Nirvana
Quotations by Dr. Frederick Lenz, Zen Master Rama:
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"There is a way to reach enlightenment and get beyond suffering.
Another condition can be attained, a condition of ecstasy. A condition so far from what the people of planet Earth experience it's not even discussible.
The world of time, of space and condition, pleasure and pain, birth, growth, maturation, decay and death, spinning, spinning, spinning this world, always spinning.
Look at the big picture of the wheel of life. Above it, there is a Buddha. He is pointing, not towards the wheel, but away from it. He is indicating that there is something else - nirvana.
Nirvana is the other side, the source of all things, where all the aggregates come from, where the templates of infinity are.
Nirvana is the center of things; then there are the outer bandings of attention. The universe is a mind. At the center of its mind is nirvana.
Nirvana isn't a physical place. It is not like going to heaven. It just means no more individualized awareness, no aggregate body of experience.
Nirvana bears no resemblance to anything in your current perceptual field.
When you visit Nirvana, there is neither existence nor nonexistence. Your baggage never arrrives because there is no one there to claim it.
Those who dissolve their body of perception completely are absorbed into what we would call nirvana.
We could take all the pleasures that have ever been and will ever be in all the universes and add them up into one experience. If you were absorbed in nirvana, it wouldn’t be noticed.
You are going around on the wheel again and again. You go around and around from lifetime to lifetime. You never quite wake up. Enlightenment is waking up.
We have this recurring dream that we're human beings, that we have bodies, that we're in time and space, that there is birth and death. To awaken from the dream of life is to be conscious of eternity.
Liberation means no rebirth. Now, does that mean you don't reincarnate? Well, you never did reincarnate.
The awareness of place, space, or condition is not liberation. You can't say what it is, but you can sure say what it isn't.
Nirvana is outside the fun house. You are walking around in the fun house forever.
Nirvana is a state of perpetual bliss and ecstasy, unaffected by the transient ups and downs of its own creations.
Everything that can be and everything that cannot be exists somewhere. Beyond the far-flung infinities there is something else, nirvana
Somewhere there is an essence. It is not a physical somewhere. There is no sense of world, of time and space. That is nirvana.
At the beginning and the middle and the end of all things, there is only the perfection of enlightenment that is nirvana.
Pain and suffering only occur in temporal time. They don't occur in the world of forever.
Nothing is distinct and separate. The waves of the ocean arise and have a separate birth, crashing on the shore, but then back into the ocean they go. They never left it. There is no movement in Nirvana.
What we discover is it was not the waves or the birds or the wind that were standing out and being separate from existence; it was we who were standing out and being separate from existence.
There is a still center of the universe. Within that still center are all things, all achievements, all loses, everything and nothing exist there.
All the joys in all the worlds of all beings who have ever been or will ever be, will never equal the perfection of one moment of absorption into the stillness of nirvana.
When your mind is flooded with the pure light of nirvana, which is happiness itself, you will be delighted with whatever occurs to you.
Unlike the transient days of our lives that constantly come and go, nirvana has always been, is now, and always will be.
Only the enlightened are consistently happy. Their happiness is not predicated upon the events and experiences that take place in this world. Instead it is based on the boundless inner energy they gain from their connection with the world of enlightenment.
When you draw from the endless awareness of nirvana, you are no longer a slave to fortune. When pleasant experiences come your way, you can enjoy them. But if pain and misfortune befall you, you can rise above them and remain unaffected.
The attainment of enlightenment makes you happy forever. It frees you from the mental and emotional pains that human beings experience every day. You live in a condition of ecstasy, brightness and joy all of the time.
Nirvana and enlightenment exist just on the other side of your sensory perceptions and your thoughts.
Nirvana is not really a physical place, although sometimes I talk about it as if it were. It is not really an experience, although sometimes I mention it as if it was.
Nirvana is a word that means enlightenment, being beyond the illusion of birth and death, the illusion of pain, the illusion of love, the illusion of time and life.
The universe is perfection; but there are different views the universe provides for itself to view itself. Beyond all views there is nirvana.
There are some beings who reach a point where they no longer want to move through the ten thousand states of mind. There is something else. It is beyond subject and object. That is nirvana.
Beyond all of this is something else, perfection; not just as an ideation, but as a living reality. Even though it may just be an idea for you, hold that idea in your mind.
Those who seek liberation want to go beyond individualized perception. The essence of their being wants to dissolve back into the cosmos.
In Nirvana, it is you, my friend, who goes away. You take an eraser and erase yourself. It's like the Road Runner cartoons where in the middle of the cartoon, the hand of the artist appears on the screen and erases the Road Runner.
There are two worlds, the world of desire and the world of enlightenment. The world of enlightenment doesn't go anywhere. It is endless, luminous perfection. The world of desire leads to more desire.
The experience of going to the other side to nirvana clarifies and simplifies your view of all things. You see the world with greater clarity, because it is not obscured by illusions.
Nirvana is not empty or cold or barren. You can't possibly have lost anything because all the things you've always loved and always experienced came forth from there and exist there and are always there..
Something in you wants to go beyond, wants to be free from this endless round of perception. Enlightenment is that.
Outside of nirvana, the planes begin, the subtlest planes of light that vibrate fastest, all the way on down through the astral realms through the physical and so on.
The experience of light in a very pure form always creates happiness. The experience of desire and aversion tends to create unhappiness.
Beyond the world of thought and sensorial impressions, there are planes and dimensions of perfect light, knowledge, and radiant perfection.
Universes collide and conjoin inside us and beyond all is nirvana, the final, absolute resting place of the soul.
The world is a grain of sand on the beach of Eternity. Eternity is a grain of sand on the beach of Infinity. The ocean of Nirvana connects both Eternity and Infinity without connecting them. Know this and you will be free.
Who is so brave and so noble that they could hurl themselves at infinity without any question, with complete trust and complete certainty that that infinity will destroy them forever?
Who has that perfect faith and trust? Only such a person with that faith and trust can be enlightened.
How could being the entire cosmos and all of its wonder and all of its stages and cycles, and yet being that which is beyond them all, the invisible, be extinction? Extinction? The extinction of what, of whom? How can that which has never been be extinguished?
There is no movement in Nirvana. There is no sameness. And one does not consider it to be timeless because one is not one. It is you, my friend, who go away.
Love is self-realization. Love is liberation. The only way beyond time, to unravel the knot of existence, is to love.
We are all incarnate Buddhas. We just have not realized it deeply. We have not moved the mind - what our friend Don Juan calls the assemblage point.
One day liberation will come, and it won't be a day; it won't be a year; it won't be a time, a place or a condition. It will be immortality reflecting through you. What will you do then?"
- Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
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