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. -- ******************************************************************************* -- John Cha "The present is always more interesting than the future or the past" *******************************************************************************