In 1963 a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, performed a miracle of sorts. He didn’t exactly walk on water but he came realistically close: he sat down, poured gasoline over himself and lit himself up. What’s amazing – to me – is not the cause, not even the decision, but what happened after… Nothing happened: the man sat, in a lotus position, while burning alive. The skin of his face coagulating in flames… Burning alive… Dying calmly…
The capacity for such amazing equanimity (while on fire) is evidence of what I call “lotus effect:” this man’s consciousness knew what it was from what it wasn’t even while its body was choking, charring and churning in agony. Thich, a “professional” meditator, knew that he wasn’t his sensations of pain, that he wasn’t his thoughts about dying, that he wasn’t his disappearing body. He knew that he wasn’t his mind-forms.
We all are continuously instructed by culture about what/who we are. We are constantly sold on what we supposedly should be, cajoled into superficial socio-cultural identities, branded into one-way econopolitical loyalties.
Set this informational nonsense on fire. Psychologically speaking, of course. Spread the spark of clarity: to know what you really are you have to first detox from all the informational junk that you’ve been confusing yourself with.
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