Hsin Hsin Ming: the Book of Nothing
Hsin Hsin Ming - verses on the faith mind of Sengstan (Sosan) 3rd Zen Patriarch, translated from the original Chinese by Richard B. Clarke, Zen teacher at the Living Dharma Centers, Amherst, Massachussets and Coventry, Connecticut.
The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.
* * * * * * *
When the deep meaning of things is not understood the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail. The way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things. Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, nor in inner feelings of emptiness. Be serene without striving activity in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves. When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity your very effort fills you with activity. As long as you remain in one extreme or the other you will never know Oneness. Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial.
* * * * * * *
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
* * * * * * *
To return to the root is to find the meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source. At the moment of inner enlightenment there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness. The changes that appear to occur in the empty world we call real only because of our ignorance. Do not search for the truth; only cease to hold opinions. Do not remain in the dualistic state; avoid such pursuits carefully. If there is a trace of this and that, the right and wrong, the Mind-essence will be lost in confusion. Although all dualities come from the One, do not be attached even to this One. When mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend it ceases to exist in the old way. When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist.
* * * * * * *
When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes, as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish. Things are objects because of the subject; the mind is such because of things. Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness. In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world. If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will no be tempted to prejudice and opinion.
* * * * * * *
To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult, but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go, and clinging cannot be limited: even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray. Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming nor going. Obey the nature of things (your own nature), and you will walk freely and undisturbed. When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear, and the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations? If you wish to move in the One Way do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas. Indeed, to accept them fully is identical with true Enlightenment. The wise man strives for no goals but the foolish man fetters himself. There is one Dharma, truth, law, not many; distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant. To seek Mind with the discriminating mind is the greatest of all mistakes.
* * * * * * *
Rest and unrest derive from illusion; with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking. All dualities come from ignorant inference. They are like dreams or flowers in the air; foolish try to grasp them. Gain and loss, right and wrong: such thoughts must finally be abolished at once. If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease. If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence. To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all entanglements. When all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached. No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state.
* * * * * * *
Consider movement stationary and the stationary in motion, and both the state of movement and the state of rest disappear. When such dualities cease to exist Oneness itself cannot exist. To this ultimate finality no law or description applies. For the unified mind in accord with the Way all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind's power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value.
* * * * * * *
In this world of Suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self. To come directly into harmony with this reality just simply say when doubts arise, "Not two." In this "not two" nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth. And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it a single thought is then thousand years.
* * * * * * *
Emptiness here, Emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before our eyes. Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen. So too with Being and non-Being. Don't waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this. One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.
Words!
The Way is beyond language, for in it there is
no yesterday
no tomorrow
no today.
Hsin Hsin Ming - verses on the faith mind of Sengstan (Sosan) 3rd Zen Patriarch, translated from the original Chinese by Richard B. Clarke, Zen teacher at the Living Dharma Centers, Amherst, Massachussets and Coventry, Connecticut.
The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.
* * * * * * *
When the deep meaning of things is not understood the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail. The way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things. Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, nor in inner feelings of emptiness. Be serene without striving activity in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves. When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity your very effort fills you with activity. As long as you remain in one extreme or the other you will never know Oneness. Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial.
* * * * * * *
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
* * * * * * *
To return to the root is to find the meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source. At the moment of inner enlightenment there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness. The changes that appear to occur in the empty world we call real only because of our ignorance. Do not search for the truth; only cease to hold opinions. Do not remain in the dualistic state; avoid such pursuits carefully. If there is a trace of this and that, the right and wrong, the Mind-essence will be lost in confusion. Although all dualities come from the One, do not be attached even to this One. When mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend it ceases to exist in the old way. When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist.
* * * * * * *
When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes, as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish. Things are objects because of the subject; the mind is such because of things. Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness. In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world. If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will no be tempted to prejudice and opinion.
* * * * * * *
To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult, but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go, and clinging cannot be limited: even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray. Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming nor going. Obey the nature of things (your own nature), and you will walk freely and undisturbed. When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear, and the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations? If you wish to move in the One Way do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas. Indeed, to accept them fully is identical with true Enlightenment. The wise man strives for no goals but the foolish man fetters himself. There is one Dharma, truth, law, not many; distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant. To seek Mind with the discriminating mind is the greatest of all mistakes.
* * * * * * *
Rest and unrest derive from illusion; with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking. All dualities come from ignorant inference. They are like dreams or flowers in the air; foolish try to grasp them. Gain and loss, right and wrong: such thoughts must finally be abolished at once. If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease. If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence. To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all entanglements. When all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached. No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state.
* * * * * * *
Consider movement stationary and the stationary in motion, and both the state of movement and the state of rest disappear. When such dualities cease to exist Oneness itself cannot exist. To this ultimate finality no law or description applies. For the unified mind in accord with the Way all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind's power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value.
* * * * * * *
In this world of Suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self. To come directly into harmony with this reality just simply say when doubts arise, "Not two." In this "not two" nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth. And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it a single thought is then thousand years.
* * * * * * *
Emptiness here, Emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before our eyes. Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen. So too with Being and non-Being. Don't waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this. One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.
Words!
The Way is beyond language, for in it there is
no yesterday
no tomorrow
no today.
Advaita Non-dual Quotes
Oneness Quotes 1
Just don’t seek from another
Or you’ll be far estranged from self.
I now go on alone
Meeting it everywhere
It now is just what I am
I now am not it.
You must comprehend in this way
To merge with thusness. - Dongshan (771-853)
O you who’ve gone on pilgrimage -
where are you, where, oh where?
Here, here is the Beloved!
Oh come now, come, oh come!
Your friend, he is your neighbor,
he is next to your wall -
You, erring in the desert -
what air of love is this?
If you’d see the Beloved’s
form without any form -
You are the house, the master,
You are the Kaaba, you! . . .
Where is a bunch of roses,
if you would be this garden?
Where, one soul’s pearly essence
when you’re the Sea of God?
That’s true – and yet your troubles
may turn to treasures rich -
How sad that you yourself veil
the treasure that is yours!
~Rumi ‘I Am Wind, You are Fire’
Translation by Annemarie Schimmel
When you understand one thing through
and through, you understand everything.
- Shunryu Suzuki
“How do you go about finding anything?
By keeping your mind and heart on it.
Interest there must be and steady remembrance.
To remember what needs to be remembered
is the secret of success.
You come to it through earnestness”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
‘I AM THAT’
When one realizes oneself, one realizes the essential nature of
the universe. The existence of duality is only an illusion and
when the illusion is undone, the primordial unity of one’s own
nature and the nature of the universe is realized, or made real.
~Namkhai Norbu
Quoted in: ‘The Enlightenment Process’
Judith Blackstone
Sagehood has nothing to do with governing others
but is a matter of ordering oneself. Nobility has
nothing to do with power and rank but is a matter
of self realization. Attain self-realization, and the
whole world is found in the self. Happiness has
nothing to do with wealth and status, but is a matter
of harmony.
- Lao-tze
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.
~Lord Byron
This is from ‘The Spirit of Tao’
Trans/edited by Thomas Cleary
The Great Way
The Great Way is very difficult to express in words. Because it
is hard to speak of, just look into beginninglessness, the
beginningless beginning. When you reach the point where there
is not even any beginninglessness, and not even any nonexistence
of beginninglessness, this is the primordial. The primordial Way
cannot be assessed; there is nothing in it that can be assessed.
What verbal explanation is there for it? We cannot explain it,
yet we do explain it-where does the explanation come from?
The Way that can be explained is only in doing. What is doing?
It is attained by nondoing. This nondoing begins in doing.
The true form is magnificently illuminated with gleaming
fire. The teaching’s voice is total silence amid the ringing
of wind chimes. The moon hangs in the old pine tree, cold
in the falling night. The chilled crane in its nest in the
clouds has not yet been aroused from its dreams.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)
Enlightenment for Everyone
by Andrew Harvey
Essay Excerpt:
It is this Eternal Dance that is always, at every moment, creating,
destroying, and recreating all things; all things in all worlds and
at every subtle level of all known and unknown universes are the
constantly changing and evolving expressions of this secret
lightning-dance, this vast blissful ecstatic dance, the Dance of
the Sacred Marriage between the “masculine” and “feminine” poles
and powers of the Godhead…
When we learn to move beyond mistaken concepts and see clearly,
we no longer solidify reality. We see waves coming and going,
arising and passing. We see that life, composed of this mind and
body, is in a state of continual, constant transformation and flux.
There is always the possibility of radical change. Every moment -
not just poetically or figuratively, but literally – every moment we
are dying and being reborn, we and all of life.
From: ‘Loving-Kindness – The Revolutionary Art of Happiness’
Sharon Salzberg p88
One minute of sitting, one inch of Buddha.
Like lightning all thoughts come and pass.
Just once look into your mind-depths:
Nothing else has ever been.
- Manzan (1649-1709)
Without the rigidity of concepts, the world becomes transparent
and illuminated, as though lit from within. With this understanding,
the interconnectedness of all that lives becomes very clear. We
see that nothing is stagnant and nothing is fully separate, that who
we are, what we are, is intimately woven into the nature of life itself.
Out of this sense of connection, love and compassion arise.
From: ‘Loving-Kindness – The Revolutionary Art of Happiness’
Sharon Salzberg p88
Love and concern for all are not things some of
us are born with and others are not. Rather, they
are results of what we do with our minds: We can
choose to transform our minds so that they embody
love, or we can allow them to develop habits and
false concepts of separation.
From: ‘Loving-Kindness – The Revolutionary Art of Happiness’
Sharon Salzberg p89
The real glory of meditation lies not in any method but in
its continual living experience of presence, in its bliss,
clarity, peace, and most important of all, complete absence
of grasping. The diminishing of grasping in yourself is a sign
that you are becoming freer of yourself. And the more you
experience this freedom, the clearer the sign that the ego
and the hopes and fears that keep it alive are dissolving, and
the closer you will come to the infinitely generous “wisdom
of egolessness.” When you live in the wisdom home, you’ll no
longer find a barrier between “I” and “you,” “this” and “that,”
“inside” and “outside;” you’ll have come, finally, to your true
home, the state of non-duality.
~Sogyal Rinpoche
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’
Sogyal Rinpoche
Quoting Dudjom Rinpoche on the buddha-nature:
No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind of category
Nirvana
by Sri Aurobindo
All is abolished but the mute Alone,
The Mind from thought released, the heart from grief
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown.
The city, a shadow picture without tone,
Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief
Flow, a cinema’s vacant shapes; like a reef
Foundering in shoreless gulfs the world is done.
Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still
Replaces all, what once was I, in It
A silent unnamed emptiness content
Either to fade in the Unknowable
Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.
From: ‘Trying to be Human: Zen Talks from Cheri Huber’
*Separateness*
here on earth would we find a boundary between us?
Would it be the air between us that we both breathe?
Would it be the skin on my body that is participating
in the exact same atmosphere as the skin on your body?
The idea of separateness is something we have to make
up, so we say everything that connects us doesn’t count
because we can’t see it. Of course, if the air weren’t
there all of a sudden, it would become important in a
hurry. But for right now, we choose not to pay attention
to it.
Look and see how you make up separateness within yourself.
Look for your sense of “self’ and “other.” Notice how within
yourself, there arc many selves. Inside or outside yourself,
see if you can find a boundary.
For life in the present there is no death. Death is
not an event in life. It is not a fact in the world.
~Wittgenstein
Enlightenment is the sudden recognition that non-duality
is, has always been, and will always be the reality of
our experience. Duality is an illusion. Consciousness is
not private and personal, but impersonal, universal, and
eternal. There is no limited personal entity, no conscious
ego. The ego is a perceived object, not the all perceiving
awareness.
~Francis Lucille
From: ‘Who Am I? The Sacred Quest’ Jean Klein
Q. Is this source that you turn to see, the ultimate
subject, your real nature?
A. Be very careful. The subject that can be seen is not your
home-ground. What is sometimes called the ultimate subject
is nothing other than silence, sunyata, emptiness of images.
This is consciousness, the light behind all perception.
The subject that is talked about is still in duality, the
subject-object relationship.
The light of consciousness passes through the film of memory
and throws pictures on your brain. Because of the deficient
and disordered state of your brain, what you perceive is
distorted and colored by feelings of like and dislike. Make
your thinking orderly and free from emotional overtones,
and you will see people and things as they are, with clarity
and charity.
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
ONE DAY MULLA NASRUDIN GOT WORD THAT HE HAD
received a special message from the Sheik in Basra. When
he went to pick it up they told him he must first identify
himself. Nasrudin fished in his trousers and took out a brass
mirror. Looking into it he exclaimed, “Yup, that’s me all right.”
From “Soul Food – Stories to Nourish the Spirit & the Heart’
Ed. Jack Kornfield & Christina Feldman
ONE DAY TESSHU, THE FAMOUS SWORDSMAN AND ZEN
devotee, went to Dokuon and told him triumphantly he believed
all that exists is empty, there is no you or me, and so on. The
master, who had listened in silence, suddenly snatched up his
long tobacco pipe and struck Tesshu’s head.
The infuriated swordsman would have killed the master there
and then, but Dokuon said calmly, “Emptiness is quick to show its
anger, isn’t it?”
Forcing a smile, Tesshu left the room.
From “Soul Food – Stories to Nourish the Spirit & the Heart’
Ed. Jack Kornfield & Christina Feldman
From: ‘Who Am I? The Sacred Quest’ Jean Klein
Q. Then I cannot ask you if the state of pure
being continues after death?
A. A state is an experience. What you are is not an
experience. Freedom is causeless, not a condition.
It doesn’t belong to existence. Existence is in space
and time.
“Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves
undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate
perception of the world.”
~Hans Margolius
Or you’ll be far estranged from self.
I now go on alone
Meeting it everywhere
It now is just what I am
I now am not it.
You must comprehend in this way
To merge with thusness. - Dongshan (771-853)
O you who’ve gone on pilgrimage -
where are you, where, oh where?
Here, here is the Beloved!
Oh come now, come, oh come!
Your friend, he is your neighbor,
he is next to your wall -
You, erring in the desert -
what air of love is this?
If you’d see the Beloved’s
form without any form -
You are the house, the master,
You are the Kaaba, you! . . .
Where is a bunch of roses,
if you would be this garden?
Where, one soul’s pearly essence
when you’re the Sea of God?
That’s true – and yet your troubles
may turn to treasures rich -
How sad that you yourself veil
the treasure that is yours!
~Rumi ‘I Am Wind, You are Fire’
Translation by Annemarie Schimmel
When you understand one thing through
and through, you understand everything.
- Shunryu Suzuki
“How do you go about finding anything?
By keeping your mind and heart on it.
Interest there must be and steady remembrance.
To remember what needs to be remembered
is the secret of success.
You come to it through earnestness”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
‘I AM THAT’
When one realizes oneself, one realizes the essential nature of
the universe. The existence of duality is only an illusion and
when the illusion is undone, the primordial unity of one’s own
nature and the nature of the universe is realized, or made real.
~Namkhai Norbu
Quoted in: ‘The Enlightenment Process’
Judith Blackstone
Sagehood has nothing to do with governing others
but is a matter of ordering oneself. Nobility has
nothing to do with power and rank but is a matter
of self realization. Attain self-realization, and the
whole world is found in the self. Happiness has
nothing to do with wealth and status, but is a matter
of harmony.
- Lao-tze
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.
~Lord Byron
This is from ‘The Spirit of Tao’
Trans/edited by Thomas Cleary
The Great Way
The Great Way is very difficult to express in words. Because it
is hard to speak of, just look into beginninglessness, the
beginningless beginning. When you reach the point where there
is not even any beginninglessness, and not even any nonexistence
of beginninglessness, this is the primordial. The primordial Way
cannot be assessed; there is nothing in it that can be assessed.
What verbal explanation is there for it? We cannot explain it,
yet we do explain it-where does the explanation come from?
The Way that can be explained is only in doing. What is doing?
It is attained by nondoing. This nondoing begins in doing.
The true form is magnificently illuminated with gleaming
fire. The teaching’s voice is total silence amid the ringing
of wind chimes. The moon hangs in the old pine tree, cold
in the falling night. The chilled crane in its nest in the
clouds has not yet been aroused from its dreams.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)
Enlightenment for Everyone
by Andrew Harvey
Essay Excerpt:
It is this Eternal Dance that is always, at every moment, creating,
destroying, and recreating all things; all things in all worlds and
at every subtle level of all known and unknown universes are the
constantly changing and evolving expressions of this secret
lightning-dance, this vast blissful ecstatic dance, the Dance of
the Sacred Marriage between the “masculine” and “feminine” poles
and powers of the Godhead…
When we learn to move beyond mistaken concepts and see clearly,
we no longer solidify reality. We see waves coming and going,
arising and passing. We see that life, composed of this mind and
body, is in a state of continual, constant transformation and flux.
There is always the possibility of radical change. Every moment -
not just poetically or figuratively, but literally – every moment we
are dying and being reborn, we and all of life.
From: ‘Loving-Kindness – The Revolutionary Art of Happiness’
Sharon Salzberg p88
One minute of sitting, one inch of Buddha.
Like lightning all thoughts come and pass.
Just once look into your mind-depths:
Nothing else has ever been.
- Manzan (1649-1709)
Without the rigidity of concepts, the world becomes transparent
and illuminated, as though lit from within. With this understanding,
the interconnectedness of all that lives becomes very clear. We
see that nothing is stagnant and nothing is fully separate, that who
we are, what we are, is intimately woven into the nature of life itself.
Out of this sense of connection, love and compassion arise.
From: ‘Loving-Kindness – The Revolutionary Art of Happiness’
Sharon Salzberg p88
Love and concern for all are not things some of
us are born with and others are not. Rather, they
are results of what we do with our minds: We can
choose to transform our minds so that they embody
love, or we can allow them to develop habits and
false concepts of separation.
From: ‘Loving-Kindness – The Revolutionary Art of Happiness’
Sharon Salzberg p89
The real glory of meditation lies not in any method but in
its continual living experience of presence, in its bliss,
clarity, peace, and most important of all, complete absence
of grasping. The diminishing of grasping in yourself is a sign
that you are becoming freer of yourself. And the more you
experience this freedom, the clearer the sign that the ego
and the hopes and fears that keep it alive are dissolving, and
the closer you will come to the infinitely generous “wisdom
of egolessness.” When you live in the wisdom home, you’ll no
longer find a barrier between “I” and “you,” “this” and “that,”
“inside” and “outside;” you’ll have come, finally, to your true
home, the state of non-duality.
~Sogyal Rinpoche
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’
Sogyal Rinpoche
Quoting Dudjom Rinpoche on the buddha-nature:
No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind of category
Nirvana
by Sri Aurobindo
All is abolished but the mute Alone,
The Mind from thought released, the heart from grief
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown.
The city, a shadow picture without tone,
Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief
Flow, a cinema’s vacant shapes; like a reef
Foundering in shoreless gulfs the world is done.
Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still
Replaces all, what once was I, in It
A silent unnamed emptiness content
Either to fade in the Unknowable
Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.
From: ‘Trying to be Human: Zen Talks from Cheri Huber’
*Separateness*
here on earth would we find a boundary between us?
Would it be the air between us that we both breathe?
Would it be the skin on my body that is participating
in the exact same atmosphere as the skin on your body?
The idea of separateness is something we have to make
up, so we say everything that connects us doesn’t count
because we can’t see it. Of course, if the air weren’t
there all of a sudden, it would become important in a
hurry. But for right now, we choose not to pay attention
to it.
Look and see how you make up separateness within yourself.
Look for your sense of “self’ and “other.” Notice how within
yourself, there arc many selves. Inside or outside yourself,
see if you can find a boundary.
For life in the present there is no death. Death is
not an event in life. It is not a fact in the world.
~Wittgenstein
Enlightenment is the sudden recognition that non-duality
is, has always been, and will always be the reality of
our experience. Duality is an illusion. Consciousness is
not private and personal, but impersonal, universal, and
eternal. There is no limited personal entity, no conscious
ego. The ego is a perceived object, not the all perceiving
awareness.
~Francis Lucille
From: ‘Who Am I? The Sacred Quest’ Jean Klein
Q. Is this source that you turn to see, the ultimate
subject, your real nature?
A. Be very careful. The subject that can be seen is not your
home-ground. What is sometimes called the ultimate subject
is nothing other than silence, sunyata, emptiness of images.
This is consciousness, the light behind all perception.
The subject that is talked about is still in duality, the
subject-object relationship.
The light of consciousness passes through the film of memory
and throws pictures on your brain. Because of the deficient
and disordered state of your brain, what you perceive is
distorted and colored by feelings of like and dislike. Make
your thinking orderly and free from emotional overtones,
and you will see people and things as they are, with clarity
and charity.
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
ONE DAY MULLA NASRUDIN GOT WORD THAT HE HAD
received a special message from the Sheik in Basra. When
he went to pick it up they told him he must first identify
himself. Nasrudin fished in his trousers and took out a brass
mirror. Looking into it he exclaimed, “Yup, that’s me all right.”
From “Soul Food – Stories to Nourish the Spirit & the Heart’
Ed. Jack Kornfield & Christina Feldman
ONE DAY TESSHU, THE FAMOUS SWORDSMAN AND ZEN
devotee, went to Dokuon and told him triumphantly he believed
all that exists is empty, there is no you or me, and so on. The
master, who had listened in silence, suddenly snatched up his
long tobacco pipe and struck Tesshu’s head.
The infuriated swordsman would have killed the master there
and then, but Dokuon said calmly, “Emptiness is quick to show its
anger, isn’t it?”
Forcing a smile, Tesshu left the room.
From “Soul Food – Stories to Nourish the Spirit & the Heart’
Ed. Jack Kornfield & Christina Feldman
From: ‘Who Am I? The Sacred Quest’ Jean Klein
Q. Then I cannot ask you if the state of pure
being continues after death?
A. A state is an experience. What you are is not an
experience. Freedom is causeless, not a condition.
It doesn’t belong to existence. Existence is in space
and time.
“Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves
undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate
perception of the world.”
~Hans Margolius
Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of
anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor
doesn’t exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming
it exists. And arhats keep negating the mind, claiming it
doesn’t exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither
create nor negate the mind. This is what’s meant by the
mind that neither exists nor doesn’t exist…
from The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma,
translated by Red Pine (North Point Press, 1987)
Meditating deeply… reach the depth of the source.
Branching streams cannot compare to this source!
Sitting alone in a great silence, even
though the heavens turn and the earth is upset,
you will not even wink.
~ Nyogen Senzaki
From: “I AM THAT” by Nisargadatta Maharaj
19.
“Use your mind. Remember. Observe.
You are not different from others.
Most of their experiences are valid for you too.
Think clearly and deeply,
go into the structure of your desires
and their ramifications.
They are a most important part of your mental
and emotional make-up
and powerfully affect your actions.
Remember, you cannot abandon what you do not know.
To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself.”
Dualistic views lead to confusion. What is the relationship of spirit
and body? Might as well count the number of angels on the head of
a pin. Spirit and body are one substance, the word is flesh.
This is what Krishnamurti was trying to point people to, that we are not
separate from feelings and situations, not to split ourselves but to accept
life whole. Duality is a function of the conventions of language, but truth
cannot be held in words, we have to point beyond and look beyond, into
our own natures.
~Terry Murphy
Keep your heart clear and transparent
And you will never be bound.
A single disturbed thought, though,
Creates ten thousand distractions.
Let myriad things captivate you
And you’ll go further and further astray.
How painful to see people
All wrapped up in themselves.
~Ryokan
“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t
compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”
~Lao-Tzu
If you want to cut directly through, don’t entertain doubts about Buddhas, or
doubts about life and death – just always let go and make your heart empty and
open.
When things come up, deal with them according to the occasion. Be like the
stillness of water, like the clarity of a mirror. Whether good or bad, beautiful
or ugly approach, you don’t make the slightest move to avoid them. Then you will
truly know that the mindless world of spontaneity is inconceivable.
~Ta Hui (1088-1163)
Every thought in consciousness has been born into form,
a temporary form and then it dies and goes onto another
form. You could say the whole world is consciousness
having taken birth as form, manifesting as form temporarily,
and then dying which means dissolving as form. What always
remains is the “essence” of all that exists – consciousness
itself.
~Eckhart Tolle
And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.
And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the sun’s mouth
And dissolve.
And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their
Cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around.
And
For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!
When I turn into a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I Am.
Hafiz/ Trans. Ladinsky
It is as if a raindrop fell from heaven into a stream or fountain
and became one with the water in it so that never again can the
raindrop be separated from the water of the stream; or as if a
little brook ran into the sea and there was thenceforward no
means of distinguishing its water from the ocean; or as if a
brilliant light came into a room through two windows and though
it comes in divided between them, it forms a single light inside.
~St. Teresa of Avila
Quoted in The Virago Book of Spirituality Ed. Sarah Anderson
from: The Color Purple
I BELIEVE God is everything. . . Everything that is or ever was
or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to
feel that, you’ve found It… My first step from the old white
man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But
one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless
child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of
everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my
arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all round
the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you
can’t miss it.
~ALICE WALKER
Quoted in The Virago Book of Spirituality Ed. Sarah Anderson
From: Zen Wisdom Ed. Timothy Freke
Vimalakirti asked Manjusri what was the Buddha’s doctrine of
nonduality. Manjusri answered, “The doctrine is realized by
one who sees beyond forms and who knows beyond argument.
This is my understanding – what is yours?” In response to this
question, Vimalakirti closed his lips and was silent.
From: Zen Wisdom Ed. Timothy Freke
The One and the All. Mingle and move
without discriminating. Live in this awareness
and you’ll stop worrying about not being perfect.
~ Seng-T’San
From: Zen Wisdom Ed. Timothy Freke
Zen opens a man’s eyes to the greatest mystery
as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to
embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every
palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking
in the garden of Eden.
~D. T. Suzuki
It is not the body, nor the personality that is the true self.
The true self is eternal. Even on the point of death we can
say to ourselves, “my true self is free. I cannot be contained.”
from: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
From: The Direct Path Andrew Harvey
When you look past the different terminologies employed by the
different mystical systems, you see clearly that they are each
talking about the same overwhelming truth–that we are all
essentially children of the Divine and can realize that identity
with our Source here on earth and in a body.
Although each of the mystical systems expresses it in subtly
different ways, this realization that we can all have of our
essential identity with the Divine is always described as a
nondual one–that is, as a relationship in which we wake up
to the overwhelming and glorious fact that our fundamental
consciousness is “one” with the Divine Consciousness that is
manifesting all things, all worlds, and all events. In other
words, we are each of us parts of Godhead who, when we are
aware of it, enter into a naked, nonconceptual identity-of-
consciousness with the Source from which all things and all
events are constantly streaming.
From: The Direct Path Andrew Harvey
The Paradox of the Journey
All major mystical traditions have recognized that there is a
paradox at the heart of the journey of return to Origin.
Put simply, this is that we are already what we seek, and that
what we are looking for on the Path with such an intensity of
striving and passion and discipline is already within and around
us at all moments. The journey and all its different ordeals are
all emanations of the One Spirit that is manifesting everything in
all dimensions; every rung of the ladder we climb toward final
awareness is made of the divine stuff of awareness itself; Divine
Consciousness is at once creating and manifesting all things and
acting in and as all things in various states of self-disguise
throughout all the different levels and dimensions of the universe.
The great Hindu mystic Kabir put this paradox with characteristic
simplicity when he said:
Look at you, you madman, Screaming you are thirsty And are dying
in a desert When all around you there is nothing but water!
And the Sufi poet Rumi reminds us:
You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck!
From: ‘Zen Wisdom’ Ed. Timothy Freke
Even to hold to Oneness is to miss it.
~Tao-Wu
From: ‘World as Lover, World as Self’
Joanna Macy
The self is a metaphor. We can decide to limit it to our skin,
our person, our family, our organization, or our species. We
can select its boundaries in objective reality As the systems
theorists see it, our consciousness illuminates a small arc in
the wider currents and loops of knowing that interconnect us.
It is just as plausible to conceive of mind as coexistent with
these larger circuits, the entire “pattern that connects,” as
Bateson said.
Do not think that to broaden the construct of self this way
involves an eclipse of one’s distinctiveness. Do not think that
you will lose your identity like a drop in the ocean merging
into the oneness of Brahma. From the systems perspective this
interaction, creating larger wholes and patterns, allows for
and even requires diversity. You become more yourself.
Integration and differentiation go hand in hand.
A billion times God has turned man
Into Himself
You stand in line for the
Highest gift
For his generosity cannot end.
But best to bring an instrument along
While waiting in the cold desert
And make some dulcet sounds
To accompany the palms’ swaying arms
That are casting silhouettes
Against the sky’s curtain
From our fire
Remind the Friend of your desire
And great patience.
A billion times God has turned man
Back into Herself.
We all stand in line
For the highest
Gift.
~Hafiz
From: The Gift Daniel Ladinsky
Profound and tranquil, free from complexity, Uncompounded
luminous clarity, Beyond the mind of conceptual ideas This is
the depth of the mind of the Victorious Ones. In this there is
not a thing to be removed Nor anything that needs to be added.
