Daily Quote, Saturday August 29, 2009.

Good afternoon,

I won't mention that today the temperature is 20 degrees c lower than a week ago. :-(

Here is today's quote:

Until the self is abandoned, the mind can never be free.

The self must cease through awareness of its own limitation, the falseness of its own existence. However deep, wide, and extensive it may become, the self is always limited, and until it is abandoned, the mind can never be free. The mere perception of that fact is the ending of the self, and only then is it possible for that which is the real to come into being.

The Collected Works, Vol. VIII - 312

Here are my reflections.

Becoming aware of our own limitation is to become aware of ourself, not as an idea for as an iea we are limitless; we can pile experience upon experience, thought upon thought, information upon information. But this does not lead to freedom, just a bigger room in the prison. The fact is that the mind does not exist; there is nothing real about it: it's just the collection of memories, motives, ambitions, and habits that we call consciousness. If you practice yoga postures, notice how you can so easily become atatched to ideas about those postures and how tenacious you can be about those ideas: they are you. Once we can see that if we think of ourselves as our mind we cannot be free, then we are free.

Best wishes

Robert