equilibrium in the course of affairs is the foundation of effective response.

 

If you are free now, what else would you add in the end? If you rest under that huge and useless tree in the homeland of nothing whatsoever now, what never has nor ever will is just the way it is, and you know it.

 

Few are those who know this and can appreciate it. Fewer still can carry it out effectively.

 

Without a doubt, the sages, saviors, buddhas, wizards and adepts of authentic transmission of Complete Reality beyond any sectarian planetary teaching or tradition are none other than people.

 

Neither possessing nor intending based on the personality, experience leaves no traces because tracelessness is your nature; open and sincere, sensitive and effective, serene and unperturbable: completely awake.

 

This is the meaning of no meaning: above or below, the wonder has no reason being. And that which is beyond Tao~ tao, itself source of the selfless homeland of nothing whatsoever? What of that?

 

Rest assured in sublime insignificance…

[Brian]

Welcome back, deci.

[doc benway]

No time to read so much just now but nice to see you back, deci

 

<3

[bax44]

cant say I fully grasp all of what you say however it seems the more I have practiced I can grasp more and more of what your getting across. in any case I always enjoy reading your posts, also because I was an english major and love the way you use words:)

[GrandmasterP]

Welcome back Deci.

Edited December 16, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Nungali]

Does the first post have meaning ?

[Boy]

...

Edited December 31, 2014 by Boy

[Brian]

<snip>

Resting in presence without bias or inclination is the authentic foundation of the nondoing of enlightening being. Resting in the highest good is activation of one’s unborn Mind without dwelling on its relative contents.

 

The meaning of subtle observation is knowledge not devolving into ramifications. Consciously aware is the root, not following the branches is resting in the highest good.

<snip>

^^^ Thank you, deci belle.

 

BTW, I appreciate the merit of your perceived reconditeness.

[joeblast]

[deci belle]

The quote you gathered as <snipped> (above) was meant to be read and contemplated just as you did, Brian.

 

How wonderful!!❤︎

[allinone]

how to tell murderer that killing is a bad thing to do?

if you don't drink coffee but you are alcoholic, would you understand how can people be addicted to coffee?

how to tell a poor person that if you lower your bar then you are actually a rich?

 

how can you be sure that what you are experiencing is called reality?

Edited December 27, 2014 by allinone

[deci belle]

There's no telling.

 

If you are following, it's not real. If you know it's not real, that's reality.

 

Yuanwu wrote "You can trust this true, pure ineffable mind, and when mundane conditions beckon involvement, you notice that the mind does not go along with them."

 

 

 

ed note: came back and added last sentence

Edited December 28, 2014 by deci belle

[deci belle]

http://thetaobums.com/topic/35910-recognizing-reality/ ~there you go, allinone.❤︎

[dawei]

Yuanwu wrote "You can trust this true, pure ineffable mind, and when mundane conditions beckon involvement, you notice that the mind does not go along with them."

 

Is this "mind" for some the heart or intuition or simply a 'knowing' ?

 

I am not sure if his idea of 'mind' is just more like an internal signal.

[Bearded Dragon]

Is this "mind" for some the heart or intuition or simply a 'knowing' ?

 

I am not sure if his idea of 'mind' is just more like an internal signal.

 

The unborn/uncreated mind is nothing at all. No attributes, no intuition, no knowing. These things come out of it. The mind doesn't go along with conditions because it isn't even in the same ball park as conditions.

 

Come on, you know this already .

[allinone]

http://thetaobums.com/topic/35910-recognizing-reality/ ~there you go, allinone.❤︎

 

Samadhi, and attemt to describe it. Reality behind appearances. Its prerequisite for enlightenment.

[allinone]

There's no telling.

 

If you are following, it's not real. If you know it's not real, that's reality.

 

Yuanwu wrote "You can trust this true, pure ineffable mind, and when mundane conditions beckon involvement, you notice that the mind does not go along with them."

 

 

 

ed note: came back and added last sentence

 

thats samadhi. The stronger you have it its easier to discern and become onepointed and remain there doing dayly chores

[deci belle]

dawei wrote:

Is this "mind" for some the heart or intuition or simply a 'knowing' ?

 

I am not sure if his idea of 'mind' is just more like an internal signal.

 

I call it seeing reality. It is mind. It is your own everyday mind without the personality's chatter. allinone calls it samadhi, which is a traditional moniker of just this mind activated without dwelling on anything. In the sutras, it is described as a sustained meditation state.

 

Perhaps it is… no doubt in the beginning of one's awakening to nonspychological awareness, it may seem that way. What is very important, at this juncture, is to avoid clinging to impersonal awareness as a conscious state dependent on the self. Its manifestation and development is entirely dependent on the situation itself and one's dismissal of intellectualism and rumination pertaining to self-reflective thought-patterns.

 

I considered it a state of grace, in that I knew it wasn't a factor of identity (or rather all of it, including wavering conditioned states in the midst of situations and including the situations themselves, were no longer seen as real). In terms of this particular samadhi being a special state of consciousness, that is a teaching device, in that one ought to be sensitive to shifts in the subtlety of awareness in the context of ordinary situations being one's direct connection with reality. The single-minded aspect which allinone brought up is the strength of concentration maintaining an authentic perception as the focus of authentic practice.