It is merely the immaculate Looking naturally at itself.
~Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche
Quoted in The Direct Path Andrew Harvey
From: The Rose Garden by Sa’di
I remember, being in my childhood pious, rising in
the night, addicted to devotion and abstinence. One
night I was sitting with my father, remaining awake
and holding the beloved Quran in my lap, whilst the
people around us were asleep. I said: ‘Not one of these
persons lifts up his head or makes a genuflection. They
are as fast asleep as if they were dead.’ He replied:
‘Darling of thy father, would that thou wert also asleep
rather than disparaging people.’
The pretender sees no one but himself
Because he has the veil of conceit in front.
If he were endowed with a God-discerning eye
He would see that no one is weaker than himself.
From: The Direct Path Andrew Harvey
The Sublime Joke of the Journey
Knowing that we are looking for something we already have
and are does not, of course, mean that the journey is
unnecessary, only that there is a vast and sublime joke
waiting to be discovered at its end.
The great mystery is not that we should have been
thrown down here at random between the profusion
of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our
very prison we should draw, from our own selves,
images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
Andre Malraux
The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind;
The butterfly visits the flower with no-mind.
The flower opens, the butterfly comes;
The butterfly comes, the flower opens.
I don’t know others,
Others don’t know me.
By not-knowing we follow nature’s course.
~Ryokan
from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf translated by John Stevens
The Chief Hoodlum
To learn the Way we first kill off the chief hoodlum. What
is the chief hoodlum? It is emotions. We need to wipe out
that den of thieves to see once again the clear, calm, wide
open original essence of mind. Don’t let conditioned
senses spy in.
What is this about? It is about quelling the mind. One
removes emotions to quell the mind, then purifies the
mind to nurture its great elixir.
~ Ancestor Lu
From: The Spirit of Tao
Translated and Edited by Thomas Cleary
Beyond ambition,
beyond attainment,
is home.
Contentment,
without content;
peace,
uncaused.
~ A. H. Almaas
Words cannot describe everything. The heart’s message cannot
be delivered in words. If one receives words literally, she will
be lost. If she tries to explain with words, she will not attain
enlightenment in this life.
-Mu-mon 1228
He who loves does not think about his own life; to
love truly, a man must forget about himself, be he ascetic
or libertine. If your desires do not accord with your spirit,
sacrifice them, and you will come to the end of your
journey. If the body of desire obstructs the way, reject it;
then fix your eyes in front and contemplate.
~ Attar
From: Travelling the Path of Love
Ed. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
From: The Mind and the Way
Ajahn Sumedho
*Seeing the True Nature of Conditions*
The Buddhas teaching points to the fact that all conditions are imper-
manent (*P. sabbe sankhara anicca*). By the word “condition” (*P. san-
khara*), we mean a formation of the mind, such as a thought or opinion.
Men and women are conditions. Similarly, Jews and Gentiles,
Buddhists and Christians, Asians and Europeans, Africans, the work-
ing class, the middle class, the upper class-all these are only forma-
tions that go through the mind. They aren’t absolutes. They are merely
conventions that are useful for communication. We must use these
conventions, but we must also realize that they are only conventions-
not absolutes. In this way, our minds are no longer fixed in our views
or opinions. Views and opinions are seen simply as conditions that
arise and cease in the mind, because that’s what they really are. All
conditions are impermanent; they arise and cease.
The morning breeze comes back
and from the southern desert
the lapwing returns
The dove’s soft song about roses
I hear that again.
The tulip, who understands what the lily says,
went away, but now she’s back.
With the sound of a bell,
strength and gentleness.
Hafiz broke his vow and damaged his heart,
but now, for no reason, his Friend forgives that,
and turns, and walks back up to his door.
~ Hafiz From: The Hand of Poetry Inayat Khan/Coleman Barks
From: The Book Alan Watts
The sense of “I ” which should have been identified with the
whole universe of your experience, was instead cut off and
isolated as a detached observer of that universe. In the
preceding chapter we saw that this unity of organism
and environment is a physical fact. But when you know
for sure that your separate ego is a fiction, you actually
feel yourself as the whole process and pattern of life.
Experience and experiencer become one experiencing,
known and knower one knowing.
Each organism experiences this from a different
standpoint and in a different way, for each organism is
the universe experiencing itself in endless variety.
From: The Book Alan Watts
To go anywhere in philosophy, other than back and
forth, round and round, one must have a keen sense of
*correlative vision*. This is a technical term for a thorough
understanding of the Game of Black-and-White,
whereby one sees that all explicit opposites are implicit
allies-correlative in the sense that they “go with” each
other and cannot exist apart. This, rather than any miasmic
absorption of differences into a continuum of ultimate goo,
is the metaphysical unity underlying the world. For this unity
is not mere one-ness as opposed to multiplicity, since these
two terms are themselves polar. The unity, or inseparability,
of one and many is therefore referred to in Vedanta
philosophy as “non-duality” (advaita) to distinguish it from
simple uniformity. True, the term has its own opposite,
“duality,” for insofar as every term designates a class, an
intellectual pigeon-hole, every class has an outside polarizing
its inside. For this reason, language can no more transcend
duality than paintings or photographs upon a flat surface can
go beyond two dimensions. Yet by the convention of
perspective, certain two-dimensional lines that slant towards
a “vanishing-point” are taken to represent the third dimension
of depth. In a similar way, the dualistic term “non-duality” is
taken to represent the “dimension” in which explicit differences
have implicit unity.
It is not at first easy to maintain correlative vision.
The Upanishads describe it as the path of the razor’s edge,
a balancing act on the sharpest and thinnest of lines.
For to ordinary vision there is nothing visible “be-
tween” classes and opposites. Life is a series of urgent
choices demanding firm commitment to this or to that.
Matter is as much like something as something can be,
and space is as much like nothing as nothing can be.
Any common dimension between them seems incon-
ceivable, unless it is our own consciousness or mind,
and this doubtless belongs to the side of matter-
everlastingly threatened by nothingness. Yet with a
slight shift of viewpoint, nothing is more obvious
than the interdependence of opposites. But who can
believe it?
anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor
doesn’t exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming
it exists. And arhats keep negating the mind, claiming it
doesn’t exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither
create nor negate the mind. This is what’s meant by the
mind that neither exists nor doesn’t exist…
from The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma,
translated by Red Pine (North Point Press, 1987)
Meditating deeply… reach the depth of the source.
Branching streams cannot compare to this source!
Sitting alone in a great silence, even
though the heavens turn and the earth is upset,
you will not even wink.
~ Nyogen Senzaki
From: “I AM THAT” by Nisargadatta Maharaj
19.
“Use your mind. Remember. Observe.
You are not different from others.
Most of their experiences are valid for you too.
Think clearly and deeply,
go into the structure of your desires
and their ramifications.
They are a most important part of your mental
and emotional make-up
and powerfully affect your actions.
Remember, you cannot abandon what you do not know.
To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself.”
Dualistic views lead to confusion. What is the relationship of spirit
and body? Might as well count the number of angels on the head of
a pin. Spirit and body are one substance, the word is flesh.
This is what Krishnamurti was trying to point people to, that we are not
separate from feelings and situations, not to split ourselves but to accept
life whole. Duality is a function of the conventions of language, but truth
cannot be held in words, we have to point beyond and look beyond, into
our own natures.
~Terry Murphy
Keep your heart clear and transparent
And you will never be bound.
A single disturbed thought, though,
Creates ten thousand distractions.
Let myriad things captivate you
And you’ll go further and further astray.
How painful to see people
All wrapped up in themselves.
~Ryokan
“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t
compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”
~Lao-Tzu
If you want to cut directly through, don’t entertain doubts about Buddhas, or
doubts about life and death – just always let go and make your heart empty and
open.
When things come up, deal with them according to the occasion. Be like the
stillness of water, like the clarity of a mirror. Whether good or bad, beautiful
or ugly approach, you don’t make the slightest move to avoid them. Then you will
truly know that the mindless world of spontaneity is inconceivable.
~Ta Hui (1088-1163)
Every thought in consciousness has been born into form,
a temporary form and then it dies and goes onto another
form. You could say the whole world is consciousness
having taken birth as form, manifesting as form temporarily,
and then dying which means dissolving as form. What always
remains is the “essence” of all that exists – consciousness
itself.
~Eckhart Tolle
And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.
And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the sun’s mouth
And dissolve.
And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their
Cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around.
And
For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!
When I turn into a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I Am.
Hafiz/ Trans. Ladinsky
It is as if a raindrop fell from heaven into a stream or fountain
and became one with the water in it so that never again can the
raindrop be separated from the water of the stream; or as if a
little brook ran into the sea and there was thenceforward no
means of distinguishing its water from the ocean; or as if a
brilliant light came into a room through two windows and though
it comes in divided between them, it forms a single light inside.
~St. Teresa of Avila
Quoted in The Virago Book of Spirituality Ed. Sarah Anderson
from: The Color Purple
I BELIEVE God is everything. . . Everything that is or ever was
or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to
feel that, you’ve found It… My first step from the old white
man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But
one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless
child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of
everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my
arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all round
the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you
can’t miss it.
~ALICE WALKER
Quoted in The Virago Book of Spirituality Ed. Sarah Anderson
From: Zen Wisdom Ed. Timothy Freke
Vimalakirti asked Manjusri what was the Buddha’s doctrine of
nonduality. Manjusri answered, “The doctrine is realized by
one who sees beyond forms and who knows beyond argument.
This is my understanding – what is yours?” In response to this
question, Vimalakirti closed his lips and was silent.
From: Zen Wisdom Ed. Timothy Freke
The One and the All. Mingle and move
without discriminating. Live in this awareness
and you’ll stop worrying about not being perfect.
~ Seng-T’San
From: Zen Wisdom Ed. Timothy Freke
Zen opens a man’s eyes to the greatest mystery
as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to
embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every
palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking
in the garden of Eden.
~D. T. Suzuki
It is not the body, nor the personality that is the true self.
The true self is eternal. Even on the point of death we can
say to ourselves, “my true self is free. I cannot be contained.”
from: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
From: The Direct Path Andrew Harvey
When you look past the different terminologies employed by the
different mystical systems, you see clearly that they are each
talking about the same overwhelming truth–that we are all
essentially children of the Divine and can realize that identity
with our Source here on earth and in a body.
Although each of the mystical systems expresses it in subtly
different ways, this realization that we can all have of our
essential identity with the Divine is always described as a
nondual one–that is, as a relationship in which we wake up
to the overwhelming and glorious fact that our fundamental
consciousness is “one” with the Divine Consciousness that is
manifesting all things, all worlds, and all events. In other
words, we are each of us parts of Godhead who, when we are
aware of it, enter into a naked, nonconceptual identity-of-
consciousness with the Source from which all things and all
events are constantly streaming.
From: The Direct Path Andrew Harvey
The Paradox of the Journey
All major mystical traditions have recognized that there is a
paradox at the heart of the journey of return to Origin.
Put simply, this is that we are already what we seek, and that
what we are looking for on the Path with such an intensity of
striving and passion and discipline is already within and around
us at all moments. The journey and all its different ordeals are
all emanations of the One Spirit that is manifesting everything in
all dimensions; every rung of the ladder we climb toward final
awareness is made of the divine stuff of awareness itself; Divine
Consciousness is at once creating and manifesting all things and
acting in and as all things in various states of self-disguise
throughout all the different levels and dimensions of the universe.
The great Hindu mystic Kabir put this paradox with characteristic
simplicity when he said:
Look at you, you madman, Screaming you are thirsty And are dying
in a desert When all around you there is nothing but water!
And the Sufi poet Rumi reminds us:
You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck!
From: ‘Zen Wisdom’ Ed. Timothy Freke
Even to hold to Oneness is to miss it.
~Tao-Wu
From: ‘World as Lover, World as Self’
Joanna Macy
The self is a metaphor. We can decide to limit it to our skin,
our person, our family, our organization, or our species. We
can select its boundaries in objective reality As the systems
theorists see it, our consciousness illuminates a small arc in
the wider currents and loops of knowing that interconnect us.
It is just as plausible to conceive of mind as coexistent with
these larger circuits, the entire “pattern that connects,” as
Bateson said.
Do not think that to broaden the construct of self this way
involves an eclipse of one’s distinctiveness. Do not think that
you will lose your identity like a drop in the ocean merging
into the oneness of Brahma. From the systems perspective this
interaction, creating larger wholes and patterns, allows for
and even requires diversity. You become more yourself.
Integration and differentiation go hand in hand.
A billion times God has turned man
Into Himself
You stand in line for the
Highest gift
For his generosity cannot end.
But best to bring an instrument along
While waiting in the cold desert
And make some dulcet sounds
To accompany the palms’ swaying arms
That are casting silhouettes
Against the sky’s curtain
From our fire
Remind the Friend of your desire
And great patience.
A billion times God has turned man
Back into Herself.
We all stand in line
For the highest
Gift.
~Hafiz
From: The Gift Daniel Ladinsky
Profound and tranquil, free from complexity, Uncompounded
luminous clarity, Beyond the mind of conceptual ideas This is
the depth of the mind of the Victorious Ones. In this there is
not a thing to be removed Nor anything that needs to be added.
It is merely the immaculate Looking naturally at itself.
~Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche
Quoted in The Direct Path Andrew Harvey
From: The Rose Garden by Sa’di
I remember, being in my childhood pious, rising in
the night, addicted to devotion and abstinence. One
night I was sitting with my father, remaining awake
and holding the beloved Quran in my lap, whilst the
people around us were asleep. I said: ‘Not one of these
persons lifts up his head or makes a genuflection. They
are as fast asleep as if they were dead.’ He replied:
‘Darling of thy father, would that thou wert also asleep
rather than disparaging people.’
The pretender sees no one but himself
Because he has the veil of conceit in front.
If he were endowed with a God-discerning eye
He would see that no one is weaker than himself.
From: The Direct Path Andrew Harvey
The Sublime Joke of the Journey
Knowing that we are looking for something we already have
and are does not, of course, mean that the journey is
unnecessary, only that there is a vast and sublime joke
waiting to be discovered at its end.
The great mystery is not that we should have been
thrown down here at random between the profusion
of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our
very prison we should draw, from our own selves,
images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
Andre Malraux
The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind;
The butterfly visits the flower with no-mind.
The flower opens, the butterfly comes;
The butterfly comes, the flower opens.
I don’t know others,
Others don’t know me.
By not-knowing we follow nature’s course.
~Ryokan
from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf translated by John Stevens
The Chief Hoodlum
To learn the Way we first kill off the chief hoodlum. What
is the chief hoodlum? It is emotions. We need to wipe out
that den of thieves to see once again the clear, calm, wide
open original essence of mind. Don’t let conditioned
senses spy in.
What is this about? It is about quelling the mind. One
removes emotions to quell the mind, then purifies the
mind to nurture its great elixir.
~ Ancestor Lu
From: The Spirit of Tao
Translated and Edited by Thomas Cleary
Beyond ambition,
beyond attainment,
is home.
Contentment,
without content;
peace,
uncaused.
~ A. H. Almaas
Words cannot describe everything. The heart’s message cannot
be delivered in words. If one receives words literally, she will
be lost. If she tries to explain with words, she will not attain
enlightenment in this life.
-Mu-mon 1228
He who loves does not think about his own life; to
love truly, a man must forget about himself, be he ascetic
or libertine. If your desires do not accord with your spirit,
sacrifice them, and you will come to the end of your
journey. If the body of desire obstructs the way, reject it;
then fix your eyes in front and contemplate.
~ Attar
From: Travelling the Path of Love
Ed. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
From: The Mind and the Way
Ajahn Sumedho
*Seeing the True Nature of Conditions*
The Buddhas teaching points to the fact that all conditions are imper-
manent (*P. sabbe sankhara anicca*). By the word “condition” (*P. san-
khara*), we mean a formation of the mind, such as a thought or opinion.
Men and women are conditions. Similarly, Jews and Gentiles,
Buddhists and Christians, Asians and Europeans, Africans, the work-
ing class, the middle class, the upper class-all these are only forma-
tions that go through the mind. They aren’t absolutes. They are merely
conventions that are useful for communication. We must use these
conventions, but we must also realize that they are only conventions-
not absolutes. In this way, our minds are no longer fixed in our views
or opinions. Views and opinions are seen simply as conditions that
arise and cease in the mind, because that’s what they really are. All
conditions are impermanent; they arise and cease.
The morning breeze comes back
and from the southern desert
the lapwing returns
The dove’s soft song about roses
I hear that again.
The tulip, who understands what the lily says,
went away, but now she’s back.
With the sound of a bell,
strength and gentleness.
Hafiz broke his vow and damaged his heart,
but now, for no reason, his Friend forgives that,
and turns, and walks back up to his door.
~ Hafiz From: The Hand of Poetry Inayat Khan/Coleman Barks
From: The Book Alan Watts
The sense of “I ” which should have been identified with the
whole universe of your experience, was instead cut off and
isolated as a detached observer of that universe. In the
preceding chapter we saw that this unity of organism
and environment is a physical fact. But when you know
for sure that your separate ego is a fiction, you actually
feel yourself as the whole process and pattern of life.
Experience and experiencer become one experiencing,
known and knower one knowing.
Each organism experiences this from a different
standpoint and in a different way, for each organism is
the universe experiencing itself in endless variety.
From: The Book Alan Watts
To go anywhere in philosophy, other than back and
forth, round and round, one must have a keen sense of
*correlative vision*. This is a technical term for a thorough
understanding of the Game of Black-and-White,
whereby one sees that all explicit opposites are implicit
allies-correlative in the sense that they “go with” each
other and cannot exist apart. This, rather than any miasmic
absorption of differences into a continuum of ultimate goo,
is the metaphysical unity underlying the world. For this unity
is not mere one-ness as opposed to multiplicity, since these
two terms are themselves polar. The unity, or inseparability,
of one and many is therefore referred to in Vedanta
philosophy as “non-duality” (advaita) to distinguish it from
simple uniformity. True, the term has its own opposite,
“duality,” for insofar as every term designates a class, an
intellectual pigeon-hole, every class has an outside polarizing
its inside. For this reason, language can no more transcend
duality than paintings or photographs upon a flat surface can
go beyond two dimensions. Yet by the convention of
perspective, certain two-dimensional lines that slant towards
a “vanishing-point” are taken to represent the third dimension
of depth. In a similar way, the dualistic term “non-duality” is
taken to represent the “dimension” in which explicit differences
have implicit unity.
It is not at first easy to maintain correlative vision.
The Upanishads describe it as the path of the razor’s edge,
a balancing act on the sharpest and thinnest of lines.
For to ordinary vision there is nothing visible “be-
tween” classes and opposites. Life is a series of urgent
choices demanding firm commitment to this or to that.
Matter is as much like something as something can be,
and space is as much like nothing as nothing can be.
Any common dimension between them seems incon-
ceivable, unless it is our own consciousness or mind,
and this doubtless belongs to the side of matter-
everlastingly threatened by nothingness. Yet with a
slight shift of viewpoint, nothing is more obvious
than the interdependence of opposites. But who can
believe it?
Oneness Quotes 2
From: Zen Wisdom Ed. Timothy Freke
Now. This is it.
The whole purpose and meaning for the existence
of everything.
From: The Gitanjali Rabindranath Tagore
67:
THOU art the sky and thou art the nest as well.
0 thou beautiful, there in the nest it is thy love that
encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours.
There comes the morning with the golden basket in her
right hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown
the earth.
And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows
deserted by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool
draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western
ocean of rest.
But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to
take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There
is no day nor night, nor form nor colour and never, never a word.
Attar (trans Margaret Smith)
From The Jawhar Al-Dhat
Intoxicated by the Wine of Love.
From each a mystic silence Love demands.
What do all seek so earnestly? ‘Tis Love.
What do they whisper to each other? Love.
Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts.
In Love no longer ‘thou’ and ‘I’ exist,
For Self has passed away in the Beloved.
Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,
And in the temple of mine inmost soul,
Behold the Friend; Incomparable Love.
He who would know the secret of both worlds,
Will find the secret of them both, is Love.
I am neither ego nor reason, I am neither mind nor thought,
I cannot be heard nor cast into words, nor by smell nor sight
ever caught:
In light and wind I am not found, nor yet in earth and sky -
Consciousness and joy incarnate, Bliss of the Blissful am I.
I have no name, I have no life, I breathe no vital air,
No elements have moulded me, no bodily sheath is my lair:
I have no speech, no hands and feet, nor means of evolution -
Consciousness and joy am I, and Bliss in dissolution.
I cast aside hatred and passion, I conquered delusion and greed;
No touch of pride caressed me, so envy never did breed:
Beyond all faiths, past reach of wealth, past freedom, past desire
Consciousness and joy am I, and Bliss is my attire.
Virtue and vice, or pleasure and pain are not my heritage,
Nor sacred texts, nor offerings, nor prayer, nor pilgrimage:
I am neither food nor eating, nor yet the eater am I -
Consciousness and joy incarnate, Bliss of the Blissful am I.
I have no misgivings of death, no chasms of race divide me,
No parent ever called me child, no bond of birth ever tied me:
I am neither disciple nor master, I have no kin, no friend -
Consciousness and joy am I, and merging in Bliss is my end.
Neither knowable, knowledge, nor knower am I, formless is my
form, I dwell within the senses but they are not my home:
Ever serenely balanced, I am neither free nor bound -
Consciousness and joy am I, and Bliss is where I am found.
Song of the Soul, by Shankaracharya
Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example-
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
~Nazim Hikmet
Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and
the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed,
the mind can only reflect the true image of the
Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed.
~Indra Devi
The nature of mind is the background to the whole
of life and death, like the sky, which enfolds the whole
universe in its embrace.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche Glimpse after Glimpse
Man is a god clothed in rags, he is a master of
the universe going about begging a crust of bread.
He is a king prostrated before his own servants,
a prisoner walled in by his own ignorance.
He could be free. He has only to walk out of his
self-constructed prison, for none holds him there
but himself.
Paul Twitchell
From: Method, Wisdom and the Three Paths by Geshe Lhundrub Sopa
What is ignorance? It is a wrong understanding of the self
and of the nature of all phenomena. Buddhism talks a lot
about the non-self or shunya nature of all things. This is
a key teaching. The realization of shunyata, or emptiness,
was first taught by Buddha, and then widely disseminated by
the great teacher Nagarjuna and his successors, who explained
the madhyamaka or middle way philosophy. Theirs is a system
of thought free from all extremes, that is they hold that the
nature of how things actually exist is free from the extremes
of absolute being and non-being. The things we usually perceive
do not exist as we see them. As for the “I”, our understanding
of its nature is also mistaken. This doesn’t mean that there
is no person and no desire; when Buddha rejected the existence
of a self he meant that the self we normally conceive is not
existent.
Deeper still into Stillness….
This is so simple
The mind can never grok it
Nothing happens Here
No cause and effect
No karma, dharma, drama
Just massive Quiet
Absolutely still
Even in the midst of hell
Stop! Check and see: Peace!
One million tears of agony are nothing!
Give me what I need to remember…
~ Poetry by friends of Vartman
You are the Self, here and now. Leave the mind alone,
stand aware and unconcerned and you will realize that
to stand alert but detached, watching events come and
go, is an aspect of your real nature.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
When you do something,
you should burn yourself completely,
like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.
~Shunryu Suzuki
‘Zen Wisdom’ Ed. Timothy Freke
“‘But great souls resorting to me, the divine nature,
their undivided minds are devoted to knowing
the imperishable source of being.
Always glorifying me and striving with firm resolve
and honoring me with devotion, they worship ever united.”
Baghavad Gita
English version by Sanderson Beck
From: Living Truth Jean Klein
There is nobody to look for something, because it is your
nearness. Nothing can be more near to you than what you are.
It is enough to live with this for some time, not to think about
it, not to manipulate it, but simply to live with it.
In the great Way of the Buddha patriarchs there is always supreme continuous
practice which is the Way without beginning or end.
Arousing the thought of enlightenment, practice, bodhi, and nirvana
have not the slightest break, but are continuous practice which goes
on forever. Therefore, it is neither one’s own effort nor someone else’s
effort; it is pure continuous practice which transcends the opposition of
self and others.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
From The Golden Age of Zen John Wu
Tung-shan asked his master Yun-yen, as he was leaving for good, “After
you have completed this life, what shall I say if anyone asks, can you still
recall your master’s true face?” The Master remained silent for a long
while and then replied, “Just *this one* is.”
…While on his journey, Tung-shan continued to muse on the cryptic words
of his master: “Just *this one* is.” Later on in crossing a stream, he
happened to see his own reflection in the water, and right on the spot he
was thoroughly awakened to the real meaning of “Just *this one* is.” He
epitomized this experience in a *gatha*:
*Do not seek him anywhere else
Or he will run away from you!
Now that I go on all alone,
I meet him everywhere.
He is even now what I am.
I am even now what he is.
Only by understanding this way
Can there be a true union with the Self-So.*
God is Within You
When one realizes God, He grants knowledge and illumination
from within; one knows it oneself. In the fullness of one’s spiritual
realization one will find that He who resides in one’s heart, resides
in the hearts of others as well – the oppressed, the persecuted, the
untouchable, and the outcast.
Sri Sarada Devi
Absolute Consciousness
Ramana Maharshi p145
Whenever a thought arises, do not be carried away by it. You
become aware of the body when you forget the Self. But can you
forget the Self ? Being the Self how can you forget it?
There must be two selves for one to forget the other. It is absurd.
So the Self is not depressed, nor is it imperfect. It is very happy.
The contrary feeling is a mere thought which actually has no
stamina in it. Be rid of thoughts. Being the Self one remains
always realised. Only be free from thoughts.
Absolute Consciousness
Ramana Maharshi p145
Ignorance is the forgetfulness of the Self. Can there be darkness
before the sun? Similarly can there be ignorance before the self-
evident and self-luminous? If you know the Self there will be no
darkness, no ignorance and no misery. The impure mind which
functions in thinking and forgetfulness, alone is samsara, which
is the cycle of birth and death. The real ‘I’ in which the activity of
thinking and forgetfulness has perished, alone is pure liberation,
it is devoid of forgetfulness of Self which is the cause of birth and
death.
This is from a wonderful discourse ‘Vimalakirti’s Gate of Nonduality’
by Abbot John Daido Loori, M.R.O. which can be found at:
http://www.mro.org/zmm/talks/teisho9.htm
We come to practice with these sicknesses of anger and
fear, mistrust, love and hate, and soon they begin to manifest
in the practice itself. We see them functioning in groups, in
families, in nations, in cultures.
Is it possible to function in this life in a nondual way?
Vimalakirti said yes. Buddha said yes. Manjusri said yes.
Countless Buddhas and Ancestors from time immemorial
have said yes.
When you are in the world of the thinking mind, you are
somewhere in the remembered past or the imagined future.
You are in a world of thought, memory, concept, idea,
opinion and belief. You are not here now. What you are
experiencing is not of the present moment. It is not real.
You are in a world of illusion (Maya) and yet you have
come to believe that it real. Almost the entire human
population is lost in this illusion. It is the sole source of
our suffering.
~ Leonard Jacobson
Awareness Itself
The subtle, perfect essence of awareness is basically
spontaneously open and calm, equanimous and
pure, vast as space. It cannot be pointed out in terms of
any concrete form, it cannot be approached in terms of
location. It cannot be entered into by any door or road,
it cannot be depicted or copied by the colors of the
spectrum.
~Wei-tse
From: Teachings of Zen Ed. Thomas Cleary
‘Absolute Consciousness’
Ramana Maharshi
Consciousness is always Self-Consciousness.
If you are conscious of anything, you are
essentially conscious of yourself.
Hanging Loose
by A.H. Almaas
from Diamond Heart, Book II
When your mind is free, not concerned, or worried, or focused
on anything in particular, and your heart is not grasping or clinging
to anything, then you are free. The most characteristic quality is
that there is no fixation on anything; you’re not focused on any issue
or experience. Whatever is there, is there. So there is a freedom
of mind. The mind is not saying, “I want this,” or “I want to look
at this,” or “It has to be this way.” The mind is loose. The expression
“hang loose” tells us what it means to be liberated.
In the Forest
The community of trees-
thousands of bodies
with a human body among them.
Branches and leaves are waving.
Then the call of the creek,
and my eyes open to the sky of the great Mind.
A smile is seen
on every leaf.
The forest is here,
because the city is down there.
But Mind has gone with the trees
and put on a new green dress.
The sunshine is the leaves.
The leaves are the sunshine.
The sunshine is no different from the leaves.
The leaves are no different from the sunshine.
All other forms and sounds
are of the same nature.
Thich Nhat Hanh
call me by my true names
Silence
A day of Silence
Can be a pilgrimage in itself.
A day of Silence
Can help you listen
To the Soul play
In marvelous lute and drum.
Is not most talking
A crazed defense of a crumbling fort?
I thought we came her
To surrender in Silence,
To yield to Light and Happiness,
To Dance within
In celebration of Love’s Victory!
