IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONEPublished on December 22, 2014
If we lack the faculty, we can't see the phenomenon. We all know that, but the reverse is also true. If we can see the phenomenon, then we have the faculty. This has always been an important concept for me, the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It takes one to know one is another way to say this.
We appreciate all the beauty that we see, but what about appreciating the appreciator and the very act of appreciation? How sacred is that? The mind is a treasure, rich beyond measure. The Tibetans call it the wish-fulfilling jewel. Why would they say that if it is not true?
The great Mahasiddha Tilopa made his living grinding sesame seeds during the day and working in a brothel at night or something like that. He did not seem stained by that activity, because it is not what you do so much as it is how you do it.
Obviously everything is here. We are never going to get "there" because we will always be right here, now and forever. When I was young, in one of my darker Shakespearean moods I wrote:
Look at yourself,
First, yet first,
No better,
And yet not worse.
Now get yourself together,
In a bunch,
And call what carriage as you may,
Your hearse.
This is just saying, once again, that "process" is everything and that expectations are fool's goals. They never materialize because we never stop processing, and what does materialize is seldom what we imagine, especially when it comes to meditation. I have proved to myself that, as the Tibetans suggest, "Don't prolong the past" and "Don't invite the future." Most important of all they then add the real clincher "Don't alter the present." That's the one to most pay attention to because that IMO is the single most important command for meditators to realize. It's hard to do.
Position and fame are beyond our reach because the means to them (and everything) has to be, by definition, within our reach. We have to start right where we are. As I mentioned earlier, it is not "what" we do as how we do it. This is the essence of meditation, to allow the mind to just rest, with no alteration.
They say that everything comes to those who wait. I would add that everything comes to those who can allow the mind to rest. The old jug band tune with the refrain got it right:
"Take your fingers off it,
Don't you dare touch it,
You know it don't belong to you."
If we are far from where we want to be, we will never get there because right here is where "there" is. Realizing "there" is "here" is what I'm talking about. Accepting the here and the now, without alteration, is always the first step to realization. There is no other way I have heard of.
Meditation progress in my experience always begins with abandoning expectations that I have as to how it should-be and, instead, accepting what actually-is and beginning to work with that. We first have to touch the earth.
A couple of 1960s-era poems I wrote:
THE END
I am in it all, the end,
And that's all,
And the ever it's coming to be.
And in me is out,
The shadow of doubt,
And the "in" that is "out,"
Well that's me!
IN OR OUT
"In" is not within the "out,"
And "out" without the "in."
No,
"In" is without the "out,"
And "out" within the "in."
IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE
If we lack the faculty, we can't see the phenomenon. We all know that, but the reverse is also true. If we can see the phenomenon, then we have the faculty. This has always been an important concept for me, the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It takes one to know one is another way to say this.
We appreciate all the beauty that we see, but what about appreciating the appreciator and the very act of appreciation? How sacred is that? The mind is a treasure, rich beyond measure. The Tibetans call it the wish-fulfilling jewel. Why would they say that if it is not true?
The great Mahasiddha Tilopa made his living grinding sesame seeds during the day and working in a brothel at night or something like that. He did not seem stained by that activity, because it is not what you do so much as it is how you do it.
Obviously everything is here. We are never going to get "there" because we will always be right here, now and forever. When I was young, in one of my darker Shakespearean moods I wrote:
Look at yourself,
First, yet first,
No better,
And yet not worse.
Now get yourself together,
In a bunch,
And call what carriage as you may,
Your hearse.
This is just saying, once again, that "process" is everything and that expectations are fool's goals. They never materialize because we never stop processing, and what does materialize is seldom what we imagine, especially when it comes to meditation. I have proved to myself that, as the Tibetans suggest, "Don't prolong the past" and "Don't invite the future." Most important of all they then add the real clincher "Don't alter the present." That's the one to most pay attention to because that IMO is the single most important command for meditators to realize. It's hard to do.
Position and fame are beyond our reach because the means to them (and everything) has to be, by definition, within our reach. We have to start right where we are. As I mentioned earlier, it is not "what" we do as how we do it. This is the essence of meditation, to allow the mind to just rest, with no alteration.
They say that everything comes to those who wait. I would add that everything comes to those who can allow the mind to rest. The old jug band tune with the refrain got it right:
"Take your fingers off it,
Don't you dare touch it,
You know it don't belong to you."
If we are far from where we want to be, we will never get there because right here is where "there" is. Realizing "there" is "here" is what I'm talking about. Accepting the here and the now, without alteration, is always the first step to realization. There is no other way I have heard of.
Meditation progress in my experience always begins with abandoning expectations that I have as to how it should-be and, instead, accepting what actually-is and beginning to work with that. We first have to touch the earth.
A couple of 1960s-era poems I wrote:
THE END
I am in it all, the end,
And that's all,
And the ever it's coming to be.
And in me is out,
The shadow of doubt,
And the "in" that is "out,"
Well that's me!
IN OR OUT
"In" is not within the "out,"
And "out" without the "in."
No,
"In" is without the "out,"
And "out" within the "in."