Ethan

non-dualist
Guénon fan

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

He is the invisible, imperishable Brahma; varying in form, invariable in substance; the chief principle, self-engendered; who is said to illuminate the caverns of the heart; who is indivisible, radiant, undecaying, multiform. To that supreme Brahma be for ever adoration.

- Viṣṇu Purāṇa, book 3, chapter 3

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

Since therefore God is that being which, as we said in the beginning, when the imperfections of all things are removed, is all things, certainly that which remains when you have rejected from all things both that imperfection which each one possesses in its own kind, and that particularity which reduces each to one kind, will assuredly be God. God is, then, Being itself, the one Himself, the Good and the True.

- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, De Ente et Uno (Of Being and Unity), chapter V

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

Therefore those who commune with universal harmony are dark as if dead drunk, lying there blissfully, thus roaming within. If they never leave the source, this is called great communion.
This is using nonuse to achieve usefulness.

- Wénzǐ, 14

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

When all of the consciousnesses, which are without intrinsic nature, occur, their extent is thoroughly complete in the unmixed Great Completeness of spontaneous presence. Going nowhere, this totality is all-pervading like space. Hence, it will be explained as non-duality. As the self-arisen integral being of everything, it is the root of great bliss, free from the passion of desire.

- Nubchen Sangye Yeshe, rtse mo byung rgyal ’grel pa (Commentary on the Victorious Peak)

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

The Prophet said, “God is beautiful and He loves beauty “; this is an established hadith. So He described Himself as loving beauty and He loves the world, so there is no thing more beautiful than the world. And He is beautiful, while beauty is intrinsically lovable; hence all the world loves God. The beauty of His Making permeates his creation, while the world is His loci of manifestation. So the love of the different parts of the world for each other derives from God’s love for Himself. This is because love is an attribute of the existent thing, and there is nothing in existence except God.

- Muḥyī d-Dīn ibn ʿArabī, Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (The Meccan Revelations), chapter 73 question 118, ‘The Beauty God and The Beauty of the World’, 114.8

[Pymander's ghost @pymandersghost]

God creates in absolute freedom and absolute necessity: the “moment” of inexpressible spontaneity.

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

The opportunities of teaching are irregular; therefore a myriad differences arise. But they all have in common that they are manifestations of the unifying harmony of all—The Tao and Virtue.
The Tao’s deepest roots lie in its omnipresent pervasion. Virtue most of all means spontaneous realization. In omnipresent pervasion, there is no principle that is not pervaded. In spontaneous realization, there is no trait of inner nature that is not fully realized.
Omnipresent pervasion has no name. Nameless, it can be affirmatively named. Spontaneous realization is nonrealization. Therefore its activity manifests and duly becomes known in appellations. Appellations thus contain the manifestations of active Virtue.

- Dàotǐ Lùn (Discourse on the Essence of the Dao), 2b-3a

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

If an ordinary man, when he is about to die, could only see five elements of consciousness as void; the four physical elements as not constituting an ‘I’; the real Mind as formless and neither coming nor going; his nature as something neither commencing at his birth nor perishing at his death, but as whole and and motionless in its very depths; his Mind and environmental objects as one—if he could really accomplish this, he would receive Enlightenment in a flash. He would no longer be entangled by the Triple World; he would be a World-Transcendor. He would be without even the faintest tendency towards rebirth. If he should behold the glorious sight of all the Buddhas coming to welcome him, surrounded by every kind of gorgeous manifestation, he would feel no desire to approach them. If he should behold all sorts of horrific forms surrounding him, he would experience no terror. He would just be himself, oblivious of conceptual thought and one with the Absolute. He would have attained the state of unconditioned being. This, then, is the fundamental principle.

- The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, Part 1, The Chün Chou Record, 18

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

If a man wants to pick out one particular image among a series of images passing in front of him, as reflections on a mirror, he must turn his attention away from the rest of the pictures and fix it on that particular one.
If on the other hand, he wants to see the space reflected, it is enough that he turns away his attention from the pictures and the space manifests without attention on his part, for, space is immanent everywhere and is already reflected there. However it has remained unnoticed because the interspatial images dominated the scene.
Space being the supporter of all and immanent in all, becomes manifest if only the attention is diverted from the panorama. In the same way, consciousness is the supporter of all and is immanent in all and always remains perfect like space, pervading the mind also.

- Tripurārahasya 15.43-46

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

O how may I ever express that secret word?
O how can I say He is not like this. and He is like that?
If I say that He is within me, the universe is ashamed:
If I say that He is without me, it is falsehood.
He makes the inner and the outer worlds to be indivisibly one;
The conscious and the unconscious, both are His footstools.
He is neither manifest nor hidden,
He is neither revealed nor unrevealed:
There are no words to tell that which He is.

- Kabir, 100 poems, IX ‘Aisā lo nahī̃, taisā lo’

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

Whatever appears, if you leave it where it is, is spontaneous presence free of activity.
If you apprehend whatever arises, awareness is liberated right where it is.

