Full Moon Shines Tonight

Who confronting Who

Face to Face

What's what

Minding Mind

Itself

Just to try to understand

Just to try to think it though

Just to try to use your words

Just to try to make sense of it all

And you'll be okay

I cannot detach the felt sense of mind and environment.

So the clouds just pass

And I just wake up to burn out

Eventually we all have to face the fire of enlightenment. In that it consumes everything, body, soul, mind, beliefs, religions, likes, and dislikes - all alike... become nothing. The fire of enlightenment is not a thing to grasp or hold, or even say. See, there? It went away.

But where does it go, if it cannot be grasped?  Woodsman

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I have been pondering this for several days.

One thing that came to mind was of Buddhist Monks setting themselves on fire to protest this or that.  I have seen films of this and marveled that they could remain in a lotus position throughout.  Then it occurred to me that after the dermal tissue, skin, has burned there is no more pain because that is where the nerve endings are.

Enlightenment doesnt cost anything, it only seems to.  You cant lose what you never had, and with awakening you realize that you never were or had anything in your own right.

Sure you do from the standpoint of the character that you are playing, but does a character really own any of the props?  No.  They all belong to the production company.

So to find out that you are just a character, even if the One who made you up is You, is to find that you are a non-entity in a non-existence. 

Of course that can be somewhat comforting as well as a source of a feeling of loss.  Then you have nothing to lose, and never did.

Without being pedantic:

These kind of descriptions only serve to confuse, I feel.  Speaking of enlightenment as an actual 'thing' is no different to speaking of the moment you get a joke as an actual thing.  The fire of getting a joke etc.  Enlightenment and Truth are not the same thing.  Enlightenment is the realisation of the Truth but in a way that goes beyond your intellect.

So, it hasn't been anywhere, nor is it anywhere, nor can it be grasped.  You either get it or you don't.  This is why enlightenment is instant.  Perhaps you burn away your old views at the moment of realising but to consume would imply IT is different than the things being consumed and therefore there is duality present.

The Truth on the other hand is what concepts such as interbeing, oneness and emptiness try to describe - not enlightenment.  Knowledge of the Truth can be grasped intellectually but this is not Enlightenment.  So as I'm sure you know (from your comments) it has nowhere to be other than where it is - so there is no coming or going.  Still, viewing it this way is dualistic.

I may for instance grab a flower.  This is the Truth grasping the Truth.  I may look at the flower and say that flower is the Truth I will grasp it.  This non-Truth grasping non-Truth.

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Oops....someone just got caught in his own net.  :-)

I understand what people call The Truth, and I did too back when, but I eventually had to realize that there isnt anything pemanent enough to be called The Truth. 

However, many things are true, at the moment, and taken together they constitute Things as It is.

Recently Esoteric and I went over the quote from Hamlet that *Nothing is either good or bad, but that thinking makes it so...*, and the soliloquy goes on to say, *Nothing is real except in the mind of the individual....* 

That is why I say that while many things are true, there is no Truth, as it were,  because each of us, while stemming from the same Source, has our own reality. 

To wit, while we have many things in common this is an illusion derived from coincidence.  We are all unique, even though much the same.

Ohhh, this has helped.  Great comments from both you and Esoteric.  Thank you!
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