The recording of the next section of the book is now published and inspired what’s below:

This image might make you go ‘Wow’…because to me ‘how it is’ is impactful…
The variations in colour and shape, are startling……
There’s nothing to be done with this…we can just receive it, be at one with it as it is…
If we stay relaxed and open…with this…we get the revelation of its fullness …
Then… the moment’s display refreshes…

But it’s rare to for us to engage with appearances in this way… We’re not used to tasting the freshness of experience and finding that enough…so our interest in this first and direct appreciation is very brief…
We ignore the unspoken invitation it gives to ‘Mind the gap’… stay open, don’t go abstract … and we step onto the ‘thinking about’ train of dualising consciousness… and straight back into samsara.

Separating in duality to… there’s ‘it’ there, a special something in the experiential field… and there’s ‘me’ here… We get busy…adding, and and then relating to, an overlaying web of thoughts…
These thoughts have little to do with what’s actually there…and a lot to do with ‘me’ and what I can bring to the party. ‘Me’ can be like a big handbag full of intoxicating spray – cans of dry knowledge, of biases, beliefs, stories, memories and opinions… which will surely help the party go with a swing!

Psst…Maybe not…and anyway… there is no party!…the image did not send out an invitation…
Never mind!… here I come ; )…mobilising in with my conceptual elaborations…
And as we shift to relating on that secondary and relative level… any freshness that the image offered is ignored… in favour of its potential utility as a springboard for whatever flavours of mentation come to mind.

Starting with ‘I like’ or ‘I don’t like’ as a feeling tone… we can divide the image it up into different parts.
There’s foreground and background depending on our interest… Our attention might be caught by what is central… we are used to that being the position for what’s most important.
We can label…naming the colours and shapes and separate with words like ‘flower’ and ‘wood’ and
We can dissect and label each part of the flower – as in a biology exam… …
We can classify – ‘it’s a nasturtium’ – though it doesn’t know it! As far as we know, flowers do not use human language to communicate among themselves.. or they would turn their heads in recognition : )
We can compare and contrast ‘this’ type with another…and know the conditions of soil water nutrients and sunlight that the plant might find ideal…
We can discover whether it’s an annual or perennial, whether it’s frost-hardy or not…
…and we can know that ‘its’s edible’.
We can drift into memories of grandma’s garden…or be glad that their leaves provided food for the butterflies…
And then there’s the wood. … the relationship between the wood and the flower– seeming brighter on a darker background…and on and on..

Does any of this thinking bring us closer to the showing… or does it distance us, enshrouding the freshness with a dusty veil?

The me-goic aspect of ourselves is however more than happy to engage in all this busyness …’I exist as someone who can add value… who knows what’s what… and can explain….’Yay – go me!”
And, having told myself what’s interesting and true about this… comes …’Let me tell you how it is…!’
Puff… puff… puff…the seemingly individuated self-bubble inflates…whilst at the same time, investing an air of importance and truth into… whatever is expressed!

None of this is a problem in itself…knowledge has its function, as does thinking…but all this agitated and agitating movement is occurring on the non-stop train… moving through awareness with the windows closed and the blinds down…
‘I know….’ chuff chuff chuff…
‘It is…’ chuff chuff chuff…
‘I think…’ chuff chuff chuff…
‘I think…therefore I AM….’ chuff chuff chuff!

The value of Descartes’ statement seemed obscure when I first heard it…a self-validating sealed loop of an idea, offering no useful insight… later seeing how this conclusion precludes any enquiry as to the nature of the thought, or the mind… the one who is thinking…or how it is to ‘be’?
It was later critiqued by Pierre Gassendi…with a response that makes more sense to me, and dharma before that would agree… that the most he could honestly conclude is that ‘thinking is occurring’.
And that is far from proof that there is an individual who is thinking!

As we can see it’s so easy to fall asleep into our soup of ‘knowing about’
However our interpretation is not what is in front of our eyes …

The dharma offers the possibility of being awake and present as presence… which doesn’t tangle with arising thoughts…nor reject them… they dance as petals in the breeze. As a petals we can dance with them or not, within the openness..

The invitation of ‘a flower’ to be simply received is unspoken…and direct reception is without words…
The dharma transmission from Shakyamuni buddha was received by Mahakasyapa in that way, with a smile.

So, maybe the lily/nasturtium/ petal-thought arising turd… is fine just as it is… without my gold or lead or other colour of spray paint?

Well, what do you think?

Could it be that varnishing these self-liberating expressions of the truth is…err…both unnecessary and problematic?

The stale megoic automaticity of thought-engagement can diminish…as the freshness of the open spacious of the truth of ourselves as home-base… becomes more familiar and wonderfully easing to us.

Then ‘My bag’ can shrink… as the spray’s sticky and condensing effect is realised… that the hand of the sprayer is caught in the act…entrapped….not free to be…

There is a lot to engage with in this twenty-five minute recording…and it’s my experience that listening and reflecting, again and again and again, may be necessary to the allow the message to penetrate deeply… rather than just be some words that we heard or read, that bounced off…like a down-pour of rain onto bone-dry soil.

That’s really not because we are stupid… but because we become stupefied – made stupid or senseless – by our attachment to unexamined beliefs. Beleifs which seem foundational… but have no basis in truth.

It invites us to look at beliefs that we take completely for granted… beliefs that, without these teachings, we would never dream of questioning in a million years.

Beliefs about who we are – such as that I am ‘Me’ …. a self-existent, individual, with autonomy – can be put into question and their falsity appreciated.

Hearing that the experiential field is panoramic and undivided.. inclusive of what we take to be self and other… and that there is a direct unmediated response to that which arises… prior to interpretation…
can put into question the value and function of all the interpretations that we make….and challenge the unwitting privileging of this second-order activity.
So we might become curious as to how to desist…or relax out of this …

The dharma teachings shine a light on how we disguise ‘how it is’ from ourselves in so many ways ……but old habits die hard.
Living the samsaric dream/nightmare lifetime after lifetime as a ‘thing’ amongst other ‘things’ with the five poisons running wild… is no picnic, and if we’re clear about how it is construed, we can see that trying to ‘think our way out’ is a impossible task…
and the invitation to mediation practice makes more and more sense…

We’ve had many…and one more follows …
in the Simply sitting Sun-days post