We must never, never study spirituality as if it is a 'chim'
subject like a difficult subject we are learning in school.
Because if we are just trying to figure it out using the mind or
intellect, then we are going the wrong directions. Words can only
help as pointers for us to have an 'intuitive feel' of what it is
talking about. Then the rest is practising, abiding in the
recognition in our daily lives.
Intellect is the wrong tool for this endeavor. It can never
grasp spirituality. Intellect is devoid of the dynamic presence and
livingness that only intuitive awareness can touch. Truth (what is
always present) is obvious by itself, requiring no other tool to
figure it out. As the 3rd Zen Patriarch said, don't seek truth,
just cease to cherish opinions. Capturing spiritual understanding
through concepts and ideas into dead images is of no use here. But
when we take the focus off of the mind, then perhaps the
all-pervading field of awareness might just reveal itself on its
own accord.
6th Zen Patriarch Hui Neng:
"What I can tell you is not secret. If you turn your
awareness inwardly and you will find what is secret within
you."
Leo Hartong:
"In relation to Pure Awareness, the best the intellect can
do is to recognize its own modus operandi. In other words, to get
it, we must get why we cannot get it. If, at this point, the
intellectual mind does not see its natural limitations, it may jump
to a wrong conclusion like, ‘Oh if I can’t get it, it must be
complicated.’ No doubt about it, trying to capture the non-dual in
the dualistic medium of language can get very complicated; but in
essence, it is not complicated at all, just as pointing out the
color blue to a child is simple, but explaining it to a professor
who was born blind is next to impossible.
While the heart – or right hemisphere of the brain – has a
feel for this type of reasoning, the dividing and classifying
left-brained aspect doesn’t. It is simply not the correct tool for
dealing with the undivided whole to which this text is pointing.
The intellect is the wrong tool for relating to non-dualistic
reality, in the same way that a bucket is the wrong tool for
scooping up the summer wind, or that bars are unfit to confine the
rain, or that a sealed coffin can’t hold sunlight.
The mind not only appears in Awareness, it tends to confuse its own
intellectual activity with Awareness. In fact, Awareness is not a
product of the mind, but the mind is a product of Awareness – the
silent and permanent background common to everything, including the
mind and its activity. Like the screen on which we watch a movie,
this background is generally ignored in favor of the impermanent
activity that appears on or against it. Zoom out, and Awareness and
its content unify in a Self-luminous singularity about which
nothing can be said or known for the simple reason that anything
said or known is part-and parcel of this
singularity."
=====================
Thusness:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-anatta-emptiness-and-spontaneous.html
"Before proceeding any further, it is of absolute importance to
know that there is no way the stanzas can be correctly understood
by way of inference, logical deduction or induction. Not that there
is something mystical or transcendental about the stanzas but
simply the way of mental chattering is a 'wrong approach'. The
right technique is through 'vipassana' or any more direct and
attentive bare mode of observation that allows the seeing of things
as they are. Just a casual note, such mode of knowing turns natural
when non-dual insight matures, before that it can be quite
'efforting'."
In short: only awareness can know itself (that is why it is
called "self-knowing awareness"), transient and changing thoughts
disguising as "understanding" merely pops in and out of awareness,
but awareness is completely unaffected by the comings and goings of
ideas, concepts and thoughts. It is an unmoving
presence-awareness.
Thought can never understand something greater than itself,
something that is intimate, evident, obvious, and
self-authenticating. 1000 descriptions of the moon is still not the
same as the direct seeing of the moon. This is not a perfect
analogy because awareness is not a "thing" to be seen yet it can be
recognised in direct experience. The eye cannot see itself, the
knife cannot cut itself. Yet it sees, it knows.