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I realized how any and all investigations are concerned with
investigating what happens in time. Now the working hypothesis
posits that time is not ultimately real. So we are invited
to switch our investigations from what happens in time to
investigating time itself.
But how to investigate if the investigation is not already
based on time, on time flowing, on taking time to investigate?
Paradox of paradoxes.
The person I normally identify with lives squarely in time,
so that little person clearly can't do it. Than what can?
Learning to listen . . . learning to be . . . unlearning . . .
Jake, Maria and others have mentioned the possibility that the
wh might not be true, an interesting notion to consider. What
would be the consequences? If the world would not be empty
and timeless, then what? What could possibly be the solid
foundation that it would rest on? If time or self would be
absolute, what would that mean? Rather than focusing on the
emotional reaction to various notions (scary, attractive,
soothing, repulsive), how about just trying to really picture
what a world would be like in which the wh would be true, or
in which the wh would be false? Really seeing that could
already provide the solution, like with any koan!
Frank, yes, that makes sense, to see reality at the same time
as illusory (in what it seems to present) and as real (as the
very nature of what it IS). However, to call the latter a
form of manifestation can easily form a subtle trap. What is
being manifested, and what is the process of manifesting? If
there is no -ing then why the -ation? If there is an -ing as
in manifesting, doesn't that already suppose time and happening
and process? How can it be other than relative, an illusion
amidst illusions? When we talk about two truths, one relative
and one absolute, or one illusionary and one real, we run the
big risk to pick and choose between two forms of illusion,
promoting one and demoting another. The IS is totally totally
totally different from manifesting, and hence manifestation.
While we may use such words, tentatively, the real challenge
is to see what IS, beyond what those words would seem to imply.
As for combining devotion and working with the wh, yes, I, too, am
all for that, and I am doing that myself as well, on a daily basis.
However, my point was that we should not use the lable "wh" for all
and everything that we like to work with. Devotion is fine, but to
call it "working with the wh" is, I think, misleading. Let us try
to be precise, and ask ourselves what it really means, to work with
the wh. Working with the wh may trigger devotion, and in turn may
be inspired by devotion, but the two are different, at least as long
as we use language and concepts, which we are doing in these writings.
By the way, you mentioned a wh variant of "I am already enlightened
and perfect, right here, right now, just as I am." This cannot be
true. There is no "I" that can be enlightened or perfect, there is
no "I" that "am". You gave a great description of the `aha' insight
that you could drop the thoughts that were telling you that you were
not perfect. But that is one step. A much bigger step is to drop
the "I" that is posited as having any thoughts whatsoever. It is
this huge distinction that we're after. This is far more than a play
of words. This is life and death. Or better: this is the difference
between life and death, on the one hand, and the unborn on the other.
I'm telling this to myself as much as I am telling it to you and
everyone else. It is easy to hear and to repeat these words;
to really see it and live it and thoroughly let it penetrate is
something else altogether . . . a lifelong task and celebration.