Three Months Retreat at Kyunpin Meditation Center

Kyunpin Meditation Center 

As planned this year, to have a long retreat in some where ... yet, don't know where, until last month, in September, the mind said, "Ok, go that place!" ...  It is the first time having retreat at this center, Kyunpin,  in Mandalay, athough in 2005, had one also in Yangon, Burma. It is almost 10 years ago. Time flies, waits for no man! Better make best use of it.

Retreat schedule: 10 Oct 2014 to 6 Jan 2015. Just a plan anyway (as proposed by man), who knows, might be shorter, or another extension of 3 months; just like what had been happened in 2005, ended up six months there. So, you will never know! That is the good part of life, always mysterious and exciting too, what important is: 

Whatever will happen, it happens, Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be, and enjoy the process ...

Some photos from the Internet, show the place, a very lovely, quiet, and scenic place. It is at a very remote area of Burma. Just imagine: 12 hours over night bus ride from Yangon to Mandalay, then another 5 hours of boat ride, from Mandalay to reach the center! Wow, that's good chance to explore and have some experience in this part of world. 

A strong intuition, the mind will have a good time there, let it go deep and dive into the Source ... for good! Again, Que Sera, Sera ... just to enjoy Life! Haha ...

And also enjoy the song attached here: the evergreen song, Que Sera Sera, one of my favourite songs.

Wish the world and all of you, well and happy
And having a very fruitful year - 2015!
Happy New Year - in advance! 

The Natural Self

Meditation is to search for the natural self, simply being aware of yourself, your being, and eventually to merge with it. 

Self-awareness is like the water in an ocean, the thought process is like the wave on the surface of the ocean. We attach to the thought (the wave) and take it as my, me, I … etc, and forget the real thing is the self-awareness (the ocean). It is similar to a fish that has forgotten the ocean it has lived since its birth. 

In real practice, awareness is a sense of self, the I amness, that is always present together with this body-mind process, but we are unaware of it. So self-awareness is the primal consciousness before all mental states are formed. It is the original thought - I amness. It can also be called the observer, the witness, or simply Consciousness, and many other names. It is timeless, space-less, quiescence, blissful and always has the nature of harmony. 

Resting on this timeless Consciousness, it just like diving into the ocean, the active mind becomes quiet, and relaxed. As everything comes out from the Consciousness, so it is also the platform where, all external objects are formed. The external objects with its own created world, has the nature of impermanence: arising, existing and passing away. Obviously, all external objects are NOT me. So left behind only the self-awareness, the observer, the witness, which is always there, and never leave us.

The self-awareness, or our natural self/consciousness, it can be compared to the vast ocean, where all kinds of fish swim freely, but they are not aware of the ocean where they are born and died there. So exactly the same, we are not aware of our natural self, because it is so quiet, simple and too ordinary to catch our attention. Like fish in the ocean, we are not aware of our ocean - the natural self, our existence, or I amness. Instead, we are so preoccupied and attached to our wave - our thoughts, which are not us.

Obviously, the mind (the wave) is just an object of the self-awareness (the ocean). So called the different mental states or the mind, simply a tiny aspect of the timeless awareness. And this awareness is a platform where all the thought process going through, it is unstable and changeable. Hence, meditation is to be aware of the self awareness, the natural self/consciousness, the observer, the witness, or the sense of self … which is stable, timeless and blissful.

Rest or soak in the ocean of Consciousness as long as you can. With Grace, and finally, merging your mind with it, then you are one with it.

Happy Birthday Lady, Beautiful Mind, Joyous Heart

Wayne Dryer &  Louise: 
Joyous Heart - Filled the Joy of Good Memory - With LOVE!

By Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Tomorrow one of my greatest role models will celebrate her 88th birthday. The beautiful, vibrant, sprightly, wise, and witty Louise Hay has made it her life mission to help and encourage us all to live our best lives. Louise has been celebrating her life ever since she discovered at around 50 years old that your thoughts can change the way you experience things. Want more happiness, peace, joy, health, love, and abundance in your life? Think on these things. Louise says, “I return to the basics of life: forgiveness, courage, gratitude, love, and humour.”

