Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
our very belief that we need to abide in being, fixates attention
away from the presence of being.
PAUL NAGY: Yes, our imaginary Buddhas are really idols, and so
are our imaginary selves, we think we are the constructs. But one
of the things you were saying when you were talking about love
and relationship, that in terms of working with it as a process, is
you were describing in very simple terms the heart of practice in
Buddhism, and which basically is that you maintain mindfulness
of all situations. It's easy to stay mindful when everything is
smooth and easy, and nobody's yelling at you. And then it's a little
less easy when somebody's yelling at you and telling you what to
do, and for some reason you have to listen to them.
But the thing is what you do is you are, well okay, there are
situations here, some I like and some I dislike, but they're there.
But you find this simple center, which is by itself, serene.
Now you also related another thing about the idea of the Self, and
what I guess you're still influenced by Buddhism, the self is not a
real thing, it's just another mask. And in some ways it is, the God
image self that Jung talked about when he was talking about
individuation. What's his name? James Hillman went out of his
way to repudiate that the self was just merely a remnant of poly
theism, we don't need them, we are all the Gods, and we don't
have to be just one of them.
But what I'm really getting about it is that when you're living
naturally in all those extremes…
WIZARD: The Now, right Now, is irrefutable. And the Now is the
substratum of all, and Now is indivisible. Who can divide Now?
BRIAN ADLER: I want to add something to what John just said.
The beauty, no matter what life situation you find yourself in, the
beauty of just being led to where John was just pointing here,
without any story, without any theology, without anything, it's
kind of mysterious to me that we spend so much time talking
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