Life Beyond the Image

Interview with Takuin at EGO PLANET

2010-09-04T13:54:31Z

Last week, Takuin was interviewed by Tammy Taylor for the site Ego Planet. It is now live.

The interview is short, at around 22 minutes, so it is easy to eat up in one sitting. I wish we could have gone on much longer, but such things are not up to Takuin.

You can leave comments here of course, but feel free to speak your minds on the post page of the interview itself: The End of Soul Searching Sounds like Takuin.

You can also visit the Facebook page for Planet Ego here: Planet Ego

Thanks, Tammy. It was fun!

In Dialogue: Trust, Fear, and the Beyond

2010-08-23T07:05:26Z

In Dialogue is a new feature here at Takuin.com. It is an on-going series of discussions and conversations with various people from all over the world.

Most of these conversations take place using the free Google Talk software, but a large portion also happen through Skype. Either is fine, but Gmail has the advantage because you can instantly save the chats within Gmail itself. I am not sure if Skype is able to save chats, at the time of this writing.

If any of you would like to have a conversation with Takuin using Google Talk, you can find me at my GMAIL address which is simply takuin. And if you use Skype and would like to have a conversation, just do a search for Takuin Minamoto and you should be all set. (I block all spammers and trolls, so play nice!)

What follows is a conversation with a friend that recently took place on Google Talk.

Questioner: Could I ask you something about trust? It’s been playing on my mind for some days.

Takuin: sure

Q: A few days ago a popular holy man was found to have indulged in acts that it seems he claimed he did not need or something like that. That shocked many many people around that area, and it created a furore. The thing is he claimed to be a brahmachari (a celibate holy man) but was secretly filmed having liaisons with some women. It is not that not being celibate is bad, only the duplicity of it did not feel good….I did not know that particular holy man, although he has several thousands of followers…

I feel i don’t really have the stamina to know a holy person or a swami or enlightened person who has a big following and all that, but my husband keeps warning me against the fact that i easily trust people, and he points out that it might hurt me. He says that I trust people with details of my life and that is not a good thing. Who knows who will use that kind of info and in what way? I feel my life does not have much that I can’t give away its details, but I see his point, and it does leave me in a bit of a quandary.

TM: well, where do you see the problem?

Q: That if I am cautious then I will not be me. Though I also understand that it does not feel good to trust someone who turns out to be not so trustworthy…I think I am not able to articulate myself well..

TM: no no, I am understanding you, but we should go a bit further, if you don’t mind

Q: ya

TM: what is trust to you? in the way you are using the word here…

Q: that the other person will not hurt me if I have had the openness and the willingness to be vulnerable and honest…Also, that a person who claims to know God truly knows God well, that is difficult, isn’t it?

TM: it is something you’ll never be able to control. You can never say, with complete certainty, whether or not someone will hurt you.

Q: ya that is true.

TM: But it is not for us to despair over this….it is not such a difficult issue when you get into it deeply. It is important to see your own functioning here. If we have trusted and we have been hurt many times, we cannot blame another completely. It might be true that someone has tricked us or that someone used us to get what they wanted…these things can happen in any walk of life…the important thing to look at is your own involvement in the thing.

It is easy to point a finger at someone else, you know…To say, THEY did this to ME, but it is not only them…you are the true constant in your life, so we must begin there.

Q: I understand…

TM: You are wonderful as you are, but you must have a look at your own involvement in this matter.

Q: I am the true constant in my life… You have put that in a very new way.

TM: There are many people that come in and out of our lives….but you are always there

Q: Yes

TM: Let’s use you and I as an example….

Q: Ok.

TM: we are friendly with one another….we seem to respect one another…

Q: yes

TM: but really, we are still….what is the word? new?

Q: yes

TM: we do not have a long record of experience and memory behind us. Now, if I trust you for something, or if you trust me, how is it that we can hurt one another?

Q: I guess it depends on involvement…as you say

TM: If you put your faith into Takuin, how might you benefit or how might you be hurt?

