Dis-covery
Moksha is a Sanskrit word meaning “liberation”. It describes a condition of the individual person that has eliminated or transcended all the unwanted aspects of human life such as ignorance, pain, and suffering. Another description of moksha is that the individual has ceased to identify himself with his body, with the contents of his mind, such as his life story, his race, creed, name, fame, and all other mistaken identities; in this sort of dis-identification the individual enjoys the absence of all the attachments and aversions associated with the identified ego-notion and experiences a true liberation from such things. Yet, this moksha is not experienced by any identified and separate ego entity. Ego is not an entity; ego is only a mistaken notion constructed on the absurd idea that subjective noumenon could be a separate and isolated objective phenomenon. A mistaken identity cannot enjoy liberation from itself because there is no self to it. But noumenal essence does enjoy the bliss, the ananda that emerges when the false view of ego is no longer present.
A “person” is a continuity of changing events, process itself, a complex flux of conditions that, when investigated, is all that a person really is. A collective set of conditions is not a self; it is not an isolated collectivity since all is related and interdependent, each with all, and all with each. A collective set of conditions is usually conceived of as a self, but there are only conditions, no real self-being or “eternal” entity of any sort. Albeit, this pseudo-entity, as a collectivity, does have the capability of altering the conditions of its collective conditionality, changing dysfunctional or unskillful characteristics into better ones, or vice versa. Since there is no definitive boundary anywhere in the totality of the flux of conditionality, there is nowhere that an isolated self can be found. All is process; all is functionality.
The common individual is quite effectively limited by the conditions of environment, of ignorance, of intellect, of karmic heredity, and of all sorts of external and internal conflicts and restrictions. Always motivated by some desire or some dislike, for-and-against attitudes and mental sets, nobody seems to be fully satisfied or content. All the objects and objectives of personal motivations support a condition of longing and restlessness of the mind and create situations of identification with some of these objects and events. Thus the ego-notion becomes the basis of all fixed percepts and mental sets, all opinion, all preference, all prejudice. But when the situations supporting the ego-identified perspectives are transcended then there is potential to recognize a higher state of being. This higher state cannot be created or produced by some method, some technology, or some device or discipline, for it is always already the present fact. In this higher state, all distinctions of duality disappear and the apperception is nondual. Peace comes to the fore when mental disturbances supported by the dualistic perspective are done away with, and for this a method or device or discipline can be a help. But all helps cannot produce the beatitude that is already present. The way to understand that subjective purity which is always present is to learn to subtract the obstructive tendencies that seem to continually hide and cover over that pure subjectivity. The key to learning to do this is to repeatedly make the distinction in awareness of the difference between external physical objects, internal mental objects, and pure subject which is the pure consciousness that perceives all objectivity.
If “I” have a point of origin, what is it? If the “me” starts somewhere, where is that? Can we trace our “selves” to some beginning point, or is this impossible? If it is possible, then first there must be a definite knowledge of exactly what this “me” or “I” is. How many people do “you” know who have enquired into what they really are as an “I” and where and how it came to be? How is this to be done if it is possible? It might be asked, “What am I and what is my point of origin?” Or it might be asked, “What am I not and what is the point of origin of that?” Either way by means of via positiva or via negativa enquiry, or both, this has to be done, otherwise there can be no real fulfillment; no real truth can be found. This is the whole axis upon which the wheel of delusion revolves.
In order to stop this wheel of delusion there are points of insight to be realized. Getting beyond the widely accepted conventional view of dualism will be difficult, but only at first. Doubt may arise when confronted with the proposal that there is no entity, no object, no phenomenon, no event, no thought that has its own reality separated from the rest of the totality of the matrix of existence. No action or motion, no speck of dust, no galactic cluster, no thing is a separate substantial entity. All are composites and all composites are impermanent. No thing can be accurately defined or characterized or described as having specific qualities or marks that come into being from some definite location or point of time or space. Every thing is open to change, but there can be found no real thing that does change. Change is going on but there is no permanent, definite, self-existing thing that changes. A permanent, definite, self-existing thing could not change into something other or something else. There is no such thing. And whatever the composite aspects of any thing are, they are not separate permanent entities either. So no point of origin can be posited for any thing or any part of anything at any place in time or space or presumed causation. What a mystery! But what we are is not a separate objective phenomenon, so we need not posit a point of origin for what we really are. What we are is unthinkable and we realize ourSelves when we understand the limitations of mind.
The capacity of the discriminative, discerning mind must be developed to its limit so that reality can be correctly discerned. This kind of correct discernment pertains only to the relative objectivity of our phenomenal world, and hence the discerning mind is limited to that field in its functional capacity. In the absence of discriminative aberrations, which we have named dichotomous perception, there would be no conflict, no notion of egoistic separation, no duality, and no false images continually floating around in the individual mind. In the absence of the ego-notion there is no false identification with the contents of mind or the qualities and history of the individual body, so in this condition there is every possibility for an awakening. But there won’t be a persona (mask), personality, ego to be awakened. There will be only the original primordial awakened state that has always existed anyway, but could not realize itself because of all the obstructive “coverings” it was hidden behind. In the absence of the “coverings” the reality becomes obvious. The sages have always and repeatedly given advice indicating the removal or “subtraction” of these “coverings” instead of advocating the accumulation of vast quantities of knowledge. It is paradoxical though, that enough of the right kind of knowledge must be gained so that this “subtraction process” can be skillfully put into operation. This is the real meaning of “Self-discovery”, a dis-covering of the Self, of “Self-realization” or real-izing the real Self, instead of continually being immersed in the illusions of a pseudo-self.
