From Notes to the Self by Daniel Clark                       

                                 A Philosophy of the Self

I am what am, without exception.  I am the subject—eternal, perfect, formless, empty, infinite, whole, at rest, capable of containing all that is seen.  I am also the objective world of time, space and form, without exception—changing, full of imperfection in its apparent parts, yet also whole.  The Subject and the objective world are dual aspects of a single being, which is the Self. 

While at rest as the subject, I move as the objective world according to my nature—the Tao—creating and dissolving form and the illusions of separate identities.

The movement of the Tao brings perception of form through the creation of distinct perspectives with a sense of separate identity that obscures the Self.

Movement also creates the illusion of intentional activity, while in reality all motion, including our thoughts, is the natural play of the Tao—the active side of the Self. 

When the Tao’s activity on rare occasion focuses our attention on the subject rather than on the objective world, we realize our essence, which is complete, immortal, and at peace at the heart of motion.  Its deathless awareness is the fertile host of the adventure of life, produced by our active nature.  

                                                                       

“As an infant you were like any animal, in that you were for yourself headless and faceless and eyeless, immense, at large, unseparate from your world….Gradually you learned the fateful and essential art of going out and looking back at yourself, as if from a few feet away and through others’ eyes, and “seeing” yourself from their point of view….Our learned view of ourselves from outside begins to overshadow, to superimpose itself upon, and eventually to blot out, our original view of ourselves from inside.  We have grown down, not up….Instead of containing our world, it now contains us—what’s left of us. Reduced from being the whole scene to being this tiny part, we find ourselves in all sorts of trouble—frightened, as we see ourselves to be things, at the mercy of and up against other things—defeated, because the probable end of even our most successful enterprises is disillusion, the certain end is death.”

                --Douglas Harding, On Having No Head—Zen and the Re-Discovery of the Obvious

“What I call perfection of seeing is not seeing others, but oneself.”

                --Chuang-Tzu (3rd c. B.C.)

“Seeing into Nothingness—this is the true seeing, the eternal seeing.”

                Shen-Hui (8th c.)

“Man, proud man…most ignorant of what he's most assur'd—his glassy essence”

                William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“In numerous texts we are told how the enlightened man as if by magic engulfs rivers, mountains, seas, the great world itself…He sees the universe as nothing else than the outflowing of his own profound Nature, which in itself remains unstained, absolutely transparent.  Now he is restored to himself as he really is: as the very heart of existence, from which all being is made manifest.” 

                --Douglas Harding, On Having No Head—Zen and the Re-Discovery of the Obvious

“The Perennial Philosophy teaches that it is desirable and indeed necessary to know the spiritual Ground of things, not only within the soul, but also outside in the world…This teaching is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi (‘That art thou’); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being is to discover the fact for himself, to find out Who he really is.”

                --Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy