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2662_032601
Audio of Jan Cox March 26, 2001
Notes by CF
Suggested Title: Mind is Enlightenment
Begin: Years and years ago one of the first things I read ( I’ll pretend I am talking about me ) and translated as stories of waking up were the experiences of Abraham, Moses and Mohammed. They called it the voice of God but I translated it as “having the experience or waking up.”
The benchmark of the experience when it was over was always I cannot explain it. But then they would begin to try to explain it. When I first had the experience of waking up I understood why they (People who had the experience of waking up ) could never explain it.
I had daydreams of what the experience of waking up could have been and speculated on what the secret teachings were about but the benchmark of the experience of waking up was always “ I cannot explain it.” And then the mind would begin to try to explain it. This could be called the first stage.
There is another stage or level (the real level) to the experience of waking up and that is the level where “you cannot explain why you cannot explain the experience of waking up.”
05:00 Not only can you not explain why you can’t explain the experience of waking up you no longer try to explain it. When the experience of waking up was presented as a teaching ( Judaism, Sufism. Buddhism. Etc. ) the teachings were trying to explain the inexplicable.
I find it extremely insightful ( rather you see it at the moment or not ) the way the mind continues to explain itself when it has had a “head-on” awareness of the fact that the experience of waking up (seeing life as it is etc.) is inexplicable. The crude allegories of Moses and the “burning bush” or Mohammed’s “angels” are attempts at explaining the inexplicable experience of waking up.
10:00 Moses could not explain the experience of being in the presence of God or what I call the awakened state. (ex. Being free of the delusions of the ordinary mind. etc. ) The ordinary mind of Moses could not explain what it saw and heard in the awakened state but he could show you the tangible stone of secret writings. (Ten Commandments)
The ordinary mind of Mohammed could not explain the awakened state. (seeing or hearing Allah)
So Mohammed used stories of angels speaking to him. Buddha did not attribute the experience of waking up to an outside state but to an inner state of mind. At first he said you had to do it yourself and then later he came up with the seven noble truths.
Can anyone see that when the mind experienced the awakened state and said I cannot tell you what I saw, that every mystical system after that was an attempt to explain what the mind saw. The Buddha truths and the ten commandments were methods to awaken. Mystical systems are a bit less specific. They may use meditation instead of an outer version such as the Ten Commandments.
Mystics have long believed that the teachings (ex, The Ten Commandments etc.) have an inner core. For example the commandment “Thou shall not kill” means that not only should you not kill anyone you should not even think about killing someone.
To the few who could hear that, it meant that the mind was important to the awakened state. If behavior was your only goal then it would be hard to get past that point. The awakened state is all in the mind.
15:00 The belief of the ordinary mind that it can explain the experience of waking up (ex. The mind being free of itself. Etc.) became a system. Moses’s stories became the teachings of Judaism. The stories of Mohammed became the teachings of Islam and Sufism. And the stories and teachings of Buddha became Buddhism and Zen.
The mind, in trying to explain the experience of waking up (ex. Seeing life as it is, etc.) to someone else is also trying to explain its mind to itself.
It is useful to me to see the experience of waking up as so extraordinary that even thousands of years ago the mind managed to come up with terms to explain the experience. (ex. I woke up. And the six billion other people say well I wake up every morning. Then they (the minds of the ones who woke up) would say no no. It was like waking up from the everyday state of waking up.)
And everything after that (the teachings and stories of of Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, etc.) as the attempt to explain the inexplicable as one level.
20:00 And the next level as being “you cannot explain why you cannot explain it (waking up) and the mind no longer tries. The mind wants to explain the experience of waking up. The first level believes it can explain it.
The body does not however want to explain it. (ex. The body does not gain any miraculous power from the experience of waking up.) Only the mind has the experience. The liver or the heart does not have the experience.
25:00 Moments when you are more awake and alert cannot be explained but the mind will continue to do so. That is why you still listen to me. It is one way the mind tries to explain itself. Once someone has the experience and it is over and they try to explain it to a friend what the mind is also doing is trying to explain it to its own mind.
