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THE WISDOM OF THE SEVENTH STAGE OF LIFE
1 – Nagarjuna
I make my obeisance to the Buddha who is wise, free from all attachment, and whose powers are beyond conception, and who has kindly taught the truth which cannot be expressed by words.
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1 – Adi Da
I bow and surrender only to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, which is radical Understanding, and Freedom from the limitations of all conditions of experiential existence. The Radiant Transcendental Consciousness is not other than the immense and inconceivable Life-Power, the Matrix of all events. And that Radiant Power is not the separate Creator, connected to the world of living beings merely as a Cause to an effect. That Radiance does not change, nor does It Cause changes outside Itself. Rather, all changes or conditions are a spontaneous modification of the Life-Power Itself, and, therefore, no phenomenal condition or living being exists separate from or relative to the Radiant Life- Power. It is One and Only, and there is no world or thing or being that is other than It. The Life-Power is simply the Transcendental Reality, unqualifiedly Radiant, and identical to Consciousness, wherein the entire world of differentiated events and processes rises and falls as a spontaneous inevitability, without Ultimate Necessity. In that Radiant Consciousness the Truth is always tacitly obvious, and it is Perfect Ignorance, or the Intuition beyond all knowledge.
2 – Nagarjuna
In the transcendental truth there is no origination (utpada), and in fact, there is no destruction (nirodha). The Buddha is like the sky (which has neither origination nor cessation), and the beings are like him, and therefore they are of the same nature.
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2 – Adi Da
In that Radiant Transcendental Consciousness no conditions either appear or disappear as independent and self-contained forms of existence. That Consciousness is like space, wherein objective conditions may seem to appear and disappear by a process of their own, whereas in Truth they are only modifications of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, or the Power that Pervades, Includes, and yet Transcends all phenomena. Living beings are apparently arising like independent objects in space, but in Truth they are always identical to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness.
3 – Nagarjuna
There is no birth either on this or the other side (of the world). A compound thing (samskrta) originates from its conditions. Therefore it is sunya by its nature. This fact comes into the range of knowledge of an omniscient one.
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3 – Adi Da
There is no Independent and yet Interested Cause or Will or Necessity that is Intentionally Originating, Emanating, Producing, Choosing, Moving, Opposing, or Dissolving the human being, or any other manifest appearance. No such Cause, separate from things and beings themselves, can be found in this world, whether in the beginning or at the end, or at the subtle other side, or even at the hidden root of this world. The arising of all possible conditions is inevitable from the point of view of conditions themselves, but no condition is necessary from the point of view of Truth, since the Truth, or the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, which is the Condition of every condition, does not Exist in relation to the conditions of the world as a Cause to an effect. Present conditions arise from previous conditions, or the spontaneous Play of modifications, not from the Willful Activity of a Transcendental Cause that is separate from all conditions and yet implicated in all conditions. Arising conditions do not hide an inner or Divine Self that is independent of conditions and yet actively Creating them. That which is Transcendental is prior to all Activity and all Inactivity. Therefore, if the Truth is Realized, there is Freedom from the world, and that Freedom does not depend on either the fulfillment or the prevention of essential human experience.
A living being does not enclose an inner, separate, and eternal soul or personal Self. Every complex condition or being that arises is exactly what it seems to be-a mechanical structuring of manifest conditions. What is within a living individual, or what may conventionally be considered to be his soul, is merely the psychic or mental part, which is subtler than the elemental body, and which survives the death of the elemental body, but which is also subject to change and death and every kind of illusion or torment. There is no eternal, separate, interested, personal, implicated, and conditioned Self within each living being. There are only psycho-physical conditions, and the Consciousness in which they seem to arise is Absolute, Transcendental, Motiveless, and always Free of all conditions.
Both the world and the living individual are Void, or Perfectly Empty. That is, both the world and the living individual are mechanical, without an inner, active, personal, and eternal Self or Consciousness. The Self of the world and of the living individual is not internal, differentiated, and creative. The True Self is Absolute, Transcendental, Infinite, and Free. Therefore, to Realize that Radiant Transcendental Consciousness is to be Free of the limitations and implications of the world and of
the body-mind. This is obvious to one who has understood all experience and all conventional knowledge. And such Understanding or Perfect Ignorance is not a matter of the intellect in itself, but of the surrender of the entire body-mind, in the midst of all experience, and into the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. In this Way even the body becomes Radiant, and even the mind intuits the Transcendental Consciousness.
4 – Nagarjuna
All things by nature are regarded as reflections. They are pure and naturally auiescent, devoid of any duality, equal, and remain always and in all circumstances in the same way (tathata).
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4 – Adi Da
In the Understanding that is native to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, all conditions are regarded as unnecessary modifications without ultimate implications. All conditions are regarded as no conditions at all. There is no irreducible dilemma, no separation, no opposition between the parts of things or beings. All things and beings are always already Dissolved in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness.
5 – Nagarjuna
In fact, worldings attribute atman to what is not atman, and in the same way they imagine happiness, misery, indifference, passions and liberation.
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5 – Adi Da
Those whose point of view is that of experience, the body-mind, or the world, rather than the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, attribute Self to what is only the body-mind, or the conditions of experience, or the world. Instead of Realizing the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, they imagine a separate soul or Eternal Creative Self within the body or the world. Therefore, they become possessed of a false understanding of their own Condition. This occurs because they approach the Understanding of the Transcendental Reality in the same manner by which they experience and think about satisfaction and frustration, desire and renunciation, body and mind. They regard the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness from the point of view of experience, or the body, whereas the experiential body-mind must itself, and as a whole, be comprehended in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness.
