The True-Self Absolute

What’s the best way to approach the Unborn Mind teachings?

You will ultimately need to jettison all-fixed traditions, ideas, and formalized modes of behavior. They will only weigh-down the Mind with needless clutter that distract from your only true resolve and that is recollecting your True-Self.

What do you mean by this Self? I thought Buddhism rejected this nonsense long ago.

The true nonsense is being ignorant on this matter. The Buddha never rejected the Absolute Self, but only those five collected aggregates that masquerade as selfhood.

I cannot accept this!

There you go again with this “I” business. As soon as you bring to mind this ‘I’, the ego-self becomes activated, and thus your worldly success or failure is the net result. You are suffering and remain in your ignorance because you exclusively identify yourself with the body-consciousness, but in reality, your actual nature is the True Self Supreme, where all beingness itself is absent. Because you cling to your precious body-consciousness, you will forever remain separate from what you truly are. Unbornness is your natural Absolute state, and to be That is your one true religion. However, you will remain far and removed from this realization until you realize the Self.

Self, self, self—why are you always coming back to this again and again???

Because the Self is omnipresent, beyond any shallow notions of birth and death, quite beyond time itself. The Self is not some isolated skandhic-individual, but the All-encompassing the All. Motionless in the Void.

Motionless?

Correct. This is also referred to as the Unmoving Principle. You must notice that Maya (illusion) is temporary and time-bound. Everything is in motion—forever flowing. All about you is incessantly changing, and these changes will never be in good stead with the Eternal. Because birth and death are concepts of Maya, Authentic Selfhood is not touched by birth and death for those are only appearances. The Akṣayamatinirdeśasūtra says that this clearly discerns the impermanence of all conditioned things. Hence It is immovable being in-union with the Absolute qualities of Buddhahood that is sustained as the Unmoving Principle. Staying still in the Unmoving Principle will forestall the wily workings of the dreamy, incessantly moving and meandering monkey-mind; when this deep Samadhi has been self-realized, then one is said to be “raptured” by the Unborn.

Well, if there’s no individuality, what about men and women?

All this concern today about gender-identity applies to when the body-consciousness took a form and was deemed either a man or woman. Gender applies only as long as the form body lasts—when there is no form, there is no gender. It’s all about being gender-less.

Much like wearing a suit that masks the Real?

Yes—that’s it precisely! In the same fashion when one wears clothing of various types and fashion, we also need to realize that the Real is not the body’s skin. Of course, we need to make use of the body and take good and proper care of it, but it is not our True-Nature; yea, having no skin whatsoever is indeed transcendent, more transparent in its pureness than the boundless sky itself. This is known as ‘waiting at the threshold for the Unborn to appear’. Recollect what you are without even considering the body and its five thieves, or skandhas. Look at your True Self without the body and its countless associations. Forever bring to mind this realization and you will recognize everything in its proper circumference, the Unborn.