/lit/ - Literature

Heat or cold, the pleasant or the unpleasant coming into contact with a man's shadow in no way affect the man himself who is quite distinct from his shadow. The qualities of things seen do not touch the seer, who is quite distinct from them, changeless and unaffected, just as household objects do not touch the lamp there. Like the sun's mere witnessing of actions, like fire's non-involvement with the things it is burning, and like the relationship of a rope to the idea superimposed on it, so is the unchanging consciousness within me. I neither do nor make things happen. I neither experience nor cause to experience. I neither see nor make others see. I am that supreme light without attributes. When intervening factors (the water) move, the ignorant ascribe the movement of the reflection to the object itself, like the sun which is actually immovable. They think "I am the doer", "I am the reaper of the consequences", and "Alas, I am being killed." Whether my physical body falls into water or onto dry land, I am not dirtied by their qualities, just as space is not affected by the qualities of a jar it is in. Such states as thinking oneself the doer or the reaper of the consequences, being wicked, drunk, stupid, bound or free are false assumptions of the understanding, and do not apply in reality to one's true self, the supreme, perfect and non-dual God. Let there be tens of changes on the natural level, hundreds of changes, thousands of changes. What is that to me, who am unattached consciousness? The clouds never touch the sky. I am that non-dual God, who like space is subtle and without beginning or end, and in whom all this from the unmanifest down to the material is displayed as no more than an appearance.

I am that non-dual God who is eternal, pure, unmoving and imageless, the support of everything, the illuminator of all objects, manifest in all forms and all-pervading, and yet empty of everything. I am that non-dual God who is infinite Truth, Knowledge and Bliss, who transcends the endless modifications of Maya, who is one's own reality and to be experienced within. I am actionless, changeless, partless, formless, imageless, endless and supportless - one without a second. I am the reality in everything. I am everything and I am the non-dual beyond everything. I am perfect indivisible awareness and I am infinite bliss. I have received this glory of the sovereignty over myself and over the world by the compassion of your grace, noble and great-souled guru. Salutation upon salutation to you, and again salutation. You, my teacher, have my supreme saviour, waking me up from sleep through your infinite compassion, lost in a vast dream as I was and afflicted every day by countless troubles in the Maya-created forest of birth, old age and death, and tormented by the tiger of this feeling myself the doer.