1
Did I create that sky? Yes, for, if it was anything other than a
conception in my mind I wouldnt have said "Sky"-That is why
I am the golden eternity. There
are not two of us here, reader and writer, but one, one golden
eternity, One-Which-It-Is, That-Which- Everything-Is.
2
The awakened Buddha to show the way, the chosen Messiah to die in
the degradation of sentience, is the golden eternity. One that is what
is, the golden eternity, or, God, or, Tathagata-the name. The Named
One. The human God. Sentient Godhood. Animate Divine. The Deified One.
The Verified One. The Free One. The Liberator. The Still One. The
settled One. The Established One. Golden Eternity. All is Well. The
Empty One. The Ready One. The Quitter. The Sitter. The Justified One.
The Happy One.
3
That sky, if it was anything other than an illusion of my mortal
mind I wouldnt have said "that sky." Thus I made that sky, I
am the golden eternity. I am Mortal Golden Eternity.
4
I was awakened to show the way, chosen to die in the degradation of
life, because I am Mortal Golden Eternity.
5
I am the golden eternity in mortal animate form.
6
Strictly speaking, there is no me, because all is emptiness. I am
empty, I am non-existent. All is bliss.
7
This truth law has no more reality than the world.
8
You are the golden eternity because there is no me and no you, only
one golden eternity.
9
The Realizer. Entertain no imaginations whatever, for the thing is
a no-thing. Knowing this then is Human Godhood.
10
This world is the movie of what everything is, it is one movie,
made of the same stuff throughout, belonging to nobody, which is what
everything is.
11
If we were not all the golden eternity we wouldnt be here. Because
we are here we cant help being pure. To tell man to be pure on account
of the punishing angel that punishes the bad and the rewarding angel
that rewards the good would be like telling the water "Be
Wet"-Never the less, all things depend on supreme reality, which
is already established as the record of Karma earned-fate.
12
God is not outside us but is just us, the living and the dead, the
never-lived and never-died. That we should learn it only now, is
supreme reality, it was written a long time ago in the archives of
universal mind, it is already done, there's no more to do.
13
This is the knowledge that sees the golden eternity in all things,
which is us, you, me, and which is no longer us, you, me.
14
What name shall we give it which hath no name, the common eternal
matter of the mind? If we were to call it essence, some might think it
meant perfume, or gold, or honey. It is not even mind. It is not even
discussible, groupable into words; it is not even endless, in fact it
is not even mysterious or inscrutably inexplicable; it is what is; it
is that; it is this. We could easily call the golden eternity
"This." But "what's in a name?" asked Shakespeare.
The golden eternity by another name would be as sweet. A Tathagata, a
God, a Buddha by another name, an Allah, a Sri Krishna, a Coyote, a
Brahma, a Mazda, a Messiah, an Amida, an Aremedeia, a Maitreya, a
Palalakonuh, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 would be as sweet. The golden eternity is
X, the golden eternity is A, the golden eternity is /\, the golden
eternity is O, the golden eternity is [ ], the golden eternity is
t-h-e-g-o-l-d-e-n-e-t-e-r- n-i-t-y. In the beginning was the word;
before the beginning, in the beginningless infinite neverendingness,
was the essence. Both the word "god" and the essence of the
word, are emptiness. The form of emptiness which is emptiness having
taken the form of form, is what you see and hear and feel right now,
and what you taste and smell and think as you read this. Wait awhile,
close your eyes, let your breathing stop three seconds or so, listen
to the inside silence in the womb of the world, let your hands and
nerve-ends drop, re-recognize the bliss you forgot, the emptiness and
essence and ecstasy of ever having been and ever to be the golden
eternity. This is the lesson you forgot.
15
The lesson was taught long ago in the other world systems that have
naturally changed into the empty and awake, and are here now smiling
in our smile and scowling in our scowl. It is only like the golden
eternity pretending to be smiling and scowling to itself; like a
ripple on the smooth ocean of knowing. The fate of humanity is to
vanish into the golden eternity, return pouring into its hands which
are not hands. The navel shall receive, invert, and take back what'd
issued forth; the ring of flesh shall close; the personalities of long
dead heroes are blank dirt.
16
The point is we're waiting, not how comfortable we are while
waiting. Paleolithic man waited by caves for the realization of why he
was there, and hunted; modern men wait in beautified homes and try to
forget death and birth. We're waiting for the realization that this is
the golden eternity.
17
It came on time.
18
There is a blessedness surely to be believed, and that is that
everything abides in eternal ecstasy, now and forever.
19
Mother Kali eats herself back. All things but come to go. All these
holy forms, unmanifest, not even forms, truebodies of blank bright
ecstasy, abiding in a trance, "in emptiness and silence' as it is
pointed out in the Diamond-cutter, asked to be only what they are:
GLAD.
20
The secret God-grin in the trees and in the teapot, in ashes and
fronds, fire and brick, flesh and mental human hope. All things, far
from yearning to be re-united with God, had never left themselves and
here they are, Dharmakaya, the body of the truth law, the universal
Thisness.
21
"Beyond the reach of change and fear, beyond all praise and
blame," the Lankavatara Scripture knows to say, is he who is what
he is in time and time-less-ness, in ego and in ego-less-ness, in self
and in self-less-ness.
22
Stare deep into the world before you as if it were the void:
innumerable holy ghosts, buddhies, and savior gods there hide,
smiling. All the atoms emitting light inside wavehood, there is no
personal separation of any of it. A hummingbird can come into a house
and a hawk will not: so rest and be assured. While looking for the
light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true
light.
23
Things dont tire of going and coming. The flies end up with the
delicate viands.
24
The cause of the world's woe is birth, The cure of the world's woe
is a bent stick.
25
Though it is everything, strictly speaking there is no golden
eternity because everything is nothing: there are no things and no
goings and comings: for all is emptiness, and emptiness is these
forms, emptiness is this one formhood.
26
All these selfnesses have already vanished. Einstein measured that
this present universe is an expanding bubble, and you know what that
means.
27
Discard such definite imaginations of phenomena as your own self,
thou human being, thou'rt a numberless mass of sun-motes: each mote a
shrine. The same as to your shyness of other selves, selfness as
divided into infinite numbers of beings, or selfness as identified as
one self existing eternally. Be obliging and noble, be generous with
your time and help and possessions, and be kind, because the emptiness
of this little place of flesh you carry around and call your soul,
your entity, is the same emptiness in every direction of space
unmeasurable emptiness, the same, one, and holy emptiness everywhere:
why be selfy and unfree, Man God, in your dream? Wake up, thou'rt
selfless and free. "Even and upright your mind abides
nowhere," states Hui Neng of China. We're all in heaven now.
28
Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind. Now that we
know this, throw the raft away.
29
Are you tightwad and are you mean, those are the true sins, and sin
is only a conception of ours, due to long habit. Are you generous and
are you kind, those are the true virtues, and they're only
conceptions. The golden eternity rests beyond sin and virtue, is
attached to neither, is attached to nothing, is unattached, because
the golden eternity is Alone. The mold has rills but it is one mold.
The field has curves but it is one field. All things are different
forms of the same thing. I call it the golden eternity-what do you
call it, brother? for the blessing and merit of virtue, and the
punishment and bad fate of sin, are alike just so many words.
30
Sociability is a big smile, and a big smile is nothing but teeth.
Rest and be kind.
31
There's no need to deny that evil thing called GOOGOO, which doesnt
exist, just as there's no need to deny that evil thing called Sex and
Rebirth, which also doesn't exist, as it is only a form of emptiness.
The bead of semen comes from a long line of awakened natures that were
your parent, a holy flow, a succession of saviors pouring from the
womb of the dark void and back into it, fantastic magic imagination of
the lightning, flash, plays, dreams, not even plays, dreams.
32
"The womb of exuberant fertility," Ashvhaghosha called
it, radiating forms out of its womb of exuberant emptiness. In
emptiness there is no Why, no knowledge of Why, no ignorance of Why,
no asking and no answering of Why, and no significance attached to
this.
33
A disturbed and frightened man is like the golden eternity
experimentally pretending at feeling the disturbed-and-frightened
mood; a calm and joyous man, is like the golden eternity pretending at
experimenting with that experience; a man experiencing his Sentient
Being, is like the golden eternity pretending at trying that out too;
a man who has no thoughts, is like the golden eternity pretending at
being itself; because the emptiness of everything has no beginning and
no end and at present is infinite.
34
"Love is all in all," said Sainte Therese, choosing Love
for her vocation and pouring out her happiness, from her garden by the
gate, with a gentle smile, pouring roses on the earth, so that the
beggar in the thunderbolt received of the endless offering of her dark
void. Man goes a-beggaring into nothingness. "Ignorance is the
father, Habit-Energy is the Mother." Opposites are not the same
for the same reason they are the same.
