Thursday, February 15, 2018

Which I Am is present?

As the Buddha is said to have said, life indeed is suffering and those who thinks otherwise are either deceiving themselves or too far asleep to notice the difference, or are living in self denial. Many would disagree with the Buddha's take of life as suffering perhaps simply because of the fact that their life had been pretty much okay except for the facts that cannot be helped like getting sick, growing old and dying or lost a loved one or getting s divorce or owing money to a loan shark, other than these few hiccups, life seems okay. The question is why do we suffer at all, the mental and emotional anguish, the spiritual torment and worse of all the physical aches and pains. Why do we suffer collectively, wars and , famine, natural and man made disasters, why do we have to become victims to every acts of terror and economic exploitations?
The answer is i believe is that human beings a inherently masochistic by nature. We love our suffering, we love being subject to pain and humiliation  often without being aware of it that we suffer this delusion. We create all sorts of excuses and justifications to prove otherwise, that we are absolutely normal contrary to the Buddha's observation that we are living in a realm of Maya or delusion. If indeed the Buddha is right, then, how the hell do we get out of this bondage, how do we wake up from this nightmare we call life?  The answer off course quite simple, awake and stay awaken. Become fully conscious within and without, and become absolutely at one with the whole; as within so without.
Dwelling over the fact that is suffering itself is one of the worse kind of suffering in itself. however as my friend Dr Peter O'Yimbo used to say, there is suffering without bitterness, it it more noble. Most of us suffer in silence while others suffer with courage and dignity, there some who suffer with rage and anger;  worthy is he who suffer with patience and perseverance. The question still is, how to end suffering and the Buddha in His infinite Wisdom has spelled it out for mankind the formula and antidote to our predicament some two thousand five hundred years ago. Today mankind has turned His revelation into a religion but not as a practice or a way of life. Huge Buddha statues and stupas are erected all over the land but the practice of the precepts is buried deep in the ground of consciousness beneath these monuments. Those that take up the Buddha's teachings today are a drop in the bucket compared to the size of humanity itself. 
The Buddha declared that, 'suffering is, but none who suffers. The Buddha's Way is but none who practice it and Nirvana is but none who attain it.' For so long as the I is there is suffering, Suffering seizes when the I is no more. "I am no more." Hence, who or what is 'I'? Who Am I? 
Self-enquiry, also spelled self-inquiry (Sanskrit vichara, also called jnana-vichara[1] or ātma-vichār), is the constant attention to the inner awareness of "I" or "I am" recommended by Ramana Maharshi as the most efficient and direct way of discovering the unreality of the "I"-thought.
Ramana taught that the "I"-thought will disappear and only "I-I"[web 1] or self-awareness remains. This results in an "effortless awareness of being",[2] and by staying with it[web 2] this "I-I" gradually destroys the vasanas "which cause the 'I'-thought to rise,"[2] and finally the 'I'-thought never rises again, which is Self-realization or liberation.[2]
Wikipedia.










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