Read Borrowed Wisdom 1 and preface here.

From Jed McKenna:

That’s what non attachment really is. All of life becomes like watching a soap opera full of characters you don’t care about in a language you don’t understand, but there’s nothing else to do so you watch. The awakened being has not awakened to reality, but from it……….Awakening is a process of continuously tearing away the next veil, and because those veils are actually the stuff of which you are made, it hurts……..When you’re not the real deal, you can’t use the stick; you have to be liked….zoom out past time and space to total nothingness. That’s what nonduality refers to; awareness without appearance, consciousness without content. That’s your true home….Emotional demons get powerful when you zoom in on details….You’ll be mindful when you are awake but you won’t wake up by being mindful…..Am I desperate to hold onto something that’s not really mine in the first place?……….The only power in dreamstate is emotion….your job is to misperceive perfection. By seeking enlightenment, you are trying to quit your job……….when someone talks about being free from attachment, this is the only attachment that matters, the attachment to pretend self……………what’s the big thing about an ego? Just don’t worry about it. Try worrying about other things and let ego just do its job. It will take care of itself, even more than you want. Try to just worry about the real stuff and let the fake stuff worry about itself….you didn’t create yourself, you are not the author of your character, so what is it about yourself that you take so personally?……….we cannot discover, uncover or recover our true self because it’s not covered, it’s nonexistent…..we want to create and preserve, but to awaken we must destroy………All spiritual activity boils down to two things; you’re either killing the false self or you’re just killing time….knowing yourself is not enlightenment because your self is a fiction….everyone is wrong about everything all the time…The ego-self is a collection of opinions and beliefs held together by the binding agent of emotional energy….There’s a price to be paid, of course, but after you let go of what must be released, you see that it was never really yours anyway, so the price was really nothing.

In the dreamstate, it is better to be amused than correct….If returning is the motion of the Tao, then it is to the singularity that you return, and having returned, realize you never really left and just dreamed the whole thing….What are television and radio but electronic Wilsons?…Your segregation is false; the barrier between you and the Integrated State is of your own making and fueled by your own emotional energy…..Why shouldn’t you be the coolest, most awesome person every by your own lights? Your are the universe, the totality…If you are self aware, then you are Atman which is Brahman which is all…For what it’s worth, you are The One, and that’s not nothing….. Magic isn’t when you wiggle your nose and something appears, it’s when you shine focused emotional energy through an idea and project it from a thought in your head to a thing in the world, which is really just a thought in the bigger head. 

That’s what death is, guaranteed absolution: freedom and forgiveness all in one. If you understand the fact of your own death, that it’s always here with you and that it’s a certainty, then you’re free. That’s liberation; knowing that nothing is yours or can be yours, knowing that you have nothing to lose.

From PAPAJI:

When all is lost, you are Home. This is Enlightenment. When you are awake, you possess nothing that can be lost. Being is the dissolving of all notions. Questions are in ignorance because Enlightenment leaves no questioner. When you wake up, you will know that nothing ever existed. Don’t try to go anywhere, just simply Be. The only “need” is to Be, not even seeing. It is so simple that it is difficult. There is no yesterday, today or tomorrow in Now. In Freedom, there is nothing to do and nothing not to do. Remove name and form and you will see and this seeing is Being. I am pure Awareness. Stay as such.

From Ikkyu:

How many passions cling to this wanderer’s sleeves?

Multitudes of falling blossoms mark the passion of Heaven and Earth.

A perfumed breeze across my pillow; Am I asleep or awake?

Here and now melt into an indistinct Spring dream.

For ten days in this temple my mind’s been in turmoil,

My feet are entangled in endless red tape.

If some day you get around to looking for me,

Try the fish-shop, the wine parlor, or the brothel.

A Zen Koan:

Monk: “With what man of Tao should one associate, so that one will hear constantly what one has never heard?”

The Master: “That which is under the same coverlet with you.”

Monk: “This is still what you, Master, can hear yourself. What is it that one will hear constantly which one has never heard?”

The Master: “It is not the same as wood and stone.” . . .

Monk: “Who is he in our country that holds a sword in his hand?”

The Master: “It is Ts’ao-shan.”

Monk: “Whom do you want to kill?”

The Master: “All those who are alive will die.”

Monk: “When you happen to meet your parents, what should you do?”

The Master: “Why should you have any choice?”

Monk: “How about yourself?”

The Master: “Who can do anything to me?”

Monk: “Why should you not kill yourself, too?”

The Master: “There is no place on which I can lay my hands.”