Q: There is expectation, I guess…I am expecting you to be a certain way perhaps…

TM: yes, that is something. And if i do not act a certain way?

Q: then it will shatter my expectation.

TM: this is all easy to see….but why do you have this? why is there the expectation?

Q: you will not come across as Takuin…because we build an idea of people

TM: ah…ah…You have said something interesting, “you will not come across as Takuin.” But YOU have created me, no?

Q: ya…going by some of the behaviour that comes from you, which I deem nice and great.

TM: yes. Now, do you make this behavior into something? I mean, do you have the tendency to build it up? To make it into something else?

Q: ha ha…I have tried to divest enlightened human beings of certain set kind of behaviour…but it is a work in progress…It can still shock me if an “enlightened person” says one things and practices another…

TM: yes. That can reveal to you volumes of information….but this kind of behavior is not uncommon within humanity, it just stings more because these people are supposed to be ‘higher’ in some way, and when we see them behaving ‘lower’ it makes us think, “Well, what the hell kind of hope do I have, if they cannot live their lives correctly?”

Q: no not that…but the fact that people who know God, or have uncovered peace totally…can lie?? Surely they don’t lie??

TM: But that is an assumption….that they know God.

Q: I mean…ok not know God…but have uncovered peace, or are enlightened, or have got the total understanding of the basis of life…or whatever words you can use for people like Buddha.

TM: let us say that this sort of person exists, whomever they might be. What is it you hope to have from them? If not directly, then indirectly…what is the connection you might have to them?

Q: well, if they still feel the need to lie…I thought it is freedom from the trap of an unnatural life… of all kinds of pretensions.

TM: It might be freedom, but it is not YOUR freedom.

Q: u mean to say my freedom will express in another way? Everybody’s freedom will express in different ways?

TM: yes and no. You cannot assume that another person’s freedom is actual freedom…not that there are levels….

Q: ya that is what…

TM: the only thing you can be aware of is your own functioning…it is nice to hear talks or to go see a guru somewhere, but ultimately, it is your journey to make. It will be like a field of freshly fallen snow, and only your footprints will be visible.

Q: but the thing is, my natural reaction could be shock at a lie from a so-called enlightened person.

My journey…my journey is a very bumbling sort of journey…Sometimes I feel that I am more interested in enlightened persons than enlightenment itself.

TM: don’t think of it as a ‘natural’ reaction…consider it….your teaching. When you react in this way, it is the perfect time to learn about you. You are always coming up against something.

Q: my own expectation and the failure of it.

TM: That could be the thing, but you might do well to develop some …suspicion, if that is the right word. There is usually always something deeper…

…unless there is nothing left, haha.

Q: now what you are saying is mysterious to me…I don’t understand.

TM: If you have disappointment, or some pain because of the actions of some teacher or guru, look more to yourself

Q: and find what? Won’t it be futile? Unless I stop looking at teachers and Gurus…

TM: ah no no, because the ‘mechanism’ that makes the disappointment possible is still there.

Q: I feel sometimes I am more interested in enlightened persons than enlightenment itself.

TM: What you’ve just said is a good statement to explore. It is not something ‘enlightened persons’ alone are responsible for.

Q: There is a saying in Zen it seems that When you see a Buddha cut His head…

TM: I have heard that.

Q: A Buddha is just another person I like to depend on…anything to go away from myself.

TM: If this is true…if this is what you see within you…then stay with it. Go deep until there is nothing left…

Q: Is it not possible to give silence to someone? I mean silence is all around… I know…but is it possible that a person who is more silent can reduce the noise in another person’s head?

TM: well….it is like a cheap trick…it is easy to do….

Q: ya you have said that

TM: and I have met some people that use this as an advantage…a mystical advantage…but you must see how you yourself arrive….for example, Let’s say you come to see Takuin somewhere…in Japan, or in your own country or wherever….What are you bringing with you? If I am sitting in a room and speaking, when you enter the room, what are you carrying? Your expectation of what Takuin might give? What is there?