35
The words "atoms of dust" and "the great
universes" are only words. The idea that they imply is only an
idea. The belief that we live here in this existence, divided into
various beings, passing food in and out of ourselves, and casting off
husks of bodies one after another with no cessation and no definite or
particular discrimination, is only an idea. The seat of our Immortal
Intelligence can be seen in that beating light between the eyes the
Wisdom Eye of the ancients: we know what we're doing: we're not
disturbed: because we're like the golden eternity pretending at
playing the magic cardgame and making believe it's real, it's a big
dream, a joyous ecstasy of words and ideas and flesh, an ethereal
flower unfolding a folding back, a movie, an exuberant bunch of lines
bounding emptiness, the womb of Avalokitesvara, a vast secret silence,
springtime in the Void, happy young gods talking and drinking on a
cloud. Our 32,000 chillicosms bear all the marks of excellence. Blind
milky light fills our night; and the morning is crystal.
36
Give a gift to your brother, but there's no gift to compare with
the giving of assurance that he is the golden eternity. The true
understanding of this would bring tears to your eyes. The other shore
is right here, forgive and forget, protect and reassure. Your
tormenters will be purified. Raise thy diamond hand. Have faith and
wait. The course of your days is a river rumbling over your rocky
back. You're sitting at the bottom of the world with a head of iron.
Religion is thy sad heart. You're the golden eternity and it must be
done by you. And means one thing: Nothing-Ever-Happened. This is the
golden eternity.
37
When the Prince of the Kalinga severed the flesh from the limbs and
body of Buddha, even then the Buddha was free from any such ideas as
his own self, other self, living beings divided into many selves, or
living beings united and identified into one eternal self. The golden
eternity isnt "me." Before you can know that you're dreaming
you'll wake up, Atman. Had the Buddha, the Awakened One, cherished any
of these imaginary judgments of and about things, he would have fallen
into impatience and hatred in his suffering. Instead, like Jesus on
the Cross he saw the light and died kind, loving all living things.
38
The world was spun out of a blade of grass: the world was spun out
of a mind. Heaven was spun out of a blade of grass: heaven was spun
out of a mind. Neither will do you much good, neither will do you much
harm. The Oriental imperturbed, is the golden eternity.
39
He is called a Yogi, his is called a Priest, a Minister, a Brahmin,
a Parson, a Chaplain, a Roshi, a Laoshih, a Master, a Patriarch, a
Pope, a Spiritual Commissar, a Counselor, and Adviser, a Bodhisattva-Mahasattva,
an Old Man, a Saint, a Shaman, a Leader, who thinks nothing of himself
as separate from another self, not higher nor lower, no stages and no
definite attainments, no mysterious stigmata or secret holyhood, no
wild dark knowledge and no venerable authoritativeness, nay a giggling
sage sweeping out of the kitchen with a broom. After supper, a silent
smoke. Because there is no definite teaching: the world is
undisciplined. Nature endlessly in every direction inward to your body
and outward into space.
40
Meditate outdoors. The dark trees at night are not really the dark
trees at night, it's only the golden eternity.
41
A mosquito as big as Mount Everest is much bigger than you think: a
horse's hoof is more delicate than it looks. An altar consecrated to
the golden eternity, filled with roses and lotuses and diamonds, is
the cell of the humble prisoner, the cell so cold and dreary. Boethius
kissed the Robe of the Mother Truth in a Roman dungeon.
42
Do you think the emptiness of the sky will ever crumble away? Every
little child knows that everybody will go to heaven. Knowing that
nothing ever happened is not really knowing that nothing ever
happened, it's the golden eternity. In other words, nothing can
compare with telling your brother and your sister that what happened,
what is happening, and what will happen, never really happened, is not
really happening and never will happen, it is only the golden
eternity. Nothing was ever born, nothing will ever die. Indeed, it
didnt even happen that you heard about golden eternity through the
accidental reading of this scripture. The thing is easily false. There
are no warnings whatever issuing from the golden eternity: do what you
want.
43
Even in dreams be kind, because anyway there is no time, no space,
no mind. "It's all not-born," said Bankei of Japan, whose
mother heard this from her son did what we call "died
happy." And even if she had died unhappy, dying unhappy is not
really dying unhappy, it's the golden eternity. It's impossible to
exist, it's impossible to be persecuted, it's impossible to miss your
reward.
44
Eight hundred and four thousand myriads of Awakened Ones throughout
numberless swirls of epochs appeared to work hard to save a grain of
sand, and it was only the golden eternity. And their combined reward
will be no greater and no lesser than what will be won by a piece of
dried turd. It's a reward beyond thought.
45
When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you cant
understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.
