Enlightenment

How to Awaken From Illusion

Gateway to the New Site (Blue Site) Here

Many who seek to awaken, seek the Real in the Unreal, in the world, in philosophy, religion or a legion of teachers and gurus. The source of consciousness, often called 'Self' in the East, will never be found by looking without; that which appears to look without must learn to accurately look within. This is obvious. The witness cannot be found in the witnessed.

There are many ways of looking within to find the originating place of consciousness and understand what consciousness is.

We must understand first, even if you assume it for the sake of argument, that the world itself arises from the mind as an appearance within consciousness.

The world is mind, mind is the world. Without mind, the world is not. The world is created by thoughts, and the mind is nothing more than thoughts; it is not an entity with autonomous existence separate from consciousness. The 'real' world exists only in the mind and you are neither mind nor the world.

The mind and thoughts are not you. They are like ghost-clouds that float on top of you. You are that which is beyond, the stateless state, untouched by the waking world, the sleep world or deep sleep darkness. All these are added onto you. You are beyond all phenomena. This you must see clearly.

In fact, there is no looking within. Within and without only arise with thoughts which are the world which create the conceptual duality of within and without. There is no beyond either, as the concept implies the opposite of not-beyond, or here. You are neither beyond, nor not-beyond. You are not real or unreal. You are not mortal or immortal, because immortal implies eternal presence or existence. You have nothing to do with either. You are beyond all measures, beyond all dualities and opposites, beyond even the concept of beyond, beyond freedom and enlightenment. This you must grasp at some point.

This website is now divided into two parts. The old website which is large and extensive is found immediately by navigating the buttons on the left side of this page and below as a site map. This old website is for Advaita/Zen Buddhist beginners and has a very personal touch as most was written years ago and is semi-autobiographical.

Many seekers start searching on exactly the right note, self-inquiry using Who Am I questioning and looking for the source or I, common Zen and Advaita practices, but then got diverted by seeking the console of gurus and spiritual teachers, and got lost, utterly lost and burnt out.

We will walk through the minefields of the mind that would trap and delay you from going free. We will walk through pathways provided by six Zen masters, Muktananda, his swamis, and many other teachers.

One extremely important teacher who has had a profound impact on Non-dual seekers is Nisargadatta Maharaj, one of whose most accomplished disciples, Jean Dunn, was also one of my teachers. She gave me a small booklet written by Nisargadatta in 1963 which is included on this site.

Those who seek enlightenment are following a very steep and narrow path of self abidance and self-inquiry. You need all the help you can get.

The central point of this old site was introducing you to my teacher, Robert Adams who went free--saw the basic illusory nature of existence--and then studied with one of the greatest Advaita teachers of the last hundred years. From my perspective, Robert was a hundred-story giant of spiritual power and understanding.

Before I met Robert, I walked a long and tortuous journey through conceptual minefields and pointless practices. Afterwards, it was still pointless and wandering, but there always was a single undercurrent of trust, faith.

All the rest of this old site is accessed by the buttons on the left. There are at least a thousand pages just of Robert's talks. A lot are just story telling, entertainment; stories of Robert’s life and teachings, Zen and Zen masters, and dozens of other topics including a psychoanalytic paper about consciousness written in 1987.

Then several months ago there was a stirring within that this site developed a whole new rationale. That was the birth of the New Site, which has a blue background, so can be called the Blue Site.

The New Site begins at the link below.

The new site is an endeavor to teach the ways to go beyond, as Robert put it in the new talk listed below, by identifying with awareness itself. It is totally how to and talks about mind, consciousness and practice.

Learn how to be aware of yourself and then abide in the self.

What is New

Gateway to the New Site Here

New Page on Deep Sleep and Enlightenment

A Reader of this Site Awakens

Question and Answer Blog

New Talk by Robert Adams: Awareness of Consciousness

New Talk Added March 10, 2009 on How the Jnani Sees the World

Teachers with whom I studied at one time or another:

Robert Adams, who was my living teacher;

Maezumi Roshi, one of the founders of Zen in the United States and with whom I studied for 4 years, the most intellectual of all Zen masters; Thich Tien-An, my ordination teacher, a Vietnamese Zen master who brought Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhism--essentially Zen--to the states; Kozan Roshi, a very down to earth Rinzai master from Okinawa, Seung Sahn Soen Sa, a ball of energy who transformed American Zen. The photo at right is of Sri Ananda, Thich Tien-An, Seung Sahn Soen Sa, Maezumi Roshi and Kozan Roshi, about 1972. This was taken near the International Buddhist Meditation Center. All four teachers had centers within a mile of each other.

The unforgettable Sasaki Roshi (left), whose concentration camp-like Mt. Baldy Zen Center was a source of great pain and great pleasure and whose antics are legend;

Philip Kapleau Roshi (Right), one of the originators of Zen in America, my first Zen master, whom I would later consider a friend; Song Ryong Hearn, an American Zen master who later became a psychologist in West Los Angeles;

Muktananda, who I knew only briefly, but I loved the chanting for many years at the Ashram led by my favorite Swami, Shankaranada, now in Australia.

Bernadette Roberts, a catholic devote who spent her life trying to understand her very Advaita-like enlightenment experience and who was a neighbor of mine in Santa Monica for many years;

Ramesh Balsekar, who led me to the irrepressible Nisargadatta Maharaj, whose wisdom became the guidepost of my searching;

Jean Dunn, a very close Bhakta disciple of Nisargadatta and editor of the three best Nisargadatta books, who also became a good friend, guide and confidant.

The photo of Maharaj to the right was given to me by Jean a year or so before she died. She also gave me a copy of his book, Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization. Only 100 copies were printed for private distribution because of copyright fears. It is posted elsewhere on this site.

Matter Covered:

Consider this as a how-to, and how not-to, site.

Meditations of various sorts, including sitting and doing nothing;
Other practices and phenomena, such as all kinds of kundalini experiences and how to handle them. Kundalini experiences can scare the crap out of you;
Self-inquiry in all its forms; this is the core teaching of this site;
Chanting, and various styles, such as Japanese, Korean, Yogananda, but especially the extremely moving Muktananda style;
Zen Buddhism; the Void; Emptiness;
Enlightenment;
Fundamental concepts that sustain the world-matrix and their removal;
the various mental states, states, their meaning and duration;
psychoanalytic object relations concepts of the self;
Self-knowledge; Self-realization as well as years of endless experiences of altered states, understandings that came and went, and personal experiences with these gurus and friends.
AND, dwelling endlessly on the life and teaching of the most unusual man I ever met, who was to become my closest friend and teacher for eight years until his death, Robert Adams.