My favorite picture of my dear friend Thomas. We were in San Diego, spooling up for Slab City. (Slab City pics coming next.)
Question: “What is implied by ‘seeing into the Real Nature’”?
Answer: “That Nature and your perception of it are one. Let me repeat that the perceived cannot perceive.”
-Huang Po
For years, I pondered: “the perceived cannot perceive.”
Finally I realized he meant that what we call the body does not perceive anything, including itself.
Perhaps it feels like the body perceives, because as a child, we were conditioned to believe that we are an individual that perceives a world around us.
Then this came: It’s not that the body does not perceive; it is that the body is not the perceiver. When that appeared, I had no doubt as to its reality.
After pondering that for about a year, I read, from Ramana Maharshi:
“The body is insentient. (Lacking perception, consciousness, or animation.)
You are the Self. The Self is present in all perceptions as the perceiver.”
Which produced a total mental shutdown.
Which, when thinking is not required, is perfect.
Ramana Maharshi: “Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that.
‘I AM THAT I AM’ sums up the whole truth; the method is summarized in ‘be still.’”
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In the absence of mentation, you are.