From:  The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Mararshi

If the inquiry "Who am I were a mere questioning, it would not be of much value.  The very purpose of Self-inquiry is to focus the entire mind at its Source.  It is not, therefore, a case of one "I" searching for another "I".

Much less is Self-inquiry an empty formula, for it involves and intense activity of the entire mind to keep it steadily poised in pure Self-awareness.

Self-inquiry is the one infallible means, the only direct one, to realize the unconditioned, absolute Being that you really are.

Inquiring into the nature of one's self that is in bondage and realizing one's true nature is release.

By the inquiry "Who am I?" the thought " Who am I?" will destroy all other thoughts and it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then there will arise Self-realization.

The self can not be found in books. You have to find it for yourself, in yourself.

Find out the truth behind yourself and you will be in a better position to understand the Truth behind the world of which you are a part.

In reality all these are nothing but the self. If you see the Self it will be found to be all, everywhere and always. Nothing but the Self exists.

Self-enquiry alone can reveal the truth that neither the ego nor the mind really exists and enable one to realize the pure, undifferentiated Being of the Self or the Absolute.

By steady and continuous investigation into the nature of the mind, the mind is transformed into that to which "I" refers; and that is in fact the Self.

Since every other thought can occur only after the rise of the "I" thought, and since the mind is nothing but a bundle of thoughts it is only through the enquiry: " Who am I?" that the mind subsides. Moreover, the integral "I" thought implicit in such enquiry, having destroyed all other thoughts, itself finally gets destroyed or consumed

The enquiry: "Who am I?" really means trying to find the source of the ego or of the "I" thought.

If you cling to yourself, the "I" thought, and your interest keeps you to that single thought, other thoughts will get rejected and will automatically vanish.

People think that Liberation is somewhere outside them to be sought for. They are wrong. It is only knowing the Self in you.

Only so long as one considers oneself bound, do thoughts of bondage and Liberation continue. When one inquires who is bound the Self is realized, eternally attained, eternally free.

When thought of bondage comes to an end, can thought of Liberation survive?

From:  The Three Pillars of Zen
By Philip Kapleau- Zen master Bassui Tokusho

If you would free yourself of the sufferings of samsara, you must learn the direct way to become a Buddha. This way is no other than the realization of your own Mind.

To realize your own Mind you must first of all look into the source from which thoughts flow.

Sleeping and working. standing and sitting, profoundly ask yourself, "What is my own Mind?" with an intense yearning to resolve this question.

In this propitious state deepen and deepen the yearning, tirelessly, to the extreme. When the profound questioning penetrates to the very bottom, and that bottom is broken open, not the slightest doubt will remain that your own Mind is itself Buddha, the Void-universe.

It is better to search your own Mind devotedly than to read and recite innumerable sutras and dharani everyday for countless years. Because searching one's own mind leads ultimately to enlightenment, this practice is a prerequisite to becoming a Buddha.

What kind of master is it that this very moment sees colours with the eyes and hears voices with the ears, that now raises the hands and moves the feet? We know these are functions of our own mind, but no one knows precisely how they are preformed.

In order to become a Buddha you must discover who it is that wants to become a Buddha, to know this Subject you must right here and now probe deeply into yourself, inquiring: " what is it that thinks in terms of good and bad, that sees, that hears?" If you question your self profoundly in this wise, you will surely enlighten yourself. If you enlighten yourself, you are instantly a Buddha.

What is my own Mind? Now even though your questioning goes deep, you will get no answer, and eventually you will reach a cul-de-sac, your thinking totally checked. You won't find anything within that can be called "I" or "Mind". But who is it that understands all this? Continue to probe more deeply yet and the mind that perceives there is nothing will vanish; you will no longer be aware of questioning but only of emptiness.

When awareness of even emptiness disappears, you will realize there is no Buddha outside Mind and no Mind outside Buddha.