 

Getting back to allinone's comment pertaining to how can you tell what's real?, the ancients said that absolutely none of it is real, not one shred. Mind, alone, is real. Practice is using creation to see essence. This is accomplished by nondoing.

 

Ultimately, and pragmatically, it is just mind, aware, functioning independently of conditions. I don't want to contribute to anyone's sense that just this mind is anything extra.

 

What is extra is habitual patterns constituting the human mentality perpetuating themselves unbeknownst to the being that is going to die. The work of self-refinement is due to this extra bit of habit energy usurping the authority and inherent capacity of enlightening being.

 

A knowing sets this function apart somehow. It is knowing. Mind is one. It is not a separate knowing. One's own knowing, independent of yet within the context of conditioned involvements, is seeing reality.

 

Some people have special perceptive and intuitive powers growing out this basic capacity, whose functional attributes are independent of seeing one's nature no different than my describing enlightening activity as independent of seeing one's nature. Why? Mind is itself the seat of all wonders— the absolute perspective is just a point outside of time, person, place.

 

Mind. For me, its functional manifestation is just spontaneous impersonal sensing and response, in terms of adapting to ordinary situations.

 

Just the basic function of and conditions for seeing reality is all I endeavor to describe in my writing.

 

 

 

 

ed note: add "This is accomplished by nondoing." at end of 4th paragraph; add 6th paragraph

Edited December 29, 2014 by deci belle

[Owledge]

Yup. Probably the worst correct description of the truth I’ve ever come across.

Read the first few lines.

Thought: "Sounds about right."

Skipped the rest.

[jyakulis]

Hmmm interesting post. I agree largely with what you say.

 

I'm in a situation where a friend says I have no ambition or life goals. She doesn't understand that I just prefer to "be". I like to float along in the world and not make any waves. I've had an awakening experience and realized pretty much what you more eloquently could describe than myself. My only concern is accumulating any additional karma. So, I lead a humble, quiet, small existence largely in solitude. This works for me. I work to feed my mouth and nothing more. Is there anything wrong with this?

 

People tell me you need dreams or you need to do something with yourself. If an opportunity presents itself I'm all for it, but currently I'd rather just float and take what comes to me. Why struggle to be someone or something. No one is going to remember you 20 years after your passing except maybe family or a couple close friends. I just wish they'd leave me alone and stop judging my humble existence.

 

I just feel like they are trying to get me to take on some "personality". My whole goal in life is to think less about myself not more. I think of it like you said a constant state of meditation. Or how I describe it. To be.

Edited December 30, 2014 by jyakulis

[Owledge]

Hmmm interesting post. I agree largely with what you say.

 

I'm in a situation where a friend says I have no ambition or life goals. She doesn't understand that I just prefer to "be". I like to float along in the world and not make any waves. I've had an awakening experience and realized pretty much what you more eloquently could describe than myself. My only concern is accumulating any additional karma. So, I lead a humble, quiet, small existence largely in solitude. This works for me. I work to feed my mouth and nothing more. Is there anything wrong with this?

 

People tell me you need dreams or you need to do something with yourself. If an opportunity presents itself I'm all for it, but currently I'd rather just float and take what comes to me. Why struggle to be someone or something. No one is going to remember you 20 years after your passing except maybe family or a couple close friends. I just wish they'd leave me alone and stop judging my humble existence.

 

I just feel like they are trying to get me to take on some "personality". My whole goal in life is to think less about myself not more. I think of it like you said a constant state of meditation. Or how I describe it. To be.

I feel you.

If those people could truly accept and just leave you be, you'd very likely thrive beyond your expectations.

[jyakulis]

I feel you.

If those people could truly accept and just leave you be, you'd very likely thrive beyond your expectations.

 

Thanks for the sympathy. I don't feel like some starving artist misunderstood. It's I feel they misunderstand life. It's not my job to explain it to them. Plus they are coming from a superior role in their mind so, I doubt they could listen or understand my perspective.

 

Not sure if I should just high tail it to a monastery. I feel like I'd bury some of my talents as I am a somewhat talented scientist. So, it's hard to say.

[allinone]

deleted, can't be that easy..

Edited January 5, 2015 by allinone

[deci belle]

Awakening to the possibilities of no meaning is simply a matter of not employing mind in that capacity.

 

The problem is that because mind is so quick, we cannot catch it in the act, therefore we go along with its habitual mental activity unawares and fail to notice our unbroken stream of assumptions leading on and on constituting the basis of falsity for lifetimes.

 

The habit of intellectualism assuming an identity being the false basis of existential reality is so deeply seated, opportunities for individuals to escape are truly rare— and when conditions arise, people rarely recognize them.

 

This is the true importance of the unbroken subtle concentration observing mind spoken of in the classics. It is a matter of sincere intent alone. Taoism calls this the "go-between" joining sense and essence.

 

 

 

 

ed note: typo, last paragraph

Edited February 1, 2015 by deci belle

[Brian]

Very nice, deci.