Using these principles in the form of daily positive affirmations, it is possible to program your thoughts and transform your life. We are connected to a Source of infinite love within that we can use to heal our lives and help others do the same. Louise teaches mirror work—looking at yourself with love and gratitude always. Giving back, moving ahead, loving life, learning, and growing—this is Louise’s program for a long and happy experience here on this earthly plane. At 88, Louise is in the midst of the kind of joy-filled and vital life that comes from being hopeful, grateful, and ready to smile. 

Not only is Louise celebrating a landmark birthday tomorrow, she is also launching a brilliant and powerful new book. With two of her favorite health and wellness practitioners, Ahlea Khadro and Heather Dane, Louise has created a guidebook for healthy living that contains many of her lifestyle secrets for staying well and feeling good into your mature years. Louise’s book is called, Loving Yourself to Great Health: Thoughts & Food—The Ultimate Diet (http://www.hayhouse.com/loving-yourself-to-great-health). In it, you’ll find everything you need to keep your mind, body, and spirit in health and harmony. People ask Louise how she manages to look so well and feel so good at 88. This book, she says, contains all that she would love to share with you on the subject.

Do we have to accept the notion that aging must involve deterioration of body and mind? I’ve always said “no” to that idea and Louise agrees. I don’t believe in “thinking” old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies—a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult—my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life. Don’t program yourself to break down as you age with thoughts that “decline is inevitable.” Time may be passing for our bodies, but because they house our ageless souls, we never need to see ourselves as old and infirm.

We can make a decision to live fully each day, and smile rather than shudder at the passage of time. Our primary identification is not with time, but with the timelessness of truth, peace, and love. Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all. Time has only leased them to you. Make peace with time. Laugh at its work, and know your laughter does not make you a victim. Live the truth that resonates with you as Louise has always done. Decide to always choose that which brings you and others a sense of both inner and outer peace. Be a force of love as often as you can and turn away negative thoughts whenever you feel them surface. As Louise guides us to affirm: Life loves me!

Happy Birthday, Louise, and many more to come!

Namaste, Wayne W. Dyer

Soaking in the Transcended Ocean of Love

There are many terms to describe the mind. First of all, one must be able to differentiate the two basic aspects of mind: the static and the dynamic, or the passive and the active. Yin (陰) and Yang (陽). In meditation, it is the subject and the object.

Terms often used in various traditions to describe static aspect of mind like the pure Awareness, formless Heart, Soul, Spirit, the witness, God, Buddha Nature, the observer, knowing mind, pure Consciousness, the Source, Home, Tao, Emptiness, the Self, samadhi, Reality, Silence,  and more. These are the terms to describe the passive or static side of the mind. There is just One Consciousness, the rests are just labels and for namesake only.

The mind is like a spectrum, the static part is in one end and in a dormant mode, it is the source of consciousness. The goal of spiritual seeker is to reach the source. Since it is a spectrum, whether it is static or dynamic, it is still within the same consciousness. Like the subject, it is the Source, the passive mind; and watching over an object, the active mind which is just an extension or a manifestation from the Source. Subject and object are within the same spectrum of consciousness, but the Source, the static mind, is the 'blueprint' or 'template' from which the active mind, the object to arise, exist and disappear by itself. So it is obvious, meditation is not on the object, or on the active mind, but on the subject, the static mind or the Source. The subjective approach of meditation practice is the key to liberate the objective mind, which is always changing and unstable.

From this spectrum of consciousness; the Source, the subject, the self-awareness, or Reality ... that is our own self, our being, our existence - the I amness consciousness: is the essence of meditation subject. Hence, greatest attention should be paid to the subject, and NOT to the object.