~ Hafiz, I Heard God Laughing Daniel Ladinsky
You are, in all that you represent, a part of living. Not somewhere
in a corner all by yourself, but like the incense of a burning incense
stick, gradually spreading itself out into infinity. This is the way you
are sharing in living.
~Abbah Frédéric
From: The Sutra of Hui-Neng
Trans. Thomas Cleary
Good friends, let each of you clear your mind to listen to my
teaching. If you want to accomplish all-knowledge, you must attain
absorption in oneness and absorption in unified activity.
If you do not dwell on appearances wherever you are, and you do
not conceive aversion or attraction to those appearances, and nei-
ther grasp nor reject, and do not think of things like gain, success,
or failure, but are peaceful, serene, empty and fluid, tranquil and
calm, this is called absorption in oneness.
If your unadulterated, undivided, straightforward mind does not
move from the site of enlightenment wherever you are, whatever
you are doing, with reality constituting the Pure Land, this is called
absorption in unified activity.
If people have these two absorptions, it is like the earth having
seeds, which it stores and nurtures, and matures the fruits. So it is
with oneness and unified activity: my teaching now is like seasonal
rain moistening the great earth everywhere; your buddha-natures
are like seeds, which will all grow when thoroughly moistened thus.
Those who get my message will certainly attain enlightenment;
those who follow my practice will definitely realize the sublime
result.
Listen to my verse:
The mind ground contains the seeds:
With universal rain, all of them sprout.
When you’ve suddenly realized the blossoming heart
The fruit of enlightenment will naturally mature.
Having uttered this verse, the Master said,
The teaching has no dualism, neither does the mind; the Way is
pure, without any signs. You should be careful not to contemplate
stillness and empty your minds. The mind is originally clean, with
nothing to grasp or reject. Each of you work on your own, going
along as best you can according to circumstances.
Take no heed of time nor of right and wrong.
Passing into the realm of the Infinite, take your final
rest therein.
The Wisdom of Laotse, Pgs. 54-55
Moon Viewing
Thich Nhat Hanh
If there is no self,
there will be no samsara.
Why then do you have to dissolve the self?
Why do you have to stop samsara?
There is no self,
but there is the belief in a self.
There is no samsara,
but there is the idea of samsara.
Is the full moon tonight a self?
No, it is not a self.
Is the moon viewer a self?
No, he is not a self.
How then can the moon viewer enjoy the moon?
It is precisely because the moon has no self
and the moon viewer has no self
that both moon and moon viewer are wonderful,
and that moon viewing is a wonderful thing.
Moon viewing is our practice.
From: my true names – collected poems
“One man cannot do right in one department
of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong
in any other department. Life is one
indivisible whole.”
~Mahatma Gandhi
*To be free from the idea of being someone – that
is illumination*
The human form is a microcosm of the universe. All that
supposedly exists outside us in reality exists in us. The
world is in you and can become known in you, as you.
~ Jean Klein
Who am I?
Krishna said, “When the man or woman of vision sees that
the powers of nature are only actors of this vast drama and
beholds that which is beyond the powers of nature . . . he
comes into my Being . . . and he who with neverfailing love
adores me and works for me . . . passes beyond the three
powers and can be one with the One.”
‘The Truth Will Set You Free’
Svami Purna
Liberation
Let go of all your previous imaginings, opinions, interpretations,
worldly knowledge, intellectualism, egoism, and competitiveness;
become like a dead tree, like cold ashes. When you reach the point
where feelings are ended, views are gone, and your mind is clean
and naked, you open up to Zen realization.
After that it is also necessary to develop consistency, keeping the
mind pure and free from adulteration at all times. If there is the
slightest fluctuation, there is no hope of transcending the world.
Cut through resolutely, and then your state will be peaceful.
When you cannot be included in any stage, whether of sages or
of ordinary people, then you are like a bird freed from its cage.
~Zen Master Yuanwu
Zen Essence – The Science of Freedom Ed. Thomas Cleary
The Way is arrived at by enlightenment. The first priority is to
establish resolve-it is no small matter to step directly from the
bondage of the ordinary person into transcendent experience
of the realm of sages. It requires that your mind be firm as steel
to cut off the flow of birth and death, accept your original real
nature, not see anything at all as existing inside or outside yourself,
and make your heart perfectly clear, without any obstruction, so
all actions and endeavors emerge from the fundamental.
~Zen Master Yuanwu
Zen Essence – The Science of Freedom Ed. Thomas Cleary
Now. This is it.
The whole purpose and meaning for the existence
of everything.
From: The Gitanjali Rabindranath Tagore
67:
THOU art the sky and thou art the nest as well.
0 thou beautiful, there in the nest it is thy love that
encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours.
There comes the morning with the golden basket in her
right hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown
the earth.
And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows
deserted by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool
draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western
ocean of rest.
But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to
take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There
is no day nor night, nor form nor colour and never, never a word.
Attar (trans Margaret Smith)
From The Jawhar Al-Dhat
Intoxicated by the Wine of Love.
From each a mystic silence Love demands.
What do all seek so earnestly? ‘Tis Love.
What do they whisper to each other? Love.
Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts.
In Love no longer ‘thou’ and ‘I’ exist,
For Self has passed away in the Beloved.
Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,
And in the temple of mine inmost soul,
Behold the Friend; Incomparable Love.
He who would know the secret of both worlds,
Will find the secret of them both, is Love.
I am neither ego nor reason, I am neither mind nor thought,
I cannot be heard nor cast into words, nor by smell nor sight
ever caught:
In light and wind I am not found, nor yet in earth and sky -
Consciousness and joy incarnate, Bliss of the Blissful am I.
I have no name, I have no life, I breathe no vital air,
No elements have moulded me, no bodily sheath is my lair:
I have no speech, no hands and feet, nor means of evolution -
Consciousness and joy am I, and Bliss in dissolution.
I cast aside hatred and passion, I conquered delusion and greed;
No touch of pride caressed me, so envy never did breed:
Beyond all faiths, past reach of wealth, past freedom, past desire
Consciousness and joy am I, and Bliss is my attire.
Virtue and vice, or pleasure and pain are not my heritage,
Nor sacred texts, nor offerings, nor prayer, nor pilgrimage:
I am neither food nor eating, nor yet the eater am I -
Consciousness and joy incarnate, Bliss of the Blissful am I.
I have no misgivings of death, no chasms of race divide me,
No parent ever called me child, no bond of birth ever tied me:
I am neither disciple nor master, I have no kin, no friend -
Consciousness and joy am I, and merging in Bliss is my end.
Neither knowable, knowledge, nor knower am I, formless is my
form, I dwell within the senses but they are not my home:
Ever serenely balanced, I am neither free nor bound -
Consciousness and joy am I, and Bliss is where I am found.
Song of the Soul, by Shankaracharya
Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example-
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
~Nazim Hikmet
Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and
the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed,
the mind can only reflect the true image of the
Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed.
~Indra Devi
The nature of mind is the background to the whole
of life and death, like the sky, which enfolds the whole
universe in its embrace.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche Glimpse after Glimpse
Man is a god clothed in rags, he is a master of
the universe going about begging a crust of bread.
He is a king prostrated before his own servants,
a prisoner walled in by his own ignorance.
He could be free. He has only to walk out of his
self-constructed prison, for none holds him there
but himself.
Paul Twitchell
From: Method, Wisdom and the Three Paths by Geshe Lhundrub Sopa
What is ignorance? It is a wrong understanding of the self
and of the nature of all phenomena. Buddhism talks a lot
about the non-self or shunya nature of all things. This is
a key teaching. The realization of shunyata, or emptiness,
was first taught by Buddha, and then widely disseminated by
the great teacher Nagarjuna and his successors, who explained
the madhyamaka or middle way philosophy. Theirs is a system
of thought free from all extremes, that is they hold that the
nature of how things actually exist is free from the extremes
of absolute being and non-being. The things we usually perceive
do not exist as we see them. As for the “I”, our understanding
of its nature is also mistaken. This doesn’t mean that there
is no person and no desire; when Buddha rejected the existence
of a self he meant that the self we normally conceive is not
existent.
Deeper still into Stillness….
This is so simple
The mind can never grok it
Nothing happens Here
No cause and effect
No karma, dharma, drama
Just massive Quiet
Absolutely still
Even in the midst of hell
Stop! Check and see: Peace!
One million tears of agony are nothing!
Give me what I need to remember…
~ Poetry by friends of Vartman
You are the Self, here and now. Leave the mind alone,
stand aware and unconcerned and you will realize that
to stand alert but detached, watching events come and
go, is an aspect of your real nature.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
When you do something,
you should burn yourself completely,
like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.
~Shunryu Suzuki
‘Zen Wisdom’ Ed. Timothy Freke
“‘But great souls resorting to me, the divine nature,
their undivided minds are devoted to knowing
the imperishable source of being.
Always glorifying me and striving with firm resolve
and honoring me with devotion, they worship ever united.”
Baghavad Gita
English version by Sanderson Beck
From: Living Truth Jean Klein
There is nobody to look for something, because it is your
nearness. Nothing can be more near to you than what you are.
It is enough to live with this for some time, not to think about
it, not to manipulate it, but simply to live with it.
In the great Way of the Buddha patriarchs there is always supreme continuous
practice which is the Way without beginning or end.
Arousing the thought of enlightenment, practice, bodhi, and nirvana
have not the slightest break, but are continuous practice which goes
on forever. Therefore, it is neither one’s own effort nor someone else’s
effort; it is pure continuous practice which transcends the opposition of
self and others.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
From The Golden Age of Zen John Wu
Tung-shan asked his master Yun-yen, as he was leaving for good, “After
you have completed this life, what shall I say if anyone asks, can you still
recall your master’s true face?” The Master remained silent for a long
while and then replied, “Just *this one* is.”
…While on his journey, Tung-shan continued to muse on the cryptic words
of his master: “Just *this one* is.” Later on in crossing a stream, he
happened to see his own reflection in the water, and right on the spot he
was thoroughly awakened to the real meaning of “Just *this one* is.” He
epitomized this experience in a *gatha*:
*Do not seek him anywhere else
Or he will run away from you!
Now that I go on all alone,
I meet him everywhere.
He is even now what I am.
I am even now what he is.
Only by understanding this way
Can there be a true union with the Self-So.*
God is Within You
When one realizes God, He grants knowledge and illumination
from within; one knows it oneself. In the fullness of one’s spiritual
realization one will find that He who resides in one’s heart, resides
in the hearts of others as well – the oppressed, the persecuted, the
untouchable, and the outcast.
Sri Sarada Devi
Absolute Consciousness
Ramana Maharshi p145
Whenever a thought arises, do not be carried away by it. You
become aware of the body when you forget the Self. But can you
forget the Self ? Being the Self how can you forget it?
There must be two selves for one to forget the other. It is absurd.
So the Self is not depressed, nor is it imperfect. It is very happy.
The contrary feeling is a mere thought which actually has no
stamina in it. Be rid of thoughts. Being the Self one remains
always realised. Only be free from thoughts.
Absolute Consciousness
Ramana Maharshi p145
Ignorance is the forgetfulness of the Self. Can there be darkness
before the sun? Similarly can there be ignorance before the self-
evident and self-luminous? If you know the Self there will be no
darkness, no ignorance and no misery. The impure mind which
functions in thinking and forgetfulness, alone is samsara, which
is the cycle of birth and death. The real ‘I’ in which the activity of
thinking and forgetfulness has perished, alone is pure liberation,
it is devoid of forgetfulness of Self which is the cause of birth and
death.
This is from a wonderful discourse ‘Vimalakirti’s Gate of Nonduality’
by Abbot John Daido Loori, M.R.O. which can be found at:
http://www.mro.org/zmm/talks/teisho9.htm
We come to practice with these sicknesses of anger and
fear, mistrust, love and hate, and soon they begin to manifest
in the practice itself. We see them functioning in groups, in
families, in nations, in cultures.
Is it possible to function in this life in a nondual way?
Vimalakirti said yes. Buddha said yes. Manjusri said yes.
Countless Buddhas and Ancestors from time immemorial
have said yes.
When you are in the world of the thinking mind, you are
somewhere in the remembered past or the imagined future.
You are in a world of thought, memory, concept, idea,
opinion and belief. You are not here now. What you are
experiencing is not of the present moment. It is not real.
You are in a world of illusion (Maya) and yet you have
come to believe that it real. Almost the entire human
population is lost in this illusion. It is the sole source of
our suffering.
~ Leonard Jacobson
Awareness Itself
The subtle, perfect essence of awareness is basically
spontaneously open and calm, equanimous and
pure, vast as space. It cannot be pointed out in terms of
any concrete form, it cannot be approached in terms of
location. It cannot be entered into by any door or road,
it cannot be depicted or copied by the colors of the
spectrum.
~Wei-tse
From: Teachings of Zen Ed. Thomas Cleary
‘Absolute Consciousness’
Ramana Maharshi
Consciousness is always Self-Consciousness.
If you are conscious of anything, you are
essentially conscious of yourself.
Hanging Loose
by A.H. Almaas
from Diamond Heart, Book II
When your mind is free, not concerned, or worried, or focused
on anything in particular, and your heart is not grasping or clinging
to anything, then you are free. The most characteristic quality is
that there is no fixation on anything; you’re not focused on any issue
or experience. Whatever is there, is there. So there is a freedom
of mind. The mind is not saying, “I want this,” or “I want to look
at this,” or “It has to be this way.” The mind is loose. The expression
“hang loose” tells us what it means to be liberated.
In the Forest
The community of trees-
thousands of bodies
with a human body among them.
Branches and leaves are waving.
Then the call of the creek,
and my eyes open to the sky of the great Mind.
A smile is seen
on every leaf.
The forest is here,
because the city is down there.
But Mind has gone with the trees
and put on a new green dress.
The sunshine is the leaves.
The leaves are the sunshine.
The sunshine is no different from the leaves.
The leaves are no different from the sunshine.
All other forms and sounds
are of the same nature.
Thich Nhat Hanh
call me by my true names
Silence
A day of Silence
Can be a pilgrimage in itself.
A day of Silence
Can help you listen
To the Soul play
In marvelous lute and drum.
Is not most talking
A crazed defense of a crumbling fort?
I thought we came her
To surrender in Silence,
To yield to Light and Happiness,
To Dance within
In celebration of Love’s Victory!
~ Hafiz, I Heard God Laughing Daniel Ladinsky
You are, in all that you represent, a part of living. Not somewhere
in a corner all by yourself, but like the incense of a burning incense
stick, gradually spreading itself out into infinity. This is the way you
are sharing in living.
~Abbah Frédéric
From: The Sutra of Hui-Neng
Trans. Thomas Cleary
Good friends, let each of you clear your mind to listen to my
teaching. If you want to accomplish all-knowledge, you must attain
absorption in oneness and absorption in unified activity.
If you do not dwell on appearances wherever you are, and you do
not conceive aversion or attraction to those appearances, and nei-
ther grasp nor reject, and do not think of things like gain, success,
or failure, but are peaceful, serene, empty and fluid, tranquil and
calm, this is called absorption in oneness.
If your unadulterated, undivided, straightforward mind does not
move from the site of enlightenment wherever you are, whatever
you are doing, with reality constituting the Pure Land, this is called
absorption in unified activity.
If people have these two absorptions, it is like the earth having
seeds, which it stores and nurtures, and matures the fruits. So it is
with oneness and unified activity: my teaching now is like seasonal
rain moistening the great earth everywhere; your buddha-natures
are like seeds, which will all grow when thoroughly moistened thus.
Those who get my message will certainly attain enlightenment;
those who follow my practice will definitely realize the sublime
result.
Listen to my verse:
The mind ground contains the seeds:
With universal rain, all of them sprout.
When you’ve suddenly realized the blossoming heart
The fruit of enlightenment will naturally mature.
Having uttered this verse, the Master said,
The teaching has no dualism, neither does the mind; the Way is
pure, without any signs. You should be careful not to contemplate
stillness and empty your minds. The mind is originally clean, with
nothing to grasp or reject. Each of you work on your own, going
along as best you can according to circumstances.
Take no heed of time nor of right and wrong.
Passing into the realm of the Infinite, take your final
rest therein.
The Wisdom of Laotse, Pgs. 54-55
Moon Viewing
Thich Nhat Hanh
If there is no self,
there will be no samsara.
Why then do you have to dissolve the self?
Why do you have to stop samsara?
There is no self,
but there is the belief in a self.
There is no samsara,
but there is the idea of samsara.
Is the full moon tonight a self?
No, it is not a self.
Is the moon viewer a self?
No, he is not a self.
How then can the moon viewer enjoy the moon?
It is precisely because the moon has no self
and the moon viewer has no self
that both moon and moon viewer are wonderful,
and that moon viewing is a wonderful thing.
Moon viewing is our practice.
From: my true names – collected poems
“One man cannot do right in one department
of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong
in any other department. Life is one
indivisible whole.”
~Mahatma Gandhi
*To be free from the idea of being someone – that
is illumination*
The human form is a microcosm of the universe. All that
supposedly exists outside us in reality exists in us. The
world is in you and can become known in you, as you.
~ Jean Klein
Who am I?
Krishna said, “When the man or woman of vision sees that
the powers of nature are only actors of this vast drama and
beholds that which is beyond the powers of nature . . . he
comes into my Being . . . and he who with neverfailing love
adores me and works for me . . . passes beyond the three
powers and can be one with the One.”
‘The Truth Will Set You Free’
Svami Purna
Liberation
Let go of all your previous imaginings, opinions, interpretations,
worldly knowledge, intellectualism, egoism, and competitiveness;
become like a dead tree, like cold ashes. When you reach the point
where feelings are ended, views are gone, and your mind is clean
and naked, you open up to Zen realization.
After that it is also necessary to develop consistency, keeping the
mind pure and free from adulteration at all times. If there is the
slightest fluctuation, there is no hope of transcending the world.
Cut through resolutely, and then your state will be peaceful.
When you cannot be included in any stage, whether of sages or
of ordinary people, then you are like a bird freed from its cage.
~Zen Master Yuanwu
Zen Essence – The Science of Freedom Ed. Thomas Cleary
The Way is arrived at by enlightenment. The first priority is to
establish resolve-it is no small matter to step directly from the
bondage of the ordinary person into transcendent experience
of the realm of sages. It requires that your mind be firm as steel
to cut off the flow of birth and death, accept your original real
nature, not see anything at all as existing inside or outside yourself,
and make your heart perfectly clear, without any obstruction, so
all actions and endeavors emerge from the fundamental.
~Zen Master Yuanwu
Zen Essence – The Science of Freedom Ed. Thomas Cleary
Nothing to do,
Nothing to force,
nothing to want -
and everything happens by itself.
Ven. Lama Gendun Rinpoche
“The timeless non-state cannot be achieved because
the mind cannot evolve towards it. The mind can only
bring you to the threshold. Awakening comes
unexpectedly when you do not wait for it, when you
live in not-knowing. Only then are you available.”
~Jean Klein
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion
That it may sing and let it direct your passion with reason
That your passion may live through its own daily resurrection
And like a phoenix rise above its own ashes.
~Kahlil Gibran
Freedom and Joy of Nonduality
Meher Baba
Limitation comes into existence owing to ego-centered desires and self-will.
Possessiveness in all its forms leads to a life of limitation. For example,
if one covets the love of someone but instead of winning the love of that
person loses it to another, there ensues a narrowing down and strangling of
the free life of the spirit — and one has an acute consciousness of
limitation. This is the origin of the pain of suffocating jealousy. But if
one looks at the situation with a heart purged of longing, the love that is
received by the other will be seen in its natural beauty. In the clarity of
perception that comes through nonpossessiveness, one will not only taste the
freedom of nonduality, but also its joy. When someone else receives that
love, it is like oneself receiving it — since no longer does one insist
upon the claims of a single form, having identified oneself with life in all
its forms.
In nonduality there is freedom from limitation, as well as the knowledge and
appreciation of things as they are. In nonduality alone is there the
realization of the true spiritual infinity that secures abiding and unfading
bliss. The limitation of jealousy is like all other limitations, such as
anger, hate and cravings; they are all of one’s own creation. All finitehood
and limitations are subjective and self-created. With the surrenderance of
self-will and ego-centered imagination, there arises a true perception of
the infinite worth of that which IS.
DISCOURSES, p. 120
Copyright 1987 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust
This is from Andrew Harvey, in Dialogues With a Modern Mystic
Andrew Harvey and Mark Matousek.
Advaita is not monism. Advaita means “not-two.” We and the
universe are not “one”: then all distinctions would be destroyed.
We are “not-two,” intricately interrelated with everything, both separate,
unique *and* united. The astonishment of this dance of
“not-two” grows slowly as the mind and heart open in divine love
and wisdom. Imagine that there was a heap of gold and a skillful
smith. The smith made fir trees, geraniums, tables, human beings, lamps.
Every object had a different shape, a different
purpose and identity but was made of the same thing. Look at the
sea. All waves are rising and falling differently, in different rhythms,
with different volumes. Some catch the light some do not. You can see the
separations between the waves but what you also see quite clearly is that
all the waves are water. That is what the knowledge
of “not-two” is like. Things retain the separateness which the
senses give them, which we use to negotiate this reality, but the illumined
mind knows that all things are Brahman, waves of one infinite sea of light.
You know, in other words, that you and everything and the light that is at
all times manifesting everything
are “not-two,” and “you” come to exist normally on all levels of
the divine creation, and meet “yourself” in all states, events, conditions,
beings. This is sahaja, spontaneous negotiation of
and union with all dimensions at all moments. Nisargadatta
Maharaj explains most lucidly the marvelous transitions to this
state: “When the I am myself goes, the I am all comes. When the
I am all goes, the I am comes. When even I am goes, Reality
alone is and in it every I am is preserved and glorified.”
It is wonderful that this the most ultimate and holy of all
possible experiences in this world, that of unity, of advaita, has
to be enjoyed by everyone in their own profound solitude, at that
diamond point of solitude at which everyone secretly joins and
meets God and each other and all things. This final experience
kept for this most sacred and secret moment and is too vast an
precious to be ever completely communicated. This is the
moment when the created one returns to the source of creation
the moment at which all laws, dogmas and techniques that helped
the mystic arrive at that diamond point vanish in the silence of
return to origin.
Chuang Tzu:
Great knowledge sees all in one.
Small knowledge breaks down into the many.
This is from : The State of Being That (One’s Own State)
A Satsang Discourse by Nome At the Society of Abidance in Truth (SAT )
The root of all illusions or delusion, which is not our natural state at
all, is the single notion of “I.” It is the notion, or the supposition, that
what you are is a separate, individualized entity. This is what is meant by
an “I” notion, or the ego. It is the root of all suffering, of all bondage.
It is the cause of such. While various delusions appear to be appended to
it, actually, all kinds of suffering and delusions are contained within that
one single false notion. Enlightened Sages free of that notion, free of the
least trace of the ego and its differentiation, experience uninterrupted,
continuous happiness. They are awake from this dreamy illusion. They are
awake to existence. If those who seek Self-Realization, or the Realization
of God, bring about the dissolution of this one notion, “I,” all the
delusion is gone, and what is declared to be the Truth by all the Realized
becomes one’s own, immediate, self-revealed experience. (Silence)
” We cannot apprehend Consciousness, because we have never been
other than it. We cannot integrate with Consciousness because we are
never disintegrated from it. In relative terms we can NEVER understand
what Consciousness is. The Whole-Mind cannot be known by the
split-mind of relativity. ”
~Ramesh Balsekar
From: Mighty Companions
“A coalition already exists in spirit. It is coming together now in the
social context by the attraction of its unconventional intelligence and
compassionate form of high-mindedness. This natural coalition is
drawn together by the recognition that the elevation of consciousness
is our fundamental life work. This is a genuinely democratic, self-
organizing force, flowing through persons of all descriptions. This force
does not flourish as any highly structured form. It is not an institution or
a foundation or a non-profit company or anything conventionally named.
This coalition is a living organism — natural, wild, free. It is made up of
individuals devoted to serving the world and developing themselves as
finely tuned instruments of service. They learn to gather in the energy of
will-to-good, from which authentic goodwill flows out subtly to the entire
world.”
~Lex Hixon
To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance,
and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for
the guidance and benefit of others, by expressing in the
world of forms – truth, love, purity and beauty – this is
the sole game that has any intrinsic and absolute worth.
All other incidents and attainments can, in themselves,
have no lasting importance.
~Meher Baba
You are Emptiness, the Ultimate substance: remove Emptiness
out of Emptiness leaves only Emptiness because there is nothing
beyond It. All rises from, dances about it, and returns to This.
As Ocean rises as a wave to dance so you are this dancing
Emptiness!
Nothing is out of this Emptiness and so it is the Fullness. Emptiness
is between is and is not. To be Free, you need the firm conviction
that you are this Substratum, this Peace, this Emptiness.
~Papaji
To study the way of the Buddha is to study your own self.
To study your own self is to forget yourself. To forget
yourself is to have the objective world prevail in you.
~Dogen
I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river
that went by and I who watched… Eventually the watcher joined
the river and then there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.
Norman Maclean, quoted in ‘Zen and the Brain’ James H.Austin M.D
Silence is the mother of everything that has come out from
the Depth. And Silence kept quiet about what she was
unable to describe: the Unspeakable.
~Clement of Alexandria
The Great Way has no gate.
Clear water has no taste.
The tongue has no bone.
In complete stillness, a stone girl is dancing.
~Seung Sahn
Ralph Waldo Emerson
From: ESSAY I – History
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is
an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once
admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole
estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt,
he may feel; what at any time has be-fallen any man, he can
understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all
that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.
Ramana Maharshi:
“You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since
you are Awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All
that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that
is of not-self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure
awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.”
From: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance
365 Selections from Rumi’s Mathnawi
Translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski
*Radiance*
If ten lamps are in one place,
each differs in form from another;
yet you can’t distinguish whose radiance is whose
when you focus on the light.
In the field of spirit there is no division;
no individuals exist.
Sweet is the oneness of the Friend with His friends.
Catch hold of spirit.
Help this headstrong self disintegrate;
that beneath it you may discover unity,
like a buried treasure.
God, whose love and joy
are present everywhere,
can’t come to visit you
unless you aren’t there.
-Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)
The Voice
~Sara Teasdale
Atoms as old as stars,
Mutation on mutation,
Millions and millions of cells
Dividing yet still the same,
From air and changing earth,
From ancient Eastern rivers,
From turquoise tropic seas,
Unto myself I came.
My spirit like my flesh
Sprang from a thousand sources,
From cave-man, hunter and shepherd,
From Karnak, Cyprus, Rome;
The living thoughts in me
Spring from dead men and women,
Forgotten time out of mind
And many as bubbles of foam.
Here for a moment’s space
Into the light out of darkness,
I come and they come with me
Finding words with my breath;
From the wisdom of many life-times
I hear them cry: “Forever
Seek for Beauty, she only
Fights with man against Death!”
Not knowing how near the truth is,
People seek it far away, what a pity!
They are like him who, in the midst of water,
Cries in thirst so imploringly.
~ Hakuin
Approach someone who has realized the purpose of life and question
him with reverence and devotion; he will instruct you in this wisdom.
Once you attain it, you will never be deluded. You will see all
creatures in the Self, and all in Me.
Bhagavad Gita 4.34-35
Illusion produces rest and motion.
Illumination destroys liking and disliking.
~ Seng -T’san
The person is a very small thing. Actually it is a composite, it cannot
be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there. It is but the
shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected
in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape
of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a
projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind.
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
When suddenly mind and environment are both forgotten there
is the ability to penetrate freely earth, mountains and rivers. The
whole substance of the real body of the king of Dharma is manifest.
People these days face it without knowing it.
- Daio (1235-1309)
Nothing divides one so much as thought.
~R. H. Blyth
All men were made by the same great spirit chief.
They are all brothers.
The earth is the mother of all people,
and all people should have equal rights upon it.
Chief Joseph
Nez Perce Tribe
Isn’t it hard after that to come back into your body and live daily life?
You were never in your body, so the question of coming back into it
doesn’t come up. Your body is in you. You are not in it. Your body
appears to you as a series of sensory perceptions and concepts. It is
in this way that you know you have a body, when you feel it or when
you think of it. These perceptions and these thoughts appear in you,
pure conscious attention. You do not appear in them, contrary to what
your parents, your teachers and nearly the whole of the society you live
in has taught you. In flagrant contradiction to your actual experience,
they have taught you that you are in your body as consciousness, that
consciousness is a function emerging from the brain, an organ of your
body. I suggest that you do not give undue credence to this second-hand
knowledge and that you inquire into the raw data of your own experience.
Remember the recipes for happiness that were given to you by these same
people when you were a child, study hard, get a good job, marry the right
man, etc.? These recipes don’t work, otherwise you wouldn’t be here
asking these questions. They don’t work because they are based on a false
perspective of reality, a perspective that I am suggesting that you put into
question.
~Francis Lucille
Nothing to force,
nothing to want -
and everything happens by itself.
