Life is for living because there is nothing else we can do. Whether we live one way or the other way is up to the realization of the individual. The way is one but the perception of the way is many, based on our nature and on our nurturing in infancy and youth.
We act because we are driven to act by our genes as long as we have a body. In fact consciousness is by nature active, even in a passive sense. You may be an active observer, who is passively observing at the same time.
And since we are here, in the main act of our performance on the stage of life, we can follow the script of the director, like those who went before us, namely parents, teachers and leaders. Or we can ad lib, and make it up as we go along. We can be spontaneous, within the limits of our culture and time in history. What was taboo before, can be fashionable today. And the opposite too. It appears that normality is relative.
The ancient texts are, for some, a purer source of wisdom. And for others the older they are, the more outdated they are. Yet consciousness is timeless. The plight of the human being has always being the same, just the externals change.
We all take birth, grow, produce by-products, maintain for a while, then dwindle and die. Eating, sleeping, mating and defending - that is the human lot, as well as the animal lot. Though as humans we can also be self-reflective, where consciousness examines itself, and we ask "who am I?.
These things never change and are always with us. So the ancient wisdom may always be applicable. Just the application of life within those same parameters may differ slightly in style, according to time, place and circumstance.
In the light of presenting the same eternal truths to Everyman, and Everywoman, for all times and all places, I here present my next revelation on the way of the human being as we journey through life, which is ultimately meant for self-realization. All the rest is simply bodily maintenance.
THE ACHINTYA BHEDA-ABHEDA TATTVA
By Jas Das babaji
CHAPTER 5: The Gateless Gate and the Lockless Lock
On Paradox and the Collapse of Duality
1. The gate to liberation has no hinges, no frame, no lock—yet billions stand before it knocking, waiting for someone to answer from the other side.
2. Try very hard not to try; seek earnestly without seeking; desire deeply to be without desire—this is not confusion but the precise instruction manual for dissolving the instruction-follower.
3. Two monks argued: one said the flag moves, one said the wind moves—the master said, "Your minds move," and in that moment, neither flag nor wind nor mind moved at all.
4. The Tao acts without acting, accomplishes without doing, arrives without traveling—wu wei is not passivity but the art of getting out of your own way so that life can live itself through you.
5. "Die before you die," said the Prophet; "Those who lose their life shall find it," said the Christ; "Kill the Buddha," said the Zen master—all pointing to the same murder that is simultaneously a resurrection.
6. You must hold fire and water in the same hand without extinguishing one or evaporating the other—this is solve et coagula, the alchemical wedding where opposites marry and give birth to what transcends both.
7. The Vedantist says "not this, not that" (neti neti), eliminating all false identities until only truth remains—but what remains is neither something nor nothing, neither being nor non-being.
8. When you can say "I am everything" and "I am nothing" in the same breath without contradiction, you are speaking the mother tongue of reality.
9. The question "Who am I?" is answered not with a noun but with the collapse of the questioner into the question into the answer into the silence that was there before asking began.
10. Enlightenment is neither gained nor lost, neither present nor absent, neither near nor far—it is exactly like your face, which you cannot see without a mirror but have never been without.
11. The paradox is not a puzzle to be solved but a doorway to walk through—on one side, logic; on the other side, logic; and in the middle, passing through, the end of the one who believed in sides.
12. When the mind exhausts itself trying to grasp what cannot be grasped, when thought collapses from the impossible weight of contradiction, in that moment of surrender—the gateless gate swings open, having never been closed.
13. Now go: practice wu wei with great effort, seek the gateless gate with intense direction, try desperately to stop trying—and when you finally laugh at the absurdity of these instructions, you will have followed them perfectly.
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