On one occasion the Blessed One was traveling along the road where a hindu priest was also traveling. The priest saw something different about his footprints and the thought occurred to him, “How amazing! How astounding! These are not the footprints of a human being!“
He saw him sitting at the root of the tree: confident, senses calmed, mind calmed, having attained the utmost control & tranquility and he said,
“Master, are you a God?”“No, priest, I am not a God.“
“Are you a spirit?“
“No…”
“… a teacher?“
“No…”
“… a human being?“
“No, priest, I am not a human being.“
“The fermentations by which I would go
to a god-state,
or become a spirit in the sky,
or go to a teacher-state & human-state:
Those have been destroyed by me,
ruined, their stems removed.Like a blue lotus, rising up,
unsmeared by water,
unsmeared am I, by the world,
and so, priest – I’m awake.“
I am awake.
Not… I have become my best self, I am evolved, I have transcended, nor I have ascended, neither did my kundalini rise, nor I am in my Oneness, not that I am the Universe, I am the All, not I am Enlightened, not I am God
The word “Budhha” means the awakened one. Just awake.
He didn’t don fancy glasses to differentiate himself, take on a new name, change his clothes, or buy a fancy new house and horse–or ox.
His riches are incomparable. His knowledge Unspeakable.
His peace indestructible.
If you want to see what a buddha sees, and know what a buddha knows, then you must not see yourself as any of those, not desire or take on these new personas, for they are all false stories.
And not what it means to be awake.
What did he mean?
It wasn’t awake to what others are doing to me.
Or what the powers that be are doing.
Or to what we are doing to the environment.
These are involved with the world, mind, and illusion.
So what about being spiritually awake?
What are you awake from? What are you awake to?
Awake from the dream, awake to the real.
What is the dream, and what is the real?
The real is unchanging. Eternal. It’s the only thing worth striving for.
The dream is not a single solid thing, it’s not a noun, but a verb.
Dreaming is when many movies in the mind arise, triggering each other and continually changing into each other—during which time you are so fully absorbed in the movie that you ignore and are unconscious to the unchanging reality. That is unconsciousness.
There’s the dream of “what’s happening,” and it’s continually changing, and it’s based on the dream character of “who I am.”
Where is the dream happening?
In the mind. In what I call the movie in the mind. It’s composed of images, videos, thoughts, feelings and even smells and tastes.
But this dream is happening in the waking state, rather than the sleep-dreaming state.
When dreaming, you do not know of the waking state, and when awake, you do not know of the dreaming state.
So one may think they are awake, but are actually dream-walking in broad daylight.
Acting on the dream in the midst of reality, and well, that just doesn’t work in reality.
Every movie needs a character, and the “what’s happening” dream is caused by the dream of “who I am.”
There’s what you think is happening …to who you think you are…
…and there’s who and what you actually are.
Until you are awake to who and what you actually are, then you will dream as the character.
Until you stop dreaming as the character, then you cannot know who and what you actually are.
It looks like a vicious circle, but waking-up from the dream, at least momentarily, is easy.
In fact it happens to you every day, many times a day, because your natural state is to be awake. It is your baseline, your default.
You can learn to discern dreaming and being wake, and to propagate being awake more often than asleep.
And all it takes …is a split-second recognition, while awake, of your Self, your true nature, to utterly destroy the mental “fermentation” and along with it the illusion of separation, such that you can never fall asleep again.
Your turn to pay attention like the Buddha did, and see, can you tell the difference between what is thought, and what is not?
Remember, to be awake is to have a memory of having had a dream, in the past, but to realize it is gone and so never had any reality. Being awake you only know now, you can only speak of now.
And until we meet again, keep it real.
Cindy