Ven. Lama Gendun Rinpoche
“The timeless non-state cannot be achieved because
the mind cannot evolve towards it. The mind can only
bring you to the threshold. Awakening comes
unexpectedly when you do not wait for it, when you
live in not-knowing. Only then are you available.”
~Jean Klein
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion
That it may sing and let it direct your passion with reason
That your passion may live through its own daily resurrection
And like a phoenix rise above its own ashes.
~Kahlil Gibran
Freedom and Joy of Nonduality
Meher Baba
Limitation comes into existence owing to ego-centered desires and self-will.
Possessiveness in all its forms leads to a life of limitation. For example,
if one covets the love of someone but instead of winning the love of that
person loses it to another, there ensues a narrowing down and strangling of
the free life of the spirit — and one has an acute consciousness of
limitation. This is the origin of the pain of suffocating jealousy. But if
one looks at the situation with a heart purged of longing, the love that is
received by the other will be seen in its natural beauty. In the clarity of
perception that comes through nonpossessiveness, one will not only taste the
freedom of nonduality, but also its joy. When someone else receives that
love, it is like oneself receiving it — since no longer does one insist
upon the claims of a single form, having identified oneself with life in all
its forms.
In nonduality there is freedom from limitation, as well as the knowledge and
appreciation of things as they are. In nonduality alone is there the
realization of the true spiritual infinity that secures abiding and unfading
bliss. The limitation of jealousy is like all other limitations, such as
anger, hate and cravings; they are all of one’s own creation. All finitehood
and limitations are subjective and self-created. With the surrenderance of
self-will and ego-centered imagination, there arises a true perception of
the infinite worth of that which IS.
DISCOURSES, p. 120
Copyright 1987 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust
This is from Andrew Harvey, in Dialogues With a Modern Mystic
Andrew Harvey and Mark Matousek.
Advaita is not monism. Advaita means “not-two.” We and the
universe are not “one”: then all distinctions would be destroyed.
We are “not-two,” intricately interrelated with everything, both separate,
unique *and* united. The astonishment of this dance of
“not-two” grows slowly as the mind and heart open in divine love
and wisdom. Imagine that there was a heap of gold and a skillful
smith. The smith made fir trees, geraniums, tables, human beings, lamps.
Every object had a different shape, a different
purpose and identity but was made of the same thing. Look at the
sea. All waves are rising and falling differently, in different rhythms,
with different volumes. Some catch the light some do not. You can see the
separations between the waves but what you also see quite clearly is that
all the waves are water. That is what the knowledge
of “not-two” is like. Things retain the separateness which the
senses give them, which we use to negotiate this reality, but the illumined
mind knows that all things are Brahman, waves of one infinite sea of light.
You know, in other words, that you and everything and the light that is at
all times manifesting everything
are “not-two,” and “you” come to exist normally on all levels of
the divine creation, and meet “yourself” in all states, events, conditions,
beings. This is sahaja, spontaneous negotiation of
and union with all dimensions at all moments. Nisargadatta
Maharaj explains most lucidly the marvelous transitions to this
state: “When the I am myself goes, the I am all comes. When the
I am all goes, the I am comes. When even I am goes, Reality
alone is and in it every I am is preserved and glorified.”
It is wonderful that this the most ultimate and holy of all
possible experiences in this world, that of unity, of advaita, has
to be enjoyed by everyone in their own profound solitude, at that
diamond point of solitude at which everyone secretly joins and
meets God and each other and all things. This final experience
kept for this most sacred and secret moment and is too vast an
precious to be ever completely communicated. This is the
moment when the created one returns to the source of creation
the moment at which all laws, dogmas and techniques that helped
the mystic arrive at that diamond point vanish in the silence of
return to origin.
Chuang Tzu:
Great knowledge sees all in one.
Small knowledge breaks down into the many.
This is from : The State of Being That (One’s Own State)
A Satsang Discourse by Nome At the Society of Abidance in Truth (SAT )
The root of all illusions or delusion, which is not our natural state at
all, is the single notion of “I.” It is the notion, or the supposition, that
what you are is a separate, individualized entity. This is what is meant by
an “I” notion, or the ego. It is the root of all suffering, of all bondage.
It is the cause of such. While various delusions appear to be appended to
it, actually, all kinds of suffering and delusions are contained within that
one single false notion. Enlightened Sages free of that notion, free of the
least trace of the ego and its differentiation, experience uninterrupted,
continuous happiness. They are awake from this dreamy illusion. They are
awake to existence. If those who seek Self-Realization, or the Realization
of God, bring about the dissolution of this one notion, “I,” all the
delusion is gone, and what is declared to be the Truth by all the Realized
becomes one’s own, immediate, self-revealed experience. (Silence)
” We cannot apprehend Consciousness, because we have never been
other than it. We cannot integrate with Consciousness because we are
never disintegrated from it. In relative terms we can NEVER understand
what Consciousness is. The Whole-Mind cannot be known by the
split-mind of relativity. ”
~Ramesh Balsekar
From: Mighty Companions
“A coalition already exists in spirit. It is coming together now in the
social context by the attraction of its unconventional intelligence and
compassionate form of high-mindedness. This natural coalition is
drawn together by the recognition that the elevation of consciousness
is our fundamental life work. This is a genuinely democratic, self-
organizing force, flowing through persons of all descriptions. This force
does not flourish as any highly structured form. It is not an institution or
a foundation or a non-profit company or anything conventionally named.
This coalition is a living organism — natural, wild, free. It is made up of
individuals devoted to serving the world and developing themselves as
finely tuned instruments of service. They learn to gather in the energy of
will-to-good, from which authentic goodwill flows out subtly to the entire
world.”
~Lex Hixon
To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance,
and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for
the guidance and benefit of others, by expressing in the
world of forms – truth, love, purity and beauty – this is
the sole game that has any intrinsic and absolute worth.
All other incidents and attainments can, in themselves,
have no lasting importance.
~Meher Baba
You are Emptiness, the Ultimate substance: remove Emptiness
out of Emptiness leaves only Emptiness because there is nothing
beyond It. All rises from, dances about it, and returns to This.
As Ocean rises as a wave to dance so you are this dancing
Emptiness!
Nothing is out of this Emptiness and so it is the Fullness. Emptiness
is between is and is not. To be Free, you need the firm conviction
that you are this Substratum, this Peace, this Emptiness.
~Papaji
To study the way of the Buddha is to study your own self.
To study your own self is to forget yourself. To forget
yourself is to have the objective world prevail in you.
~Dogen
I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river
that went by and I who watched… Eventually the watcher joined
the river and then there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.
Norman Maclean, quoted in ‘Zen and the Brain’ James H.Austin M.D
Silence is the mother of everything that has come out from
the Depth. And Silence kept quiet about what she was
unable to describe: the Unspeakable.
~Clement of Alexandria
The Great Way has no gate.
Clear water has no taste.
The tongue has no bone.
In complete stillness, a stone girl is dancing.
~Seung Sahn
Ralph Waldo Emerson
From: ESSAY I – History
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is
an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once
admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole
estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt,
he may feel; what at any time has be-fallen any man, he can
understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all
that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.
Ramana Maharshi:
“You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since
you are Awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All
that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that
is of not-self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure
awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.”
From: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance
365 Selections from Rumi’s Mathnawi
Translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski
*Radiance*
If ten lamps are in one place,
each differs in form from another;
yet you can’t distinguish whose radiance is whose
when you focus on the light.
In the field of spirit there is no division;
no individuals exist.
Sweet is the oneness of the Friend with His friends.
Catch hold of spirit.
Help this headstrong self disintegrate;
that beneath it you may discover unity,
like a buried treasure.
God, whose love and joy
are present everywhere,
can’t come to visit you
unless you aren’t there.
-Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)
The Voice
~Sara Teasdale
Atoms as old as stars,
Mutation on mutation,
Millions and millions of cells
Dividing yet still the same,
From air and changing earth,
From ancient Eastern rivers,
From turquoise tropic seas,
Unto myself I came.
My spirit like my flesh
Sprang from a thousand sources,
From cave-man, hunter and shepherd,
From Karnak, Cyprus, Rome;
The living thoughts in me
Spring from dead men and women,
Forgotten time out of mind
And many as bubbles of foam.
Here for a moment’s space
Into the light out of darkness,
I come and they come with me
Finding words with my breath;
From the wisdom of many life-times
I hear them cry: “Forever
Seek for Beauty, she only
Fights with man against Death!”
Not knowing how near the truth is,
People seek it far away, what a pity!
They are like him who, in the midst of water,
Cries in thirst so imploringly.
~ Hakuin
Approach someone who has realized the purpose of life and question
him with reverence and devotion; he will instruct you in this wisdom.
Once you attain it, you will never be deluded. You will see all
creatures in the Self, and all in Me.
Bhagavad Gita 4.34-35
Illusion produces rest and motion.
Illumination destroys liking and disliking.
~ Seng -T’san
The person is a very small thing. Actually it is a composite, it cannot
be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there. It is but the
shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected
in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape
of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a
projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind.
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
When suddenly mind and environment are both forgotten there
is the ability to penetrate freely earth, mountains and rivers. The
whole substance of the real body of the king of Dharma is manifest.
People these days face it without knowing it.
- Daio (1235-1309)
Nothing divides one so much as thought.
~R. H. Blyth
All men were made by the same great spirit chief.
They are all brothers.
The earth is the mother of all people,
and all people should have equal rights upon it.
Chief Joseph
Nez Perce Tribe
Isn’t it hard after that to come back into your body and live daily life?
You were never in your body, so the question of coming back into it
doesn’t come up. Your body is in you. You are not in it. Your body
appears to you as a series of sensory perceptions and concepts. It is
in this way that you know you have a body, when you feel it or when
you think of it. These perceptions and these thoughts appear in you,
pure conscious attention. You do not appear in them, contrary to what
your parents, your teachers and nearly the whole of the society you live
in has taught you. In flagrant contradiction to your actual experience,
they have taught you that you are in your body as consciousness, that
consciousness is a function emerging from the brain, an organ of your
body. I suggest that you do not give undue credence to this second-hand
knowledge and that you inquire into the raw data of your own experience.
Remember the recipes for happiness that were given to you by these same
people when you were a child, study hard, get a good job, marry the right
man, etc.? These recipes don’t work, otherwise you wouldn’t be here
asking these questions. They don’t work because they are based on a false
perspective of reality, a perspective that I am suggesting that you put into
question.
~Francis Lucille
Oneness Quotes 3
Good are friends when need arises;
good is contentment with just what one has;
good is merit when life is at an end,
and good is the abandoning of all suffering.
Dhammapada 331
As a human being related to all living beings we must first be
related to ourselves. We cannot understand, love and welcome
others without first knowing and loving ourselves.
~Jean Klein
‘Who am I?’
We have made ourselves so weak; we have made ourselves
so low. We may make great claims, but naturally we
want to lean on somebody else. We are like little,
weak plants, always wanting a support. How many times
I have been asked for a “comfortable religion!” Very
few men ask for the truth, fewer still dare to learn
the truth, and fewest of all dare to follow it in all
its practical bearings.
~ Swami Vivekananda
Disease, laziness, indecision, apathy, lethargy,
craving sense-pleasure, erroneous perception,
lack of concentration, unstable attention,
these are the obstacles that distract consciousness.
Sorrow, worry, restlessness, and irregular breathing
accompany the distractions.
To overcome them practice that oneness.
From: YOGA SUTRAS - UNION THREADS
by Patanjali English version by Sanderson Beck
*That Most Delicate Place*
There is a place in all of us that has remained innocent, uncorrupted
and untouched by the world. We have to locate that most delicate place.
It is a very sensitive place, it’s where we feel love – where tenderness
and compassion arise, free from self-interest.
This place is the hole we have to fall into – and disappear in forever.
from Enlightenment is a Secret By Andrew Cohen
Just understand that birth-and-death is itself
nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death
to be avoided; there is nothing such as nirvana to
be sought. Only when you realize this are you free
from birth and death.
~Dogen
Friend, our closeness is this:
anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.
How is it with this love,
I see your world and not you?
From: Rumi The Essential Rumi Barks/Moyne
A genuine spiritual life is not one consisting
of a series of disconnected and undefined
experiences occurring at random; it is a
constant dynamic process incorporating
every element of our being.
Stephen Batchelor
Quoted in ‘Zen and the Brain’ James H. Austin M.D.
from: The Joy of the Snow
Elizabeth Goudge
WE cannot understand – not yet – but we can see how the more
we lose our sense of separateness in the knowledge of the oneness
of all living creatures, millions of small leaves on the one single tree
of life, the more we shall lose our sense of self-importance, and so
be liberated from our self-pity; a bondage so horrible that I believe
it can bring us at last to a state not unlike that of Gollum, the dreadful
creature Tolkien created, living alone in the dark, talking to himself,
murmuring, ‘My preciouss. My preciouss.’
But if that ‘my preciouss’ were to be the song of the leaves on
the tree, each leaf delighting in all the others, there could be no
love of self, no hatred and no sin, and none of the suffering that
springs from sin. And since a tree has no voice but the wind, and
the leaves know it, they would soon know who it was who was
singing their song with them and through them, and lifting an
swinging them in the dance. If we can find a little of our oneness
with all other creatures, and love for them, then I believe we
are half-way towards finding God.
Quoted in The Virago Book of Spirituality Ed. Sarah Anderson
From: Enlightenment Unfolds -
The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen
A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims there
is no end to the water. A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how
far it flies there is no end to the air. However, the fish and the bird
have never left their elements. When their activity is large their
field is large. When their need is small their field is small. Thus,
each of them totally covers its full range, and each of them totally
experiences its realm. If the bird leaves the air it will die at once. If
the fish leaves the water it will die at once.
Know that water is life and air is life. The bird is life and the
fish is life. Life must be the bird and life must be the fish. You can
go further. There is practice-enlightenment which encompasses
limited and unlimited life.
Now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before
moving in it, this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place.
When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualiz-
ing the fundamental point. When you find your way at this mo-
ment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point; for the
place, the way, is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others.
The place, the way, has not carried over from the past, and it is not
merely arising now. Accordingly, in the practice-enlightenment of
the buddha way, to attain one thing is to penetrate one thing; to
meet one practice is to sustain one practice.
Here is the place; here the way unfolds. The boundary of real-
ization is not distinct, for realization comes forth simultaneously
with the mastery of buddha-dharma. Do not suppose that what you
attain becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your intellect.
Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be ap-
parent. Its appearance is beyond your knowledge.
From: Ask The Awakened
Wei Wu Wei
Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent
Of everything you think,
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself -
And there isn’t one.
To the man of realization . . . it is indifferent
whether the senses . . . are indrawn or turned
without. What matters it to the sun whether the
clouds gather together or are dispersed?
~Srimad Bhagavatam
“Even This Will Pass Away”
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
TOUCHED with the delicate green of early May,
Or later, when the rose uplifts her face,
The world hangs glittering in starry space,
Fresh as a jewel found but yesterday.
And yet ’tis very old; what tongue may say
How old it is? Race follows upon race,
Forgetting and forgotten; in their place
Sink tower and temple; nothing long may stay.
We build on tombs, and live our day, and die;
From out our dust new towers and temples start;
Our very name becomes a mystery.
What cities no man ever heard of lie
Under the glacier, in the mountain’s heart,
In violet glooms beneath the moaning sea!
From: The Book
Alan Watts
We can never, never describe all features of the total
situation, not only because every situation is infinitely
complex, but also because the total situation is the uni-
verse. Fortunately, we do not have to describe any sit-
uation exhaustively, because some of its features appear
to be much more important than others for understand-
ing the behavior of the various organisms within it. We
never get more than a sketch of the situation, yet this
is enough to show that actions (or processes) must
be understood, or explained, in terms of situations
just as words must be understood in the context of
sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, libraries,
and . . . life itself.
To sum up: just as no thing or organism exists on its
own, it does not act on its own. Furthermore, every
organism is a process: thus the organism is not other
than its actions. To put it clumsily: it is what it does.
More precisely, the organism, including its behavior, is
a process which is to be understood only in relation to
the larger and longer process of its environment. For
what we mean by “understanding” or “comprehen-
sion” is seeing how parts fit into a whole, and then
realizing that they don’t compose the whole, as one as-
sembles a jigsaw puzzle, but that the whole is a pattern,
a complex wiggliness, which has no separate parts. Parts
are fictions of language, of the calculus of looking at
the world through a net which seems to chop it up into
bits. Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and de-
scribing, and as we figure the world out we become
confused if we do not remember this all the time.
From Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
As long as there is duality, one sees the other, one hears
the other, one smells the other, one speaks to the other,
one thinks of the other, one knows the other; but when
for the illumined soul the all is dissolved in the Self, who
is there to be seen by whom, who is there to be smelt by
whom, who is there to be heard by whom, who is there to
be spoken to by whom, who is there to be thought of by
whom, who is there to be known by whom? Ah, Maitreyi,
my beloved, the Intelligence which reveals all by what
shall it be revealed? By whom shall the Knower be known?
The Self is described as *not this, not that.* It is incom-
prehensible, for it cannot be comprehended; undecaying
for it never decays; unattached, for it never attaches;
unbound, for it is never bound. By whom, O my beloved,
shall the Knower be known?
What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you’ll be that.
~Attar
From: Enlightenment Unfolds -
The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen
When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you
may assume it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body
and mind, you understand that something is missing. For example,
when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land
is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular,
and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round
nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is
like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time.
All things are like this.
Though there are many features in the dusty world and the
world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your
eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of the myriad
things, you must know that although they may look round or
square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in
variety; whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but
also directly beneath your feet, or in a drop of water.
Everything is the original law;
Every day the morning sun
Clears the sky,
In every mind there is no
Separate mind.
In every place the pure wind
Circles the earth.
If you can understand in this way,
Then there is no need for Buddha
To appear in this world
Or for Bodhidharma to come
From the west.
- Daio (1235-1309)
There is no need to wait until another life or for
future generations. Before you is the Buddha who
proves to you the possibility of penetrating to God.
-Chang Po-Tuan
From: HSIN HSIN MING
Verses on the Faith Mind by
The 3rd Zen Patriarch, Sengstau
If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they
are, of single essence.
To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all
entanglements.
The true task of spiritual life
is not found in faraway places
or unusual states of consciousness.
It is here in the present.
It asks of us a welcoming spirit
to greet all that life presents to us
with a wise, respectful, and kindly heart.
We can bow to both beauty and suffering,
to our entanglements and confusion,
to our fears and to the injustices of the world.
Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom.
~ Jack Kornfield
Lotus Leaves
by Mitsukuni, translated by Miyamori Asataro.
“Over the lotus leaves
A refreshing shower has run;
Now, on the white jewels of dew
The splendour of the setting sun!”
This is from: ‘Loving Kindness’ by Sharon Salzberg
Being free from concepts is like going backstage in a theater
and suddenly realizing how much of our engagement with
the drama has come from mere appearances: the costumes,
the makeup, the staging, the lighting, and actors projecting
artificial personae. It is liberating to realize that we are, in
effect, “making it all up.” We are playing on the stage set,
lost in the costumes and the lighting. We are creating
boundaries and divisions according to our histories, our
fears, our needs, and our habits. But what is the substance
of these boundaries? Where can they be found, in truth?
The heart has eyes which the brain knows nothing of.
~ Charles H. Perkhurst
Perfect knowledge is attained on the destruction of deluding karmas, of
karmas which obscure knowledge and perception, and of karmas which
obstruct [faith]. With the absence of the cause of bondage, the
annihilation of all karmas is liberation.
Jainism. Tattvarthasutra 10.1-2
Advaita
When you have calmed the furies of the mind
Forgotten greed and all ambitions snare:
When you have banished all intruding thought
And scotched the Ego lurking in its lair;
When you have come to nothing and seek nought
But less than nothing – in your earthly quest,
You will be ALL at last – and more than nothing,
For nothing will be more than all the rest.
~Robert Goslin
“Love grants in a moment what toil can
hardly achieve in an age.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The wisdom of enlightenment is inherent in every
one of us. It is because of the delusion under which
our mind works that we fail to realize it ourselves,
and that we have to seek the advice and the
guidance of enlightened ones.
~Hui Neng
Swami Jyoti:
“LOVE is not a social or human virtue as we normally view it.
It is the very ‘glue’ by which the creation is possible.”
“Ordinarily when we use the word love, it refers to human
feeling or sentiment. . .However, the human experience of
love is also derived from that original Love, which is not a
feeling. Feelings of love, sentimentality and affection, are
behavior patterns born of Absolute Love. In today’s
world, unless you say ‘I love you’ nobody understands that
you love him or her. But ultimate Love you do not express –it’s
just there, a radiation that attracts. In the lives of sages…we
see love without any demonstration of feelings; Love just
emanates from [their] eyes. That natural born Love is
the basis of the relationship between God and man. These
words are not needed. Why tell God *I love You*–God, Who
is Love Incarnate, Love embodied, Who is Love Himself? Human
expression is a very pale reflection of that ultimate relationship
between you and your Sprit, you and your God.”
“. . . [Love] is completely fulfilling. You feel resigned, interconnected,
not only with humanity but with everything; insects, stones, boulders,
trees. . .Then if you close your eyes to leave the body due to old age
or disease, you will not mind. There will be no pangs of pathos. You
will have reached the beginning and the end. You will not see much
difference between life and death; old age, sickness and such will
lose their hold on you. You will be relaxed and content. Pleasure and
pain will not affect you. You will quietly let go. Whatever the
conditions, you will be released. You will have found the basis of
your Being.”
When your thinking rises above concern for your
own welfare, wisdom which is independent of
thought appears.
-Ha Gakure
Quoted in ‘Zen Soup’ Ed. Laurence G. Boldt
From: Enlightenment Unfolds -
The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen
MAYU, Zen Master Baoche, was fanning himself. A monk ap-
proached and said, “Master, the nature of wind is permanent and
there is no place it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself?”
“Although you understand that the natare of the wind is perma-
nent,” Mayu replied, “you do not understand the meaning of its
reaching everywhere.”
“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the
monk again. Mayu just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed
deeply.
The actualization of the buddha-dharma, the vital path of its
correct transmission, is like this. If you say that you do not need to
fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent and you can
have wind without fanning, you will understand neither permanence
nor the nature of the wind. The nature of the wind is permanent.
Because of that, the wind of the buddha’s house brings forth the
gold of the earth and makes fragrant the cream of the long river.
From: NONDUAL ECOLOGY
In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony
With Everything That Moves
by John McClellan
*Everything That Moves-Primordial Purity*
The way I see it, anything that arises on this planet is completely
natural, pristine, and pure. Created by God’s spontaneous,
self-arising nature, sacred. God itself. Deep ecologists reserve
this level of honor for wilderness areas, asking that they be
untouched by outside forces, meaning generally man or machines.
But is this entire planet not a pristine, sacred wilderness? Has it
ever been touched by ‘outside forces’? Is not all this Gaia’s own
doing?
The game is not about becoming somebody; it’s
about becoming nobody.
-Ram Dass
Quoted in ‘Zen Soup’ Ed. Laurence G. Boldt
The burden of the self is lightened
when I laugh at myself
~Rabindranath Tagore
You say,
“How can I find God?”
I say,
“The Friend is the lining in your pocket -
The curved pink wall in your belly -
Sober up,
Steady your aim,
Reach in,
Turn the Universe and
The Beautiful Rascal
Inside out.”
You say,
“That sounds preposterous -
I really don’t believe God is in there.”
I say,
“Well then,
Why not try the Himalayas -
You could get naked
And pretend to be an exalted yogi
And eat bark and snow for forty years.”
And you might think,
“Hey, Old Man,
Why don’t you – go shovel
Snowflakes!”
~Hafiz
The Subject Tonight is Love / Daniel Ladinsky
good is contentment with just what one has;
good is merit when life is at an end,
and good is the abandoning of all suffering.
Dhammapada 331
As a human being related to all living beings we must first be
related to ourselves. We cannot understand, love and welcome
others without first knowing and loving ourselves.
~Jean Klein
‘Who am I?’
We have made ourselves so weak; we have made ourselves
so low. We may make great claims, but naturally we
want to lean on somebody else. We are like little,
weak plants, always wanting a support. How many times
I have been asked for a “comfortable religion!” Very
few men ask for the truth, fewer still dare to learn
the truth, and fewest of all dare to follow it in all
its practical bearings.
~ Swami Vivekananda
Disease, laziness, indecision, apathy, lethargy,
craving sense-pleasure, erroneous perception,
lack of concentration, unstable attention,
these are the obstacles that distract consciousness.
Sorrow, worry, restlessness, and irregular breathing
accompany the distractions.
To overcome them practice that oneness.
From: YOGA SUTRAS - UNION THREADS
by Patanjali English version by Sanderson Beck
*That Most Delicate Place*
There is a place in all of us that has remained innocent, uncorrupted
and untouched by the world. We have to locate that most delicate place.
It is a very sensitive place, it’s where we feel love – where tenderness
and compassion arise, free from self-interest.
This place is the hole we have to fall into – and disappear in forever.
from Enlightenment is a Secret By Andrew Cohen
Just understand that birth-and-death is itself
nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death
to be avoided; there is nothing such as nirvana to
be sought. Only when you realize this are you free
from birth and death.
~Dogen
Friend, our closeness is this:
anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.
How is it with this love,
I see your world and not you?
From: Rumi The Essential Rumi Barks/Moyne
A genuine spiritual life is not one consisting
of a series of disconnected and undefined
experiences occurring at random; it is a
constant dynamic process incorporating
every element of our being.
Stephen Batchelor
Quoted in ‘Zen and the Brain’ James H. Austin M.D.
from: The Joy of the Snow
Elizabeth Goudge
WE cannot understand – not yet – but we can see how the more
we lose our sense of separateness in the knowledge of the oneness
of all living creatures, millions of small leaves on the one single tree
of life, the more we shall lose our sense of self-importance, and so
be liberated from our self-pity; a bondage so horrible that I believe
it can bring us at last to a state not unlike that of Gollum, the dreadful
creature Tolkien created, living alone in the dark, talking to himself,
murmuring, ‘My preciouss. My preciouss.’
But if that ‘my preciouss’ were to be the song of the leaves on
the tree, each leaf delighting in all the others, there could be no
love of self, no hatred and no sin, and none of the suffering that
springs from sin. And since a tree has no voice but the wind, and
the leaves know it, they would soon know who it was who was
singing their song with them and through them, and lifting an
swinging them in the dance. If we can find a little of our oneness
with all other creatures, and love for them, then I believe we
are half-way towards finding God.
Quoted in The Virago Book of Spirituality Ed. Sarah Anderson
From: Enlightenment Unfolds -
The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen
A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims there
is no end to the water. A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how
far it flies there is no end to the air. However, the fish and the bird
have never left their elements. When their activity is large their
field is large. When their need is small their field is small. Thus,
each of them totally covers its full range, and each of them totally
experiences its realm. If the bird leaves the air it will die at once. If
the fish leaves the water it will die at once.
Know that water is life and air is life. The bird is life and the
fish is life. Life must be the bird and life must be the fish. You can
go further. There is practice-enlightenment which encompasses
limited and unlimited life.
Now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before
moving in it, this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place.
When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualiz-
ing the fundamental point. When you find your way at this mo-
ment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point; for the
place, the way, is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others.
The place, the way, has not carried over from the past, and it is not
merely arising now. Accordingly, in the practice-enlightenment of
the buddha way, to attain one thing is to penetrate one thing; to
meet one practice is to sustain one practice.
Here is the place; here the way unfolds. The boundary of real-
ization is not distinct, for realization comes forth simultaneously
with the mastery of buddha-dharma. Do not suppose that what you
attain becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your intellect.
Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be ap-
parent. Its appearance is beyond your knowledge.
From: Ask The Awakened
Wei Wu Wei
Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent
Of everything you think,
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself -
And there isn’t one.
To the man of realization . . . it is indifferent
whether the senses . . . are indrawn or turned
without. What matters it to the sun whether the
clouds gather together or are dispersed?
~Srimad Bhagavatam
“Even This Will Pass Away”
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
TOUCHED with the delicate green of early May,
Or later, when the rose uplifts her face,
The world hangs glittering in starry space,
Fresh as a jewel found but yesterday.
And yet ’tis very old; what tongue may say
How old it is? Race follows upon race,
Forgetting and forgotten; in their place
Sink tower and temple; nothing long may stay.
We build on tombs, and live our day, and die;
From out our dust new towers and temples start;
Our very name becomes a mystery.
What cities no man ever heard of lie
Under the glacier, in the mountain’s heart,
In violet glooms beneath the moaning sea!
From: The Book
Alan Watts
We can never, never describe all features of the total
situation, not only because every situation is infinitely
complex, but also because the total situation is the uni-
verse. Fortunately, we do not have to describe any sit-
uation exhaustively, because some of its features appear
to be much more important than others for understand-
ing the behavior of the various organisms within it. We
never get more than a sketch of the situation, yet this
is enough to show that actions (or processes) must
be understood, or explained, in terms of situations
just as words must be understood in the context of
sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, libraries,
and . . . life itself.
