We are now going to look at that rarest of things, a modern day Taoist philosopher. That's right. Amazing. I know. It's like Christmas in this thread, isn't it? Why yes, yes it is.
Terence Gray was born in England to Irish aristocrats and received a Cambridge university education. He became an Egyptologist in the 1920s and published books on the subject, he later opened a theatre and became a major influence on the arts community of the day, along with his cousin, Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet. He eventually left England for France to take care of the family vineyards and to work with their race horses.
Years later, so the story goes, while looking up at the stars, he decided to become a mystic. He consequently travelled through Asia studying various spiritual works and teachers, including a trip to Ramana Maharshi's ashram in India. In 1958, at the age of 63, his first book, Fingers Pointing to the Moon, appeared.
What fascinates me about this man is he was raised an arisocrat and educated accordingly and thoroughly, yet was able to uncondition himself and rediscover his self-knowledge.
He would go on to write 8 books in total, all under the pseudonym Wei Wu Wei - a Taoist term for 'actionless action', the realisation he expressed in those books are crystallised in his following quotes:
Why aren't you happy? It's because ninety-nine percent of everything you do, and think, and say, is for yourself - and there isn't one.
Play your part in the comedy, but don't identify yourself with your role.
What is your trouble? Mistaken identity.
Disciples and devotees…what are most of them doing? Worshipping the teapot instead of drinking the tea!
It is only with total humility, and in absolute stillness of mind that we can know what indeed we are.
Wise men don't judge: They seek to understand.
Past and Future are a duality of which Present is the reality. The now-moment alone is eternal and real.
The writer of these lines has nothing whatsoever to teach anyone; his words are just his contribution to our common discussion of what must inevitably be for us the most important subject which could be discussed by sentient beings.
There is no mystery whatever — only inability to perceive the obvious.
In order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow - and that is likely to hurt.
We do not possess an 'ego.' We are possessed by the idea of one.
Living should be perpetual and universal benediction.
THIS which is seeking is THAT which is sought,
and THAT which is sought is THIS which is seeking.
Are we not wasps who spend all day in a fruitless attempt to traverse a window-pane - while the other half of the window is wide open?
The seeing of Truth cannot be dualistic (a 'thing' seen). It cannot be seen by a see-er, or via a see-er. There can only be a seeing which itself is Truth.
The saint is a man who disciplines his ego. The sage is a man who rids himself of his ego.
Never forget, what you're looking for is what is looking.
Do you realise that when you give a schilling to a beggar you are giving it to yourself? Do you realise that when you help a dog over a stile you yourself are being helped? Do you realise when you kick a man when he is down, you are kicking yourslef? Give him another kick, you deserve it!
The qualities we possess should never be a matter for satisfaction, but the qualities we have discarded.
It is less what one is that should matter, than what one is not.
There is no becoming. ALL IS.
It is only the artificial ego that suffers. The man who has transcended his false 'me' no longer identifies with his suffering.
Detachment is a state, it is not a totalisation of achieved indifferences.
Reality alone exists - and that we are. All the rest is only a dream, a dream of the One Mind, which is our mind without the 'our'. Is it so hard to accept? Is it so difficult to assimilate and to live?
Spontaneity is being present in the present. Spontaneity by-passes the processes of the conceptual mind. Reintegration with Nature, which we are, is the recovery of spontaneity.
Truth is that which lies in a dimension beyond the reach of thought. Whole-mind has no 'thoughts', thoughts are split-mind.
Let us live gladly! Quite certainly we are free to do it. Perhaps it is our only freedom, but ours it is, and it is only phenomenally a freedom. 'Living free' is being 'as one is'. Can we not do it now? Indeed can we not-do-it? It is not even a 'doing': it is beyond doing and not-doing. It is being as-we-are.
Even the intellectual understanding of the inexistence of our 'selves' is a rare and bitter attainment which few even attempt. And that is only the elimination round which qualifies us for access to Reality... Intellectual understanding should be not indispensable to a 'simple' mind, but, with our conditioning, it would seem to be an almost inevitable preliminary.
Realisation is a matter of becoming conscious of that which is already realised.
All the evil in the world, and all the unhappiness, comes from the I-concept.
This 'real' nature with whose revelation the Zen Masters are primarily concerned, or the Atman-'I' of the Vedantists, is not the far-off, unreachable will-o'-the-wisp we are apt to imagine, but just the within of which we know the without. It is just the other side of the medal, and it lies wherever our senses and our intellect cease to function.
Go to the Awakened Masters - and leave all your baggage behind.