Who Programs Your Mindbot?

 

1 Turntable of Self and an Infinite Groove

Playing Programmer In Lotus Land

Here’s a stanza from a Rush song, called Freewill, and my interpretive projections.

They are those who think they were dealt a losing hand,

The cards were stacked against them:

they weren’t born in lotus-land.

Mind is conditional, i.e. un-free.  Consciousness isn’t conditional, it is the conditioner, thus, free, or, in the parlance of the East, consciousness is un-born or a-causal (in the sense that it is not pre-determined, but pre-determines).  Consciousness is the source of freedom.  Override determinism via mindfulness. 

Once again: how’s mind different from consciousness?  Same way as form is different from essence and the programmer is different from the program.  Brain – hardware.  Mind – software.  Consciousness – programmer.  Mindfulness – toggle switch.  Sit down to witness the difference.  Sit down to play programmer.

We are what we identify with.  Which do you identify with: mind (form) or consciousness (essence)?

Resources:

Lotus Effect: Shedding Suffering and Rediscovering Your Essential Self (release: Fall 2010)

Reflections in the Lotus Pond

Standing on Lotus Land

Standing On Pure Lotus Land

Another identity-focused poem + interpretation combo (arbitrarily truncated, edited & annotated – see italics – by yours truly):

Zazen Wasan (Praise of Zazen) by Hakuin (1686-1769)

From the beginning all beings are Buddha (i.e. consciousness).

Like water and ice, without water no ice, outside us no Buddhas (i.e. all is one, one is all).

How near the truth, yet how far seek, like one in water crying “I thirst!” (you are enough).

Like a child of rich birth wandering poor on this earth, we endlessly circle the six worlds (of false identities).

The gateway to freedom is zazen samadhi (sit down in meditation to see the real you).

The pure lotus land is not far away (you cannot but be the real you).

And if we turn inward and prove our True-nature – that True-self is no-self, our own Self is no-self – we go beyond ego and past words.

(when we dis-identify from what we are not, we find the emptiness of awareness, which is the ground of our being, our true, essential “self,” our Original Face; when we dis-identify from the informational mind-dirt, when we go beyond the verbal/word self-definitions, we rediscover our essence, our “buddha-nature;” we are not mind, we are consciousness, not the objects of our awareness, but the awareness itself; the no-self isn’t a nothing, it’s everything).

Our form now being no-form (we aren’t form, we are essence).

This earth where we stand is the pure lotus land, and this very body the body of Buddha (we are the blossom itself, not the 1000s of its informational petals; we are the ground of being, not what grows on it; we are consciousness, not mind),

Resources:

Lotus Effect: Shedding Suffering and Rediscovering Your Essential Self (release: Fall 2010)

Reflections in the Lotus Pond

"Ahuva Goldstand" isn't Ahuva Goldstand

If you've browsed through my bio, you've probably seen my "Somov" isn't Somov self-non-description (the meaning of this will be far clearer after Lotus Effect comes out).  But, here's a similar attitude to self-concept from Ahuva Goldstand (whose haiku I featured the other day).  Here's what Ahuva Goldstand says about herself/her self:

Ahuva Goldstand is not who she says she is.

Or rather, she would be who she says she is, if she could be trusted to say anything truthful about herself, the world in general or the current state of affairs in Madagascar. Incidentally, Madagascar is the one topic she never lies about. She also never talks about it, thereby solving that problem.

When faced with an opportunity to say something about herself, Ahuva chooses, silently to herself, whether or not she will say something of merit, or completely fabricated. She will not tell you her decision, and if she does, it’s probably not true. In saying things about the general person of Ahuva Goldstand, the person who you may perceive to be Ahuva Goldstand (this perception being based solely on being told it is by said Ahuva Goldstand) will assume a trustworthy guise and proceed to lie to your face. Inversely, she may adopt a shifty look, and speak the complete and honest truth. Sometimes she mixes it up, all for sport.

So, after establishing her trustworthy qualities (or lack there of), one must understand that whether or not Ahuva was born is completely up for debate. And while this binary query of “she was” or “wasn’t” is mind-boggling all on its own, throwing in such other details as locale, time and heritage makes the problem infinitely more complex.

When answering questions about herself, Ahuva will most often, though not always, supply the one fact that is not the answer to the question at hand, leaving the nigh-infinite other possibilities as valid answers to said question.

This, in a nutshell, is what Ahuva Goldstand has to say about herself.

If she is in fact the one saying these things.

So, as you see, whether it's Pavel Somov or Ahuva Goldstand, letters are letters. Question is: who's writing these ego-descriptions to oneself?

Tuareg Wind Carries No One (revised)

Tap, tap, triple-tap, not enough palms to clap, not enough heels to walk…
Neti-Neti* Knee knows not where to walk, so it walks not-knowing…
In between the dunes of sand or snow, knowing Nothing but One thing-less thing:
Whatever walkabout is about, no matter how infinite the diameter, a dervish ain’t a dervish.
Thus, un-wind, Wind!
Sands of time witness you pass, zig-zag-ing between Form and Essence…

Been there-here, done/undone this-that.
Your turn: spin!
Your web of interpretation catches nothing but word-fish...
So is mine, so is mine...


pavel, the writer-reader, on a walkabout about what he ain't...

*"neti, neti" - an Upanishadic saying - translates from Sanskrit as "not this, not that" - an apophatic assertion of about identity (that in saying nothing, says nothing false)