cyee@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au (Chut Ngeow YEE) (05/28/91)
Thanks John Cha for sharing your experiences with us and clarifying your
real identity. For a while I was suspecting that Rebecca is a male name
(pardon my lack of Western culture). I agree with your view on experiences,
spiritual or mundane. I had quite a few of these myself, although they seems
to be of significance in one way of another, but I can never quite figure
out what they are nor do I know how they arise.
Below is a quote from the back cover of "The Garbage and the Goddess" by
Da Avabhasa on spirutial experiences which I think would interest you.
"There have been many people who came to me and very quickly became
involved in the experiential dimensions stimulated by the yogic aspect
of the Divine Power. They had all kinds of experiences. But it didn't
change them one iota. They were just as stupid, just as committed to
their asshole destiny in the midst of kriyas, blisses and visions as they
were before they ever heard of kundalini[yogic 'serpant' power]. They
failed to understand just as completely...
My Teaching work over the last two and one half years has thus been
associated with inner and outer miracles, but it was all a way to
demonstrate how the fulfillment of experiential life in individuals does
not amount in any sense whatoever to illumination. The arising of
miraculous or extraordinary experiential phenomena does not produce the
enlightened man, the wise man. Enlightenment or radical understanding
depends entirely on the conscious process, not on the experiential one"
Da Avabhasa
The Garbage and the Godness
This book is a document of his play with his devotees in the early days
(1972-1974). He took on the name Bubba Free John then. Bubba is his
childhood nickname which means brother. "Free John" is derived from his
birth name Franklin Jones. "Franklin" means a liberated man, and "Jones"
is a Welsh version of the name "John". That period is signified by him
living intimately amongst his devotees as a loving and crazy brother,
leading them through the labryinth of experiences, exoteric and esoteric,
gross and subtle. Da Avabhasa humorously called that period "packaging
the garbage".
I have received a private mail which expresses doubt on Da Avabhasa
teaching. All I have to say now is that all doubts are sustained. I
am not a scholar and definitely not a realizer, so cannot 'reply' any
of your questions. I might quote a passage here and there from the few
volumes in hand that I feel relates to any query, but even that you
have to take it with a pinch (or should I say a bucket) of salt.
I definietly welcome responses, both positive and negative. I have
enjoyed the postings in this news group and have learned a great deal.
And I definitely enjoy what I am doing (at the risk of mispresenting a
rare Realizer).
Below is another of my favouriate:
"The great message of the universe is not that you survive. It is that
you are awakened into a process in which nothing ultimately survives.
Everything that rises also falls. Everything in its process of appearance
is inevitably locked into a cycle that is changing. The Law we perceive
in this life then, is the Law of the obligation to be a sacrifice, to
yield one's independent position. To hold on to one's position is a
torment, producing all kinds of illusions and false hopes. It also makes
us self-possessed and loveless. Therefore, such clinging prevents our
life, even while it continues, from becoming a creative form of
participation and action.
As long as we are essentially possessed of ourselves and afraid, we look
for consoling knowledge. We want to hear that we survive, we want to hear
that there is something we can do in our rooms for twenty minutes morning
and evening that will make us happy. Because we do not want to go through
the sacrifice, the moral change. We do not want to fulfill the Law. We do
-----
not want to lose face. We are always seeking to know in order to protect
ourselves. We want to save ourselves and continue. And we cannot.
When you beome aware of the message of things, and the Law of things, and
the Truth of things, then you become combined with this affair of existence
in an entirely different way. You see that the ultimate communication of
the universe is Eternal Life. It is an Eternal Process. However, it is
Eternal Life paradoxically expressed through a procession of infinite
changes in which we are fundamentally without knowledge. If you can come
into this certainty of Ignorance, you will feel profound relief. You will
be already mindless, bodiless, beginningless, endless in your feeling, in
your certainty, in your awareness itself - while at the same time
paradoxically present in the mechanics of things. And thourgh that
Intuition you will become animated by the Law that obliges us, the Law of
Sacrifice. You will fulfill the Law through love rather than pursue
knowledge, certainty, and survival.
It is only when we are not certain of Ignorance that we pursue survival in
the coventional sense, that we fail to make this sacrifice through love.
Spiritual life is moral transformation through love, through Intuition. It
is not a matter of gaining knowledge. All knowledge passes. There is no way
to have any fixed certainty about whether or how you survive your death.
You will never acquire any ultimate certainty theough the means of
knowledge. Yes - it is true that we are not smothered, ended, murdered. The
universe is not a machineof death. But you will not become certain of
Eternal Life theough any egoic pursiut of certainty, knowledge, or
information. All the forms of information ultimately contradict one another.
You will realize that certainty only through submission, through intelligent
response to this Teaching, through your moral commitment, through love,
through the energy of the whole body-being. You will enjoy a different
Vision, not a vision realized through knowledge or egoic independence, but
the Vision realized through the paradoxical disposition of the devotee: the
Vision of Eternal Life, the Vision of God.
Da Avabhasa
The Way That I Teach
Yee.dogen@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (John Chq) (05/29/91)
Mr. C. N. Yee,
Thanks for the quotes from da free john. I've known people
who have had tremendous "awakenings", and this does not seem to make them
any "better". Pride, jealousy, anger, have not been eradicated. In fact it
becomes worse,sometimes, because they have attained something their ignorant
bretheren have not. At first I thought this affliction of arrogance was a
problem of the 'intellectuals',--we academicians take pride in
whatever scholarly achievments we make, aithough the most 'humble' person
I've met is a pure land priest and a Buddhist scholar who has read most of
the major Buddhist works in all four cannonical languages (Sanskrit, Pali,
Chinese, and Tibetan!)--, but it seems to afflict most people (myself
included, of course8-)]. But on those very rare occaisions when I have
observed selfishness, etc., in me arise and pass away were the times when I
was 'free' from them. Thats why I think an emphasis on conscious living is
important. So, am I aware of the pressure of the keys on my fingers? Who
asks? Yes, gomboo can run thick at times.
justrunningthickjustrunningthickjustrunningthick,
J. C.
--
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-- John Cha
"The present is always more interesting than the future or the past"
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