Guys, please help… I’ve seen it in some Zen books and in the Gita. They do not elaborate any further than “acting without doing” … can u please explain what that means. ? Thanks
Suhas! Deva! where are you! you should know:)
For what it?s worth;
There is only life. There is nobody who lives a life.
As long as you have the idea of influencing events, liberation is not for you: The very notion of doership, of being a cause, is bondage.
The world recreates itself out of itself. It is an endless process, the transitory begetting the transitory. It is your ego that makes you think that there must be a doer. You create a God to your own Image, however dismal the image. Through the film of your mind you project a world and also a God to give it cause and purpose. It is all imagination – step out of it.
Doership is a myth born from the illusion of ‘me’ and ‘the mine’.
The witness is that which says ‘I know’. The person says ‘I do’. Now, to say ‘I know’ is not untrue – it is merely limited. But to say ‘I do’ is altogether false, because there is nobody who does; all happens by itself, including the idea of being a doer.
The universe is full of action, but there is no actor. There are numberless persons small and big and very big, who, through identification, imagine themselves as acting, but it does not change the fact that the world of action (mahadakash) is one single whole in which all depends on, and affects all. The stars affect us deeply and we affect the stars. Step back from action to consciousness, leave action to the body and the mind; it is their domain. Remain as pure witness, till even witnessing dissolves in the Supreme.
Imagine a thick jungle full of heavy timber. A plank is shaped out of the timber and a small pencil to write on it. The witness reads the writing and knows that while the pencil and the plank are distantly related to the jungle, the writing has nothing to do with it. It is totally super-imposed and its disappearance just does not matter. The dissolution of personality is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off.
It is like washing printed cloth. First the design fades, then the background and in the end the cloth is plain white. The personality gives place to the witness, then the witness goes and pure awareness remains. The cloth was white in the beginning and is white in the end; the patterns and colors just happened – for a time.
Awareness with an object we called witnessing. When there is also self-identification with the object, caused by desire or fear, such a state is called a person. In reality there is only one state; when distorted by self-identification it is called a person, when colored with the sense of being, it is the witness; when colorless and limitless, it is called the Supreme.
You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfectly lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over.
~ ?I AM THAT? Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
CityMonk,
“I should know” is exactly what I used to tell myself after reading each post, write uninvited replies and pick up a war of attrition with Deva. Not any more; have grown wiser!! Knowing more does make one aware of how much one doesn’t know.
On “Acting vs doing” I will take a pass and just second what Ray has written so beautifully. After all, acting (on behalf of Ishvara) and doing (expecting no returns) are only pre-requisites to the ultimate state of just ‘being’.
Only mind think there is a doer. When we do actions with mind we want something in return.