Advaita Post, Volume 17 No. 11
Text Satsang
From an Advaita talk with Douwe Tiemersma, Schiermonnikoog* June 9, 2001
About Freedom, part 3
So, freedom is celebrating, letting go. Letting everything run free. We celebrate freedom. Then nothing is needed. You don’t have to see anything special, you don’t have to hear anything special, you don’t have to do anything special. You walk or cycle like this around Schiermonnikoog and everywhere it’s perfect. Now, when it’s perfect everywhere, then there’s no need to go anywhere. You certainly can, because those wheels continue to spin and those feet continue to walk. But nothing is needed. Everywhere it’s perfect, complete, precisely because it’s completely open. Everything is in the here and now, it’s not elsewhere.
Is that right, E (the name of a visitor)?
I can, I think I can follow it.
Douwe: Do you realize that too?
If you say that when I walk and I move that actually nothing is happening, … if that is realization, then I realize that.
Be a little more precise. What do you realize now?
That this body runs in something that’s not localized anywhere, is everywhere and doesn’t move and isn’t a thing and [yet] I am aware of.
Yes. And what about yourself?
Whether I am that?
No. What about yourself. Can you say anything about that?
If that is my self …
No, not ‘if’. Just use ordinary sentences.
There’s nothing to say about that.
Yes.
You can only be that.
Yes.
Is that enlightenment?
Yes.
Disappointing.
As soon as you think: this is disappointing …
I’m back to thinking again. Then you make an object of it, then you have expectations.
You said something else and then there was no thinker.
No, no … yes, yes …
Now, you don’t need to back down. You just said, “I can’t say anything about it, it’s not localized anywhere.”
No.
There should be something else?
Yes, there should be something. For me then, as a person, there should…
Now you are saying something else again: ‘for me as a person …’
No, in that state itself, there, nothing is needed, that is complete, that is …
Can it also be like that here too?
You mean in this body?
No, here and now.
It is here and now.
Then why do you say you are dissatisfied?
Still, I don’t feel happy.
Who is that I then?
Let’s just say that the little me is not happy.
Yes, but you just said that it needed nothing more.
No, that being doesn’t need anything.
You have said that you can’t say anything about it and that, in any case, you are not situated in a particular place.
That’s true.
Well…
But within it an unhappy little ‘I’ appears.
Oh, but that’s something else. Then you say: that little I there, that still feels a little unhappy. But for yourself, you don’t need anything more.
No, when you’ve completely moved to being, then you don’t need anything anymore.
[shouts and laughter]
- An island off the coast of Holland where Douwe would hold retreats.
thegroundlessopenness 