We also use the word Heart, as the Source, implied Yin (陰) aspect of the mind. The active mind represents Yang (陽), which is always active, like the thinking mind. It generates actions, implies karma making. So the active mind is also the karma creator. On contrary, when the mind is transformed to the Heart; it is transcended, detached, quiet down, all the mental activities to be dissolving into the ocean of Love, like a river merging with the Ocean. In this aspect, Heart or Soul, is the purifier, it purifies the mind, stabilizes the mind, dissolves the mind, and slow down the karma making. Eventually it liberates the mind. 

Heart, its true nature is harmonious, timeless, blissful, peaceful, detached and existential. It is contrast to the nature of mind which are impermanent, inconstant, agitation, changing, clinging, involving with time and addicted to all sorts habitual tendencies. So the active mind is not reliable, but a source of  suffering. When mind is active and dominated our existence or our life, then we cling to the external worldly experiences, that sustains our rebirths and Samsara becomes our eternal home! Meditation is to dissolve, get rid of the active mind and going back to the Source. So the transformation from the mind to the Heart, becomes a transcended state, being one with the Source. That is to end the incessant rebirths; also the goal of the spiritual practice. 

The main theme of practice is always resting our active mind on the observer or the witness, let the mind soaked itself in the ocean of Love, in the pure Awareness, or in the Soul realm. The longer the mind stays at the Source, the more chances to transform the mind to the nature of the Heart. It takes time and effort to practice for this transformation to take place. Once the mind is tame and it is able to ride itself Home.

And with this level of practice, mind has found its Home, its Source, its Love, and it is transcended. At this stage, meditation is effortless, because it can directly contact with the Source itself. By simply ‘parking’ or resting the mind onto the Source, the formless Heart, then the mind is soaked into this infinite pure Awareness. 

Gradually, the previous habitual patterns of the active mind, like restlessness, unceasing thinking habit, other negative aspects of the mind, started to loosen. The mind nature is changing and slow down the mental process. Now the mind is more like the Heart.

In all: the mind is letting go its previous self, or identity, the roles, the images, that previously it has clung so tight, and finally, is able to let go off and free itself.

The Father and the Son Are One

Sunway KL-5 Oct 2014.

While cycling this morning, mind was observing its own mental activities, like thought-process, mental chattering, commenting this and that. The thought-process is passively popping up from no where. Like watching a movie on a screen. It is happened in a very detached manner, like watching other people’s thoughts. 

Conventionally, people say: I am thinking … So whatever come out from this thinking mind is MY thought-process. Or else who’s the one doing the thinking? If not, then who am I? We take it for granted, assuming that the thought process as mine. But actually there is ANOTHER ONE, apart from the thinking mind! 

He (or It) is always there all the time, never ever leave you, but you are unaware of Him because you are so preoccupied and strongly attached with your external mental activities, that means you are not aware of your own existence. You forget yourself!

Your own existence is your witness, your being, yourself or the silent observer, He is always there, and witnessing everything we have experienced. So the thinking mind is just one aspect of His extension. That extension we call it the human mind, or the ego; we apply this limited mind for our day to day activities. One is passive - the witness, and the extension one is the active mind. The mind is like a coin of two sides; static and dynamic at the same time. The tricky thing is that we  are so enchanted by the dynamic side of mind that we take it as ‘me’, ‘mine’, ‘I’, so the Maya (illusion) is in operation, and the separateness emerged, so the sufferings. 

All our life, we seldom notice the static or the passive side of the mind - the silent witness, so we live our life PARTIALLY with the ego being busily and unceasingly engaging to outside world. Before we discover the witness, this personal active mind is the only little mind we have. Once we have found the witness - the all embracing transcended state of mind - we start to realize that this personal mind, or the ego is actually an impostor, and not the ‘real’ one! It is like a run away son, he has left his father long time ago. Then he is wandering around in his own created world as a nobody child. Alone and separated.

As the simile says the Eve was expelled from the Garden of Eden, and disowned by his Father. Metaphorically speaking, the expulsion of the Eve is the beginning of sufferings for the fall of man - the lonely self, or the ego - that the human being so much associated with. 

In this case, the witness is the Father - the primal state of mind, the Garden of Eden, the Source where the Eve came from. That was the time the Father and the Son were One. Due to the emergence of the ego, the Father and the Son separated. That is how the ego is born and becomes a separate self. But in reality, the Father is always here and now, never has one second left His Son, only His Son has left Him. So the spiritual journey is the searching for the Father and the goal is to unite with Him. That's all the human evolution talking about: going to the Source and be One. 

The most precious moment of the seeking is when the Son has found his Father. So to say that the ego, after wandering for a long, long journey in his own world, he finally has found his Source, the witness, the primal timeless consciousness, where he came from. Surprised! He is just behind and with you all the time, you are unaware  because you never turn back your head and look inward of yourself. Like the Allegory of the cave by Plato, saying: the people in the cave only perceive what is in front of them, they are chained and kept from turning their heads. Their perception is their own shadows which the fire reflected on the wall of the cave. Exactly this is how our senses and our thinking minds are fooling and misleading us all the time. We take them as real, but they are just the reflections, until we turn our heads by looking inwardly.

At this stage, when the mind turns back and looks inward, the Son recognizes the Father; or the ego perceives the existence of the witness and found the Reality. How relieved it is, now you can ‘throw’ (surrender) everything of your burdens to the Father, like the saying: Surrender yourself to God. As it is said: The Kingdom of God is within you, so the Salvation lies within. God and you are One. Now you realize, you do not have to find God outside of yourself, or rely on others to find for you.

On the perspective of meditation, we find that there is nothing outside the mind: your hell, heaven or salvation, liberation or the Kingdom of God, is well within you. Just turn back and look inward, then you will find God. When the mind rests on the witness, your little ego is superimposed on the higher and unlimited Consciousness, now you are in the hand of God. God is infinite and timeless, God is Tao, and God is impersonal Consciousness or Emptiness, and many more names. 

The Son no longer runs away from the Father, instead, reunions with Him; reaching the Source. With the embracing of the Silent Father - the witness - the world is still going on, everything as it is: in the World but not of the World. 

Sum up the Truth: 

I am that I am, not this, not that. 
Just Be. 

So, it is a happy ending story. 

************

Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi on Life, Death, Rebirth and Suicide

Sri Ramana Maharshi

What is Life?

Materially speaking Life is the body; spiritually speaking it is the Ultimate Consciousness. It depends on how you look at it.

What is Death?

Death, like life, is a mere thought. It is oblivion of one's real nature. When you are “awake,” you incessantly think, and when you go to sleep and dream, you do not think any the lesser. But when you pass from dreamful to dreamless sleep, your thoughts cease and you enjoy undisturbed peace, till you wake again and resume your thinking and with it your restless, peace-less state.

Life is miserable because it consists of nothing but thoughts. When death strikes down the body, the dreamless, thought-free state prevails for a brief period, but soon thinking starts again in the dream – “astral” – world, and continues till a full “waking” takes place in a new body, after another dreamless lull. 

This daily cycle of waking and sleeping is a miniature of the cycle of life and death in man and the universe, of alternation of activity and rest. The substance of the former is thoughts and sensations and of the latter the peaceful being from which these arise. To transcend birth and death we have, therefore, to transcend the processes of thought and abide in the eternal being. 

- 4th Jan 1937 -

What is the cause of tanha, thirst for life, thirst for rebirth?

Real rebirth is dying from the ego into the Spirit. This is the significance of the crucifixion of Jesus. Whenever identification with the body exists, a body is always available, whether in this or in any other one, till the body-sense disappears by merging into the Source – the Spirit, or Self. The stone which is projected upwards remains in constant motion, till it returns to its source, the earth, and rests. Headache continues to give trouble, till the pre-headache state is regained.