Your physical body, composed of the four basic elements, is like a phantom, without reality, yet apart from this body there is no mind. The empty-space of the ten quarters can neither see nor hear; still, something within you does hear and distinguish sounds. Who or what is it? When this question totally ignites you, distinctions of good and evil, awareness of being or emptiness, vanish like a light extinguished on a dark night.

Though you are no longer consciously aware of yourself, still you can hear and know you exist. Try as you will to discover the subject hearing, your effort will fail and you will find yourself at an impasse.

All at once your mind will burst into great enlightenment and you will feel as though you have risen from the dead, laughing loudly and clapping your hands in delight.  Now for the first time you will know that Mind itself is Buddha.

Realization of the self-nature is the sole cure for all (mind) illness. Do not rely on any other remedy. Find the subject which casts the shadows, it is the very source of all Buddhas.

Once you realize your True-nature, all evil bent of mind arising from karma extending over innumerable years past is instantly annihilated, like snow put into a roaring furnace.

However much you try to know it through logical reasoning or to name or call it, you are doomed to failure, and even though all of you becomes one mass of questioning as you turn inward and intently search the very core of your being, you will find nothing that can be termed Mind or essence.

Yet should someone call your name, something from within will hear and respond. Find out this instant who it is. 

From:  The ENLIGHTENMENT INTENSIVE - Lawrence Noyes

Of all the different kinds of searchings for the truth that there are, there is one particular kind that begins when we take up the essential questions of our existence. This could be called not just the search for truth but the search for truth itself. This is the search for the truth of the truth, that ultimate, underlying place from which all relative truths come.

With enlightenment, it is not necessary to have a clear concept of the thing or to " understand"  it before setting out for it.

We don't need a clear idea of what the truth is before intending to know it. The intending to know is sufficient to begin with. And when we are ready to take up this search into the essential questions of our existence, we need a laboratory in which to work. One we now have is the Enlightenment Intensive. There, most people begin by working on the age-old question, "who am I"

This sense of somehow being separated from one's own life, even if one happens to be outwardly successful, is a hallmark of a life being lived from ideas, social automaticity, or an inner system of should and shouldn’t.  It's a hallmark of a life not lived from who one really is.

Whereas silence tends to still the mind, this particular kind of communication tends to empty and unburden the mind. When combined with repeated considering of a question like "Who am I?" participants thus begin to come more into their natural self, beyond the world of ideas, confusions and inner chatter. This in turn sets up an internal condition in which direct experience is more likely to occur. This is the great advantage of the dyad format and the essence of how it can help us win the battle with the mind.

Like most activities of this nature, it must be experienced to be fully appreciated.

From:  The Transmission of Truth - Charles Berner

The whole thing is You standing face to face with the truth, until there's no standing anymore, there's just Truth.

The mind is a fake, a total fake. Once you call its bluff, it disappears every time. If a person is determined to go ahead, the fever abates. What ever it is abates, Once one is totally committed and enters that room of the unknown, once one takes the leap of faith, goes on anyway, and jumps off the cliff, the mind is defeated.

That being there for each other is what lends power to this technique. You could go off and meditate by yourself. But to communicate you have a live entity (partner) there with you, being there for you. And this enables you to go on when you would panic and run if you were by yourself. It also gives you someone who will listen and understand. And to the degree that you're able to get these things grasped, if they're untrue, they vanish. If they're true, they persist. This is the great advantage of a partner.

 From:  The Power of Now - Eckhart tolle

You can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Be there as the witnessing presence. You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of "feeling-realization" is enlightenment.

You are cut off from Being as long as your mind takes up all your attention. When this happens-and it happens continuously for most people-you are not in your body.

The mind absorbs all your consciousness and transforms it into mind stuff. You cannot stop thinking. Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease.

Your whole sense of who you are is then derived from mind activity. Your identity, as it is no longer rooted in Being, becomes a vulnerable and ever-needy mental construct, which creates fear as the predominant underlying emotion.

The one thing that truly matters is then missing from your life; awareness of your deeper self - your invisible and indestructible reality. To become conscious of it, will free vast amounts of consciousness that previously had been trapped in useless and compulsive thinking.

