The journey of self discovery or simply in knowing who you truly are, your 'Unborn Buddha Mind' or Buddha nature', your 'Original Face', I believe will end up when there is Utter Silence of the mind, some look at it as the death of the ego. This is what I have gathered over the years from my own personal experiences and observations, the Great Minds that I have read and the 'Revelations of the various religious systems and beliefs that i have practiced; they all point toward this end,
"A jīvanmukta, literally meaning 'liberated while living',[1] is a person who, in the Jain and Vedānta philosophy, has gained complete self-knowledge and self-realisation and attained kaivalya (enlightenment) or moksha (liberation), thus is liberated while living and not yet dead.[2][3] The jivanmukt being is termed as sayogi-kevali (enlightened one with the body) or Arihant in Jainism. The state is the aim of moksha in Vedānta, Yoga and other schools of Hinduism, and it is referred to as jīvanmukti.[4][5][6] "
I have been writing on this subject intensively in the past repeating myself over and over in order that i would one day come to fully understand encapsulate and become its true nature or state of being. Far be it for me to have achieved Moksha or Enlightenment when I know i cannot even control my thoughts as they arise and fall independently with images and imaginations that often throw me into a corner like a defeated man feeling sorry and having inferiority complex over the past, future and even the present circumstances of my life. Greed, hate and Delusions still haunts me and I find myself helpless even after years of practicing the different modes of mind bending exercises. It seems like a futile adventure into what is unfathomable and obscure yet it is right there before my eyes day in day out in my wakeful state and my sleep; the 'Monkey Mind' is relentless.
Yes, every now and then one catches a glimpse of 'the truth' or able to see with clarity of the cause and effect of the matter, however this is mostly at the intellectual level and the mind will still be entrapped by the on going chattering as soon as it gains a foothold into the shallow realization at this level. It took the historical Gautama Buddha almost lifetime of wanderings and self mortification to subdue the monkey mind and attained enlightenment and he did it by giving up or letting go. When He decided to sit under the Bodhi or Pipal tree to meditate vowing not to move eat or drink until He found the Truth, He was actually committing suicide. If the Buddha had died without attaining Awakening or Complete Enlightenment He would have ended in the Hell realm This was the gambit that the Buddha took when all else failed in His quest to attain Complete Liberation. I highly doubt that the Buddha said to himself, I will sit for forty days before He made the decision to sit and meditate however he did sat for a long period of time and in the process faced many challenges physically as well as mentally and was spiritually tempted by Mara the 'Evil One' or the Dark Lord. The Buddha's success came only when He decided that it was all a waste of time and effort, that in order to become liberated from this life and its inherent nature of suffering one simply has to accept that nothing is real, all is an illusion, ephemeral, just as thoughts are. The act of letting go completely is the key to liberation; this includes the letting go of the believe that there is such a thing as a 'Self', the 'I'. For so long as there is an I, there is suffering.
For those well versed in the teachings of Buddhism it is spiritually acknowledged that the Historical Buddha was not an ordinary man, He was a Bodhisattva Mahasattva or was just about to renounce the material world for good, never to return, no more reincarnations. However He was besieged and urged by the Devas, Gods and Deities to return tot his realm before hanging up his towel; the world was in a chaos and needed to be set straight, at least in ancient India. The country was then ran by Brahmin Priests who exploited the teachings of Hinduism for their own benefit and evil practices was rampant with deviation from the original teachings. One of the distinct act of the Buddha's teaching was to end the Caste system, however with the waning of Buddhism this system persisted till today. I made allot of discoveries about Buddhism when I was staying at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and spent most of the cold nights reading rare Buddhist texts that were donated to the library there. I delved deeply into the various schools of Buddhism from the Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana or Tantric school including the lesser schools expounded by later Mendicant monks like Nagarjuna and Shantideva. For those who have the opportunity to be a resident at the Zen Mountain Center would know what a rare treasure trove of Buddhist texts the small library holds.
The fact that my journey took me to these far away unique places was no coincidence, now that I look back at it. Very few and privileged had or will make it to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center located in the Big Sur of Carmel Valley County. in California. What are the chances that a Malaysian from Sungai Pinang, Kampung Selut, would? From the Mahindarama Buddhist Temple on Kampar Road in Penang to Tassajara was a long trip of a spiritual journey if I may say so myself. I got there by way of Green Bay, Wisaconsin, Sandpoint, Alaska and San Francisco, Ca. and what a trip it was.
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