You see, it might be a combination of two things….that silence that you have mentioned, but also, the expectation that the listener can be silenced by another. It is not a true awakening….it is more like a pain killer.

Pain killers can be useful….but in the end, it is never enough.

Q: yes

TM: but i am not saying this is the case 100%

Q: but the thing is that pain killer can propel the listener to find permanent silence for good.

TM: One can become dependent upon a person in the same way they might be dependent upon a drug.

The only thing you can be truly aware of is what you carry with you.

Q: true…

I don’t have the stamina to sift the noise in my head actually… I don’t see the way out…even if I knew, I don’t know if I’d be able to implement it…

TM: If you have some ‘silenced mind’ in the presence of someone else, you must see how this goes on within yourself. Don’t assume it is because of anything other than you.

There is some activity in the head…you called it noise…

Q: ya

Q: I know you suggest that I see the functioning of my mind standing outside…well how is it possible to see the functioning, if the mind is not even coherent?

TM: This seems like a great difficulty

Q: I mean, if it is a lot of gibberish unfinished sentences…

TM: That is it. You are not looking for an ideal state….you are looking for what is present.

Q: but then there is the body to see also…the functioning would mean the body also…I can’t see so many things at the same time…

TM: the body will take care of itself. You will find this out.

Q: It’s like…you know the TV impulses on MTV…so fast that you can’t watch them…you feel you are always late…one thought does not happen at one time…many thoughts happen at one time.

TM: yes. It is like being a passenger in a car…you look out the window, and keeping your head still, the view goes by you very quickly…you can’t go back and say, I want to see that view from 1 minute ago. You are stuck with the view as a complete movement.

Q: more like a a superfast train than car…One gets to watch very little…

TM: you see the movement

Q: ok…all of the movement, including my impatience with the movement…that is part of it all

TM: yes, but remember, these words are never enough.

Q: ya

TM: if you look for the specific, you might miss the whole thing.

Q: ok. You know, once long back I was by the side of a river, very early morning…I was very distraught… it was only a year after my mum’s death…and I was very very miserable. Something happened then…that in spite of me a certain peace came, and it seemed to come from the river, the rising sun, the air, the sand on the shore…it was not because I was looking inside my head, or seeing the functioning…what was the miracle that it came in spite of me…

TM: This is like a transference of nature…all of our movements as human beings are mirrored throughout nature. It is beautiful to see.

Q: but if nature was mirroring me that day then I would not have felt the peace….It was like the Sun knew everything about me, the air knew everything about me, the river knew everything about me, and each lap felt like a caress…I did not imagine it up… I was too miserable to imagine peace…

TM: and YOU were not really necessary for this to happen, if that makes sense to you.

Q: what use is peace unless there is the opposite of it…I could sense it as a stark contrast only because i was feeling just the opposite till a few moments back.

If there is no noise, if there is no intense functioning of the mind, peace will not be missed…

TM: if you only know peace by holding up war next to it and comparing, then you have never known peace…peace is just a word we are using here…we could say it in other ways.

Q: I get a sense that absence is like peace. What happened that day …what nature did that day…why can’t nature be able to do that everyday?

TM: maybe because you want something else to do it for you?

Q: something else?

TM: it is not the responsibility of nature, or anything else.

Q: I know, but how kind of it it would be…

TM: When I say to ‘see’ something, see your functioning or whatever, it is not merely looking at your tendencies and then saying, “Yes, I see that.” Whom is it that looks? How is this looker perceiving the good or bad? Every part of ‘seeing’ is important to your own self-teaching.

Q: ok. u mean self-discovery?

TM: yes….discovery is a good word.

Q: yes

Ok i will try to be more patient with the functioning, or I will hope to be more patient with the functioning…and not reject it outright.

TM: One must be diligent with this….that might be why it is so easy to expect someone else to give our freedom to us.

