Suchness Quotes

It is called enlightenment, nirvana, God, truth, call it what you will. There is no activity other than the eternal activities of the universe, perfect being, the awareness of all suchness, knowledge. ~ Frederick Lenz

Western science has made nature intelligible in terms of its symmetries and regularities, analyzing its most wayward forms into components of a regular and measurable shape. As a result we tend to see nature and to deal with it as an "order" from which the element of spontaneity has been "screened out." But this order is maya, and the "true suchness" of things has nothing in common with the purely conceptual aridities of perfect squares, circles, or triangles - except by spontaneous accident. Yet this is why the Western mind is dismayed when ordered conceptions of of the universe break down. and when the basic behavior of the physical world is found to be a "principle of uncertainty. ~ Alan W. Watts

One of the names of Buddha is TATHAGATA - one who lives in suchness, one who has become free from all the distractions of the mind. And the miracle is that the mind consists only of distraction, so once you are free of all distractions there is no mind left. In the present there is no mind. In the present there is only consciousness, awareness, watchfulness. ~ Rajneesh

Xinxin Ming or Trust in the Heart


The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose;
Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference, and heaven and earth are set apart.

If you want the truth [of nonduality] to stand clear before you, never be for or against.
The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease.
When the Way is not understood, the mind chatters endlessly to no avail.

The Perfect Way is vastness without holiness.
Like infinite space it contains all and lacks nothing.
Because you pick and choose, cling and reject, you can't see its Suchness.

Neither be entangled in the world, nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things,
And dualism vanishes of its own accord.

Craving the passivity of Oneness you are filled with activity.
As long as you tarry in dualism,
You will never know Oneness.

If you don't trust in the Heart, you fall into assertion or denial.
In this world of Suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To be in accord with the Way, let go of all self-centered striving.

Denying the world [of duality] is the asserting of it;
Asserting emptiness [oneness] is the denying of it.
The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you go.

To return to the root [the One] is to ~ Sengcan

Dharma has several connotations in South Asian religions, but in Buddhism it has two basic, interrelated meanings: dharma as 'teaching' as found in the expression Buddha Dharma, and dharma as 'reality-as-is' (abhigama-dharma). The teaching is a verbal expression of reality-as-is that consists of two aspects-the subject that realizes and the object that is realized. Together they constitute 'reality-as-is;' if either aspect is lacking, it is not reality-as-is. This sense of dharma or reality-as-is is also called suchness (tathata) or thatness (tattva) in Buddhism. ~ Taitetsu Unno

We do not understand that we are literally able to live and enjoy life only because of other people and things. If one really understands this truth, he cannot help but become humble and appreciate others. ~ Gyomay M. Kubose

Transcendence implies the surpassing of two things, and the consequent attainment of a third thing. But there are no 'things' in reality, of any kind whatever: there is only the thing-in-itself, its suchness, which is Reality, revealed when the illusory dualism of inexistent qualities is dissolved. ~ Wei Wu Wei

Oh you the creator, you the destroyer, you who sustain and make an end,
Who in sunlight dance among the birds and the children at their play,
Who at midnight dance among corpses in the burning grounds,
You Shiva, you dark and terrible Bhairava,
You Suchness and Illusion, the Void and All Things,
You are the lord of life, and therefore I have brought you flowers;
You are the lord of death, and therefore I have brought you my heart
This heart that is now your burning ground.
Ignorance there and self shall be consumed with fire.
That you may dance, Bhairava, among the ashes.
That you may dance, Lord Shiva, in a place of flowers,
And I dance with you. ~ Aldous Huxley

Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, or else for those resolute dead-enders, who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner. ~ Aldous Huxley

I think part of your success lies in the shock of recognition- or as the Japanese might say, 'the unexpected recognition of the faithful "suchness" of very ordinary things'. ~ Charles J. Shields

In Tantric Zen, career, relationships, the type of insurance you have - all things are part of your evolution, your awareness, your experience of the suchness of existence. ~ Frederick Lenz

Like the Buddha, we too have come from suchness, remain in suchness, and will return to suchness. We have come from nowhere and have nowhere to go. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

This is how one ought to see," I repeated yet again. And I might have added, "These are the sort of things one ought to look at." Things without pretensions, satisfied to be merely themselves, sufficient in their suchness, not acting a part, not trying, insanely, to go it alone, in isolation from the Dharma-Body, in Luciferian defiance of the grace of God. ~ Aldous Huxley

If you sit with an enlightened teacher and silent your mind as they go into nirvana, suchness, the pure power of their aura will bring you on a journey into the world of perfection. ~ Frederick Lenz