Thirst for life is inherent in the very nature of life, which is Absolute Existence – Sat. Although indestructible by nature, by false identification with its destructible instrument, the body, consciousness imbibes a false apprehension of its destructibility, hence it tries to perpetuate that instrument, which results in a succession of births. But however long these bodies may last, they eventually come to an end and yield to the Self, which alone eternally exists.

Give up the false identification and, remember, the body cannot exist without the Self, whereas the Self can exist without the body; in fact it is always without it.

Is a human being may take an animal birth in some other life?

Let him who takes birth ask this question. Find out first who it is that is born, and whether there are actual birth and death. These are only of the ego, which is an illusion of the mind.

- 4 April 1937 -

Is suicide a wrong act?

Killing the innocent body is certainly wrong. Suicide must be committed on the mind, where the suffering is deposited, and not on the body, which is insentient and feels nothing. The mind is the real culprit, being the creator of the anguish which tempts to suicide, but by an error of judgement, the innocent, insentient body is punished for it.

- 5th May, 1943 -

Is there rebirth?

Do you know what birth is? There is neither Past nor Future. There is only the Present. Yesterday was the present to you when you experienced it, and tomorrow will be also the present when you will experience it. Therefore experience takes place only in the present, and beyond experience nothing exists.

Are then Past and Future mere imagination?

Yes, even the Present is mere imagination, for the sense of time is purely mental. Space is similarly mental; therefore birth and rebirth, which take place in time and space cannot be other than imagination.

- 3 Sep 1948 -

A well-educated North Indian came forward, prostrated to Sri Bhagavan Raman Maharshi and sat in the front line. He asked in excellent English:

Visitor.  What is the cause and origin of the universe?

Bh.  Have you no worries of your own?

V.  Of course I have; that is why I want to know about Life, Death, Consciousness, etc.

Bh. Begin with the beginning: who has Life, Consciousness, etc.? Have you, for instance, life?

V.  Of course I know I am alive, for I see my body.

Bh. Do you always see the body? What happens to it and to the universe when you go to sleep?

V.  I don’t know, it is a mystery.

Bh.  You may not know what happens to them, but do you for that reason cease to exist?

V.  I don’t know.

Bh.  How do you then know that you exist even now?

V.  Now I have awareness and see my body moving and thinking.

Bh. But you see your body also moving and thinking and being in all sorts of places while it is actually lying fast asleep in Tiruvannamalai.

V.  It is a mystery. Can I say that I, the permanent, am ever present and only my ego changes?

Bh.  So you think you are two persons: the permanent ‘I’ and the ego. Is that possible?

V.  Then please show me the way to the Real.

Bh. The Real is ever-present, like the screen on which all the cinematographic pictures move. While the pictures appear on it, it remains invisible. Stop the pictures, and the screen, which has all along been present, in fact the only object that has existed throughout, will become clear. All these universes, humans, objects, thoughts and events are merely pictures moving on the screen of Pure Consciousness, which alone is real. Shapes and phenomena pass away, but Consciousness remains ever.

A few days later Sri Bhagavan gave a different answer to a similar question asked by Dr. Godel, a French Medical Officer of the Suez Canal. He told the doctor: 

“You must distinguish between the ‘I’, pure in itself, and the ‘I’- thought. The latter, being merely a thought, sees subject and object, sleeps, wakes up, eats and thinks, dies and is reborn. But the pure ‘I’ is the pure Being, eternal existence, free from ignorance and thought-illusion. If you stay as the ‘I’, your being alone, without thought, the I-thought will disappear and the delusion will vanish forever. 

In a cinema-show you can see pictures only in a very dim light or in darkness. But when all lights are switched on, all pictures disappear. So also in the flood-light of the Supreme Atman all objects disappear.”

Dr. G.  That is the Transcendental State.

Bh.  No, transcending what, and by whom? You alone exist.

                                          - 22 Feb 1949 -