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May 01, 2006

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Interesting post. just today i was thinking about belief, and thinking that the surest way to a free mind is to know nothing, to erase and empty the mind as you say.
When we build a mental construct and defend it, it may be as harmless as banter between two people, but can become extremism that may cause harm to others.

"I know nothing", even though this too is a construct, it has no walls to defend.

Excellent advice: don't eat the menu; don't drive on the map.

The illusions are wonderful and instructive, maya is a beautiful dance, and as long as we don't jump up on stage during Othello and try to make an arrest, we can live in the once-removed.

That detachment is necessary, because a full erasure, like an f-disk clearing, takes out programming too. You may not want to make the assumptions that you can sit in the theatre seats, or that the real action is on the stage.

Reliably, the empty blackboard is always there, with the words pointing to it.

Hey Bri,

This post makes me think about "tabula rasa", defined in Wikipedia as follows:

Tabula rasa (Latin: "scraped tablet", though often translated "blank slate") is the notion that individual human beings are born "blank" (with no built-in mental content), and that their identity is defined entirely by their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world.

We seem to be obsessed with writing on and filling the slate, starting at birth. It never seems to be enough, which is why at some point many of us try to disconnect from all the stuff that now fills it (through meditation, for example) in order to connect with the slate itself.

Thanks for bringing a new perspective to an old concept for me.

Cyn

The mind is the obstacle (we're told).

Trying to understand the mystic message with the mind is like unravelling the insides of a golfball. It may be interesting for a while but it ruins the ball, and you're further away from the hole-in-one.
The Hill People were commended by MaharaJi for their simplicity- it aided them in going in when initiated.

The mental gymnastics will wear itself out eventually. We can run around the edge of the circle until we're ready to rest in the dot in the middle. It's all about cleverness, probably like this comment.

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