Undeniably, You are aware. As such, You are a 'perceiver'. Apparently, You SEEM to be (or have) a particular, ever-changing body/mind that perceives a multiplicity and diversity of other ever-changing body/minds, life-forms and non-living forms that all exist in a fundamentally non-living reality that is absolutely different to and other than You. Evidently, the MANNER in which You perceive this 'constant difference' is itself constantly the same. If it is actually true that You are (or have) this particular ever-changing body/mind, how is it that You have been (and continue to be) perceiving all of these ever-changing forms (INCLUDING the particular ever-changing body/mind) in a manner that is ever-changless? Surely, if You perceive ever-changing form in an ever-changless manner as You do, You must ACTUALLY be absolutely changeless and formless. As such, in truth, You have no location or edge, and so You do not begin or end. You are infinite and eternal, causelessly silent and perfectly symmetrical, as the One unthreatenable Emptiness itself. You are Pure Awareness; the one and only Perceiver that ever TRULY exists. In truth, the TOTALITY of this 'ever-changing coherent asymmetry' that is ever-changelessly perceived by You (better known as 'the entire universe') is in fact Your only REAL Organism. As such, It is an inextricable aspect of Your REAL Self. It gets It's characteristic asymmetrical structure simply from the fact that (being 'finite') It is essentially the inseperable opposite of the one ever-changless, formless, causelessly silent and perfectly symmetrical Perceiver that You are. The only COHERENT ever-changing asymmetry is a 'FRACTAL' ever-changing asymmetry, and that is precisely what is 'perceived'. ALL apparent 'things' and 'events' are as they are simply because they are all 'parts' of this one eternally cyclic Universal Organism. Some of the 'nerve ends' of the Organism are of such an extreme level of physical complexity that they have the natural capacity to become 'hypnotized' by their surroundings. This hypnosis makes it seem to these 'nerve ends' (a.k.a. intelligent body/mind life-forms) as if there is a uniquely isolated, finite and temporary consciousness functioning within each one of them, which in turn gives rise to the illusion that they are the autonomous originators of their own particular movements. As such, the absolute harmony that naturally exists between all the 'parts' of the Organism (and therefore, the Organism itself) is impossible to be seen by these hypnotized nerve ends. In It's place is seen a situation that seems confusingly fragmented, hostile and threatening. Seeing this, the hypnotized nerve ends are bound to suffer. But this harmony certainly IS Here and Now, outside of the hypnosis, ever-patiently awaiting 'our' realization of (and resting in) it. In this resting, there can be no suffering... Thanks for reading. Peace.
Great post. Hope to see more such posts coming . I quite relished the above statement. I had been going through native american proverbs and sayings in the net, and had gone through two similar sayings yesterday and today. With all things and in all things, we are relatives. - Sioux Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. Chief Seattle, 1854 Imho, it is because of the fact that everything is related due to the unity of existence , which underlie beneath all the seemingly separate names and forms in the material world, that the wise sages and saints in different and totally unrelated civilizations and cultures all around the world have come to the same conclusion.
My own feeling on this is that as much as we are a part of that universal self, we are also meant to be eternally individuated---as a part of that multiplicity, much as each of my own fingers are separate and in a sense, individuated. However, as an eternal being, existence would become very boring and even difficult to endure if I wasn't somehow able to escape this eternal reality, and live, at least temporarily, under the illusion of physicality gaining memories and experiences of adventures in happiness, ecstasy, suffering, struggles, and so forth.
I don't know if that is an actual proverb as much as it is a description of the sacred phrase, Mitakuye Oyase, which is simply translated as all my relatives. But relatives, as you already know, means more than just my family members aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousains, and so forth. It means more than just my tribe, but they are also all my relatives; or just my race which is also my relatives; or all human beings (and we are all related). There are also the 4-legged people (all 4 legged animals), the flying people (birds), the swimming people (fish), crawling people (insects and so forth), and even the standing people (trees, bushes, grasses and other plants), for they too are all my relatives. But in the Native traditions everything is alive, so there are also the grandfathers (rocks and stones), the sun, the moon, the water, the stars, the earth, metals, glass, and everything else, each of which is also my relative. Oyase shares the etymological root with Oyate, which means, nation. For example, in the No DAPL protests going on, as I write this, near the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, the Lakota (Sioux) prayed to the Tatanka Oyate (the Buffalo Nation), and as the police were pushing back protestors with batons, mace, rubber bullets, and so forth, a herd of supposedly 1000 buffalo suddenly came over the ridge behind the police----no one knows where they came from. Even the report on NBC nightly news, earlier this evening, showed buffalo roaming around in the midst of the protest (though they never mentioned why). Mitakuye Oyase---all my relatives---is a very fundamental part of ceremony. It acknowledges that all of creation is my relative, while honoring and giving respect to all of creation as my myriad relatives. (And after all, we are all nothing more than star dust created in the first stars after the Big Bang.) It is used at the beginning of ceremony, and in that sense it is similar, for example, to how the Japanese use a bamboo cup on the end of a bamboo stick to gather water from a spring and then rinse their hands and mouth and then pass through a torii gate to enter a Shinto shrine---in other words, it serves to ceremonially express that one is entering into the sacred. Though, while Shinto also belives that everywhere is sacred, the Native American blatantly lives such a truth so there is no gate into the sacred, only the phrase, Mitakuye Oyase. Mitakuye Oyase is also used at the end of ceremony. In this way, it is much like the phrase, Amen. In years past, prayers would end with, hechetu yelo, meaning, so it is. But today they use Mitakuye Oyase. Therefore, for example, at the beginning of a sweat lodge, one will say, Mitakuye Oyase as they enter it. At the end of each of the 4 rounds in the sweat, before the door is opened, they will say, Mitakuye Oyase. And finally, as one leaves the sweat lodge, they will again say Mitakuye Oyase. Another example is that of praying with the sacred pipe which begins and ends with Mitakuye Oyase. Or, any prayer for that matter. For me, having experienced Native ceremony, per the Lakota traditions quite a few times, the phrase carries a special significance----a feeling of sacredness that I can't put my finger on. The phrase by itself evokes a connection, and an entry into a sacred reality.