46
O everlasting Eternity, all things and all truth laws are no-
things, in three ways, which is the same way: AS THINGS OF TIME they
dont exist because there is no furthest atom than can be found or
weighed or grasped, it is emptiness through and through, matter and
empty space too. AS THINGS OF MIND they dont exist, because the mind
that conceives and makes them out does so by seeing, hearing touching,
smelling, tasting, and mentally-noticing and without this mind they
would not be seen or heard or felt or smelled or tasted or
mentally-noticed, they are discriminated that which they're not
necessarily by imaginary judgments of the mind, they are actually
dependent on the mind that makes them out, by themselves they are
no-things, they are really mental, seen only of the mind, they are
really empty visions of the mind, heaven is a vision, everything is a
vision. What does it mean that I am in this endless universe thinking
I'm a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of earth, but
actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of
everything? It means that I am empty and awake, knowing that I am
empty and awake, and that there's no difference between me and
anything else. It means that I have attained to that which everything
is.
47
The-Attainer-To-That-Which-Everything-Is, the Sanskrit Tathagata,
has no ideas whatever but abides in essence identically with the
essence of all things, which is what it is, in emptiness and silence.
Imaginary meaning stretched to make mountains and as far as the germ
is concerned it stretched even further to make molehills. A million
souls dropped through hell but nobody saw them or counted them. A lot
of large people isnt really a lot of large people, it's only the
golden eternity. When St. Francis went to heaven he did not add to
heaven nor detract from earth. Locate silence, possess space, spot me
the ego.
"From the beginning," said the Sixth Patriarch of the
China School, "not a thing is."
48
He who loves all life with his pity and intelligence isnt really he
who loves all life with his pity and intelligence, it's only natural.
The universe is fully known because it is ignored. Enlightenment comes
when you dont care. This is a good tree stump I'm sitting on. You cant
even grasp your own pain let alone your eternal reward. I love you
because you're me. I love you because there's nothing else to do. It's
just the natural golden eternity.
49
What does it mean that those trees and mountains are magic and
unreal?- It means that those trees and mountains are magic and unreal.
What does it mean that those trees and mountains are not magic but
real?- it means that those trees and mountains are not magic but real.
Men are just making imaginary judgments both ways, and all the time
it's just the same natural golden eternity.
50
If the golden eternity was anything other than mere words, you
could not have said "golden eternity." This means that the
words are used to point at the endless nothingness of reality. If the
endless nothingness of reality was anything other than mere words, you
could not have said "endless nothingness of reality," you
could not have said it. This means that the golden eternity is out of
our word-reach, it refuses steadfastly to be described, it runs away
from us and leads us in. The name is not really the name. The same
way, you could not have said "this world" if this world was
anything other than mere words. There's nothing there but just that.
They've long known that there's nothing to life but just the living of
it. It Is What It Is and That's All It Is.
51
There's no system of teaching and no reward for teaching the golden
eternity, because nothing has happened. In the golden eternity
teaching and reward havent even vanished let alone appeared. The
golden eternity doesnt even have to be perfect. It is very silly of me
to talk about it. I talk about it simply because here I am dreaming
that I talk about it in a dream already ended, ages ago, from which
I'm already awake, and it was only an empty dreaming, in fact nothing
whatever, in fact nothing ever happened at all. The beauty of
attaining the golden eternity is that nothing will be acquired, at
last.
52
Kindness and sympathy, understanding and encouragement, these give:
they are better than just presents and gifts: no reason in the world
why not. Anyhow, be nice. Remember the golden eternity is yourself.
"If someone will simply practice kindness," said Gotama to
Subhuti, "he will soon attain highest perfect wisdom." Then
he added: "Kindness after all is only a word and it should be
done on the spot without thought of kindness." By practicing
kindness all over with everyone you will soon come into the holy
trance, infinite distinctions of personalities will become what they
really mysteriously are, our common and eternal blissstuff, the
pureness of everything forever, the great bright essence of mind, even
and one thing everywhere the holy eternal milky love, the white light
everywhere everything, emptybliss, svaha, shining, ready, and awake,
the compassion in the sound of silence, the swarming myriad
trillionaire you are.
53
Everything's alright, form is emptiness and emptiness is form, and
we're here forever, in one form or another, which is empty.
Everything's alright, we're not here, there, or anywhere. Everything's
alright, cats sleep.
54
The everlasting and tranquil essence, look around and see the
smiling essence everywhere. How wily was the world made, Maya,
not-even-made.
