Who Am I?

  14 Alan Watts Quotes That Will Change the Way You See the World “The only Zen you’ll find on mountain tops is the Zen you bring up there with you” Image by The Alan Watts Organization via Big Think I first fell in love with Alan Watts because of his humour and profound wisdom. He saw the world in such a lighthearted, playful, and brilliant way that it made my life more lighthearted, playful, and beautiful too. After being on a spiritual path for a few years, I was taking my life a little  too seriously, so he came as a refreshing surprise. During his 58 years, he was a self-proclaimed philosophical entertainer, fusing Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoist traditions. The only thing he did more than making babies was write books, 25 of them in fact, which is 18 more than had children, just in case you were wondering. So, here are 15 of my favourite quotes by the man himself. And if applied, can change the way you see the world forever. 1. “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It...

  Maharaj: " People would scarcely believe if I said that life in this world is like photography. Those who trust the Guru's words as Truth, might believe in it and appreciate this analogy. The photography starts from the day of conception, nine months prior to birth. The child's parents are first chosen to pose for this picture, followed by the picture of the world and of the entire Universe, including the stars and planets. It is as if these pictures assigned the fate of the child. It doesn't stop there. All that could be seen with the eyes, heard by ears, felt by the sense of touch and smelled by the nose, are captured. How is this photography conducted? The child is too innocent and helpless to understand or perform it all. In fact, the Cosmic intelligence, a quality of Sattva, which is called Hiranyagarbha, takes care of the process that is known as 'birth'. A Chemical in the Sattva does the job. Then this life force is separated from its source(...

Michael Ignatieff, whom I have long admired since reading his superb biography of  Isaiah Berlin , has given us some fascinating reflections on the subject of Consolation, illuminating the Book of Job and the Psalms in a most enlightening way. His talk, the first of several on the subject of Consolation, can be found on BBC Sounds  here . 

I saw that the entity I had taken to be “me” was really a fabrication. My true nature, I realised, was much more real, both uglier and more beautiful than I could have imagined. The feeling began shortly before eleven o’clock at night on October first. I was browsing on the eleventh floor of Butler Library. I knew the library was about to close, and I saw a book that concerned the area of my research. I slid it off the shelf and held it in my two hands. It was large and heavy. I read that it had been published in 1892, and it was donated to the Columbia Library the same year. On the back cover was a slip of paper that recorded the names of borrowers and the dates they took it out of the library. The first time it had been borrowed was in 1915, the second time was in 1932. I would be the third. Can you imagine? I was only the third borrower, on October 1, 1962. For seventy years, only two other people had stood in the same spot I now stood, pulled the book from the shelf, and decided to...

              Why does a date-palm lose its leaves in autumn?            Why does every beautiful face grow in old age            Wrinkled like the back of a Libyan lizard?            Why does a full head of hair get bald?            Why is the tall, straight figure            That divided the ranks like a spear            Now bent almost double?            Why is it that the            Lion's strength weakens to nothing?            The wrestler who could hold anyone down            Is led out with two people supporting him,            Their shoulders under his arms?            God answers,   ...

What can I do? I do not know myself. I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Zoroastrian nor Muslim, I am not from east or west, not from land or sea, Not from the shafts of nature nor from the spheres of the firmament, Not of the earth, not of water, not of air, not of fire. I am not from the highest heaven, not from this world, not from existence, not from being. I am not from India, not from China, not from Bulgar, not from Saqsin, Not from the realm of the two Iraqs, not from the land of Khurasan I am not from the world, not from beyond, Not from heaven and not from hell. I am not from Adam, not from Eve, not from paradise and not from Ridwan. My place is placeless, my trace is traceless, No body, no soul, I am from the soul of souls. I have chased out duality, lived the two worlds as one. One I seek, one I know, one I see, one I call. He is the first, he is the last, he is the outer, he is the inner. Beyond "He" and "He is" I know no other. I am drunk from the ...

  M: The daily life is a life of action. Whether you like it or not, you must function. Whatever you do for your own sake accumulates and becomes explosive; one day it goes off and plays havoc with you and your world. When you deceive yourself that you work for the good of all, it makes matters worse, for you should not be guided by your own ideas of what is good for others. A man who claims to know what is good for others, is dangerous. " Q: How is one to work then? M:" Neither for yourself nor for others, but for the work's own sake. A thing worth doing is its own purpose and meaning. Make nothing a means to something else. Bind not. God does not create one thing to serve another. Each is made for its own sake. Because it is made for itself, it does not interfere. You are using things and people for purposes alien to them and you play havoc with the world and itself. "

Question: A day must come when the show is wound up; man must die; the universe comes to an end. Maharaj: "Just as a sleeping man forgets all and wakes up for another day, or he dies and emerges into another life, so do the worlds of desire and fear dissolve and disappear. But the Universal Witness, the Supreme Self never sleeps and never dies. Eternally, the Great Heart beats and at each beat a new universe comes into being. " Q: Is He conscious ? M:" He is beyond all that a mind conceives. He is beyond being and not being. He is the Yes and No to everything beyond and within, creating and destroying, unimaginably real. " Q: God and the Mahatma, are they one or two? M:" They are one. Q: There must be some difference. M: "God is the All-Doer, the Jnani is a non-doer. God himself does not say 'I am doing all''. To Him things happen by their own nature. To the Jnanis, all is done by God. He sees no difference between God and natu...

Nisargadatta Maharaj Visitor: I am a painter, and I earn my money by painting pictures. Has it any value from the spiritual point of view? Maharaj:' When you paint, what do you think about? " V: When I paint, there is only the painting and myself. M:" What are you doing there? " V: I paint. M:" No, you don't. You see the painting going on. You are watching only, all else happens. " V: The picture is painting itself? Or, is there some deeper 'me', or some God who is painting? M:" Consciousness itself is the greatest painter. The entire world is a picture. " V Who painted the picture of the world? M:" The painter is in the picture. " V: The picture is in the mind of the painter and the painter is in the picture, which is in the mind of the painter, who is in the picture! Is not this infinity of states and dimension absurd? The moment we talk of a picture in the mind, which itself is in the picture, we come to an endless succ...

The standard-brand religions, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, or Buddhist, are — as now practiced — like exhausted mines: very hard to dig. With some exceptions not too easily found, their ideas about man and the world, their imagery, their rites, and their notions of the good life don’t seem to fit in with the universe as we now know it, or with a human world that is changing so rapidly that much of what one learns in school is already obsolete on graduation day. There is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. Most philosophical problems are to be solved by getting rid of them, by coming to the point where you see that such questions as “Why this universe?” are a kind of intellectual neurosis, a misuse of words in that the question sounds sensible but is actually as me...