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The Arahant - Ajahn Amaro

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THE PHANTOM I: SEEING THROUGH THE ILLUSION -- PART 2

Now, the perception of this truth must happen suddenly with the deepest conviction and the most urgent immediacy. It is not a matter of developing understanding through reasoning over a period of time, but it is a sudden shock of timeless apprehension, an instantaneous cessation of the mind process in which thinking is suspended and intuitive awareness dawns. Then, after this seed of apprehension has been planted and has taken root, the deliverance from the imagined bondage will proceed on its own course, in its own time. Once you are thoroughly convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the object with which you had identified yourself all this time is really only a phenomenon, having neither independence nor autonomy... that it is merely a dreamed figure, an appearance without substance, seen as a phenomenal object through the dualistic minds of other sentient objects regarding themselves as subjects... and that this shadow can have neither bondage nor liberation... then you as cons...
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THE EMPTINESS OF THE RED GERANIUM

Here – sitting outside with the laptop – there is the view of a natural wilderness – the huge oak tree, fields of nasturtium leaves, geraniums with deep pink flowers, a white butterfly, the smell of jasmine on the creeper nearby, two white arum lilies, overhead the blue sky and drifting white clouds, the sounds of unseen birds, wasps building nests in the eaves, a dog soaking up the sun, the call of the Egyptian geese.  How is it possible to describe the inexplicable emptiness of this amazing array? Everything is simply this unfathomable emptiness – ONE – but expressed with this veneer of solidity that appears different – the red geranium, the brown dog. Ha!  The gaze can look for hours on this scene marveling at this dance of nothing showing itself in a thousand different ways. What Am I? The question is answered in everything – the NOTHING or the emptiness that is recognized points directly to this unfathomable mystery. I am THAT; I AM.   Everything happens n...
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