Just consider the mind after it has had the experience of waking up and the mind states it cannot explain the experience but it continues to try – it can make the human voice wearisome. (To repeat for the third time in ten days.)
Maybe next time I can just come in and wiggle my fingers for thirty minutes.
And may I remind you that even though its a fine definition and I still stand by it that what we are doing is trying to enlighten our thoughts, “what if thoughts are enlightenment ?” Or if you prefer instead of the struggle to enlightening the mind, what if mind is enlightenment ?
28:06
Jan’s Posted Daily Fresh Real News
March 26, 2001.
HOW DO YOU TELL THE IDIOTS FROM THE IMBECILES?
A rich and powerful prince once asked a man
who many believed to be awake,
to teach him how to become enlightened —
which he declined to do;
his unspoken reason being that he
had no interest in being around anyone dumb enough
to make such a request.
As titillating as smart asses may find the story,
its real eroticism comes from seeing it not as a relationship between a prince, and a wise man, but between that portion of mans collective mind that operates in your head, and that renegade slice of your brain that faults same.
Only pinheads hire themselves out to tutor pinheads;
only the thoroughly lost act as guides to the
irredeemably misplaced,
and only boulders tell trees how to walk.
People, (and things), too dense to realize what is going on can never be made to realize;
the practical feature of this fact is in you finally recognizing that your own thoughts can never
enlighten themselves,
and that totally captive thing in you that says, I
will never lead you to liberation.
No doctor can ever cure himself
who is not ill to begin with;
no sleeper can be awakened
whose natural state is slumber,
and no cave dweller can be enticed into the light
who has no eyes with which to see.
In rational communities: plumbers don’t work on cars,
nor eunuchs teach sex ed,
but in routine neural neighborhoods
patent idiots publicly denounce idiocy amidst the
cheers and jeers of other obvious idiots.
(You are keeping in mind that the real tale being told here concerns activities within the folds of your brain, and nowhere else, right?!)
The few people on this planet at any given time who want to understand what is going on strongly enough to engage in some consistent,
and not totally insane effort to that end
begin in the same position as anyone else desirous of
knowing something they do not presently know:
they seek to be told about it by someone who
does know —
but in this singular instance — no one does know,
for the one big question that eternally dogs the few
has no answer —
not in the context as mind pictures a relationship between questions-&-answers, and between
not-knowing-something, and then learning-about it.
Routine people and princes think that there are many questions to be answered about life:
about why humans are so blind in certain affairs;
why they are so stupid concerning other particular matters, but the sundry examples of mortal thought and speech that all men find inexplicable in other men
are all but reflected variations of a single question:
Why is life like THIS?
with, this being a blank space that each mans mind continually fills, and re-fills in
as dictated by never-still circumstances.
Why is life like THIS?: that is the one,
all encompassing question proffered by philosophers, princes, priests, and plebeians alike,
which in most instances is actually a criticism
rather than a question, and yet,
if the person engaged in the criticism understood
what is going on in life
the question, even if unstated, would be operationally
answered, and their criticism erased.
No man would express any complaint about life if he knew what was going on in life.
The answer to: Why is life like THIS?
is the answer to everything;
the answer to that question reveals to the few —
everything they have always longed to know — but —
— What ho?! — have you already forgotten?!
There IS no answer to the big question!
The enlightenment, and liberation that comes to those
who see their interest through to the end,
lands on their head, not in the form of an answer to that question, but through the sudden realization
of the questions origin.
Being asleep, dumb, and in-the-dark
is not the problem of the successful genealogist;
he who gets to the roots of things
is free of the vines that strangle the trees.
The irritating mental condition that
fuels the interests of the few
is no longer so irritating when its origins,
and real nature are recognized.
Being asleep is not what it once was —
after you suddenly realize who it is whos been
telling you that you’re asleep, all these years.
Forget the promise of prizes for answering the questions on life’s quiz show —
do nothing but keep your eye on the one apparently hosting the show and reading out the questions —
finally recognizing who “he” is — IS the prize.
J
……I’ll take any letter, Pat, as long as it does not appear in the word, “I.”