To sum up: just as no thing or organism exists on its
own, it does not act on its own. Furthermore, every
organism is a process: thus the organism is not other
than its actions. To put it clumsily: it is what it does.
More precisely, the organism, including its behavior, is
a process which is to be understood only in relation to
the larger and longer process of its environment. For
what we mean by “understanding” or “comprehen-
sion” is seeing how parts fit into a whole, and then
realizing that they don’t compose the whole, as one as-
sembles a jigsaw puzzle, but that the whole is a pattern,
a complex wiggliness, which has no separate parts. Parts
are fictions of language, of the calculus of looking at
the world through a net which seems to chop it up into
bits. Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and de-
scribing, and as we figure the world out we become
confused if we do not remember this all the time.
From Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
As long as there is duality, one sees the other, one hears
the other, one smells the other, one speaks to the other,
one thinks of the other, one knows the other; but when
for the illumined soul the all is dissolved in the Self, who
is there to be seen by whom, who is there to be smelt by
whom, who is there to be heard by whom, who is there to
be spoken to by whom, who is there to be thought of by
whom, who is there to be known by whom? Ah, Maitreyi,
my beloved, the Intelligence which reveals all by what
shall it be revealed? By whom shall the Knower be known?
The Self is described as *not this, not that.* It is incom-
prehensible, for it cannot be comprehended; undecaying
for it never decays; unattached, for it never attaches;
unbound, for it is never bound. By whom, O my beloved,
shall the Knower be known?
What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you’ll be that.
~Attar
From: Enlightenment Unfolds -
The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen
When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you
may assume it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body
and mind, you understand that something is missing. For example,
when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land
is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular,
and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round
nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is
like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time.
All things are like this.
Though there are many features in the dusty world and the
world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your
eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of the myriad
things, you must know that although they may look round or
square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in
variety; whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but
also directly beneath your feet, or in a drop of water.
Everything is the original law;
Every day the morning sun
Clears the sky,
In every mind there is no
Separate mind.
In every place the pure wind
Circles the earth.
If you can understand in this way,
Then there is no need for Buddha
To appear in this world
Or for Bodhidharma to come
From the west.
- Daio (1235-1309)
There is no need to wait until another life or for
future generations. Before you is the Buddha who
proves to you the possibility of penetrating to God.
-Chang Po-Tuan
From: HSIN HSIN MING
Verses on the Faith Mind by
The 3rd Zen Patriarch, Sengstau
If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they
are, of single essence.
To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all
entanglements.
The true task of spiritual life
is not found in faraway places
or unusual states of consciousness.
It is here in the present.
It asks of us a welcoming spirit
to greet all that life presents to us
with a wise, respectful, and kindly heart.
We can bow to both beauty and suffering,
to our entanglements and confusion,
to our fears and to the injustices of the world.
Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom.
~ Jack Kornfield
Lotus Leaves
by Mitsukuni, translated by Miyamori Asataro.
“Over the lotus leaves
A refreshing shower has run;
Now, on the white jewels of dew
The splendour of the setting sun!”
This is from: ‘Loving Kindness’ by Sharon Salzberg
Being free from concepts is like going backstage in a theater
and suddenly realizing how much of our engagement with
the drama has come from mere appearances: the costumes,
the makeup, the staging, the lighting, and actors projecting
artificial personae. It is liberating to realize that we are, in
effect, “making it all up.” We are playing on the stage set,
lost in the costumes and the lighting. We are creating
boundaries and divisions according to our histories, our
fears, our needs, and our habits. But what is the substance
of these boundaries? Where can they be found, in truth?
The heart has eyes which the brain knows nothing of.
~ Charles H. Perkhurst
Perfect knowledge is attained on the destruction of deluding karmas, of
karmas which obscure knowledge and perception, and of karmas which
obstruct [faith]. With the absence of the cause of bondage, the
annihilation of all karmas is liberation.
Jainism. Tattvarthasutra 10.1-2
Advaita
When you have calmed the furies of the mind
Forgotten greed and all ambitions snare:
When you have banished all intruding thought
And scotched the Ego lurking in its lair;
When you have come to nothing and seek nought
But less than nothing – in your earthly quest,
You will be ALL at last – and more than nothing,
For nothing will be more than all the rest.
~Robert Goslin
“Love grants in a moment what toil can
hardly achieve in an age.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The wisdom of enlightenment is inherent in every
one of us. It is because of the delusion under which
our mind works that we fail to realize it ourselves,
and that we have to seek the advice and the
guidance of enlightened ones.
~Hui Neng
Swami Jyoti:
“LOVE is not a social or human virtue as we normally view it.
It is the very ‘glue’ by which the creation is possible.”
“Ordinarily when we use the word love, it refers to human
feeling or sentiment. . .However, the human experience of
love is also derived from that original Love, which is not a
feeling. Feelings of love, sentimentality and affection, are
behavior patterns born of Absolute Love. In today’s
world, unless you say ‘I love you’ nobody understands that
you love him or her. But ultimate Love you do not express –it’s
just there, a radiation that attracts. In the lives of sages…we
see love without any demonstration of feelings; Love just
emanates from [their] eyes. That natural born Love is
the basis of the relationship between God and man. These
words are not needed. Why tell God *I love You*–God, Who
is Love Incarnate, Love embodied, Who is Love Himself? Human
expression is a very pale reflection of that ultimate relationship
between you and your Sprit, you and your God.”
“. . . [Love] is completely fulfilling. You feel resigned, interconnected,
not only with humanity but with everything; insects, stones, boulders,
trees. . .Then if you close your eyes to leave the body due to old age
or disease, you will not mind. There will be no pangs of pathos. You
will have reached the beginning and the end. You will not see much
difference between life and death; old age, sickness and such will
lose their hold on you. You will be relaxed and content. Pleasure and
pain will not affect you. You will quietly let go. Whatever the
conditions, you will be released. You will have found the basis of
your Being.”
When your thinking rises above concern for your
own welfare, wisdom which is independent of
thought appears.
-Ha Gakure
Quoted in ‘Zen Soup’ Ed. Laurence G. Boldt
From: Enlightenment Unfolds -
The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen
MAYU, Zen Master Baoche, was fanning himself. A monk ap-
proached and said, “Master, the nature of wind is permanent and
there is no place it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself?”
“Although you understand that the natare of the wind is perma-
nent,” Mayu replied, “you do not understand the meaning of its
reaching everywhere.”
“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the
monk again. Mayu just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed
deeply.
The actualization of the buddha-dharma, the vital path of its
correct transmission, is like this. If you say that you do not need to
fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent and you can
have wind without fanning, you will understand neither permanence
nor the nature of the wind. The nature of the wind is permanent.
Because of that, the wind of the buddha’s house brings forth the
gold of the earth and makes fragrant the cream of the long river.
From: NONDUAL ECOLOGY
In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony
With Everything That Moves
by John McClellan
*Everything That Moves-Primordial Purity*
The way I see it, anything that arises on this planet is completely
natural, pristine, and pure. Created by God’s spontaneous,
self-arising nature, sacred. God itself. Deep ecologists reserve
this level of honor for wilderness areas, asking that they be
untouched by outside forces, meaning generally man or machines.
But is this entire planet not a pristine, sacred wilderness? Has it
ever been touched by ‘outside forces’? Is not all this Gaia’s own
doing?
The game is not about becoming somebody; it’s
about becoming nobody.
-Ram Dass
Quoted in ‘Zen Soup’ Ed. Laurence G. Boldt
The burden of the self is lightened
when I laugh at myself
~Rabindranath Tagore
You say,
“How can I find God?”
I say,
“The Friend is the lining in your pocket -
The curved pink wall in your belly -
Sober up,
Steady your aim,
Reach in,
Turn the Universe and
The Beautiful Rascal
Inside out.”
You say,
“That sounds preposterous -
I really don’t believe God is in there.”
I say,
“Well then,
Why not try the Himalayas -
You could get naked
And pretend to be an exalted yogi
And eat bark and snow for forty years.”
And you might think,
“Hey, Old Man,
Why don’t you – go shovel
Snowflakes!”
~Hafiz
The Subject Tonight is Love / Daniel Ladinsky
Oneness is like the clear blue sky-
everything arises, unfolds, and subsides
within its all-compassionate love.
Oneness is our real Self.
Everything is an aspect of Oneness.
And our quest to know this comes from Oneness.
Abhinavagupta on the teachings of Non-dual Kashmir Shaivism
A man has many skins in himself, covering the depths of his heart.
Man knows so many things; he does not know himself. Why, thirty
or forty skins or hides, just like an ox’s or a bear’s, so thick and
hard, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know
yourself.
~ Meister Eckhart
Papaji:
Self is what you are.
You are That Fathomlessness
in which experience and concepts appear.
Self is the Moment that has no coming or going.
It is the Heart, Atman, Emptiness.
It shines to Itself, by Itself, in Itself.
Self is what gives breath to Life.
You need not search for It, It is Here.
You are That through which you would search.
You are what you are looking for!
And That is All it is.
Only Self is.
Gitanjali 69:
THE same stream of life that runs through my veins night
and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic
measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of
the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into
tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of
birth and death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this
world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages
dancing in my blood this moment.
Rabindranath Tagore
From The Bhagavad Gita:
… the beginningless Brahman, … can be called neither being nor
nonbeing. It is both near and far, both within and without every
creature; it moves and is unmoving. In its subtlety it is beyond
comprehension. It is indivisible, yet appears divided in separate
creatures. Know it to be the creator, the preserver, and the
destroyer. Dwelling in every heart, it is beyond darkness. It is
called the light of lights, the object and goal of knowledge, and
knowledge itself.
Dying and giving birth go on
inside the one consciousness,
but most people misunderstand
the pure play of creative energy,
how inside that, those
are one event.
Lalla
Naked Song Trans. Coleman Barks
You are the unchangeable Awareness in which all activity takes place.
Always rest in peace.
You are eternal Being, unbounded and undivided.
Just keep Quiet.
All is well.
Keep Quiet Here and Now.
You are Happiness, you are Peace, you are Freedom.
Do not entertain any notions that you are in trouble.
Be kind to yourself.
Open to your Heart and simply Be.
~ Papaji
All objects unfold in perceiving.
The perceiver is also in the perceiving.
Here, there is only perceiving.
There is no split.
There is no separate self.
There is no separate other.
Everything is made of the same substance.
There is only Oneness.
There is only love.
~ Richard Miller
Papaji:
Look within,
There is no difference
between yourself, Self and Guru.
You are always Free.
There is no teacher,
there is no student,
there is no teaching.
Oneness is Compassionate.
Oneness has no judgement.
Oneness sees everything as it is.
Oneness allows everything as it is.
Oneness is all there is.
~ Richard Miller
Lalla, you’ve wandered so many places
trying to find your husband!
Now at last, inside the walls
of this body-house, in the heart-shrine,
you discover where he lives.
Lalla
Naked Song Trans. Coleman Barks
Being without passion,
behold the source!
Being with passion,
behold the flow!
The two are one -
born of the same root,
differently named when they appear.
Both may be called mystery -
going from mystery to deeper mystery,
enter the secret of Life!
~ Laozi
When you know yourself, your “I-ness” vanishes
and you know that you and God are one and the same.
~Ibn ‘Arabi
From: The Spirit of Tao Thomas Cleary
SAYINGS OF ANCESTOR LU
Nothingness
Those obstructed by nothingness, clinging one-sidedly to
this principle, sit blankly to clear away sense objects and
think that the Way is herein. None of them seeks the secret
of nurturing the three treasures. Though they speak of
reaching nothingness, this is really not the Way. The ulti-
mate Way is not in reification, nor simple nothingness.
The mystic essential is to balance openness and realism.
In terms of ephemeral manifestations, even the body
passes away, to say nothing of success, fame, wealth,
and rank. In terms of reality, all beings are oneself,
to say nothing of family members. If people can see
through the ephemeral and recognize the real, then
they can bear great social responsibilities and at the
same time be free from the bonds of the world.
-Huanchu Daoren
Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7:
That which is the finest essence–this whole world has
that as its soul. That is Reality. That is the Self (Atman).
That art thou.
From: Tantra – The Path of Ecstasy
Georg Feurstein
This Is the Other World
Although in many respects Tantra continued the metaphysics and
language of nondualism, it often sought to express new meanings
through them. The Tantric One (eka), for instance, is not the life-
negating Singularity of some brahmanical teachers but the all-
encompassing Whole ( purna), which is present as the body, the
mind, and the world yet transcends all of these. At its best, Tantra
is integralism. This is hinted at in the word tantra itself, which, among
other things, means “continuum.”
This continuum is what the enlightened adepts realize as nirvana
and what unenlightened worldlings experience as samsara. These are
not distinct, opposite realities. They are absolutely the same Being,
the same essence (samarasa). That essence merely appears different to
different people because of their karmic predispositions, which are
like veils or mental filters obscuring the truth. To ordinary worldlings,
the One remains utterly hidden. To spiritual seekers, it seems a dis-
tant goal, perhaps realizable after many lifetimes. To initiates, it is a
reliable inner guide. To the Self realized sages, it is the only One that
exists, for they have *become* the Whole.
No Water, No Moon
When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku
she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long
time. At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an
old pail bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the
bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was
set free ! In commemoration, she wrote a
poem :
In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom felt out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
From: Teachings of Zen Ed. Thomas Cleary
This Mind
Bodhidharma came from the West and just pointed to
the human mind, to show its nature and enlighten
it. That was undeniably direct and economical, but
when seen with the absolute eye, it is already all mixed
up. There is no choice for now but to make some medi-
cine for a dead horse.
This mind that is simply pointed to is precisely what
the Buddha could not express in forty-nine years of
lectures and talks. It is extremely rarefied, extremely
subtle; few are able to find the true pulse.
This mind cannot be transmitted but can only be
experienced in oneself and understood in oneself.
When you get to the point where there is neither
delusion nor enlightenment, you simply dress and eat as
normal, without a bunch of arcane interpretations and
lines of doctrine jamming your chest, so you’re clear
and uncluttered.
Ying-an (d. 1163)
Now I am called the shepherd of the desert gazelles,
Now a Christian monk,
Now a Zoroastrian.
The Beloved is Three, yet One :
Just as the three are in reality one.
~Ibn El-Arabi
From The Way of the Sufi Idries Shah
As for me, I delight in the everyday Way,
Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness I am completely free,
With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever.
There are roads, but they do not reach the world;
Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts?
On a bed of stone I sit, alone in the night,
While the round moon climbs up Cold Mountain.
~ Han Shan
A telling analogy for life and death:
Compare the two of them to water and ice.
Water draws together to become ice,
And ice disperses again to become water.
Whatever has died is sure to be born again;
Whatever is born comes around again to dying.
As ice and water do one another no harm,
So life and death, the two of them, are fine.
~ Han Shan
Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself
into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become
enlightened.
When you sit, let it be. What you walk, let it be. Grasp
at nothing. Resist nothing.
from A Still Forest Pool by Ajhan Chah
To love is to know Me,
My innermost nature,
The truth that I am.
Bhagavad Gita 18.55
The Sea Is Our Essence
We are of the sea, and the sea is our essence;
why then is there this duality between us?
The world is an imaginary line before the sight;
read well that line, for it was inscribed by us.
Whatsoever we possess in both the worlds
in reality, my friend, belongs to God.
His love I keep secretly in my heart;
the less of the pain of His love is our cure.
Companions are we of the cup, comrades of the saki,
lest thou suppose that he is apart from us:
it is the assembly of love, and we are drunk -
who ever enjoyed so royal a party?
So long as Ni’mat Allah is the slave of the Lord,
the king of the world is as a beggar at his door.
~Ni’mat Allah
From: The Element Book of Mystical Verse
Truth Is One
In long devotion to forms that cheat
Thou hast suffered the days of thy life to fleet:
But outward forms are still passing away,
Changing their fashion from day to day.
Tread not ever on stones that are rough to thy feet;
Nor shift from one branch to another thy seat.
Seek high o’er the sphere of the world thy rest;
In the world of reality make thee a nest.
If Truth be thine object, form-worshippers shun;
For form is manifold, Truth is one.
In number trouble and error lie.
To Unity then for sure refuge fly.
If the might of the foeman oppress thee sore,
Fly to the fortress and fear no more.
~ Jami
From: The Element Book of Mystical Verse
In God nought e’er is known.
Forever one is He.
What we in Him e’er know
Ourselves must grow and be.
~ Angelus Silesius
Swami Vivekananda
Vedanta – Voice of Freedom
Good is near Truth but is not yet Truth. After learning not to
be disturbed by evil, we have to learn not to be made happy by
good. We must find that we are beyond both evil and good. We
must study their adjustment and see that they are both
necessary.
Really good and evil are one and are in our mind. When the
mind is self-poised, neither good nor bad affects it. Be perfectly
free – then neither can affect you, and you will enjoy freedom
and bliss. Evil is the iron chain, good is the gold one: Both are
chains. The thorn of evil is in our flesh. Take another thorn
from the same bush and extract the first thorn, then throw
away both and be free.
There is only one Power, whether manifesting as evil or
good. God and the devil are the same river with the water
flowing in opposite directions.
When we realize that the way we are experiencing things is mixed up
with our own interpretations of things and our reactions to our own
interpretations, we learn to refrain from taking our own representa-
tions for ineluctable realities, and thus reduce our susceptibility to
compulsion and obsession. Within the calmness and stability this in-
sight produces, we can distinguish between subjective projections and
objective truths.
Zen and the Art of Insight Thomas Cleary
“When you most desire to be alone with God, distracting concepts
will slip into your mind with such stealth that only constant vigilance
will detect them. Be sure that if you are occupied with something less
than God, you place it above you for the time being and create a
barrier between yourself and God.”
~ Cloud of Unknowing
When you desire the common good, the whole world
desires with you. Make humanity’s desire your own
and work for it. There you cannot fail.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That
everything arises, unfolds, and subsides
within its all-compassionate love.
Oneness is our real Self.
Everything is an aspect of Oneness.
And our quest to know this comes from Oneness.
Abhinavagupta on the teachings of Non-dual Kashmir Shaivism
A man has many skins in himself, covering the depths of his heart.
Man knows so many things; he does not know himself. Why, thirty
or forty skins or hides, just like an ox’s or a bear’s, so thick and
hard, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know
yourself.
~ Meister Eckhart
Papaji:
Self is what you are.
You are That Fathomlessness
in which experience and concepts appear.
Self is the Moment that has no coming or going.
It is the Heart, Atman, Emptiness.
It shines to Itself, by Itself, in Itself.
Self is what gives breath to Life.
You need not search for It, It is Here.
You are That through which you would search.
You are what you are looking for!
And That is All it is.
Only Self is.
Gitanjali 69:
THE same stream of life that runs through my veins night
and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic
measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of
the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into
tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of
birth and death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this
world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages
dancing in my blood this moment.
Rabindranath Tagore
From The Bhagavad Gita:
… the beginningless Brahman, … can be called neither being nor
nonbeing. It is both near and far, both within and without every
creature; it moves and is unmoving. In its subtlety it is beyond
comprehension. It is indivisible, yet appears divided in separate
creatures. Know it to be the creator, the preserver, and the
destroyer. Dwelling in every heart, it is beyond darkness. It is
called the light of lights, the object and goal of knowledge, and
knowledge itself.
Dying and giving birth go on
inside the one consciousness,
but most people misunderstand
the pure play of creative energy,
how inside that, those
are one event.
Lalla
Naked Song Trans. Coleman Barks
You are the unchangeable Awareness in which all activity takes place.
Always rest in peace.
You are eternal Being, unbounded and undivided.
Just keep Quiet.
All is well.
Keep Quiet Here and Now.
You are Happiness, you are Peace, you are Freedom.
Do not entertain any notions that you are in trouble.
Be kind to yourself.
Open to your Heart and simply Be.
~ Papaji
All objects unfold in perceiving.
The perceiver is also in the perceiving.
Here, there is only perceiving.
There is no split.
There is no separate self.
There is no separate other.
Everything is made of the same substance.
There is only Oneness.
There is only love.
~ Richard Miller
Papaji:
Look within,
There is no difference
between yourself, Self and Guru.
You are always Free.
There is no teacher,
there is no student,
there is no teaching.
Oneness is Compassionate.
Oneness has no judgement.
Oneness sees everything as it is.
Oneness allows everything as it is.
Oneness is all there is.
~ Richard Miller
Lalla, you’ve wandered so many places
trying to find your husband!
Now at last, inside the walls
of this body-house, in the heart-shrine,
you discover where he lives.
Lalla
Naked Song Trans. Coleman Barks
Being without passion,
behold the source!
Being with passion,
behold the flow!
The two are one -
born of the same root,
differently named when they appear.
Both may be called mystery -
going from mystery to deeper mystery,
enter the secret of Life!
~ Laozi
When you know yourself, your “I-ness” vanishes
and you know that you and God are one and the same.
~Ibn ‘Arabi
From: The Spirit of Tao Thomas Cleary
SAYINGS OF ANCESTOR LU
Nothingness
Those obstructed by nothingness, clinging one-sidedly to
this principle, sit blankly to clear away sense objects and
think that the Way is herein. None of them seeks the secret
of nurturing the three treasures. Though they speak of
reaching nothingness, this is really not the Way. The ulti-
mate Way is not in reification, nor simple nothingness.
The mystic essential is to balance openness and realism.
In terms of ephemeral manifestations, even the body
passes away, to say nothing of success, fame, wealth,
and rank. In terms of reality, all beings are oneself,
to say nothing of family members. If people can see
through the ephemeral and recognize the real, then
they can bear great social responsibilities and at the
same time be free from the bonds of the world.
-Huanchu Daoren
Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7:
That which is the finest essence–this whole world has
that as its soul. That is Reality. That is the Self (Atman).
That art thou.
From: Tantra – The Path of Ecstasy
Georg Feurstein
This Is the Other World
Although in many respects Tantra continued the metaphysics and
language of nondualism, it often sought to express new meanings
through them. The Tantric One (eka), for instance, is not the life-
negating Singularity of some brahmanical teachers but the all-
encompassing Whole ( purna), which is present as the body, the
mind, and the world yet transcends all of these. At its best, Tantra
is integralism. This is hinted at in the word tantra itself, which, among
other things, means “continuum.”
This continuum is what the enlightened adepts realize as nirvana
and what unenlightened worldlings experience as samsara. These are
not distinct, opposite realities. They are absolutely the same Being,
the same essence (samarasa). That essence merely appears different to
different people because of their karmic predispositions, which are
like veils or mental filters obscuring the truth. To ordinary worldlings,
the One remains utterly hidden. To spiritual seekers, it seems a dis-
tant goal, perhaps realizable after many lifetimes. To initiates, it is a
reliable inner guide. To the Self realized sages, it is the only One that
exists, for they have *become* the Whole.
No Water, No Moon
When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku
she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long
time. At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an
old pail bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the
bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was
set free ! In commemoration, she wrote a
poem :
In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom felt out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
From: Teachings of Zen Ed. Thomas Cleary
This Mind
Bodhidharma came from the West and just pointed to
the human mind, to show its nature and enlighten
it. That was undeniably direct and economical, but
when seen with the absolute eye, it is already all mixed
up. There is no choice for now but to make some medi-
cine for a dead horse.
This mind that is simply pointed to is precisely what
the Buddha could not express in forty-nine years of
lectures and talks. It is extremely rarefied, extremely
subtle; few are able to find the true pulse.
This mind cannot be transmitted but can only be
experienced in oneself and understood in oneself.
When you get to the point where there is neither
delusion nor enlightenment, you simply dress and eat as
normal, without a bunch of arcane interpretations and
lines of doctrine jamming your chest, so you’re clear
and uncluttered.
Ying-an (d. 1163)
Now I am called the shepherd of the desert gazelles,
Now a Christian monk,
Now a Zoroastrian.
The Beloved is Three, yet One :
Just as the three are in reality one.
~Ibn El-Arabi
From The Way of the Sufi Idries Shah
As for me, I delight in the everyday Way,
Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness I am completely free,
With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever.
There are roads, but they do not reach the world;
Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts?
On a bed of stone I sit, alone in the night,
While the round moon climbs up Cold Mountain.
~ Han Shan
A telling analogy for life and death:
Compare the two of them to water and ice.
Water draws together to become ice,
And ice disperses again to become water.
Whatever has died is sure to be born again;
Whatever is born comes around again to dying.
As ice and water do one another no harm,
So life and death, the two of them, are fine.
~ Han Shan
Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself
into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become
enlightened.
When you sit, let it be. What you walk, let it be. Grasp
at nothing. Resist nothing.
from A Still Forest Pool by Ajhan Chah
To love is to know Me,
My innermost nature,
The truth that I am.
Bhagavad Gita 18.55
The Sea Is Our Essence
We are of the sea, and the sea is our essence;
why then is there this duality between us?
The world is an imaginary line before the sight;
read well that line, for it was inscribed by us.
Whatsoever we possess in both the worlds
in reality, my friend, belongs to God.
His love I keep secretly in my heart;
the less of the pain of His love is our cure.
Companions are we of the cup, comrades of the saki,
lest thou suppose that he is apart from us:
it is the assembly of love, and we are drunk -
who ever enjoyed so royal a party?
So long as Ni’mat Allah is the slave of the Lord,
the king of the world is as a beggar at his door.
~Ni’mat Allah
From: The Element Book of Mystical Verse
Truth Is One
In long devotion to forms that cheat
Thou hast suffered the days of thy life to fleet:
But outward forms are still passing away,
Changing their fashion from day to day.
Tread not ever on stones that are rough to thy feet;
Nor shift from one branch to another thy seat.
Seek high o’er the sphere of the world thy rest;
In the world of reality make thee a nest.
If Truth be thine object, form-worshippers shun;
For form is manifold, Truth is one.
In number trouble and error lie.
To Unity then for sure refuge fly.
If the might of the foeman oppress thee sore,
Fly to the fortress and fear no more.
~ Jami
From: The Element Book of Mystical Verse
In God nought e’er is known.
Forever one is He.
What we in Him e’er know
Ourselves must grow and be.
~ Angelus Silesius
Swami Vivekananda
Vedanta – Voice of Freedom
Good is near Truth but is not yet Truth. After learning not to
be disturbed by evil, we have to learn not to be made happy by
good. We must find that we are beyond both evil and good. We
must study their adjustment and see that they are both
necessary.
Really good and evil are one and are in our mind. When the
mind is self-poised, neither good nor bad affects it. Be perfectly
free – then neither can affect you, and you will enjoy freedom
and bliss. Evil is the iron chain, good is the gold one: Both are
chains. The thorn of evil is in our flesh. Take another thorn
from the same bush and extract the first thorn, then throw
away both and be free.
There is only one Power, whether manifesting as evil or
good. God and the devil are the same river with the water
flowing in opposite directions.
When we realize that the way we are experiencing things is mixed up
with our own interpretations of things and our reactions to our own
interpretations, we learn to refrain from taking our own representa-
tions for ineluctable realities, and thus reduce our susceptibility to
compulsion and obsession. Within the calmness and stability this in-
sight produces, we can distinguish between subjective projections and
objective truths.
Zen and the Art of Insight Thomas Cleary
“When you most desire to be alone with God, distracting concepts
will slip into your mind with such stealth that only constant vigilance
will detect them. Be sure that if you are occupied with something less
than God, you place it above you for the time being and create a
barrier between yourself and God.”
~ Cloud of Unknowing
When you desire the common good, the whole world
desires with you. Make humanity’s desire your own
and work for it. There you cannot fail.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That
Oneness Quotes 4
Eye cannot see him, nor words reveal him;
by the senses, austerity, or works he is not known.
When the mind is cleansed by the grace of wisdom,
he is seen by contemplation–the One without parts.
Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.8
This then, is the human problem; there is a price to
be paid for every increase in consciousness. We
cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being
more sensitive to pain.
~Alan Watts
“It (the state of mind) should be like a lotus leaf, which
though in water, with its stem in the mud and flower above,
is yet untouched by both. Similarly, the mind should be kept
untainted by the mud of desires and the water of distractions,
even though engaged in worldly activities.”
~ Nityananda
From The Conference of the Birds
by Farid Ud-Din Attar Trans. Dick Davis/Afkham Darbandi
The sufi who thought he had left the world
A sufi once, with nothing on his mind,
Was – without warning – struck at from behind.
He turned and murmured, choking back the tears:
“The man you hit’s been dead for thirty years
He’s left this world!” The man who’d struck him said:
“You talk a lot for someone who is dead!
But talk’s not action – while you boast, you stray
Further and further from the secret Way,
And while a hair of you remains, your heart
And Truth are still a hundred worlds apart.”
Burn all you have, all that you thought and knew
(Even your shroud must go; let that burn too);
Then leap into the flames, and as you burn
Your pride will falter, you’ll begin to learn.
But keep one needle back and you will meet
A hundred thieves who force you to retreat
(Think of that tiny needle which became
The negligible cause of Jesus’ shame*).
As you approach this stage’s final veil,
Kingdoms and wealth, substance and water fail;
Withdraw into yourself, and one by one
Give up the things you own – when this is done,
Be still in selflessness and pass beyond
All thoughts of good and evil; break this bond,
And as it shatters you are worthy of
Oblivion, the Nothingness of love.