- Paṇḍita Śākyaśrībhadra, Rin chen man ngag sa bon dgu pa (The Nine Seeds of Precious Instructions)

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

But for man to attain this Perfection, within which he contemplates Being and all Its perfections, and because of which Being contemplates Itself within him, he must first be delivered from his illusory selfhood. As long as he is dominated by his ego and his own individuality, he will never reach his true station. He must enter the Path and annihilate all his own illusory attributes, so that they may be replaced by his true attributes, which are nothing but the Attributes of Being as such.
In Itself Being is Sheer Oneness. But since the entity has achieved a certain kind of independent existence through the Visible Theophany—even though its being can be none other than the Being of God, since Being is One—duality and multiplicity have appeared within Being.

- Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī, Sharḥ-i Lamaʿāt (Explanation of the Flashes), Flash III

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

Radiant light is the function of mind, empty silence is the substance of mind. If there is empty silence without radiant light, the silence is not true silence, the emptiness is not true emptiness — it is just a ghost cave.

- Jīnhuá Zōngzhǐ Huòwèn (Questions Concerning the Essential Teaching of the Golden Flower)

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

Regardless of what arises within the scope of awareness, whether saṃsāra or nirvāṇa, in essence it is the supreme manifestation of the ground of being as apparent phenomena, which has never existed as anything within naturally occurring timeless awareness—the natural place of rest of original purity, spontaneously present basic space.

- Longchenpa, gnas lugs rin po che’i mdzod, (The Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding), section 4: The Theme of Oneness

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

That non-dual indestructible one which has become the object, the ground of mind and all sense-organs, is neither ‘I’ nor another; neither one nor many.

- Annapūrṇopaniṣad 2.21

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

Once mortals see their nature, all attachments end. Awareness isn’t hidden. But you can only find it right now. It’s only now. If you really want to find the Way, don’t hold onto anything. Once you put an end to karma and nurture your awareness, any attachments that remain will come to an end. Understanding comes naturally. You don’t have to make any effort. But fanatics don’t understand what the Buddha meant. And the harder they try, the further they get from the Sage’s meaning. All day long they invoke buddhas and read sutras. But they remain blind to their own divine nature, and they don’t escape the Wheel.

- Dámó Zǔshī, Xuèmài Lùn (Bloodstream Sermon)

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

The truth of Allāh Most High is exempt from and free of any kind of description or any kind of image or form. The image is the mirror, though what is seen is neither the mirror nor the one who is looking into the mirror. Ponder on that and try to understand, because that is the essence of the realm of secrets.
Yet all this is happening in this world of attributes. In the realm of the Essence all means disappear, burn into thin air. The ones in that realm of the Essence themselves do not exist, but they feel the Essence and nothing else. How well the Prophet ﷺ explains this when he says ‘I knew my Lord by my Lord’. In His Light, by His Light!

- ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, Sirr al-Asrār wa Maẓhar al-Anwār (The Secret of Secrets and the Manifestation of Lights), chapter 9

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

The Lord, although Himself free from desires because of possessing absolute bliss, grants to those desiring various objects, such as enjoyment and liberation, their desired objects. Similarly, in spite of being the nondual cause of this universe, He relishes this universe (as) ‘the field of enjoyment’ which He incessantly projects externally on the canvas of His own Consciousness.

- Kṣemarāja, Stavacintāmaṇivivṛti, 63

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

The recognition of your self-cognizing primordial wisdom
Is the reality of the self-arisen nature of everything.
Pure like the sky, luminous like the sun,
It is just unflagging luminosity.
It is just pervasiveness, without substance.
It is not nonexistent, for it is conscious and knowing.
It is just awareness, empty by nature.

- rang byung lta ba’i snying po (The Essence of the Self-arisen View)

[Ethan @Ethan0008000]

Know that God’s sustaining influence and self-disclosures come to the world with every breath. Indeed, to be strictly accurate, there is really only one self-disclosure which, in accordance with the varying ranks and dispositions of its manifold receptacles, assumes various determinations. For this reason, it takes on the guise of plurality and appears to have different qualities, names and attributes, yet without this meaning that it really is many in itself or that its flow is broken or renewed, for the same considerations apply to the question of its apparent succession as applied to its apparent plurality … Now, this unique self-disclosure is none other than the Light of Being, and nothing arrives from the True to the contingents other than that, either after they are attributed with existence or before … Given, then, that Being is not intrinsic to anything other than the True, but is instead merely acquired from His self-disclosure, it follows that, in order to persist, the world is utterly dependent upon this unique existential succour at every instant without break or interruption. Indeed, were this succour to be interrupted for the merest blinking of an eye the world would vanish at once, for the sway of non-existence forever accompanies the contingent, whereas existence is imparted to it from its principle.

- Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī, Iʿjāz al-bayān fī al-tarjama ʿan al-Qurʾān (The Inimitability of Exposition in Interpreting the Qurʾān), p. 34-35