Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00235)

This is a beautiful piece of writing, Eldon. A joy to read, truly 
inspirational. Thank you . . .

Cheers
oldescott


--- In theos-talk@y..., "Eldon B Tucker" <eldon@t...> wrote:
> Maya could be considered the opposite of reality. But what is Maya and
> what is the truly real? If you take one person's viewpoint, that
> person's place in life determines his or her view of things. Someone
> working in a high-pressure office in New York City might consider the
> exact clock time and daily schedule to be extremely real. Another person
> spending a month hiking in Nepal might consider the time of day as very
> unreal. A young mother with four hungry, noisy children charging about
> the house might consider their needs real. A Buddhist student on the
> sixth day of Dai Session might consider the sound of children at play
> outside as no more real than the ant crawling on the floor before him or
> the momentary sound of honking car horns.
> 
> Maya is misperception. A stick lies beside the sidewalk. Walking home in
> the dark, someone is startled to see a snake. After a brief shock, the
> person realizes the mistake and sees what is really there. 
> 
> Our ordinary perceptions of life are full of such mistakes. That is
> Maya. It is not that the physical world is a mirage, unreal, and does
> not exist. It is as real as everything else, on whatever plane of
> existence. It may be grosser, more material, more limited in
> expressiveness, but it is not a figment of our imagination. What is
> unreal is our false perception of it. We see it. We could understand
> what is happening. But we misperceive, fooling ourselves, seeing things
> that are not here and missing seeing things that actually exist before
> us.
> 
> The biggest cause of Maya is the action of the lower mind in creating a
> false sense of permanence to things. In addition, we paint the world
> with our minds, making it look like our worldviews. If we are devout
> Christians, we have a story of life involving the church doctrines we've
> been taught. That story colors our perception. We picture the world as
> acting according it. We make the world appear as though that story were
> actual reality. In doing so, we fill our minds with Maya, deluding
> ourselves. 
> 
> In a dream, there may be a narrative voice. That voice explains the
> setting and what is going on. Our minds take on that role in waking
> life, adding a subtle narration to our experience of life. The storyline
> that is followed represents how our beliefs are organized.
> 
> How do we get closer to the Real, and reduce the influence of Maya in
> our lives?
> 
> First, we need to be aware of the presence and influence of Maya. We
> need to keep aware that what we believe about the world and what is
> happening are preconceptions that hold us back from seeing things more
> directly.
> 
> Second, we need to practice disassociating ourselves from Maya. This is
> helped if we have multiple ways of thinking about things, taken from
> vastly differently outlooks. Switching frequently between these
> different views, we come to see that each is something that we're doing
> rather than literal reality. Contrast the traditional theosophical view
> with a Buddhist or Islamic view. Then add a Jungian view. Throw in a
> sci-fi view or perhaps a taste of Taoism. Give each a turn, continually
> wondering about life.
> 
> Third, we recognize that life is multimodal. That is, there are many
> equally valid perspectives. None is ultimate truth, to which all people
> must someday accept. There is fullness and emptiness, sunya and sunyata.
> There is the unmanifest and the manifest. There is life and death. There
> is deism and not-deism. There are many different outlooks, each assuming
> the face of reality when we embrace it. Each, though, is but one of many
> equally real faces to life.
> 
> I think it's a misconception to think that we're closer to reality if we
> could somehow exist on a higher plane. The materials of that plane, its
> "laws of nature," may be subtler, but they are equally capable of
> deluding us. Insight into life is cultivated from within. It is not
> conferred upon us from outside, from visiting special places, be they
> Tibet or some higher plane. Wherever we are, we exist in some form and
> are doing something. If we don't cultivate our perceptions, polish the
> mirror of our minds, and draw forth insight from within, we remain
> subject to delusion. 
> 
> There are higher faculties than the mind. Besides cultivating it, we can
> draw deeper within and be aware of the world in other, richer ways. But
> these faculties are *in addition to* what we work with, not *instead of*
> them. All of them are important add to the richness of life. We can draw
> upon inner sources of light that illumine the mind. But if the mind is
> not clear, acting as a well-polished lens to focus that light with
> clarity, the light is rendered impotent. A mind that is unclear, that is
> opaque, that diffuses and scatters the light -- it makes one
> dysfunctional, much like cataracts may render otherwise perfectly
> healthy eyes useless. 
> 
> The mind should be clear, transparent, luminous, focused, and a
> responsive instrument of the inner nature. As such, it allows one to be
> a potent, creative being in the world. Without it, one is frustrated,
> confused, confusing, disoriented, without purpose, and but stumbling
> along in life. (This sounds like most of us, to a degree! We all have
> room for improvement in sharpening our mental faculties.)
> 
> Maya arises when we let our preconceptions rule us, and don't carefully
> look at life. The world is real. Life is real. We don't have to long to
> be on some higher plane, to be totally absorbed in our favorite deity,
> to achieve final "liberation" in nirvana, or active any "not here, not
> now" objective. When we stop the "somewhere else, some other time"
> outlook, and instead give up, stop rejecting our current selves, and
> instead seek to discover the riches already within ourselves -- then
> Maya is fading and Reality is showing its face. And we discover that we
> have actual riches to draw upon that have more to give us than anything
> we might have longed for.
> 
> Longing for something higher, seeking for further perfection, wanting to
> escape our current limitations, we function within time and deal with
> that part of us that is subject to evolution. But there is also a higher
> part of us that is timeless, and as such does not evolve. To evolve,
> something must participate in time, and thus is something less than that
> part. 
> 
> Being timeless, that highest part of us is as available to us now as it
> was billions of years ago, and will be no more available to us at the
> end of some great Manvantara as it is this moment. It is both available
> and unreachable at the same time. It is unreachable in the sense that no
> action we might take could bring us closer to it nor is there anything
> we can do to grasp it more fully. But it is also as available at this
> moment as any other. We will never get any closer than we already are.
> And we are more intimately close to it than we could ever conceive. It
> is the Unknowable, or our personal experience of it, or our essential
> rootedness in it, something that could be considered the ultimate
> mystery of life except that it also is that thing which we more
> ultimately, truly know.
> 
> -- Eldon