Jesus had a needle with him when he entered heaven,
breaking God’s prohibition on earthly possessions.
Peace does not mean the absence of war.
Peace means the presence of harmony,
love, satisfaction and oneness.”
~Sri Chinmoy
All this dying is not the death of the physical form:
this body is only an instrument for the spirit.
There is many a martyred soul that has died to self in this world,
though it goes about like the living.
The animal self has died, though the body, which is its sword, survives:
the sword is still in the hand of that eager warrior.
The sword is the same sword; the person is not the same person,
but this appearance of identity bewilders you.
~Rumi
Jewels of Remembrance Camille and Kabir Helminski
What is in one is in the whole, and therefore, ultimately,
Each soul is responsible for the whole world.
~ Gary Zukav
In life and in love, there is only that moment, the NOW.
The only reality we know is what we experience this very second.
Reality is not what has passed or what has yet to come into being.
Grabbing hold of this simple idea makes life magical
because it brings love alive.
~ Leo Buscaglia
You are telling us to ‘let go’, but it is very difficult.
That’s because you have the idea that ‘letting go’ is something
that you have to do. To move from one place to another may be
difficult if the journey is long and hard. But if you don’t have
to move at all, how can you say that it is difficult? Just give
up the idea that you have to do something or reach somewhere.
That’s all you have to do.
Dialogues with the Master Sri H.W.L. Poonja
(Papaji)
Between me and You, there is only me.
Take away the me, so only You remain.
~Al-Hallaj
Gitanjali – Song Offerings by Rabindranath Tagore
6.
Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it
droop and drop into the dust.
I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch
of pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before
I am aware, and the time of offering go by.
Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this
flower in thy service and pluck it while there is time.
I have occasionally spoken of a light in the soul which is
uncreated and uncreatable. . . . This light is not satisfied
with the simple, still and divine being which neither gives
nor takes, but rather it desires to know from where this
being comes. It wants to penetrate to the simple ground,
to the still desert, into which distinction never peeped,
neither Father, Son nor Holy Spirit. There, in that most
inward place, where everyone is a stranger, the light is
satisfied, and there it is more inward than it is in itself,
for this ground is a simple stillness which is immovable
in itself. But all things are moved by this immovability
and all the forms of life are conceived by it which,
possessing the light of reason, live of themselves.
~Meister Eckhart
No past.
No future.
Open Mind.
Open Heart.
Complete attention.
No reservations.
That’s all.
~Scott Morrison
Hasan Dagh
Never will you reach that silver mountain
which appears, like a cloud of joy,
in the evening light.
Never can you cross that lake of salt
which treacherously smiles at you
in the morning mist.
Every step on this road takes you farther away
from home, from flowers, from spring.
Sometimes the shade of a cloud will dance on the way
Sometimes you rest in a ruined caravanserai
seeking the truth from the blackish tresses of smoke
Sometimes you walk a few steps
with a kindred soul
only to lose him again.
You go, and go
torn by the wind, burnt by the sun,
and the shepherd’s flute
tells you “the Path in Blood”
until you cry no more
until the lake of salt
is only your dried-up tears
which mirror the mountain of joy
that is closer to you than your heart.
~Annemarie Schimmel, Nightingales Under the Snow Variations on Rumi’s Thoughts
The Ocean cannot stay alone
and so the notion of wave is created.
When waves rise Ocean loses nothing
and when waves fall Ocean gains nothing.
Samsara, the illusion, Maya, the play,
is the wave on the Ocean of Nirvana.
Waves are not separate from the Ocean,
rays are not separate from the Sun,
You are not separate from
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.
This is a reflection of That.
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
(Papaji)
The Holy Longing
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent.
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.
In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.
Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher lovemaking
sweeps you upward.
Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.
~ translated by Robert Bly
Separate yourself from all twoness.
Be one on one, one with one, one from one.
~ Meister Eckhart
Become aware of what is in you.
Announce it, pronounce it,
produce it and give birth to it.
~ Meister Eckhart
Love is the light that dissolves all walls
between souls, families and nations.
~ Paramahansa Yogananda
You and I and everything in the universe
exist as a part of the endless flow of God’s Love.
Realizing this, we recognize that all creation
is bound together with the same benevolence.
To harmonize with life is to come into accord
with that part of God which flows through all things.
To foster and protect all life
is both our mission and our prayer.
~ Morehei Ueshiba
O friend,
Life fills the world.
Thou and I are in eternal union.
~ Aurobindo Ghose
Folded Into the River
Your face is the light in here that makes
my arms full of gentleness.
The beginning of a month-long holiday, the disc
of the full moon, the shade of your hair,
these draw me in. I dive
into the deep pool of a mountain river,
folded into union,
as the split-second when the bat meets the ball,
and there is one cry between us.
~Rumi Ode 2253
Open Secret trans. Coleman Barks
Confucianism. Doctrine of the Mean 26
Absolute truth is indestructible. Being indestructible, it is eternal. Being
eternal, it is self-existent. Being self-existent, it is infinite. Being
infinite, it is vast and deep. Being vast and deep, it is transcendental and
intelligent. It is because it is vast and deep that it contains all existence.
It is because it is transcendental and intelligent that it embraces all
existence. It is because it is infinite and eternal that it fulfills or perfects
all existence. In vastness and depth it is like the Earth. In transcendental
intelligence it is like Heaven. Infinite and eternal, it is the Infinite itself.
Such being the nature of absolute truth, it manifests itself without being seen;
it produces effects without motion; it accomplishes its ends without action.
Withdraw now from the invisible pounding and weaving of your
ingrained ideas. If you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil,
you must just sit through it and let go of everything. Attain
fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly. Light and shadow altogether
forgotten. Drop off your own skin, and the sense-dusts will be
fully purified. The eye then readily discerns the brightness.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)
From: Zen Wisdom Ed. Timothy Freke
One embraces All
All merges in One
One is All
All is One
One pervades All
All is in One
Within You Without You
The Beatles (Harrison)
We were talking-about the space between us all
And the people-who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth-then it’s far too late-when they pass away.
We were talking-about the love we all could share-when we find it
To try our best to hold it there-with our love
With our love-we could save the world-if they only knew.
Try to realise it’s all within yourself
no-one else can make you change
And to see you’re really only very small,
and life flows within you and without you.
We were talking-about the love that’s gone so cold and the people,
Who gain the world and lose their soul-
they don’t know-they can’t see-are you one of them?
When you’ve seen beyond yourself-then you may find, peace of mind,
is waiting there-
And the time will come when you see
we’re all one, and life flows on within you and without you.
Your eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is sound,
your whole body is full of light; but when it is not sound,
your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest
the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is
full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright,
as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.
Luke 11.34-36
We don’t have awareness, we are awareness. And awareness is
love. When it is wide open, when it is not fixated on some narrow and
contrived identity, some narrow craving, argument, irritation, or fear,
the nature of awareness is unconditionally affectionate, tender,
sensitive, and compassionate. Advaita Vedanta, Christian meditation,
the Buddhadharma, Kabbalah, Vipassana, Tibetan Dzogchen, Zen practice,
Sufi practice, and all true forms of mysticism, at their very best, are
simply doors to this discovery. The radical, unconditional mercy of Jesus,
the uncorrupted compassion and understanding of the Buddha – these are
just metaphors for your own pure heart, the core of your own being.
Yours, mine, everyone’s.
Scott Morrison
Everything
just as it is,
as it is,
as is.
Flowers in bloom.
Nothing to add.
~Robert Aitken, Roshi, As it Is
Whenever one is confronted with an inescapable, unavoidable situation,
whenever one has to face a fate that cannot be changed, e.g., an incurable
disease, such as an inoperable cancer, just then is one given a last chance
to actualize the highest value, to fulfill the deepest meaning, the meaning
of suffering. For what matters above all is the attitude we take toward
suffering, the attitude in which we take our suffering upon ourselves.
~ Viktor Frankl
From: Grist For the Mill Ram Dass
Nobody Special
WE ARE IN TRAINING to be nobody special. And it is in that
nobody-specialness that we can be anybody. The fatigue, the
neurosis, the anxiety, the fear, all comes from identifying
with the somebody-ness. But you have to start somewhere. It
does seem that you have to be somebody before you can
become nobody. If you started out being nobody at the be-
ginning of this incarnation, you probably wouldn’t have made
it this far. Blue babies are examples of nobody special. They
just don’t have the will to breathe or eat or live. For it’s that
force of somebody-ness that develops the social and physical
survival mechanisms. It’s only now, having evolved to this
point, that we learn to put that somebody-ness, that whole
survival kit, which is called the ego, into perspective.
When I was a Harvard professor, I would spend all my
time thinking. I was paid for that. I would have clipboards
and tape recorders to collect all my thoughts. Now I’ve be-
come very simple. My mind is quite empty. There is nothing
in there at all, and I just sit looking stupid. Then when some-
thing needs to happen, it happens, and I don’t have to listen
to it.
The practice of breathing in and out of the phrase “Toward the
One” can be done at almost any time. One should breathe in a
most natural fashion, without attempting to alter the breath in
any way. You simply become one with your breath in whatever
condition it may be in. The thought and feeling of oneness held
in such a fashion allows a person to become united with what-
ever space or situation he finds himself in. Gradually the bound-
aries of one’s being dissolve. External distractions are overcome
by merging with them, including them in overall compass by
your being.
~Pir Villayat Khan
‘Essential Sufism’
Eds. Fadiman/Frager
by the senses, austerity, or works he is not known.
When the mind is cleansed by the grace of wisdom,
he is seen by contemplation–the One without parts.
Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.8
This then, is the human problem; there is a price to
be paid for every increase in consciousness. We
cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being
more sensitive to pain.
~Alan Watts
“It (the state of mind) should be like a lotus leaf, which
though in water, with its stem in the mud and flower above,
is yet untouched by both. Similarly, the mind should be kept
untainted by the mud of desires and the water of distractions,
even though engaged in worldly activities.”
~ Nityananda
From The Conference of the Birds
by Farid Ud-Din Attar Trans. Dick Davis/Afkham Darbandi
The sufi who thought he had left the world
A sufi once, with nothing on his mind,
Was – without warning – struck at from behind.
He turned and murmured, choking back the tears:
“The man you hit’s been dead for thirty years
He’s left this world!” The man who’d struck him said:
“You talk a lot for someone who is dead!
But talk’s not action – while you boast, you stray
Further and further from the secret Way,
And while a hair of you remains, your heart
And Truth are still a hundred worlds apart.”
Burn all you have, all that you thought and knew
(Even your shroud must go; let that burn too);
Then leap into the flames, and as you burn
Your pride will falter, you’ll begin to learn.
But keep one needle back and you will meet
A hundred thieves who force you to retreat
(Think of that tiny needle which became
The negligible cause of Jesus’ shame*).
As you approach this stage’s final veil,
Kingdoms and wealth, substance and water fail;
Withdraw into yourself, and one by one
Give up the things you own – when this is done,
Be still in selflessness and pass beyond
All thoughts of good and evil; break this bond,
And as it shatters you are worthy of
Oblivion, the Nothingness of love.
Jesus had a needle with him when he entered heaven,
breaking God’s prohibition on earthly possessions.
Peace does not mean the absence of war.
Peace means the presence of harmony,
love, satisfaction and oneness.”
~Sri Chinmoy
All this dying is not the death of the physical form:
this body is only an instrument for the spirit.
There is many a martyred soul that has died to self in this world,
though it goes about like the living.
The animal self has died, though the body, which is its sword, survives:
the sword is still in the hand of that eager warrior.
The sword is the same sword; the person is not the same person,
but this appearance of identity bewilders you.
~Rumi
Jewels of Remembrance Camille and Kabir Helminski
What is in one is in the whole, and therefore, ultimately,
Each soul is responsible for the whole world.
~ Gary Zukav
In life and in love, there is only that moment, the NOW.
The only reality we know is what we experience this very second.
Reality is not what has passed or what has yet to come into being.
Grabbing hold of this simple idea makes life magical
because it brings love alive.
~ Leo Buscaglia
You are telling us to ‘let go’, but it is very difficult.
That’s because you have the idea that ‘letting go’ is something
that you have to do. To move from one place to another may be
difficult if the journey is long and hard. But if you don’t have
to move at all, how can you say that it is difficult? Just give
up the idea that you have to do something or reach somewhere.
That’s all you have to do.
Dialogues with the Master Sri H.W.L. Poonja
(Papaji)
Between me and You, there is only me.
Take away the me, so only You remain.
~Al-Hallaj
Gitanjali – Song Offerings by Rabindranath Tagore
6.
Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it
droop and drop into the dust.
I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch
of pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before
I am aware, and the time of offering go by.
Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this
flower in thy service and pluck it while there is time.
I have occasionally spoken of a light in the soul which is
uncreated and uncreatable. . . . This light is not satisfied
with the simple, still and divine being which neither gives
nor takes, but rather it desires to know from where this
being comes. It wants to penetrate to the simple ground,
to the still desert, into which distinction never peeped,
neither Father, Son nor Holy Spirit. There, in that most
inward place, where everyone is a stranger, the light is
satisfied, and there it is more inward than it is in itself,
for this ground is a simple stillness which is immovable
in itself. But all things are moved by this immovability
and all the forms of life are conceived by it which,
possessing the light of reason, live of themselves.
~Meister Eckhart
No past.
No future.
Open Mind.
Open Heart.
Complete attention.
No reservations.
That’s all.
~Scott Morrison
Hasan Dagh
Never will you reach that silver mountain
which appears, like a cloud of joy,
in the evening light.
Never can you cross that lake of salt
which treacherously smiles at you
in the morning mist.
Every step on this road takes you farther away
from home, from flowers, from spring.
Sometimes the shade of a cloud will dance on the way
Sometimes you rest in a ruined caravanserai
seeking the truth from the blackish tresses of smoke
Sometimes you walk a few steps
with a kindred soul
only to lose him again.
You go, and go
torn by the wind, burnt by the sun,
and the shepherd’s flute
tells you “the Path in Blood”
until you cry no more
until the lake of salt
is only your dried-up tears
which mirror the mountain of joy
that is closer to you than your heart.
~Annemarie Schimmel, Nightingales Under the Snow Variations on Rumi’s Thoughts
The Ocean cannot stay alone
and so the notion of wave is created.
When waves rise Ocean loses nothing
and when waves fall Ocean gains nothing.
Samsara, the illusion, Maya, the play,
is the wave on the Ocean of Nirvana.
Waves are not separate from the Ocean,
rays are not separate from the Sun,
You are not separate from
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.
This is a reflection of That.
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
(Papaji)
The Holy Longing
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent.
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.
In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.
Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher lovemaking
sweeps you upward.
Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.
~ translated by Robert Bly
Separate yourself from all twoness.
Be one on one, one with one, one from one.
~ Meister Eckhart
Become aware of what is in you.
Announce it, pronounce it,
produce it and give birth to it.
~ Meister Eckhart
Love is the light that dissolves all walls
between souls, families and nations.
~ Paramahansa Yogananda
You and I and everything in the universe
exist as a part of the endless flow of God’s Love.
Realizing this, we recognize that all creation
is bound together with the same benevolence.
To harmonize with life is to come into accord
with that part of God which flows through all things.
To foster and protect all life
is both our mission and our prayer.
~ Morehei Ueshiba
O friend,
Life fills the world.
Thou and I are in eternal union.
~ Aurobindo Ghose
Folded Into the River
Your face is the light in here that makes
my arms full of gentleness.
The beginning of a month-long holiday, the disc
of the full moon, the shade of your hair,
these draw me in. I dive
into the deep pool of a mountain river,
folded into union,
as the split-second when the bat meets the ball,
and there is one cry between us.
~Rumi Ode 2253
Open Secret trans. Coleman Barks
Confucianism. Doctrine of the Mean 26
Absolute truth is indestructible. Being indestructible, it is eternal. Being
eternal, it is self-existent. Being self-existent, it is infinite. Being
infinite, it is vast and deep. Being vast and deep, it is transcendental and
intelligent. It is because it is vast and deep that it contains all existence.
It is because it is transcendental and intelligent that it embraces all
existence. It is because it is infinite and eternal that it fulfills or perfects
all existence. In vastness and depth it is like the Earth. In transcendental
intelligence it is like Heaven. Infinite and eternal, it is the Infinite itself.
Such being the nature of absolute truth, it manifests itself without being seen;
it produces effects without motion; it accomplishes its ends without action.
Withdraw now from the invisible pounding and weaving of your
ingrained ideas. If you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil,
you must just sit through it and let go of everything. Attain
fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly. Light and shadow altogether
forgotten. Drop off your own skin, and the sense-dusts will be
fully purified. The eye then readily discerns the brightness.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)
From: Zen Wisdom Ed. Timothy Freke
One embraces All
All merges in One
One is All
All is One
One pervades All
All is in One
Within You Without You
The Beatles (Harrison)
We were talking-about the space between us all
And the people-who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth-then it’s far too late-when they pass away.
We were talking-about the love we all could share-when we find it
To try our best to hold it there-with our love
With our love-we could save the world-if they only knew.
Try to realise it’s all within yourself
no-one else can make you change
And to see you’re really only very small,
and life flows within you and without you.
We were talking-about the love that’s gone so cold and the people,
Who gain the world and lose their soul-
they don’t know-they can’t see-are you one of them?
When you’ve seen beyond yourself-then you may find, peace of mind,
is waiting there-
And the time will come when you see
we’re all one, and life flows on within you and without you.
Your eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is sound,
your whole body is full of light; but when it is not sound,
your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest
the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is
full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright,
as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.
Luke 11.34-36
We don’t have awareness, we are awareness. And awareness is
love. When it is wide open, when it is not fixated on some narrow and
contrived identity, some narrow craving, argument, irritation, or fear,
the nature of awareness is unconditionally affectionate, tender,
sensitive, and compassionate. Advaita Vedanta, Christian meditation,
the Buddhadharma, Kabbalah, Vipassana, Tibetan Dzogchen, Zen practice,
Sufi practice, and all true forms of mysticism, at their very best, are
simply doors to this discovery. The radical, unconditional mercy of Jesus,
the uncorrupted compassion and understanding of the Buddha – these are
just metaphors for your own pure heart, the core of your own being.
Yours, mine, everyone’s.
Scott Morrison
Everything
just as it is,
as it is,
as is.
Flowers in bloom.
Nothing to add.
~Robert Aitken, Roshi, As it Is
Whenever one is confronted with an inescapable, unavoidable situation,
whenever one has to face a fate that cannot be changed, e.g., an incurable
disease, such as an inoperable cancer, just then is one given a last chance
to actualize the highest value, to fulfill the deepest meaning, the meaning
of suffering. For what matters above all is the attitude we take toward
suffering, the attitude in which we take our suffering upon ourselves.
~ Viktor Frankl
From: Grist For the Mill Ram Dass
Nobody Special
WE ARE IN TRAINING to be nobody special. And it is in that
nobody-specialness that we can be anybody. The fatigue, the
neurosis, the anxiety, the fear, all comes from identifying
with the somebody-ness. But you have to start somewhere. It
does seem that you have to be somebody before you can
become nobody. If you started out being nobody at the be-
ginning of this incarnation, you probably wouldn’t have made
it this far. Blue babies are examples of nobody special. They
just don’t have the will to breathe or eat or live. For it’s that
force of somebody-ness that develops the social and physical
survival mechanisms. It’s only now, having evolved to this
point, that we learn to put that somebody-ness, that whole
survival kit, which is called the ego, into perspective.
When I was a Harvard professor, I would spend all my
time thinking. I was paid for that. I would have clipboards
and tape recorders to collect all my thoughts. Now I’ve be-
come very simple. My mind is quite empty. There is nothing
in there at all, and I just sit looking stupid. Then when some-
thing needs to happen, it happens, and I don’t have to listen
to it.
The practice of breathing in and out of the phrase “Toward the
One” can be done at almost any time. One should breathe in a
most natural fashion, without attempting to alter the breath in
any way. You simply become one with your breath in whatever
condition it may be in. The thought and feeling of oneness held
in such a fashion allows a person to become united with what-
ever space or situation he finds himself in. Gradually the bound-
aries of one’s being dissolve. External distractions are overcome
by merging with them, including them in overall compass by
your being.
~Pir Villayat Khan
‘Essential Sufism’
Eds. Fadiman/Frager
While the concept of oneness may be intellectually appealing, it is
nevertheless difficult to put into practice. It’s no hardship to feel
oneness with great and noble beings or those we already love. It’s
also not too much of a stretch to experience a sense of unity with
the trees, the ocean, and the sky. But most of us balk at experiencing
oneness with the cockroach or the rat-let alone the obnoxious co-worker
whom we barely tolerate. Yet this is precisely where we need to apply
Vedanta’s teachings and realize that all these manifold aspects of
creation are united in and through divinity. The Self that is within me,
the Atman, is the same Self that is within you-no matter whether the
“you” in question is a saint, a murderer, a cat, a fly, a tree, or that
irritating driver at the four-way stop.
From: Vedanta society of California
Death is a favor to us,
But our scales have lost their balance.
The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity,
Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes
Of this mysterious existence we share
And are surely just traveling through.
If I were in the Tavern tonight,
Hafiz would call for drinks
And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
That all I know of life and myself is that
We are just a mid-air flight of golden wine
Between His Pitcher and His Cup.
If I were in the Tavern tonight,
I would buy freely for everyone in this world
Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
Of time and space cannot endure very long.
Death is a favor to us,
But our minds have lost their balance.
The miraculous existence and impermanence of
Form
Always makes the illumined ones
Laugh and sing.
The subject tonight is Love – 60 wild and sweet poems of Hafiz
Versions by Daniel Ladinsky
When you look into a mirror you see your face as it is; you may
wish that some parts of it were different, but the actual fact
is shown in the mirror. Now, can you look at your conditioning
in a similar way?
~ J. Krishnamurti
You must understand the whole of life, not just
one little part of it. That is why you must read,
that is why you must look at the skies, that is
why you must sing and dance, and write poems,
and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
~J.Krishnamurti
From: Kensho – The Heart of Zen Ed. Thomas Cleary
Wan-sung says: “Someone who presented a jewel in the matrix three
times to a king did not escape punishment. Thrown a luminous pearl,
few are those who do not react defensively. There may be a sudden
guest, but not a sudden host; what may be suitable temporarily is not
suitable in reality. If rarities and treasures cannot be used, bring
forth something whose price can’t be named.”
From: Kensho – The Heart of Zen Ed. Thomas Cleary
Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great teacher Bodhidharma,
“What is the ultimate meaning of the holy truths?”
Bodhidharma replied, “Empty, without holiness.”
‘The emperor said, “Who is in my presence?
Bodhidharma answered, “Don’t know.”
Having realized the Self, which is soundless, intangible, formless,
undecaying, and likewise tasteless, eternal, and odorless; having
realized That which is without beginning and end, beyond the Great,
and unchanging–one is freed from the jaws of death.
Katha Upanishad 1.3.15
There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment.
A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully
understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and
nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.
Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he
thought it were somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But
grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one
has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point
on, though he may not always bear it in mind.
When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs
will thin out.
from Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo
*Abandon Every Idea About Enlightenment*
In order to be successful in your quest for Freedom, it is imperative
that you unconditionally abandon every idea that you have about
Enlightenment. As long as you think that Enlightenment is something that
can be understood by the mind, the cycle of blindly perpetuating your own
ignorance will never cease.
from Enlightenment is a Secret By Andrew Cohen
Where one sees nothing but the One, hears nothing but the One, knows
nothing but the One–there is the Infinite. Where one sees another, hears
another, knows another–there is the finite. The Infinite is immortal,
the finite is mortal.
It is written, He who has realized eternal Truth does not see death, nor
illness, nor pain; he sees everything as the Self, and obtains all.
Chandogya Upanishad 7.23, 27
To love is to know Me,
My innermost nature,
The truth that I am.
Bhagavad Gita 18.55
Isaiah 11.6-9:
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall feed;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as waters cover the sea.
The Call of the Beloved
Every morning a voice comes to thee from
heaven:
‘When thou lay’st the dust of the way, thou
win’st thy way to the goal.’
On the road to the Ka’ba of Union, lo, in every
thorn-bush
Are thousands slain of desire who manfully
yielded up their lives.
Thousands sank wounded on this path, to whom
there came not
A breath of the fragrance of Union, a token from
the neighbourhood of the Friend.
~ Rumi (trans F Hadland Davis)
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say,
and what you do are in harmony.”
~ Mohandas K. Gandhi
The Rhodora: On Being Asked, Whence
Is the Flower?
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, 0 rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self same Power that brought me there brought you.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Disappearance
Thich Nhat Hanh
The leaf tips bend
under the weight of dew.
Fruits are ripening
in Earth’s early morning.
Daffodils light up in the sun.
The curtain of cloud at the gateway
of the garden path begins to shift:
have pity for childhood,
the way of illusion.
Late at night,
the candle gutters.
In some distant desert,
a flower opens.
And somewhere else,
a cold aster
that never knew a cassava patch
or gardens of areca palms,
never knew the joy of life,
at that instant disappears-
man’s eternal yearning.
Those who practice the Art of Peace must protect the
domain of Mother Nature, the divine reflection of
creation, and keep it lovely and fresh. Warriorship
gives birth to natural beauty. The subtle techniques
of a warrior arise as naturally as the appearance of
spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Warriorship is
none other than the vitality that sustains all life.
~ Morihei Ueshiba
Inside this clay jar there are meadows and groves and the One
who made them.
Inside this jar there are seven oceans and innumerable stars, acid
to test gold, and a patient appraiser of jewels.
Inside this jar the music of eternity, and a spring flows from the
source of all waters.
Kabir says: Listen, friend! My beloved Master lives inside.
~ Kabir
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass
The world is no more than the Beloved’s single face;
In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist.
Each place, each moment, sings its particular song of not-being
and being.
Without reason, the clear glass equally mirrors wisdom and
madness.
Those who claim knowledge are wrong; prayer just leads to
trance;
Appearance and faith are mere lees in the Unknowing Wine.
Wherever the Footprint is found,
that handful of dust holds the oneness of worlds.
This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love
That the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light.
~ Ghalib
Even at prayer, our eyes look inward;
If the gate to the holy is shut, we just turn away.
The One is only the One, everyone knows –
What mirroring icon could hold it face to face?
Held back unvoiced, grief bruises the heart;
Not reaching the river, a raindrop is swallowed by dust.
If a story brings only tears and not blood to the eyes,
It is simply a lovers’ tale.
Whoever can’t see the whole in every part plays at
blind man’s buff;
A wise man tastes the entire Tigris in every sip.
~Ghalib
Original Face is the reality of realities:
Stretch your hand to the winging bird.
Vertical nose, horizontal eyes – and then?
What if your mind is empty?
~ Tokugaku (15th Century)
Ripple
Grateful Dead
Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia.
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music
Would you hold it near as it were your own?
It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they’re better left unsung
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air
(Chorus)
Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow
Reach out your hand if your cup be empty
If your cup is full may it be again
Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone
(Chorus)
You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone
If you should stand then who’s to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home.
Man should discover his own reality
and not thwart himself.
For he has the self as his only friend,
or as his only enemy.
A person has the self as a friend
when he has conquered himself,
But if he rejects his own reality,
the self will war against him.
Bhagavad Gita 6.5-6
See with your eyes, hear
with your ears.
Nothing is hidden.
~Tenkei
Everything has its “that,” everything has its “this.” From the point
of view of “that” you cannot see it, but through understanding you
can know it. So I say, “that” comes out of “this” and “this” depends
on “that”–which is to say that “this” and “that” give birth to each
other. But where there is birth there must be death; where there is
death there must be birth. Where there is acceptability there must be
unacceptability; where there is unacceptability there must be
acceptability. Where there is recognition of right there must be
recognition of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong there must
be recognition of right. Therefore the sage does not proceed in such
a way, but illuminates all in the light of Heaven. He too recognizes
a “this”, but a “this” which is also “that”; a “that” that is
also “this”. His “that” has both a right and a wrong in it;
his “this” too has both a right and a wrong in it. So, in fact, does
he still have a “this” and “that”? Or does he in fact no longer have
a “this” and “that”? A state in which “this” and “that” no longer
find their opposites is called the Hinge of the Way. When the hinge
is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly.
Chuang Tzu 2
All composite things are impermanent,
They belong in the realm of birth and death;
When birth and death is trancended,
Absolute tranquillity is realized and blessed are we.
Zen and Japanese Culture D.T. Suzuki
The body is not the Real Man; neither is the mind, for the mind waxes
and wanes. It is the Spirit beyond, which alone can live forever. The
body and mind are continually changing and are, in fact, only names
of series of changeful phenomena, like rivers whose waters are in a
constant state of flux, yet present the appearance of unbroken streams.
Every particle in this body is continually changing; no one has the same
body for many minutes together, and yet we think of it as the same body.
So with the mind: One moment it is happy, another moment unhappy;
one moment strong, another weak-an ever-changing whirlpool. That
cannot be the Spirit, which is infinite. Change can only be in the limited.