God is not someone or something separate but is the suchness in each moment, the underlying reality. ~ Stephen Levine

As simple as that sounds, it is nevertheless extremely difficult to adequately discuss no-boundary awareness or nondual consciousness. This is because our language - the medium in which all verbal discussion must float - is a language of boundaries. As we have seen, words and symbols and thoughts themselves are actually nothing but boundaries, for whenever you think or use a word or name, you are already creating boundaries. Even to say "reality is no-boundary awareness" is still to create a distinction between boundaries and no-boundary! So we have to keep in mind the great difficulty involved with dualistic language. That "reality is no-boundary" is true enough, provided we remember that no-boundary awareness is a direct, immediate, and nonverbal awareness, and not a mere philosophical theory. It is for these reasons that the mystic-sages stress that reality lies beyond names and forms, words and thoughts, divisions and boundaries. Beyond all boundaries lies the real world of Suchness, the Void, the Dharmakaya, Tao, Brahman, the Godhead. And in the world of suchness, there is neither good nor bad, saint nor sinner, birth nor death, for in the world of suchness there are no boundaries. ~ Ken Wilber

When we are truly able to see and understand life, its reality, its value and beauty as well as its troubles, we are able to accept life dynamically and walk its path with appreciation and gratitude. This way of life is Buddhism. ~ Gyomay M Kubose

You can call it tathata, suchness. 'Suchness' is a Buddhist way of expressing that there is something in you which always remains in its intrinsic nature, never changing. It always remains in its selfsame essence, eternally so. That is your real nature. That which changes is not you, that is mind. That which does not change in you is buddha-mind. You can call it no-mind, you can call it samadhi, satori. It depends upon you; you can give it whatsoever name you want. You can call it christ-consciousness. ~ Rajneesh

Both light and dark are eternity. Human beings assign relative values to colors, but beyond the relative, there just is - what in Zen we call "suchness". ~ Frederick Lenz

Prana is implicate to matter but explicate to mind; mind is implicate to prana but explicate to soul; soul is implicate to mind but explicate to spirit; and the spirit is the source and suchness of the entire sequence. ~ Ken Wilber

I may discuss contemporary cinema, how to shop at a mall without losing energy, how to use the power of mind to increase career and academic success, the Zen of sports, reincarnation, karma, sex, the experience of "suchness" or a new book by Stephen King. ~ Frederick Lenz

The enchantment of being here at all, alive and aware, is a gift too often considered a problem.

Simply feeling the aliveness - the unique suchness - of each never-to-be-repeated moment outshines completely the desire for power, or pleasure, or meaning - outshines those desires in my world at least.

When actually engaged in this aliveness without trying to explain it (as if it ever could be explained), questions such as "What does it all mean?" or "Who am I?" never even arise. The aliveness is the meaning. ~ Robert Saltzman

Suchness is neither that which is existence, nor that which is nonexistence, nor that which is at once existence and nonexistence, nor that which is not at once existence and nonexistence. ~ Asvaghosa

The difference between supermind and Big Mind (if we take Big Mind to mean the state experience of nondual Suchness, or turiyatita) is that Big Mind can be experienced or recognized at virtually any lower level or rung. Magic to Integral. In fact, one can be at, say, the Pluralistic stage, and experience several core characteristics of the entire sequence of state-stages (gross to subtle to causal to Witnessing to Nondual), although, of course, the entire sequence, including nondual Suchness, will be interpreted in Pluralistic terms. This is unfortunate in many ways - interpreting Dharma in merely Pluralistic terms (or Mythic terms, or Rational, and so on) - because it is so ultimately reductionistic; but it happens all the time, given the relative independence of states and structures at 1st and 2nd tier.

Supermind, on the other hand, as a basic structure-rung (conjoined with nondual Suchness) can only be experienced once all the previous junior levels have emerged and developed, and as in all structure development, stages cannot be skipped. Therefore, unlike Big Mind, supermind can only be experienced after all 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-tier junior stages have been passed through. While, as Genpo Roshi has abundantly demonstrated, Big Mind state experience is available to virtually anybody at almost any age (and will be interpreted according to the View of their current stage), supermind is an extremely rare recognition. Supermind, as the highest structure-rung to date ~ Ken Wilber

What we usually think of as the self is very temporal and an illusion. ~ Gyomay M. Kubose

Suchness [...] means that reality is as it is. You cannot say anything about it; you cannot describe it. Nirvana is the same. Nirvana is the removal of all notions and concepts so that reality can reveal herself fully to you. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh