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Trust is a child's hand
Prajnaparamita talks about Trust
What does trust have to do with awakening?
Nothing. Awakening is realizing absolute freedom: freedom,
no matter what. This freedom is complete and not restricted by any circumstances or conditions. When we speak about freedom we tend to think of freedom of speech, political freedom, or freedom within a relationship. But real freedom is free. This freedom is of an entirely different nature: no longer related to a situation, free of ideas and free of conditions. Here trust no longer applies, it has lost its meaning.
But this conversation is supposed to be about trust. Does trust have no role on the path to awakening?
Trust plays a large role on the path to awakening. There are some qualities that greatly serve you on your inner journey. Trust is
one of them, as are honesty and courage. Self-confidence emerges into trust. What can you do without self-confidence? How can you ride a bicycle without self-confidence? What are the qualities of your work, your friendships, your life, when they are not rooted in self-confidence? Self-confidence is your base. Without self-confidence everything contracts and stagnates and the gateway to the living life remains closed.
And what about trust?
When there is self-confidence, trust comes of its own accord. Trust is the ability to allow, to receive, to experience: a
rainbow, the song of a black bird, the morning dew, drinking a glass of water…….
People often say that they have so little trust. But realize how big that trust actually is: you trust that the trees know how to grow leaves, that your feet know how to take the next step, you trust that you remember your own name. Throughout the day you live in trust, but you take it for granted and you do not realize how great your trust actually is.
Yes, that could be so, but I worry about my work… I have little trust that it will turn out all right.
'If it will turn out all-right…....'
Actually you are saying: 'I have little trust if it will turn out all-right according to the idea that I have, how I think it should be.' That is not really trust, but an expectation, a masked control, a hidden agreement. Real trust is when trust is no longer an area of concern for you. Where we make trust a subject, we are still engaged in some sort of negotiation, in control, in delusion, in anxiety.
Is it then: Trusting that it is good?
Life lives with or without my trust. Does the rain need my trust? Or the snowflakes? Or the
order of the universe?
What is trust then?
Trust is a child's hand.
Trust is to give yourself over.
Real trust is blind,
giving yourself to not-knowing.
And this giving is surrender.
In this merging
you no longer put yourself in the way
by building a wall,
insisting on an explanation,
an expectation,
an interpretation.
And to trust your guru, what is that then?
Long ago my teacher Alexander Smit spoke about how Nisargadatta was just a short time with his Master Siddharameswhar Maharaj before he (Siddharameswhar) died. But in that short time he had etched a few deeply penetrating words in the heart
of his student: 'Tat tvam asi'. This is what you are. This: the open secret, where no words reach, unborn, always present, borderless, untouchable, unchanging. Siddharameswhar said: "This, Nisargadatta, realize what this truly means". Nisargadatta believed and trusted his master completely. And this trust and the focus of Nisargadatta and his intense desire for freedom drove him to total surrender and awakening.
This quality of doubtless trust in your Guru is exceptional and yet, is available for everyone. When the student rests in this trust, he is emptied of ideas and purified through the enlightened speech and the power of the Guru.
This mysterious alliance between the selfless teacher and the passionate student digs up all the power in the student, the power to allow vulnerability, to allow everything and to come
to surrender.
But you just said that in awakening trust is meaningless. Will you say something more about that?
During your awakening journey trust changes its meaning and colour. You move from self-confidence to trust and from trust to trusting your Self, trusting the Self without any reservation. The Guru can be a symbol for that, and serve as a bridge, as in the life of Nisargadatta.
When you live your life on the compass of truth, you
discover that all the ideas that you cherished, protected and defended lose their gravity. All importance and meaning pales and you realize that no form or thought has any substance or reality. That is an astounding discovery, marvellous and liberating.
In seeing what is truly real, all concepts are emptied out. So the concept of trust transforms into an embodied trust. And then you longer know what it is.
You realize that all you have done is assigned a meaning to your ideas. And this applies even to the word 'I', the point from which everything is measured and defined.
Recently someone said to me; 'I would love to be alone, but I think that I would isolate myself.' Look at what you are actually saying. How would you measure that you were isolating yourself? By another idea? By how involved you
think how you should be socially, as it is was taught to you, what your mother thought of it
or your colleagues? 'I' is the focus at which the undividable life is split. But that is impossible, that is only imagined. What is undividable cannot be split. 'I' is a concept and as long as you believe it, this will be the source of all suffering. All ideas are no more than an assumption, a misunderstanding, whereby you have constricted life. The root of all delusion is simply the belief in the reality of this idea 'I'.
See, break the chains of ignorance and live freedom!
But if 'I' doesn't exist, then I am dead.
In awakening death dies.
I have done so much for my awakening, have studied and read a great deal. That does not bring me any further and now I trustfully wait and hope to come to realization.
You have discovered a lot and you have a deep sight. Now you are at a point of your awakening journey where the tools that have served you for so long no longer work for you and 'doing' no longer deepens your search. All
that brought you to this point, those shining words such as self-realization, freedom, peace and love, have lost their meaning. But watch out, you are waiting, and so you cast a fishing line towards the future, towards the great goal, of which you still hold an image. Your trust has given you the courage to see ever deeper and more subtly. But from these concepts, as trust and hope, that have served you for so long, you have made a
comfortable vehicle, with which you still wish to go somewhere. No longer live with trust at your side but embody trust completely, live it.
Nothing can be brought through the gate of liberation.
Do not abandon yourself any longer,
do not allow the entrance of time.
Give up hope and expectation
and dare to stand alone,
empty handed.
Now, here,
in the courage of naked truth.
I trust that I can surrender myself now.
Who surrenders what to whom? The work is done. Rest in yourself, just rest and relax.
The concepts are lived,
emptied out
and fully embodied..
No longer trust in,
no longer trust that,
no longer trust.
Rest in surrender
and lay your life in God's hands.
Here is no time,
nor attainment,
nor knowing.
Everything knows itself.
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