To say that the infinite changes in any way is absurd; it cannot be. You
can move and I can move, as limited bodies; every particle in this uni-
verse is in a constant state of flux. But taking the universe as a unit, as
one whole, it cannot move~ it cannot change. Motion is always a
relative thing. I move in relation to something else. Any particle in this
universe can change in relation to any other particle. But take the whole
universe as one, and in relation to what can it move? There is nothing
besides it. So this infinite Unit is unchangeable, immovable, absolute, and
this is the Real Man. Our reality, therefore, consists in the Universal and
not in the limited. These are old delusions, however comfortable they are,
to think that we are little limited beings, constantly changing.
from: Vedanta – Voice of Freedom
Swami Vivekananda
That by which our hearts are held,
whole worlds love it too.
I can’t deny the truth -
many ways lead to the One.
Those whom the Beloved loves,
we must also love.
If someone is a friend to the Friend,
how can we afford not to be friends?
If you would be a lover,
befriend him who loves your Friend;
and if you cannot,
don’t call yourself a friend of mine.
Whomever you tend to despise,
hold dear instead.
Don’t belittle others, respect them.
This is where the path leads.
If your heart is filled with love,
your way is sacrifice.
Through sacrifice you will find your place
in the ranks of Love.
Hearts which truly love the Truth,
Truth will open a door wide.
Dismantle the house of selfishness.
Put away your self-regard.
High and low, enemy, neighbor,
the Friend serves them all.
Whoever wants to spread this word
must first go out of his home.
This counsel that Yunus gives
is like buried gold.
Those who love the Friend
find peace in both worlds.
~Yunus Emre
The Drop That Became the Sea Translated by Kabir Helminski & Refik Algan
Every day, mindful practice. When the mind is disciplined then the Way can
work for us. Otherwise, all we do is talk of Tao; everything is just words;
and the world will know us as its one great fool.
~Loy Ching-Yuen, The Book of the Heart
How could the love between Thee
and me sever?
As the leaf of the water abides on the
water: so thou art my Lord, and
I am thy servant.
As the night-bird Chakor gazes all
night at the moon: so Thou art
my Lord and I am Thy servant.
From the beginning until the ending
of time, there is love between
Thee and me; and how shall such
love be extinguished?
Kabir says: ‘As the river enters into the
ocean, so my heart touches Thee.’
~Kabir
nevertheless difficult to put into practice. It’s no hardship to feel
oneness with great and noble beings or those we already love. It’s
also not too much of a stretch to experience a sense of unity with
the trees, the ocean, and the sky. But most of us balk at experiencing
oneness with the cockroach or the rat-let alone the obnoxious co-worker
whom we barely tolerate. Yet this is precisely where we need to apply
Vedanta’s teachings and realize that all these manifold aspects of
creation are united in and through divinity. The Self that is within me,
the Atman, is the same Self that is within you-no matter whether the
“you” in question is a saint, a murderer, a cat, a fly, a tree, or that
irritating driver at the four-way stop.
From: Vedanta society of California
Death is a favor to us,
But our scales have lost their balance.
The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity,
Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes
Of this mysterious existence we share
And are surely just traveling through.
If I were in the Tavern tonight,
Hafiz would call for drinks
And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
That all I know of life and myself is that
We are just a mid-air flight of golden wine
Between His Pitcher and His Cup.
If I were in the Tavern tonight,
I would buy freely for everyone in this world
Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
Of time and space cannot endure very long.
Death is a favor to us,
But our minds have lost their balance.
The miraculous existence and impermanence of
Form
Always makes the illumined ones
Laugh and sing.
The subject tonight is Love – 60 wild and sweet poems of Hafiz
Versions by Daniel Ladinsky
When you look into a mirror you see your face as it is; you may
wish that some parts of it were different, but the actual fact
is shown in the mirror. Now, can you look at your conditioning
in a similar way?
~ J. Krishnamurti
You must understand the whole of life, not just
one little part of it. That is why you must read,
that is why you must look at the skies, that is
why you must sing and dance, and write poems,
and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
~J.Krishnamurti
From: Kensho – The Heart of Zen Ed. Thomas Cleary
Wan-sung says: “Someone who presented a jewel in the matrix three
times to a king did not escape punishment. Thrown a luminous pearl,
few are those who do not react defensively. There may be a sudden
guest, but not a sudden host; what may be suitable temporarily is not
suitable in reality. If rarities and treasures cannot be used, bring
forth something whose price can’t be named.”
From: Kensho – The Heart of Zen Ed. Thomas Cleary
Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great teacher Bodhidharma,
“What is the ultimate meaning of the holy truths?”
Bodhidharma replied, “Empty, without holiness.”
‘The emperor said, “Who is in my presence?
Bodhidharma answered, “Don’t know.”
Having realized the Self, which is soundless, intangible, formless,
undecaying, and likewise tasteless, eternal, and odorless; having
realized That which is without beginning and end, beyond the Great,
and unchanging–one is freed from the jaws of death.
Katha Upanishad 1.3.15
There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment.
A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully
understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and
nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.
Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he
thought it were somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But
grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one
has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point
on, though he may not always bear it in mind.
When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs
will thin out.
from Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo
*Abandon Every Idea About Enlightenment*
In order to be successful in your quest for Freedom, it is imperative
that you unconditionally abandon every idea that you have about
Enlightenment. As long as you think that Enlightenment is something that
can be understood by the mind, the cycle of blindly perpetuating your own
ignorance will never cease.
from Enlightenment is a Secret By Andrew Cohen
Where one sees nothing but the One, hears nothing but the One, knows
nothing but the One–there is the Infinite. Where one sees another, hears
another, knows another–there is the finite. The Infinite is immortal,
the finite is mortal.
It is written, He who has realized eternal Truth does not see death, nor
illness, nor pain; he sees everything as the Self, and obtains all.
Chandogya Upanishad 7.23, 27
To love is to know Me,
My innermost nature,
The truth that I am.
Bhagavad Gita 18.55
Isaiah 11.6-9:
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall feed;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as waters cover the sea.
The Call of the Beloved
Every morning a voice comes to thee from
heaven:
‘When thou lay’st the dust of the way, thou
win’st thy way to the goal.’
On the road to the Ka’ba of Union, lo, in every
thorn-bush
Are thousands slain of desire who manfully
yielded up their lives.
Thousands sank wounded on this path, to whom
there came not
A breath of the fragrance of Union, a token from
the neighbourhood of the Friend.
~ Rumi (trans F Hadland Davis)
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say,
and what you do are in harmony.”
~ Mohandas K. Gandhi
The Rhodora: On Being Asked, Whence
Is the Flower?
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, 0 rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self same Power that brought me there brought you.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Disappearance
Thich Nhat Hanh
The leaf tips bend
under the weight of dew.
Fruits are ripening
in Earth’s early morning.
Daffodils light up in the sun.
The curtain of cloud at the gateway
of the garden path begins to shift:
have pity for childhood,
the way of illusion.
Late at night,
the candle gutters.
In some distant desert,
a flower opens.
And somewhere else,
a cold aster
that never knew a cassava patch
or gardens of areca palms,
never knew the joy of life,
at that instant disappears-
man’s eternal yearning.
Those who practice the Art of Peace must protect the
domain of Mother Nature, the divine reflection of
creation, and keep it lovely and fresh. Warriorship
gives birth to natural beauty. The subtle techniques
of a warrior arise as naturally as the appearance of
spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Warriorship is
none other than the vitality that sustains all life.
~ Morihei Ueshiba
Inside this clay jar there are meadows and groves and the One
who made them.
Inside this jar there are seven oceans and innumerable stars, acid
to test gold, and a patient appraiser of jewels.
Inside this jar the music of eternity, and a spring flows from the
source of all waters.
Kabir says: Listen, friend! My beloved Master lives inside.
~ Kabir
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass
The world is no more than the Beloved’s single face;
In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist.
Each place, each moment, sings its particular song of not-being
and being.
Without reason, the clear glass equally mirrors wisdom and
madness.
Those who claim knowledge are wrong; prayer just leads to
trance;
Appearance and faith are mere lees in the Unknowing Wine.
Wherever the Footprint is found,
that handful of dust holds the oneness of worlds.
This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love
That the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light.
~ Ghalib
Even at prayer, our eyes look inward;
If the gate to the holy is shut, we just turn away.
The One is only the One, everyone knows –
What mirroring icon could hold it face to face?
Held back unvoiced, grief bruises the heart;
Not reaching the river, a raindrop is swallowed by dust.
If a story brings only tears and not blood to the eyes,
It is simply a lovers’ tale.
Whoever can’t see the whole in every part plays at
blind man’s buff;
A wise man tastes the entire Tigris in every sip.
~Ghalib
Original Face is the reality of realities:
Stretch your hand to the winging bird.
Vertical nose, horizontal eyes – and then?
What if your mind is empty?
~ Tokugaku (15th Century)
Ripple
Grateful Dead
Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia.
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music
Would you hold it near as it were your own?
It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they’re better left unsung
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air
(Chorus)
Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow
Reach out your hand if your cup be empty
If your cup is full may it be again
Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone
(Chorus)
You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone
If you should stand then who’s to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home.
Man should discover his own reality
and not thwart himself.
For he has the self as his only friend,
or as his only enemy.
A person has the self as a friend
when he has conquered himself,
But if he rejects his own reality,
the self will war against him.
Bhagavad Gita 6.5-6
See with your eyes, hear
with your ears.
Nothing is hidden.
~Tenkei
Everything has its “that,” everything has its “this.” From the point
of view of “that” you cannot see it, but through understanding you
can know it. So I say, “that” comes out of “this” and “this” depends
on “that”–which is to say that “this” and “that” give birth to each
other. But where there is birth there must be death; where there is
death there must be birth. Where there is acceptability there must be
unacceptability; where there is unacceptability there must be
acceptability. Where there is recognition of right there must be
recognition of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong there must
be recognition of right. Therefore the sage does not proceed in such
a way, but illuminates all in the light of Heaven. He too recognizes
a “this”, but a “this” which is also “that”; a “that” that is
also “this”. His “that” has both a right and a wrong in it;
his “this” too has both a right and a wrong in it. So, in fact, does
he still have a “this” and “that”? Or does he in fact no longer have
a “this” and “that”? A state in which “this” and “that” no longer
find their opposites is called the Hinge of the Way. When the hinge
is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly.
Chuang Tzu 2
All composite things are impermanent,
They belong in the realm of birth and death;
When birth and death is trancended,
Absolute tranquillity is realized and blessed are we.
Zen and Japanese Culture D.T. Suzuki
The body is not the Real Man; neither is the mind, for the mind waxes
and wanes. It is the Spirit beyond, which alone can live forever. The
body and mind are continually changing and are, in fact, only names
of series of changeful phenomena, like rivers whose waters are in a
constant state of flux, yet present the appearance of unbroken streams.
Every particle in this body is continually changing; no one has the same
body for many minutes together, and yet we think of it as the same body.
So with the mind: One moment it is happy, another moment unhappy;
one moment strong, another weak-an ever-changing whirlpool. That
cannot be the Spirit, which is infinite. Change can only be in the limited.
To say that the infinite changes in any way is absurd; it cannot be. You
can move and I can move, as limited bodies; every particle in this uni-
verse is in a constant state of flux. But taking the universe as a unit, as
one whole, it cannot move~ it cannot change. Motion is always a
relative thing. I move in relation to something else. Any particle in this
universe can change in relation to any other particle. But take the whole
universe as one, and in relation to what can it move? There is nothing
besides it. So this infinite Unit is unchangeable, immovable, absolute, and
this is the Real Man. Our reality, therefore, consists in the Universal and
not in the limited. These are old delusions, however comfortable they are,
to think that we are little limited beings, constantly changing.
from: Vedanta – Voice of Freedom
Swami Vivekananda
That by which our hearts are held,
whole worlds love it too.
I can’t deny the truth -
many ways lead to the One.
Those whom the Beloved loves,
we must also love.
If someone is a friend to the Friend,
how can we afford not to be friends?
If you would be a lover,
befriend him who loves your Friend;
and if you cannot,
don’t call yourself a friend of mine.
Whomever you tend to despise,
hold dear instead.
Don’t belittle others, respect them.
This is where the path leads.
If your heart is filled with love,
your way is sacrifice.
Through sacrifice you will find your place
in the ranks of Love.
Hearts which truly love the Truth,
Truth will open a door wide.
Dismantle the house of selfishness.
Put away your self-regard.
High and low, enemy, neighbor,
the Friend serves them all.
Whoever wants to spread this word
must first go out of his home.
This counsel that Yunus gives
is like buried gold.
Those who love the Friend
find peace in both worlds.
~Yunus Emre
The Drop That Became the Sea Translated by Kabir Helminski & Refik Algan
Every day, mindful practice. When the mind is disciplined then the Way can
work for us. Otherwise, all we do is talk of Tao; everything is just words;
and the world will know us as its one great fool.
~Loy Ching-Yuen, The Book of the Heart
How could the love between Thee
and me sever?
As the leaf of the water abides on the
water: so thou art my Lord, and
I am thy servant.
As the night-bird Chakor gazes all
night at the moon: so Thou art
my Lord and I am Thy servant.
From the beginning until the ending
of time, there is love between
Thee and me; and how shall such
love be extinguished?
Kabir says: ‘As the river enters into the
ocean, so my heart touches Thee.’
~Kabir
Oneness Quotes 5
“Realization of Truth is higher than all else.
Higher still is Truthful Living.”
~Guru Nanak, Sri Rag
From More Poems
A. E. Housman
XIII
I lay me down and slumber
And every morn revive.
Whose is the night-long breathing
That keeps a man alive?
When I was off to dreamland
And left my limbs forgot,
Who stayed at home to mind them,
And breathed when I did not?
. . . . .
– I waste my time in talking,
No heed at all takes he,
My kind and foolish comrade
That breathes all night for me.
Look at Love…
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love
look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life
why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend
why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how unknown merges into the known
why think separately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last
look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs
look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once
the wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together
look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox
you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me
be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
don’t get mixed up with bitter words
my beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be
~ Rumi, translated by Nader Khalili
Earth, mountains, rivers – hidden in this nothingness.
In this nothingness – earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows:
There’s no being or non-being, nor denial itself.
- Saisho (? – 1506)
Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, p.32
Translated by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
Ask those who know,
what’s this soul within the flesh?
Reality’s own power.
What blood fills these veins?
Thought is an errand boy,
fear a mine of worries.
These sighs are love’s clothing.
Who is the Khan on the throne?
Give thanks for His unity.
He created when nothing existed.
And since we are actually nothing,
what are possessions, houses, shops?
God sent us here
to come and see the world.
This world itself is not everlasting.
What are all of Solomon’s riches?
Ask Yunus and Taptuk
what the world means to them.
The world won’t last.
What are You? What am I?
~ Yunus Emre
The Sonnets to Orpheus: I
Rainer Maria Rilke
A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence!
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence
a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.
Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright
unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests;
and it was not from any dullness, not
from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves,
but from just listening. Bellow, roar, shriek
seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been
at most a makeshift hut to receive the music,
a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing,
with an entryway that shuddered in the wind-
you built a temple deep inside their hearing.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Being conscious is cutting through your own melodrama and being right
here. Exist in no mind, be empty, here now, and trust that as a situation
arises, out of you will come what is necessary to deal with that situation
including the use of your intellect when appropriate. Your intellect need
not be constantly held on to keep reassuring you that you know where
you’re at, out of fear of loss of control. Ultimately, when you stop
identifying so much with your physical body and with your psychological
entity, that anxiety starts to disintegrate. And your start to define
yourself as in flow with the universe; and whatever comes along ~ death,
life joy, sadness ~ is grist for the mill of awakening. Not this versus that
but whatever.
~ Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill
From The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle:
Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you
have the total picture? There have been many people for whom
limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out
to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-
images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave
them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real.
Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson
concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time. Even a
brief illness or an accident can show you what is real and unreal in
your life, what ultimately matters and what doesn’t.
Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be
more precise: they are neither positive nor negative. They are as they
are. And when you live in complete acceptance of what is which is
the only sane way to live – there is no “good” or “bad” in your life
anymore. There is only a higher good – which includes the “bad.”
Seen from the perspective of the mind, however, there is good -bad,
like-dislike, love-hate.
There Is A Brokenness
by Rashani
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
A shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
Beyond all grief which leads to joy
And a fragility
Out of which depth emerges strength.
There is a hollow space
Too vast for words
Through which we pass with each loss,
Out of whose darkness we are sanctified into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
Whose serrated edges cut the heart
As we break open
To the place inside which is unbreakable
And whole.
Make excursions in pure simplicity.
Identify yourself with non-distinction.
Follow the nature of things and admit no personal bias.
Then the world will be in peace.
~ Chuang Tzu
If the mind is happy,
not only the body
but the whole world will be happy.
So one must find out
how to become happy oneself.
Wanting to transform the world
without discovering one’s true self
is like trying to cover the whole world with leather
to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns.
It is much simpler to wear shoes.
~ Ramana Maharshi
Eternal Now
Meher Baba
Life is not meant to be rich in spiritual significance at some distant date,
but it can be so at every moment if the mind is disburdened of illusions.
Only through a clear and tranquil mind is the true nature of spiritual infinity
grasped — not as something that is yet to be but that already has been, is,
and ever will be eternal Self-fulfillment. When every moment is rich with
eternal significance, there is neither the lingering clinging to the dead past
nor a longing expectation for the future but an integral living in the eternal
Now. Only through such living can the spiritual infinity of the Truth be
realized in life.
It is not right to deprive the present of all importance by subordinating it to
an end in the future. For this means the imaginary accumulation of all
importance in the imagined future rather than the perception and realization
of the true importance of everything that exists in the eternal Now. There
cannot be an ebb and flow in eternity, no meaningless intervals between
intermittent harvests, but a fullness of being that cannot suffer impoverish-
ment for a single instant. When life seems to be idle or empty, it is not due
to any curtailment of the infinity of the Truth but to one’s own lack of capa-
city to enter into its full possession….
Spiritual life is not a matter of quantity but of inherent quality of living.
Spiritual infinity includes in its scope all phases of life. It comprises acts
that are great as well as acts that are small. Being greater than the greatest,
spiritual infinity is also smaller than the smallest; and it can equally express
itself through happenings irrespective of whether they are outwardly small
or great. Thus a smile or a look stands on the same level as offering one’s
life for a cause, when the smile or the look springs from Truth-consciousness.
There are no gradations in spiritual importance when all life is lived in the
shadow of Eternity. If life were to consist only of big things and if all the
little things where to be omitted from its scope, it would not only be finite
but would be extremely poor. The infinite Truth, which is latent in every-
thing, can reveal itself only when life is seen and accepted in its totality.
DISCOURSES, pp. 118-119
If you keep your heart immersed always in the ocean of
divine love, Your heart is sure to remain ever full to the
overflowing with the waters of the divine love.
~ Ramakrishna
One moon shows in every pool;
in every pool, the one moon.
Zen Forest Saying
…the growing and dying of the moon reminds us of our
ignorance which comes and goes; but when the moon
is full it is as if the eternal light of the Great Spirit were
upon the whole world.
~Black Elk
The madness of love
Is a rich fief;
Anyone who recognized this
Would not ask Love for anything else:
It can unite Opposites
And reverse the paradox.
lam declaring the truth about this:
The madness of love makes bitter what was sweet,
It makes the stranger a kinsman,
And it makes the smallest the most proud.
To souls who have not reached such love,
I give this good counsel:
If they cannot do more,
Let them beg Love for amnesty,
And serve with faith,
According to the counsel of noble Love,
And think: ‘It can happen,
Love’s power is so great!’
Only after his death
Is a man beyond cure.
-HADEWIJCH of Antwerp
This is from: This – Prose and Poetry of Dancing Emptiness
Sri H. W. L. Poonja (Papaji)
You are the One which is aware
of the awareness of objects and ideas.
You are the One that is even more silent than awareness.
You are the Life which precedes the concept of life.
Your nature is silence and it is not attainable,
It always Is.
You are Emptiness, the ultimate Substance:
removing Emptiness out of Emptiness
leaves only Emptiness because there is nothing beyond It.
Emptiness is between “is” and “is not”
and nothing is out of this Emptiness so it is the Fullness.
To be Free, you need the firm conviction
that you are this Substratum, this Peace, this Emptiness.
All rises from,
dances about in,
and returns to
This.
As Ocean rises as a wave to dance,
so you are this Dancing Emptiness!
You Can Still Be Free
Savage Garden
Cool breeze and autumn leaves
Slow motion daylight
A lone pair of watchful eyes
Oversee the living
Feel the presence all around
A tortured soul
A wound unhealing
No regrets or promises
The past is gone
But you can still be free
If time will set you free
Time now to spread your wings
To take to flight
The life endeavor
Aim for the burning sun
You’re trapped inside
But you can still be free
If time will set you free
But it’s a long long way to go
Keep moving way up high
You see the light
It shines forever
Sail through the crimson skies
The purest light
The light that sets you free
If time will set you free
Sail through the wind and rain tonight
You’re free to fly tonight
And you can still be free
If time will set you free
And going higher than mountain tops
And go high the wind won’t stop
And go high
Free to fly tonight
Free to fly tonight
Our original nature is, in highest truth,
devoid of any atom of objectivity.
It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure;
it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy ~
and that is all.
Enter deeply into it by awakening yourself.
~ Huang Po
Knowledge is to understand
To understand who you are.
If you know not who you are
What’s the use of learning?
The aim in learning is
To understand God’s Truth.
Because without knowledge
It is wasted hard labour.
Do not say: I know it all,
I am obedient to my God.
If you know not who God is
That is sheer idle talk.
Twenty-eight syllables
You read from end to end.
You name the first `alpha”
What can it possibly mean?
Yunus Emre says also
Let me receive what I need.
The best possible thing
Is to find perfect peace.
~ Yunus Emre
Translated by Taner Baybars
Those who desire to understand,
who are looking to find that which is eternal,
without beginning and end,
will walk together with greater intensity
will be a danger to everything which is unessential,
to unrealities, to shadows.
They will concentrate,
they will become the flame,
because they understand.
~ Jiddhu Krishnamurti
“Saints and mystics throughout history have adorned their realisations with
different names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what
they are all fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind.”
~Sogyal Rinpoche
“Mind and body dropped off; dropped off mind and body!
This state should be experienced by everyone; it is like piling
fruit into a basket without a bottom, like pouring water into a
bow! With a pierced hole; however much you may pile or
pour you cannot fill it up. When this is realized the pail bottom
is broken through. But while there is still a trace of conceptualism
which makes you say ‘I have this understanding’ or ‘I have that
realization’, you are still playing with unrealities.”
~ Dogen
When you don’t require anything from the world and nothing from
God, when you don’t desire anything, when you don’t strive for
anything, don’t expect anything, the divine will enter you, unasked
and unexpected.
~ Nisargadatta
From The wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj by Robert Powell
Hidden Treasure
(Winwood/Capaldi)
Take a walk down by, take a walk down by the river
There’s a lot that you, there’s a lot that you can learn
If you’ve got a mind that’s open, if you’ve got a heart that yearns
If you listen to, if you listen to the water
You will hear the sound, you will hear the sound of life
There’s a million different voices, there is happiness and strife
Message in the deep, from a strange eternal sleep
That is waiting there, that is waiting there for you
Like hidden treasure
Traffic, The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys, 1972
Are you born now? Why do you think of other
births? The fact is that there is neither birth nor
death. Let him who is born think of death and
palliatives therefore.
~ Ramana Maharshi
Just understand that birth-and-death is itself
nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death to
be avoided; there is nothing such as nirvana to be
sought. Only when you realize this are you free from
birth and death.
~ Dogen
“I follow the Way of Love,
and where Love’s caravan takes its path,
there is my religion, my faith.”
~Ibn ‘Arabi
Neither is there Bodhi-tree,
Nor yet a mirror bright;
Since in reality all is void,
Whereon can the dust fall?
~ Hui Neng
Love will be enlightened when we come into contact with
that bliss which is free from any condition or object. It must
be thoroughly understood that we have no need to acquire
love, because in the depths of ourselves we are ‘desire for
perfect bliss’, or in theological language, ‘Love of God’. No
one needs to acquire or increase love, but only to enlighten
it on its true aim.
~ Jean Klein
My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit,
the Teacher, is near,
wake up, wake up!
Run to his feet -
he is standing close to your head right now.
You have slept for millions and millions of years.
Why not wake up this morning?
~ Kabir, Version by Robert Bly
Uncreated
(Quotations from Chuang Tzu)
To name Tao is to name no-thing.
Tao is not the name of (something created).
“Cause” and “chance” have no bearing on the Tao.
Tao is a name that indicates without defining.
Tao is beyond words and beyond things.
It is not expressed either in word or in silence.
Where there is no longer word or silence
Tao is apprehended.
The Brim
Hafiz
You hide your face in the leaves,
and your eyes fill with rosewater,
sleepy as a narcissus opening.
You slip away in the garden seasons.
The purple violets, the white lily,
they change, and you hurry off.
Surface bubbles open their eyes,
and vanish. How different is
this world from those bubbles?
Your way with a body-cup
is to drain its love-wine.
Do that to us!
from The Hand of Poetry Inayat Khan/Coleman Barks
The true meaning of love one’s neighbor is not that
it is a command from God which we are to fulfill,
but that through it and in it we meet God.
~ Martin Buber
Higher still is Truthful Living.”
~Guru Nanak, Sri Rag
From More Poems
A. E. Housman
XIII
I lay me down and slumber
And every morn revive.
Whose is the night-long breathing
That keeps a man alive?
When I was off to dreamland
And left my limbs forgot,
Who stayed at home to mind them,
And breathed when I did not?
. . . . .
– I waste my time in talking,
No heed at all takes he,
My kind and foolish comrade
That breathes all night for me.
Look at Love…
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love
look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life
why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend
why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how unknown merges into the known
why think separately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last
look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs
look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once
the wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together
look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox
you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me
be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
don’t get mixed up with bitter words
my beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be
~ Rumi, translated by Nader Khalili
Earth, mountains, rivers – hidden in this nothingness.
In this nothingness – earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows:
There’s no being or non-being, nor denial itself.
- Saisho (? – 1506)
Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, p.32
Translated by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
Ask those who know,
what’s this soul within the flesh?
Reality’s own power.
What blood fills these veins?
Thought is an errand boy,
fear a mine of worries.
These sighs are love’s clothing.
Who is the Khan on the throne?
Give thanks for His unity.
He created when nothing existed.
And since we are actually nothing,
what are possessions, houses, shops?
God sent us here
to come and see the world.
This world itself is not everlasting.
What are all of Solomon’s riches?
Ask Yunus and Taptuk
what the world means to them.
The world won’t last.
What are You? What am I?
~ Yunus Emre
The Sonnets to Orpheus: I
Rainer Maria Rilke
A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence!
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence
a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.
Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright
unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests;
and it was not from any dullness, not
from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves,
but from just listening. Bellow, roar, shriek
seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been
at most a makeshift hut to receive the music,
a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing,
with an entryway that shuddered in the wind-
you built a temple deep inside their hearing.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Being conscious is cutting through your own melodrama and being right
here. Exist in no mind, be empty, here now, and trust that as a situation
arises, out of you will come what is necessary to deal with that situation
including the use of your intellect when appropriate. Your intellect need
not be constantly held on to keep reassuring you that you know where
you’re at, out of fear of loss of control. Ultimately, when you stop
identifying so much with your physical body and with your psychological
entity, that anxiety starts to disintegrate. And your start to define
yourself as in flow with the universe; and whatever comes along ~ death,
life joy, sadness ~ is grist for the mill of awakening. Not this versus that
but whatever.
~ Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill
From The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle:
Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you
have the total picture? There have been many people for whom
limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out
to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-
images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave
them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real.
Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson
concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time. Even a
brief illness or an accident can show you what is real and unreal in
your life, what ultimately matters and what doesn’t.
Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be
more precise: they are neither positive nor negative. They are as they
are. And when you live in complete acceptance of what is which is
the only sane way to live – there is no “good” or “bad” in your life
anymore. There is only a higher good – which includes the “bad.”
Seen from the perspective of the mind, however, there is good -bad,
like-dislike, love-hate.
There Is A Brokenness
by Rashani
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
A shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
Beyond all grief which leads to joy
And a fragility
Out of which depth emerges strength.
There is a hollow space
Too vast for words
Through which we pass with each loss,
Out of whose darkness we are sanctified into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
Whose serrated edges cut the heart
As we break open
To the place inside which is unbreakable
And whole.
Make excursions in pure simplicity.
Identify yourself with non-distinction.
Follow the nature of things and admit no personal bias.
Then the world will be in peace.
~ Chuang Tzu
If the mind is happy,
not only the body
but the whole world will be happy.
So one must find out
how to become happy oneself.
Wanting to transform the world
without discovering one’s true self
is like trying to cover the whole world with leather
to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns.
It is much simpler to wear shoes.
