Spiritual Atheism

It is said that Plotinus experienced the ecstasy of "One" four times in his life. on the contrary if the One is barely this sort of thing, it is momentary and passing, an experience of single one time and one place. This experience does not constitute eternal subjectivity, for the actual One is never just individual particular experience. The falling away of mind and material substance is eternal, never something from which single can separate. That which not ever separates is the Self, the real Self. The True Self is the eternal Self a Self unrestricted through time and space. Accordingly, it is the unborn-undying Self the Self without life-and-death, the Self existing as Nirvana. Therefore, this is not ever something one becomes and then separates from. As indicated in the expression "Ordinary Mind is the Way," the authentic Self is the ordinary, constant mind, which at no time changes or is parted from. The condition in zazen [meditation] wherein a someone experiences a good feeling that disappears at the extremity of sitting is a simple illusion. True zazen must be unborn-undying zazen functioning in the midst of life-and-death. . . Whether standing, sitting, lying, thinking, living or dying, this always is the Self solitary this kind of Self can be designated as the real Self. A self differing from this cannot smooth be called a "self."56

Meditative samadhi restricted by the agency of time means the inevitable turn back to disquiet as the default style of human life. Nor will meditation "do" if it is spatially restricted to the position of sitting, or restricted by dint of "concentration."

Sitting is something eternal; in other words it is the [awakened] make submissive It is this Subject which stands. Standing does not mean rising from on the outside of [some particular] condition of sitting. It is the "sitting" which stands.57