 
From:  Loving What Is - Byron katie

The mind can only find its true nature by thinking what else is there? How else is it going to find itself? It has to leave clues for itself, and it comes to realize that it has dropped its own breadcrumbs. It has come out of itself, but it hasn't realized that yet.

Inquiry is the breadcrumbs that allow it to return to itself. The everything returns to the everything. The nothing returns to the nothing.

The fear of death is the last smokescreen for the fear of love. We think that we're afraid of the death of our body, though what we're really afraid of is the death of our identity. But through inquiry, as we understand that death is just a concept and that our identity is a concept too, we come to realize who we are. This is the end of fear.

Inquiry is a way to end confusion and to experience internal peace, even in a world of apparent chaos.

Above all else, inquiry is about realizing that all the answers we ever need are always available inside us.

You're either attaching to your thoughts or inquiring. There's no other choice.

It is not our thoughts, but the attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering.

Attaching to a thought means believing that it's true, without inquiring.

From:  Don Juan, in The Power of Silence  - Carlos Castaneda

Our difficulty with this simple progression..(the path of knowledge) is that most of us are unwilling to accept that we need so little to get on with. We are geared to expect instruction, teaching, guides, masters. And when we are told that we need no one, we don't believe it. We become nervous, then distrustful, and finally angry and disappointed. If we need help, it is not in methods, but in emphasis. If someone makes us aware that we need to curtail our self-importance, that help is real. Sorcerers say we should need no one to convince us that the world is infinitely more complex than our wildest fantasies. So, why are we dependent? Why do we crave someone to guide us when we can do it ourselves?…. 

From Awaken Children - Ammachi

If you always say no to life, to all the experiences that life brings you, you will be miserable and you will get bored…. To accept is to say yes to everything. Everything may go wrong in your life, but still you find yourself saying, "yes, I accept." The river says yes to everyone. All of Nature says yes, except human beings.

A human being can say both yes and no……..

When you see life, and all that life brings you, as a precious gift, you will be able to say yes to everything.

Everybody is just being prepared to reach this final state of dropping all worldly attachment, all ego (limited sense of "I" or "mine") It must happen because that is the final state of evolution, you cannot avoid it….. The final destiny for all souls is the dropping away of every obstruction to peace and contentment.

From When things Fall Apart  - Pema Chodron

Only in a open, nonjudgmental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we're not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.

Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to Truth.

What makes maitri (loving kindness) such a different approach is that we are not trying to solve a problem. We are not striving to make pain go away or to become a better person. In fact, we are giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart.

If there's any possibility for Enlightenment, it's right now, not at some future time. Now is the time. 

From The Gurdjieff work - Kathleen Speeth

Do I actually know myself, here and now? Know myself with the kind of objectivity that I can at times apple to others? Who is this person who goes around under the name of Mr. So-and-so or Ms. Such-and such? The only person who can know myself is myself - no one can do what is required for self-knowledge for me. And no amount of fantasizing about who or what I am will substitute for a direct, dispassionate look at the data.                                                                                                                       

G.I. Gurdjieff

If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning round in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him - to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death ?

Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious. 

Kabir

What we call salvation belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you are alive, do you think ghosts will do it for you afterward?

What is found now is found then.   

From:  A Year to Live - Stephen Levine

He (Buddha) reminds us of the enormous deathlessness of our being-without-end, and that the closer our awareness is to the present moment the closer we are to our timeless essence.

His wisdom reminds us that at the very center of this moment is timelessness and that time just trails off in either direction.   He reminds us of the universal in which the personal floats. He encourages us now to become wholly familiar with the light within so as not to be taken by surprise when it shines immense before us. He advises that only acknowledging and entering that light without reserve will prepare us for our enormity.

The Tibetan tradition says that most people are so unaware of their Great Nature that upon seeing the tremendous luminescence of their original face they swoon, trip, and "fall head-long into a womb," taking unconscious rebirth.   

return to top