“In time it becomes evident that life is not a concept. That life cannot be thought. “
The mind cannot understand. The only thing we can do together is to come to see what is not. Yes, is not. The mind wants to choose, but then you come to see very clearly at some point that something is stopping you. There is no freedom, there is nothing pre-determined either, they are both concepts of the mind. You cannot have one concept without the other. So yes, you say: “see that you have a story”, and yes you can say: “there is no such thing as a story”, because there is no one there to “have any story”. So what do you do with that? If you follow the two lines of feeling very deeply you come to a blank state and in this blank state there is dissolution. And you see it is not the one, nor the other. They are both concepts. But these concepts have been recalled from memory. In time it becomes evident that life is not a concept. That life cannot be thought.
That’s why you can never say: “I understand something.” This realization will knowingly remain as a constant background present before any upsurge of understanding. All knowing is included in not knowing. The moment you say ” I know this ” you exclude the opposite. So of course you challenge the knowledge later on and it is very upsetting to the mind. We realize that wanting to understand was a need to grasp what cannot be grasped. It goes against what we have said that there is no sense in anything. You may hear that and feel very happy. To make sense out of the idea that there is no sense in anything gives you a feeling of security. Then someone tells you: ” Look you are making sense out of it ” and then the mind becomes crazy because it sees that it cannot not make sense out of it. Because when you understand that there is no sense in anything, you are saying to yourself: ” that makes sense “. You are falling into the trap. So you have to constantly observe yourself because you constantly want to grasp what you cannot grasp and for the mind of course it is very upsetting. But it works. You must see the mechanism of understanding there is nothing to understand. There is nothing to understand, — you hear that and say: “Yes, now I understand that” and again you fall into the trap. So you must stop knowingly before understanding.
This is an excerpt from an article by Roxane Chapdelaine