55
There's the world in the daylight. If it was completely dark you
wouldnt see it but it would still be there. If you close your eyes you
really see what it's like: mysterious particle-swarming emptiness. On
the moon big mosquitos of straw know this in the kindness of their
hearts. Truly speaking, unrecognizably sweet it all is. Don't worry
about nothing.
56
Imaginary judgments about things, in the Nothing-Ever-Happened
wonderful void, you dont even have to reject them, let alone accept
them. "That looks like a tree, let's call it a tree," said
Coyote to Earthmaker at the beginning, and they walked around the
rootdrinker patting their bellies.
57
Perfectly selfless, the beauty of it, the butterfly doesnt take it
as a personal achievement, he just disappears through the trees. You
too, kind and humble and not-even-here, it wasnt in a greedy mood that
you saw the light that belongs to everybody.
58
Look at your little finger, the emptiness of it is no different
that the emptiness of infinity.
59
Cats yawn because they realize that there's nothing to do.
60
Up in heaven you wont remember all these tricks of yours. You wont
even sigh "Why?" Whether as atomic dust or as great cities,
what's the difference in all this stuff. A tree is still only a
rootdrinker. The puma's twisted face continues to look at the blue sky
with sightless eyes, Ah sweet divine and indescribable verdurous
paradise planted in mid-air! Caitanya, it's only consciousness. Not
with thoughts of your mind, but in the believing sweetness of your
heart, you snap the link and open the golden door and disappear into
the bright room, the everlasting ecstasy, eternal Now. Soldier, follow
me! - there never was a war. Arjuna, dont fight! - why fight over
nothing? Bless and sit down.
61
I remember that I'm supposed to be a man and consciousness and I
focus my eyes and the print reappears and the words of the poor book
are saying, "The world, as God has made it" and there are no
words in my pitying heart to express the knowless loveliness of the
trance there was before I read those words, I had no such idea that
there was a world.
62
This world has no marks, signs, or evidence of existence, nor the
noises in it, like accident of wind or voices or heehawing animals,
yet listen closely the eternal hush of silence goes on and on
throughout all this, and has been gong on, and will go on and on. This
is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and
the everlasting eternity pays no attention to it. At night under the
moon, or in a quiet room, hush now, the secret music of the Unborn
goes on and on, beyond conception, awake beyond existence. Properly
speaking, awake is not really awake because the golden eternity never
went to sleep; you can tell by the constant sound of Silence which
cuts through this world like a magic diamond through the trick of your
not realizing that your mind caused the world.
63
The God of the American Plateau Indian was Coyote. He says:
"Earth! those beings living on your surface, none of them
disappearing, will all be transformed. When I have spoken to them,
when they have spoken to me, from that moment on, their words and
their bodies which they usually use to move about with, will all
change. I will not have heard them."
64
I was smelling flowers in the yard, and when I stood up I took a
deep breath and the blood all rushed to my brain and I woke up dead on
my back in the grass. I had apparently fainted, or died, for about
sixty seconds. My neighbor saw me but he thought I had just suddenly
thrown myself on the grass to enjoy the sun. During that timeless
moment of unconsciousness I saw the golden eternity. I saw heaven. In
it nothing had ever happened, the events of a million years ago were
just as phantom and ungraspable as the events of now, or the events of
the next ten minutes. It was perfect, the golden solitude, the golden
emptiness, Something-Or- Other, something surely humble. There was a
rapturous ring of silence abiding perfectly. There was no question of
being alive or not being alive, of likes and dislikes, of near or far,
no question of giving or gratitude, no question of mercy or judgment,
or of suffering or its opposite or anything. It was the womb itself,
aloneness, alaya vijnana the universal store, the Great Free Treasure,
the Great Victory, infinite completion, the joyful mysterious essence
of Arrangement. It seemed like one smiling smile, one adorable
adoration, one gracious and adorable charity, everlasting safety,
refreshing afternoon, roses, infinite brilliant immaterial gold ash,
the Golden Age. The "golden" came from the sun in my
eyelids, and the "eternity" from my sudden instant
realization as I woke up that I had just been where it all came from
and where it was all returning, the everlasting So, and so never
coming or going; therefore I call it the golden eternity but you can
call it anything you want. As I regained consciousness I felt so sorry
I had a body and a mind suddenly realizing I didn't even have a body
and a mind and nothing had ever happened and everything is alright
forever and forever and forever, O thank you thank you thank you.
65
This is the first teaching from the golden eternity.
66
The second teaching from the golden eternity is that there never
was a first teaching from the golden eternity. So be sure.