Being - Eckhart Tolle

Although the following passage is from Eckhart Tolle's excellent book "The Power of Now" it is nothing less than the essence of Buddhism. Buddhism is not so much a religion as a philosophy. It deals with the mind, the ego and of course awareness. As I have said before, I am not Buddhist even though my eldest daughter when angry with me some months ago said, "You and your Zen Buddhist bullshit."  There is no bullshit with Buddhism only common sense and a great deal of uncommon decency. Equally, there is no bullshit in what Eckhart Tolle says below. 

I, much like Jiddu Krishnamurti, see no need to belong to any faith or philosophical group. You simply cannot find the truth or God by a single path or through group mentality. One thing is for certain though, the key to awareness, to finding 'God'  is through the mind and on that I, along with Buddhism, Jiddu Krishnamurti and Eckhart Tolle agree.

"The word Being explains nothing, nor does God. Being, however, has the advantage that it is an open concept. It does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite entity. It is impossible to form a mental image of it. Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being. It is your very essence, and it is immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence, the realization I am that is prior to I am this or I am that. So it is only a small step from the word Being to the experience of Being.

The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind.

Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.  To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over."