The FREEDOM Blog

A few random thoughts and comments.... First, I recently came across this quote from Shantideva amongst my collection: "All the joy the world contains is through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains has come through wanting pleasure for oneself." The basic difficulty is selfishness (and that is with a small 's'). But it's slightly more complicated then that. Let's see if we can't disentangle it a bit. 1. Our initial idea is to find happiness for ourselves. While in and of itself there is nothing wrong with that, in too many cases it involves getting something from someone else or in someway depriving others of something to do it. For instance, the basic 'necessities' of life are a given, and under normal circumstances there is plenty to go around. However, when certain people find that they need more than someone else, then things go bad. This is in essence the human condition because of a lack of satisfaction. People wan...

In the sixth part of the Yoga Vasistha it says: "The belief in a knower and the known is called bondage. The knower is bound by the known; he is liberated when there is nothing to know." This is so contrary to most people's way of being that it's hard for most to even get a hint at this, primarily because everyone is anxiously awaiting the point where 'they' will be a 'knower' of the Absolute; 'They' will have achieved enlightenment. Once more, dear friends, it doesn't work that way. For a moment, just stop. In that moment, is there anyone to know anything? Is there anything to know? In the silence between thoughts - no! However, a half moment later a thought will probably arise saying, something like, "Cool" or "But I was there knowing I was not a knower", or some other such evaluatory statement. (Is evaluatory a word?) Where there is no thought, that is where there is no knower or known. That occurs through letting go ...