True Self

True self:

there is no true self - there's no separate awareness free of suffering, untouched by sorrow, nor without the pleasures known through the simple joys of life. To believe so is to imply a subtle sense of duality that just isn't found. I am not removed from any experience, every aspect of life is part of my belonging. If there is a true self it is vast,  it's everything at once, and includes all of joy and sorrows. 

a true self is not left untouched by life. 

as well, I find there is no absence of a self - emptiness is it's own immediate fulfillment, and I appear through an intimate sense of its expression. There's no point in denying any aspect of life as false. Even illusions are true in their appearance, however briefly that they're seen. The singer Donovan sang in true Zen fashion,  "first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is" and these lines are repeated in closing through circular fashion. 

who know's where it truly ends? 

my own experience is life - it's personal, I find myself involved through every detail, a participant to it's sorrows and joys. There's no duality to any of this simply because there is no duality. There's just life through all of it's expressions. Yet it's impersonal as well. I'm not defined by any borders, life carries me from one expression to the next, an abstract design without true lines. In every sense I am empty of self, and at every moment there's a self felt keenly alive. 

first there is a mountain...

~

Peace, Eric