6 – 7 – Nagarjuna
Birth in the six realms of existence in the world, highest happiness in the heaven, great pain in the hell,—these do not come within the perview of truth (i.e. cannot be accepted as true); nor do the notions that unmeritorious actions lead to the extreme misery, old age, disease, and death, and meritorious actions surely bring about good results.
It is owing to false notions that beings are consumed by fire of passions even as a forest is burnt by forest conflagration and fall into the hells, etc.
As illusion prevails so do beings make their appearance. The world is illusory and it exists only on account of its cause and conditions.
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6-7 – Adi Da
A thing seen and known and believed in a dream is no longer seen, known, or believed when one awakens. Likewise, the world of experience ceases to be a dilemma or a necessity when one Awakens from the position of the body-mind and into the Position of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. (15)
That which arises from conditional causes does not cause itself, nor is it Caused by any Divine Interest or Intention, but every condition is an ordinary result of the obvious and mechanical round or activity of conditions themselves, or the Eternally Changing Realm and Process of Nature. The idea of an Independent, Eternally Interested, and Creative Divine Cause is a false notion, popular among ordinary people, who do not directly inspect their own experience or Realize the Truth of things.
There are two fundamental ideas that are untrue, even though commonly believed to be the Truth. One is the idea that conditions arise by Causation-that is, by the Interested Will or Motivated Intention of the Divine and Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. The other is the idea that there is an individual or personal but Eternal Consciousness deep within the living being that is implicated by will or intention in the experience of the body-mind. Awaken from these illusions, which are only a kind of “holy” worldliness.
In Truth, the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness is the Eternally Free Condition of all apparent conditions, whether of the world or of the body-mind. And in the Understanding that is native to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, neither the world nor the body-mind is thought to be Caused or Moved from beyond or within. Rather, both the world and the body-mind are Realized to be only illusory or unnecessary modifications of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness.
8 – Nagarjuna
As a painter is frightened by the terrible figure of a Yaksa which he himself has drawn, so is a fool frightened in the world (by his own false notions).
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8 – Adi Da
The entire world, including every living being, is arising in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Every thing and every being is like a state of mind, rather than a thing in itself, independent of the mind. Every thing and every being arises in Consciousness, entirely dependent on Consciousness. Things and beings are not independent, objective, self-contained, and self-existing. They cannot be properly Understood when considered in themselves, independent of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. They are, each and all, only unnecessary, temporary, and absolutely dependent modifications of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Every thing and every being is a state or condition of Consciousness, not merely an independent configuration of objective material elements. The material elements are themselves only a modification of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness.
9 – Nagarjuna
Even as a fool going himself to a quagmire is drowned therein, so are beings drowned in the quagmire of false notions and are unable to come out thereof.
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9 – Adi Da
It is not necessary, nor is it fruitful, to seek the total, final, and absolute domination of one great and negative aspect of experience by its equally great and positive opposite. Good cannot finally destroy evil, nor can right finally destroy all that is wrong. Only the struggle, the opposition itself, goes on interminably like the polarized play of male and female.
Then how is this great struggle to be overcome? It is not a matter of any strategic domination of the parts of experience or any warfare within the body-mind. Rather, if there is Awakening to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, then all phenomena are transcended, and the world ceases to be a Dilemma.
No condition, thing, or being is self-existing or independent. Every thing is Subjective, or native to Consciousness, not Objective or separate from Consciousness. No condition, thing, or being contains any Consciousness or Life-Power whatsoever. It is only and falsely presumed that Consciousness and the Radiant Power of Life are within the world or within living beings. In Truth, the world and living beings are within Consciousness and Life. And the Life-Consciousness is Transcendental, Perfect, without dependence on any condition, thing, or being. Thus, the entire world, and every living being, is only an appearance, dependent on the Radiant Life-Consciousness, but unnecessary, containing no Consciousness or Life.
Radiant Consciousness Transcends the world, all beings, and all conditions of experience. Therefore, Awaken to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Then the world, all experience, and every notion of independent personal existence will inhere and dissolve in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness.
10 – Nagarjuna
The feeling of misery is experienced by imagining a thing where in fact it has no existence. Beings are tortured by the poison of false notions regarding the object and its knowledge.
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10 – Adi Da
When something is imagined to exist it becomes attractive, and a desire is aroused that cannot be satisfied. Just so, when we become distracted and committed to false notions about the ultimate Nature of the world and of experience, we suffer a profound frustration that leaves us constantly deluded, bewildered, and in fear-forever inventing plans for ultimate escape, like animals in snares and cages.
11 – Nagarjuna
Seeing these helpless beings with a compassionate heart one should perform thc practices of the highest knowledge (bodhicarya) for the benefit of them.
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11 – Adi Da
Therefore, if one has seen and felt and Understood the common and universally tormented state of living beings, one should surrender to the Truth and practice the Way of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Compassionate Understanding of the fear and delusion of all living beings moves one to practice this Way. Thus, one may, by one’s manner of living, support the illusions and intensify the torment of living beings, or one may transcend all illusions and bring Transcendental Peace into the world.
12 – Nagarjuna
Having acquired requisites thereby and getting unsurpassable bodhi one should become a Buddha, the friend of the world, being freed fron the bondage of false notions.
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12 – Adi Da
All false notions come to Rest in one whose Understanding of experience is thorough, radical, and perfect. He has Awakened to Intuition of the Transcendental Consciousness, prior to knowledge of the world in itself, and he has become Enlightened by that Radiance wherein the world is without necessity or deluding power. He Remembers the Condition of the world, while others forget It. And his Remembrance is a beginningless and endless Presumption of the Condition of every differentiated condition or experience. For him there is neither experience nor the absence of experience, but only the Infinite Radiance of Free Consciousness. His Presence is Radiant with the Power of Life. Only one so Enlightened is truly a Friend of the world.
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