It is impossible to see our true nature through the senses of the false, screening self. The false self, besides the ordinary senses such as sight and hearing, also includes the manas which is the false self’s mental powers such as the intellect, understanding, thoughts and imagination, and even will, to name just a few examples that represent the manas.
Perhaps no sense is more difficult to let go of than the manas. Specifically, this would be our thoughts and concepts about enlightenment which are never other than inadequate and unenlightened. Here, as we can guess, the problem is one of attachment, a refusal to let go of the manas, maybe not even knowing how to let go.
Still, we have the ability to let go but it’s hidden deep within us—almost impossible to reach. And many of us are not interested in letting go of our attachment to the manas. Our depth of penetration only goes as far as the manas. Then it stops on this side. This means, for example, that we like to think about Zen giving it our thoughts. But this thinking is within the limits of the manas; not beyond it. We find that we keep going to the same limit, repeatedly.
None see the great disease of Zen. It's our inability to get beyond the manas but more to the point, we do not know that we keep reaching the dead end of the manas. If we did know we would be in despair, thrown into a kind of limbo, unable to escape from the manas-world while accepting, at the same time, an inaccessible transcendent world probably beyond the manas.
The Absolute is inexpressible, indeterminate, indefinable and ineffable. It is above thought-constructions and can be directly realised through spiritual experience. — Dr. Chandradhar Sharma
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