Reflection 48

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As Easy As Winking

It remains a stern fact that, while it’s the easiest thing imaginable to see yourself intermittently as bare Capacity, it’s far from easy to keep up the seeing. But isn’t this contrast what we deeply desire? What is life without audacity and daring, without adventure, without a tremendous challenge to put us on our mettle? And what challenge can compare with this one great adventure which is never completed, yet is ever complete because you can enjoy being at the goal from the very first step along the road? Furthermore, this is not a big hard thing to do made up of little hard things to do. Each is as easy as winking. Now. (Head Off Stress, Douglas Harding)

I first read The Little Book of Life and Death when I was hospitalized with broken bones in my arm and foot. I enjoyed it so much I burst out laughing in my hospital bed. That was 6 years ago already. Since then I find myself appreciating the sweetness of Vedic texts such as Bagavatam, Avadhuta Gita, Tripura Rahasia and Ashkavakra Samhita more and more. Love letters written in such humor and sweetness from Me to Me. Human heart, which is the heart of the mystery, can only be truly free when it knows itself. But the words get in the way when you talk like this. This knowing is more like intuiting. Just as Mr. Harding says, it's not for believing but for seeing. The famous Zen phrase, "directly see into your heart, find Buddha nature, become Buddha" is said with a twinkle in the priest's eyes, I'm sure. Yoko.

When I first met Alan here in Sydney he told me about the time that he told a friend of his, someone extraordinarily erudite about all things spiritual, about the Douglas Harding techniques and the results as they had happened to him. Apparently the friend looked down his nose and snorted “But that’s very low level enlightenment!” Alan often proclaims now that he is an exponent of “low level enlightenment.” And I find that this has a very beneficial effect. It acts as an antidote to the idea that seeing is essentially a “great event”. Often the most remarkable thing about “seeing” is its ordinariness. Often it is searching for something miraculous that is the great barrier to “seeing” what is here now. Wallace.


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