Q: ya

TM: Every movement is for you to discover. It is not only what you ‘see’, but the seen is not separate from the ‘seeing’ and this is something you will want to explore on your own, as well.

Q: ya. I have heard that line before some times… and have always found it confusing…Only when I realise it on my own will I know what it means.

TM: I suppose that is true

Q: But I will continue to snatch silence from between words and continue to pray to God also for freedom

TM: You see, you know the answers. You know how you ‘work,’ but still, this goes on. This is something for you to explore.

Q: yes. That which truly looks, that perceives, I have to discover…

TM: or if anything at all is perceiving…

Q: right now with the perception, with the looking is a lot of judgement…

TM: As a self, it is too easy to put everything into position around you….it is always an idea of ME in one place and the SOMETHING ELSE in another place. It is how you come up against other things…I say YOU, but i don’t necessarily mean YOU personally.

Q: yes.

TM: Having said that, you might want to ask and explore, Is there a seeing beyond positions? Seeing beyond the over there, and the over here…

Q: I am actually scared of being so disoriented…and that is why the fight to be in control…

TM: Could the disorientation be a by-product of the control?

Q: no, actually the disorientation would be good…I am scared to lose the stand point…

TM: you mean your ‘position’?

Q: ya

TM: I see. Well, this is a fantasy of sorts…you cannot know what is beyond your position, because that is beyond what you have known, and your position is what you have known.

Q: yes

TM: the knowledge, memory and so on…whatever it is…

Q: I am taking other people’s words for it…

TM: so in order to fear the beyond, you have to think of it in terms of what is known to you.

Q: yes

TM: So you are really only afraid of your thoughts about the beyond, which is nowhere close to the actual thing.

Let’s finish here.

Q: Thank you so much Takuin!!

TM: It is always my pleasure. Go and be good!

Q: Bye

TM: bye bye

Why I Started Takuin.com

2010-08-10T00:35:01Z

Question for August 9, 2010. Why did you start Takuin.com?

This is the first video made specifically for this site. I won’t say much, as we’ll let the video speak for itself…

The comments for this video have been disabled on YouTube, but they are of course open here. HD is available for this video on this post, although it is not automatically enabled. You may need to manually change that option if you want to view it in the highest quality.

Enjoy!

(Note: For those reading this post through RSS or Email subscriptions, if you cannot see the video below, please click through to the post itself to watch.)

The Final Thread

2010-07-24T03:17:52Z

What was once verbose, is now but a broad, silent stroke; a slash, cutting away the darkness with no effort.

The who, the what, the when, the where, the place, the time…

…DISSOLVE.

Nonentity born.

Spiritual Progress

2010-07-07T08:20:39Z

This short post is an excerpt from a recent skype conversation.

Do not blame anyone else or any outside situation for your perceived lack of progress on your spiritual path. There is no assignment of fault, other than your wish to find the right words that will someday set you free.

Try not to feel so bad, though. There is certainly no lack of trying on your part. But what has your conformity and adherence to the words of others done for you? If you are in a frustrated state of mind, how did you arrive there? Is it due to your hope for liberation through conformity?

Everything coming into your life, whether helpful or harmful, teaches. And this teaching is unique and personal to where you stand at any given moment. It can never happen again, to anyone else, at any time, in the way it is happening to you now.

Your teaching is constantly with you, but why can’t you see it?

What is with you when your mother dies, when your spouse leaves you for another, when your child has to undergo surgery, or when lose your job? The only thing consistently present is you, and how you come up against the world around you. That is the greatest teacher of all, and the only spiritual teaching you’ll ever need.

Your own salvation will not come through acceptance of hand-me-downs and conformity. It is far more simple than any of that…

The Dream of the Turtle

2010-06-29T12:22:49Z

Our lives ebb and surge, retreat and advance, from the first breath, until our lives abate, falling into nothingness.

Some never truly live until their life is finished.

In life, one lives as the description, as the word, desperately seeking the proper punctuation to complete itself gracefully…

…a dream, searching for a dream-less state.

