Sunday, January 18, 2009

The Seeker

What manner of people were these who, like the carp in the Chinese fable that leapt up the waterfall in a mighty thrust to tecome a dragon, could rise to a higher level of consciousness, to a wholly new awareness of the indivisibility of all life and the basic emptiness of all things? Certainly none was gifted with extraordinary intellect, nor were any endowed with supranormal powers. Suffering they had each known, but it was no more than what is experienced in the lifetime of an ordinary person. If they were exceptional in any way it was simply in their courage to "go they knew not where by a road they knew not of," prompted by a faith in their real Self.

The seeker who does not find is still entrapped by his illusion of two worlds: one of perfection that lies beyond, of peace without struggle, of unending joy; the other the everyday meaningless world of pain and evil which is scarcely worth relating himself to. Secretly he longs for the former even as he openly despises the latter. Yet he hesitates to plunge into the teeming Void, into the abyss of his own Primal-nature, because in his deepest unconscious he fears abandoning his familiar world of duality for the unknown world of Oneness, the reality of which he still doubts. The finders, on the other hand, are restrained by neither fears nor doubts. Casting both aside, they leap because they can't do otherwise - they simply must and no longer know why - and so they triumph.

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