In death, one gives over everything freely, with no hope or expectation of return. It is compassion beyond thought. It is life beyond measure…

…a being, with no need to be anything.

Will you ever know the truth of death in life? Or will you wait until you are forced screaming, feeble and frail, into that final darkness?

Why wait?

The dream of the turtle is over, and life has already begun…

Solitude

2010-06-29T12:21:46Z

To sit, truly alone, is deeper than any experience; more powerful than any drug.

But can you do it?

Can you stand apart from your creations?

Can you leave the safety of your house and live without a roof or without walls?

Can you look past the prized possession, even for a second, to see if it truly exists at all?

Can you walk, devoid of your desire to conquer and destroy?

Only you will see this through to the end. You and no one else.

The beast rears its ugly head in communion with other beasts, but in solitude, it has no place to hide. It dies in the presence of nothing, and flowers spring up from its corpse.

There is no loneliness in solitude. Only alone-ness…

…and flowers.

Tom Stine’s Online Satsang

2010-06-16T12:47:12Z

This is just a quick note to remind everyone that my friend Tom Stine is holding a live online satsang on June 20th. The details are available on Tom’s site here: Live Satsang Online.

For those of you unfamiliar with this concept of satsang, Tom explains it well:

If you’ve never been to a satsang before, let me give you a brief overview of what it is and how I plan to do it. The word satsang means “coming together to talk about the truth.” Pretty straightforward. The format will be pretty straightforward, too: I will talk for about 20-45 minutes, and then I will answer questions and dialogue with anyone who wishes to speak with me.

It is sure to be a fine experience for those attending, and this will be Tom’s first satsang, so head over there and show him your support. I was planning on attending, but I will be in the mountains again for four days and won’t return until the 21st.

I’m happy Tom was able to finally get this off the ground, as I think he’s been planning something like this for some time.

Break a leg, Tom.

Lesson with an Enlightened Master

2010-06-14T11:24:46Z

B.T. – a powerful spiritual teacher – has been known to reduce the person to true nothingness…but only if one is capable of seeing and listening. Recently, Takuin sat with B.T. to listen. This short post is the result of what Takuin heard from the great master.

Never a word…

Even though the exterior,

Might be rough,

And creatures may eat you alive.

Never a word…

You may support generations,

Millions of creatures,

Whom never thank you,

No recognition,

No gratitude,

No return,

But you’ll keep giving,

And loving.

Never a word…

You may be used completely,

Unrecognizable,

Destroyed by the very people,

You’ve sheltered from rain,

But you will give of yourself freely,

That they might find support in a new way.

Never a word…

Be it in the grasses,

In the city,

By the river,

Or on the mountain,

You will never lose your freedom.

Never a word will set you free.

Click here to see B.T. Many of you may recognize the creature in this photograph…

How to Sit

2010-06-08T07:06:04Z

Question for June 8th, 2010 from John:

What is the best way to sit? It seems to me, pretty useful, to ask an expert how to do something than to fumble around on my own for 100 years. So, how does one sit?

Time for another audio response…

After finishing this recording, I realized I left something out that may be useful for you, John:

I never make a plan to go out and sit. I never say, “Well, now I am going to get to the bottom of this and find out the truth,” or whatever. Sitting is life. It is living. It moves everywhere I might go.

It is difficult to talk about, partly because it is very much like breathing. You don’t make a plan for it, and it seems labored only after you notice it, haha. It is not an activity in that sense, because you cannot do anything about it, really. It is not something you do, in the usual sense of doing.

If you make a plan to sit, there is nothing wrong with that. But you might find eventually, the spaces in-between sitting become shorter and shorter…then it is all space.

By the way, the photos used in this post are of a favorite place of mine. It is all in one location. You would do well to find a similar place of your own. Nature sitting in nature…

(Note: For those reading this post through RSS or Email subscriptions, if you cannot see the audio player below, please click through to the post itself to listen.)