~ Ramana Maharshi
Eternal Now
Meher Baba
Life is not meant to be rich in spiritual significance at some distant date,
but it can be so at every moment if the mind is disburdened of illusions.
Only through a clear and tranquil mind is the true nature of spiritual infinity
grasped — not as something that is yet to be but that already has been, is,
and ever will be eternal Self-fulfillment. When every moment is rich with
eternal significance, there is neither the lingering clinging to the dead past
nor a longing expectation for the future but an integral living in the eternal
Now. Only through such living can the spiritual infinity of the Truth be
realized in life.
It is not right to deprive the present of all importance by subordinating it to
an end in the future. For this means the imaginary accumulation of all
importance in the imagined future rather than the perception and realization
of the true importance of everything that exists in the eternal Now. There
cannot be an ebb and flow in eternity, no meaningless intervals between
intermittent harvests, but a fullness of being that cannot suffer impoverish-
ment for a single instant. When life seems to be idle or empty, it is not due
to any curtailment of the infinity of the Truth but to one’s own lack of capa-
city to enter into its full possession….
Spiritual life is not a matter of quantity but of inherent quality of living.
Spiritual infinity includes in its scope all phases of life. It comprises acts
that are great as well as acts that are small. Being greater than the greatest,
spiritual infinity is also smaller than the smallest; and it can equally express
itself through happenings irrespective of whether they are outwardly small
or great. Thus a smile or a look stands on the same level as offering one’s
life for a cause, when the smile or the look springs from Truth-consciousness.
There are no gradations in spiritual importance when all life is lived in the
shadow of Eternity. If life were to consist only of big things and if all the
little things where to be omitted from its scope, it would not only be finite
but would be extremely poor. The infinite Truth, which is latent in every-
thing, can reveal itself only when life is seen and accepted in its totality.
DISCOURSES, pp. 118-119
If you keep your heart immersed always in the ocean of
divine love, Your heart is sure to remain ever full to the
overflowing with the waters of the divine love.
~ Ramakrishna
One moon shows in every pool;
in every pool, the one moon.
Zen Forest Saying
…the growing and dying of the moon reminds us of our
ignorance which comes and goes; but when the moon
is full it is as if the eternal light of the Great Spirit were
upon the whole world.
~Black Elk
The madness of love
Is a rich fief;
Anyone who recognized this
Would not ask Love for anything else:
It can unite Opposites
And reverse the paradox.
lam declaring the truth about this:
The madness of love makes bitter what was sweet,
It makes the stranger a kinsman,
And it makes the smallest the most proud.
To souls who have not reached such love,
I give this good counsel:
If they cannot do more,
Let them beg Love for amnesty,
And serve with faith,
According to the counsel of noble Love,
And think: ‘It can happen,
Love’s power is so great!’
Only after his death
Is a man beyond cure.
-HADEWIJCH of Antwerp
This is from: This – Prose and Poetry of Dancing Emptiness
Sri H. W. L. Poonja (Papaji)
You are the One which is aware
of the awareness of objects and ideas.
You are the One that is even more silent than awareness.
You are the Life which precedes the concept of life.
Your nature is silence and it is not attainable,
It always Is.
You are Emptiness, the ultimate Substance:
removing Emptiness out of Emptiness
leaves only Emptiness because there is nothing beyond It.
Emptiness is between “is” and “is not”
and nothing is out of this Emptiness so it is the Fullness.
To be Free, you need the firm conviction
that you are this Substratum, this Peace, this Emptiness.
All rises from,
dances about in,
and returns to
This.
As Ocean rises as a wave to dance,
so you are this Dancing Emptiness!
You Can Still Be Free
Savage Garden
Cool breeze and autumn leaves
Slow motion daylight
A lone pair of watchful eyes
Oversee the living
Feel the presence all around
A tortured soul
A wound unhealing
No regrets or promises
The past is gone
But you can still be free
If time will set you free
Time now to spread your wings
To take to flight
The life endeavor
Aim for the burning sun
You’re trapped inside
But you can still be free
If time will set you free
But it’s a long long way to go
Keep moving way up high
You see the light
It shines forever
Sail through the crimson skies
The purest light
The light that sets you free
If time will set you free
Sail through the wind and rain tonight
You’re free to fly tonight
And you can still be free
If time will set you free
And going higher than mountain tops
And go high the wind won’t stop
And go high
Free to fly tonight
Free to fly tonight
Our original nature is, in highest truth,
devoid of any atom of objectivity.
It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure;
it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy ~
and that is all.
Enter deeply into it by awakening yourself.
~ Huang Po
Knowledge is to understand
To understand who you are.
If you know not who you are
What’s the use of learning?
The aim in learning is
To understand God’s Truth.
Because without knowledge
It is wasted hard labour.
Do not say: I know it all,
I am obedient to my God.
If you know not who God is
That is sheer idle talk.
Twenty-eight syllables
You read from end to end.
You name the first `alpha”
What can it possibly mean?
Yunus Emre says also
Let me receive what I need.
The best possible thing
Is to find perfect peace.
~ Yunus Emre
Translated by Taner Baybars
Those who desire to understand,
who are looking to find that which is eternal,
without beginning and end,
will walk together with greater intensity
will be a danger to everything which is unessential,
to unrealities, to shadows.
They will concentrate,
they will become the flame,
because they understand.
~ Jiddhu Krishnamurti
“Saints and mystics throughout history have adorned their realisations with
different names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what
they are all fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind.”
~Sogyal Rinpoche
“Mind and body dropped off; dropped off mind and body!
This state should be experienced by everyone; it is like piling
fruit into a basket without a bottom, like pouring water into a
bow! With a pierced hole; however much you may pile or
pour you cannot fill it up. When this is realized the pail bottom
is broken through. But while there is still a trace of conceptualism
which makes you say ‘I have this understanding’ or ‘I have that
realization’, you are still playing with unrealities.”
~ Dogen
When you don’t require anything from the world and nothing from
God, when you don’t desire anything, when you don’t strive for
anything, don’t expect anything, the divine will enter you, unasked
and unexpected.
~ Nisargadatta
From The wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj by Robert Powell
Hidden Treasure
(Winwood/Capaldi)
Take a walk down by, take a walk down by the river
There’s a lot that you, there’s a lot that you can learn
If you’ve got a mind that’s open, if you’ve got a heart that yearns
If you listen to, if you listen to the water
You will hear the sound, you will hear the sound of life
There’s a million different voices, there is happiness and strife
Message in the deep, from a strange eternal sleep
That is waiting there, that is waiting there for you
Like hidden treasure
Traffic, The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys, 1972
Are you born now? Why do you think of other
births? The fact is that there is neither birth nor
death. Let him who is born think of death and
palliatives therefore.
~ Ramana Maharshi
Just understand that birth-and-death is itself
nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death to
be avoided; there is nothing such as nirvana to be
sought. Only when you realize this are you free from
birth and death.
~ Dogen
“I follow the Way of Love,
and where Love’s caravan takes its path,
there is my religion, my faith.”
~Ibn ‘Arabi
Neither is there Bodhi-tree,
Nor yet a mirror bright;
Since in reality all is void,
Whereon can the dust fall?
~ Hui Neng
Love will be enlightened when we come into contact with
that bliss which is free from any condition or object. It must
be thoroughly understood that we have no need to acquire
love, because in the depths of ourselves we are ‘desire for
perfect bliss’, or in theological language, ‘Love of God’. No
one needs to acquire or increase love, but only to enlighten
it on its true aim.
~ Jean Klein
My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit,
the Teacher, is near,
wake up, wake up!
Run to his feet -
he is standing close to your head right now.
You have slept for millions and millions of years.
Why not wake up this morning?
~ Kabir, Version by Robert Bly
Uncreated
(Quotations from Chuang Tzu)
To name Tao is to name no-thing.
Tao is not the name of (something created).
“Cause” and “chance” have no bearing on the Tao.
Tao is a name that indicates without defining.
Tao is beyond words and beyond things.
It is not expressed either in word or in silence.
Where there is no longer word or silence
Tao is apprehended.
The Brim
Hafiz
You hide your face in the leaves,
and your eyes fill with rosewater,
sleepy as a narcissus opening.
You slip away in the garden seasons.
The purple violets, the white lily,
they change, and you hurry off.
Surface bubbles open their eyes,
and vanish. How different is
this world from those bubbles?
Your way with a body-cup
is to drain its love-wine.
Do that to us!
from The Hand of Poetry Inayat Khan/Coleman Barks
The true meaning of love one’s neighbor is not that
it is a command from God which we are to fulfill,
but that through it and in it we meet God.
~ Martin Buber
It is so easy for everyone to just simply rest as consciousness in
that same true way of being. All it requires is untainted surrender
to what you honestly know is true, and all it will cost is your
personal wants and needs. All it will cost is just your personal
dream… your illusion. Then, as you continue to let in Truth to
the point where it has replaced everything in you that is untrue,
then you come into true form. You come to know your real self,
and you come to realize and live the reality you were in when you
were very, very young. You begin to grow as a real human being,
a beloved servant of Truth, instead of as a human “wannabe,” a
slave of your own illusion.
~ John de Ruiter
The Tao has its reality and its signs but is without action or form.
You can hand it down but you cannot receive it; you can get it but
you cannot see it. It is its own source, its own root. Before heaven
and earth existed it was there, firm from ancient times. It gave
spirituality to the spirits and to God; it gave birth to heaven and to
earth. It exists beyond the highest point, and yet you cannot call it lofty;
it exists beneath the limit of the six directions, and yet you cannot call it
deep. It was born before heaven and earth, and yet you cannot say it
has been there for long; it is earlier than the earliest time, and yet you
cannot call it old.
~ Chuang Tzu 6
It is not after we understand the truth that we attain
enlightenment. To realize the truth is to live – to exist
here and now.
~ Shunryu Suzuki
But is there any comfort to be found?
Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
What more is there to say?
~ W. B. Yeats
From ‘Sailing to Byzantium’
When you set out to look for the Way,
At once it changes to something
That is to be sought in your self.
When sight becomes no-sight,
You come to possess the jewel,
But you have not yet fully penetrated into it.
Suddenly one day everything is empty like space
That has no inside or outside, no bottom or top,
And you are aware of one principle
Pervading all the ten thousand things.
You know then that your heart
Is so vast that it can never be measured.
~ Daikaku (1213-1279)
If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life.
A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.
~ Thomas Merton
“Blessed One, what is meant by this term Nirvana?”
Replied the Buddha, “When the self-nature and the habit-energy
of all the sense-discriminations, including ego (alaya), intellect
(manas), and the faculty of judgment (manovijnana), from which
issue the habit-energy of wrong speculations–when all these go
through a revulsion, I and all the Buddhas declare that there is
Nirvana. The way and the self-nature of this Nirvana is emptiness,
which is the state of reality.”
Lankavatara Sutra 38
In original nature there is no this and that.
The Great Round Mirror has no likes or dislikes.
~ Seung Sahn
My daily activities are not unusual,
I’m just naturally in harmony with them.
Grasping nothing, discarding nothing…
Supernatural power and marvelous activity -
Drawing water and carrying firewood.
~Layman Pang-yun (740-808)
All these things arise dependently, from causes,
Yet they are neither existent nor nonexistent,
Therein is neither ego, nor experiencer, nor doer,
Yet not action, good or evil, looses its effects.
Vimalakirta Nirdesa Sutra
Translated by Robert A. F. Thurman
Nothing left: thought smoke.
A moment – a billion years.
Dont curl like orange peel, dont ape
a mummified past. Uncage eternity.
When selfs let go, universe is all -
O for speed to get past time.
~ Shinkichi Takahashi
The spiritual light, shining independently,
transcends the senses and objects;
the essence is revealed, real and eternal,
not confined to written words.
The nature of mind has no stain;
it is basically complete in itself.
Just detach from false mental objects
and be enlightened to being-as-is.
~ Baizhang
from Chinese literary critic Liu Hsieh…
“Spiritual action…
is transmitted by symbols
in which feelings and changes
are conceived
The knowledge of things…
is learned through appearances,
but the awareness of reality…
is reflected in…
the heart”
“Is Love, then, so Simple”
Irene Rutherford Mcleod
IS love, then, so simple my dear?
The opening of a door,
And seeing all things clear?
I did not know before.
I had thought it unrest and desire
Soaring only to fall,
Annihilation and fire:
It is not so at all.
I feel no desperate will,
But I think I understand
Many things, as I sit quite still,
With Eternity in my hand.
From Posthumous Pieces:
Wei Wu Wei
If we clearly apperceive the difference
Between direct apprehension in Whole-mind
And relative comprehension by reasoning
In mind divided into subject-and-object,
All the apparent mysteries will disappear.
For that will be found to be the key
Which unlocks the doors of incomprehension.
A life-time is not what’s between,
The moments of birth and death.
A life-time is one moment,
Between my two little breaths.
The present, the here, the now,
That’s all the life I get,
I live each moment in full,
In kindness, in peace, without regret.
~Chade Meng, One Moment
Sound swallowed away,
no waters, no mountains, no
bush, no grass and
because no grass
no shade but your shadow.
Not flatness because no not-flatness.
No loss, no gain. So–
nothing in the way!
Gary Snyder
Finding the Space in the Heart
Mountains and Rivers Without End, p. 151
“…our experience is altogether momentary.
From one point of view, each moment is so
elusive and so brief that we cannot even
think about it before it has gone. From
another point of view, this moment is always
here, since we know no other moment than the
present moment. It is always dying, always
becoming past more rapidly than imagination
can conceive. Yet at the same time it is
always being born, always new, emerging just
as rapidly from that complete unknown we
call the future. Thinking about it almost
makes you breathless.”
~ Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
All that you are attached to, all that you Love,
all that you know, someday will be gone.
Knowing this, and that the world is your mind
which you create, play in, and suffer from,
is known as discrimination.
Discriminate between the real and the unreal.
The known is unreal and will come and go
so stay with the Unknown, the Unchanging Truth.
All which appears and disappears is not real,
and no nectar will come from it so don’t cling to it,
and once you let go do not turn back to it.
Stay as Eternity in your own Being.
The Truth Is, Papaji
“The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is
what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams,
illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is
what it is. Accept that it’s unknown, and it’s plain sailing.”
~ John Lennon
The moon’s the same old moon,
The flowers exactly as they were,
Yet I’ve become the thingness
Of all the things I see!
~ Bunan
“…when you really understand that you are
what you see and know, you do not run around
the country-side thinking, ‘I *am* all this.’
There is simply ‘all this.’ ”
~ Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
That which is, is peace. All that we need do is to keep quiet. Peace is
our real nature. We spoil it. What is required is that we cease to spoil it.
If we remove all the rubbish from the mind, the peace will become manifest.
That which is obstructing the peace must be removed. Peace is the only
reality.
~Ramana Maharshi
When you understand one thing through and through
you understand everything.
~Shunryu Suzuki
*Day and Night*
Day and night there is movement of foam on the Sea.
You see the foam, but not the Sea. Amazing!
We are dashing against each other like boats:
our eyes are darkened though we are in clear water.
O you who have gone to sleep in the body’s boat,
you’ve seen the water,
but look at the Water of the water.
The water has a Water that is driving it;
the spirit has a Spirit that is calling it.
Rumi (Mathnawi III, 1271-1274)
trans. Camille and Kabir Helminski
Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,
if this is the time.
Do it gently with a touch of a hand, or a look.
Every morning I wait at dawn. That’s when
it’s happened before. Or do it suddenly
like an execution. How else
can I get ready for death?
You breathe without a body like a spark.
You grieve, and I begin to feel lighter.
You keep me away with your arm,
but the keeping away is pulling me in.
Rumi
Trans Coleman Barks/John Moyne
that same true way of being. All it requires is untainted surrender
to what you honestly know is true, and all it will cost is your
personal wants and needs. All it will cost is just your personal
dream… your illusion. Then, as you continue to let in Truth to
the point where it has replaced everything in you that is untrue,
then you come into true form. You come to know your real self,
and you come to realize and live the reality you were in when you
were very, very young. You begin to grow as a real human being,
a beloved servant of Truth, instead of as a human “wannabe,” a
slave of your own illusion.
~ John de Ruiter
The Tao has its reality and its signs but is without action or form.
You can hand it down but you cannot receive it; you can get it but
you cannot see it. It is its own source, its own root. Before heaven
and earth existed it was there, firm from ancient times. It gave
spirituality to the spirits and to God; it gave birth to heaven and to
earth. It exists beyond the highest point, and yet you cannot call it lofty;
it exists beneath the limit of the six directions, and yet you cannot call it
deep. It was born before heaven and earth, and yet you cannot say it
has been there for long; it is earlier than the earliest time, and yet you
cannot call it old.
~ Chuang Tzu 6
It is not after we understand the truth that we attain
enlightenment. To realize the truth is to live – to exist
here and now.
~ Shunryu Suzuki
But is there any comfort to be found?
Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
What more is there to say?
~ W. B. Yeats
From ‘Sailing to Byzantium’
When you set out to look for the Way,
At once it changes to something
That is to be sought in your self.
When sight becomes no-sight,
You come to possess the jewel,
But you have not yet fully penetrated into it.
Suddenly one day everything is empty like space
That has no inside or outside, no bottom or top,
And you are aware of one principle
Pervading all the ten thousand things.
You know then that your heart
Is so vast that it can never be measured.
~ Daikaku (1213-1279)
If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life.
A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.
~ Thomas Merton
“Blessed One, what is meant by this term Nirvana?”
Replied the Buddha, “When the self-nature and the habit-energy
of all the sense-discriminations, including ego (alaya), intellect
(manas), and the faculty of judgment (manovijnana), from which
issue the habit-energy of wrong speculations–when all these go
through a revulsion, I and all the Buddhas declare that there is
Nirvana. The way and the self-nature of this Nirvana is emptiness,
which is the state of reality.”
Lankavatara Sutra 38
In original nature there is no this and that.
The Great Round Mirror has no likes or dislikes.
~ Seung Sahn
My daily activities are not unusual,
I’m just naturally in harmony with them.
Grasping nothing, discarding nothing…
Supernatural power and marvelous activity -
Drawing water and carrying firewood.
~Layman Pang-yun (740-808)
All these things arise dependently, from causes,
Yet they are neither existent nor nonexistent,
Therein is neither ego, nor experiencer, nor doer,
Yet not action, good or evil, looses its effects.
Vimalakirta Nirdesa Sutra
Translated by Robert A. F. Thurman
Nothing left: thought smoke.
A moment – a billion years.
Dont curl like orange peel, dont ape
a mummified past. Uncage eternity.
When selfs let go, universe is all -
O for speed to get past time.
~ Shinkichi Takahashi
The spiritual light, shining independently,
transcends the senses and objects;
the essence is revealed, real and eternal,
not confined to written words.
The nature of mind has no stain;
it is basically complete in itself.
Just detach from false mental objects
and be enlightened to being-as-is.
~ Baizhang
from Chinese literary critic Liu Hsieh…
“Spiritual action…
is transmitted by symbols
in which feelings and changes
are conceived
The knowledge of things…
is learned through appearances,
but the awareness of reality…
is reflected in…
the heart”
“Is Love, then, so Simple”
Irene Rutherford Mcleod
IS love, then, so simple my dear?
The opening of a door,
And seeing all things clear?
I did not know before.
I had thought it unrest and desire
Soaring only to fall,
Annihilation and fire:
It is not so at all.
I feel no desperate will,
But I think I understand
Many things, as I sit quite still,
With Eternity in my hand.
From Posthumous Pieces:
Wei Wu Wei
If we clearly apperceive the difference
Between direct apprehension in Whole-mind
And relative comprehension by reasoning
In mind divided into subject-and-object,
All the apparent mysteries will disappear.
For that will be found to be the key
Which unlocks the doors of incomprehension.
A life-time is not what’s between,
The moments of birth and death.
A life-time is one moment,
Between my two little breaths.
The present, the here, the now,
That’s all the life I get,
I live each moment in full,
In kindness, in peace, without regret.
~Chade Meng, One Moment
Sound swallowed away,
no waters, no mountains, no
bush, no grass and
because no grass
no shade but your shadow.
Not flatness because no not-flatness.
No loss, no gain. So–
nothing in the way!
Gary Snyder
Finding the Space in the Heart
Mountains and Rivers Without End, p. 151
“…our experience is altogether momentary.
From one point of view, each moment is so
elusive and so brief that we cannot even
think about it before it has gone. From
another point of view, this moment is always
here, since we know no other moment than the
present moment. It is always dying, always
becoming past more rapidly than imagination
can conceive. Yet at the same time it is
always being born, always new, emerging just
as rapidly from that complete unknown we
call the future. Thinking about it almost
makes you breathless.”
~ Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
All that you are attached to, all that you Love,
all that you know, someday will be gone.
Knowing this, and that the world is your mind
which you create, play in, and suffer from,
is known as discrimination.
Discriminate between the real and the unreal.
The known is unreal and will come and go
so stay with the Unknown, the Unchanging Truth.
All which appears and disappears is not real,
and no nectar will come from it so don’t cling to it,
and once you let go do not turn back to it.
Stay as Eternity in your own Being.
The Truth Is, Papaji
“The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is
what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams,
illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is
what it is. Accept that it’s unknown, and it’s plain sailing.”
~ John Lennon
The moon’s the same old moon,
The flowers exactly as they were,
Yet I’ve become the thingness
Of all the things I see!
~ Bunan
“…when you really understand that you are
what you see and know, you do not run around
the country-side thinking, ‘I *am* all this.’
There is simply ‘all this.’ ”
~ Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
That which is, is peace. All that we need do is to keep quiet. Peace is
our real nature. We spoil it. What is required is that we cease to spoil it.
If we remove all the rubbish from the mind, the peace will become manifest.
That which is obstructing the peace must be removed. Peace is the only
reality.
~Ramana Maharshi
When you understand one thing through and through
you understand everything.
~Shunryu Suzuki
*Day and Night*
Day and night there is movement of foam on the Sea.
You see the foam, but not the Sea. Amazing!
We are dashing against each other like boats:
our eyes are darkened though we are in clear water.
O you who have gone to sleep in the body’s boat,
you’ve seen the water,
but look at the Water of the water.
The water has a Water that is driving it;
the spirit has a Spirit that is calling it.
Rumi (Mathnawi III, 1271-1274)
trans. Camille and Kabir Helminski
Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,
if this is the time.
Do it gently with a touch of a hand, or a look.
Every morning I wait at dawn. That’s when
it’s happened before. Or do it suddenly
like an execution. How else
can I get ready for death?
You breathe without a body like a spark.
You grieve, and I begin to feel lighter.
You keep me away with your arm,
but the keeping away is pulling me in.
Rumi
Trans Coleman Barks/John Moyne
Oneness Quotes 6
The Way is not about knowing or not-knowing.
Knowing is only delusion and
not-knowing is merely blank consciousness.
~ Nan-Ch’uan
Quoted in ‘Zen Wisdom’ Timothy Freke
For enlightenment to happen the perceiver must turn right around
and wake up to the fact that he is face to face with his own nature –
that HE IS IT. The spiritual seeker ultimately finds that he was
already at the destination, that he himself IS what he had been
seeking and he was in fact already home.
~Ramesh S. Balsekar, A Net of Jewels
Think of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, as a shoreless ocean.
Through the cooling influence, as it were, of the bhakta’s love, the water
is frozen at places into blocks of ice. In other words, God now and then
assumes various forms for His lovers and reveals Himself to them as a
Person. But with the rising of the Sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice
melt. Then one doesn’t feel any more that God is a Person, nor does one see
God’s forms. What He is cannot be described. Who will describe Him? He who
would do so disappears. He cannot find his I any more.
~ Sri Ramakrishna
From Ask The Awakened Wei Wu Wei
This ‘real’ nature with whose revelation the Chan Masters are primarily
concerned, or the Atman-’I’ of the Vedantists, is not the far-off,
unreachable will-o’-the-wisp we are apt to imagine, but just the within
of which we know the without. It is just the other side of the medal,
and it lies wherever our senses and our intellect cease to function.
It does nothing, yet it has fashioned the universe. Sustaining the entire
universe, it does nothing at all. All substances are non-different from it,
yet it is not a substance; though it is non-substantial it pervades all substances.
The cosmos is its body, yet it has no body… that infinite consciousness is and
is not. It is even what it is not. All these statements about what is and what is
not are based on logic, and the infinite consciousness goes beyond truth, beyond
logic.
Vasishtha’s Yoga (pp. 377-378)
If the process of manifestation, which involves the full-fledged appearance
of the visible world, never truly involves a departure from the unmanifest,
undifferentiated reality of Shiva, then it follows that the tantric path of
return consists of the recovery of this vision of the undifferentiated unity
of all things.
This vision, which at first appears to annihilate all things into the dark
abyss of Shiva, later grows into the unmilana samadhi, which reveals the
pulsating essence of Shiva actively structuring and maintaining all the
apparently finite and even inert forms of visible reality. The yogin must
come to a vision of the inseparability of all things from Shiva.
~ Abhinavagupta
Remember: if you can cease all restless activity,
your integral nature will appear.
from: The Hua Hu Ching
“If you lose all differentiation between yourselves and others,
fit to serve others you will be.
And when in serving others you will win success,
then shall you meet with me;
And finding me, you shall attain to Buddhahood.”
~ Milarepa
O Rama, two aspects of the “heart” are spoken of here: one is
acceptable and the other is to be ignored. The heart that is part
of this physical body and is located in one part of the body may
be ignored! The heart which is acceptable is of the nature of pure
consciousness. It is both inside and outside and it is neither inside
nor outside. This is the principal heart and in it is reflected everything
which is in the universe, and it is the treasure-house of all wealth.
Consciousness alone is the heart of all beings, not the piece of flesh
which people call the heart!
from: Vasishtha’s Yoga
… we should learn to see God in all gifts and works, neither resting
content with anything nor becoming attached to anything. For us there can be
no attachment to a particular manner of behavior in this life, nor has this
ever been right, however successful we may have been.
~Meister Eckhart
Sogyal Rinpoche:
It is important to remember always that the principle of egolessness does
not mean that there was an ego in the first place, and the Buddhists did
away with it. On the contrary, it means there was never any ego at all to
begin with. To realize that is called “egolessness.”
When you are with everyone but me, you’re with no one.
When you are with no one but me, you’re with everyone.
Instead of being so bound up with everyone, be everyone.
When you become that many, you’re nothing. Empty.
~Rumi
The Essential Rumi Barks/Moyne
The Imperson witnesses everything ‘we’ do and everything ‘we’ think (all
psychic and physical manifestation), and that is the great joke. For we
ourselves are the Imperson, and the ‘we’ that acts and thinks is only a
personalisation of the one Unself (Reality) seen as phenomenon, a notion
that as phenomenon has neither permanence nor duration but is renewed every
instant.
Why Lazarus Laughed Wei Wu Wei
When you touch one thing with deep awareness,
you touch everything.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, from Touching Peace
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field,
keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, an angel of the
Lord said unto them, “Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings
of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this
day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
LUKE 2:8-11
“Blessed is the season which engages the
whole world in a conspiracy of love.”
~Hamilton Wright Mabie
SO WHAT IS THERE TO REALIZE?
Peonies bloom on peony trees.
A cat doesn’t become a chicken.
Tulips are tulips, not roses.
Why can’t we realize this true fact?
That to be me is great.
I don’t have to be anyone but me.
I am blooming as I am in my life, just as
a peony blooms on a peony tree.
Further, a beautiful peony flower does not
worry about when it will wilt and fall to the ground.
It does not compete with the flower next to it;
rather it blooms with its whole self.
~ Sensie Ogui, from Zen Shin Talks
The notion of oneself being identical with the body is the cause of
egoism. It is this egoism that entangles all judgments of value in the
preconception that knowledge is acquired through the senses and
the mind or the intellect. This prejudice of egoism is Samsara, the
persistent idea that all knowledge is in terms of space, time and
externality.
~ Swami Krishnananda
Make your mind one-pointed in meditation, and your heart will be
purified… With all fears dissolved in the peace of the Self and all
desires dedicated to Brahman, controlling the mind and fixing it on
me (God), sit in meditation with me as your only goal. With senses
and mind constantly controlled through meditation, united with the
Self within, an aspirant attains nirvana, the state of abiding joy and
peace in me.
Bhagavad Gita 6:12-15
All I know is Love,
And I find my heart Infinite
And Everywhere!
~Hafiz
ALL THIS CAN SOUND RATHER ESOTERIC–
rapture, bliss, impermanence, lack of self–
and it is important not to let the practice
become a cluster of words up in your head.
You don’t want to create an image of yourself,
a stone Buddha like those you see around various
centers, always sitting in the lotus posture
and discerning marvelous wisdom.
The whole point of a book like this, of retreats
and classes, of sitting practice itself, is for you
to take the practice into everyday life,
to practice moment to moment.
You can learn everything I’ve said
just as well by cleaning the toilet.
~Larry Rosenberg,
from Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation
In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help
everybody else.
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The privilege of a lifetime is to be yourself.
~ Joseph Campbell
The particular is born and reborn, changing name and shape, the
gnani is the Changeless Reality, which makes the changeful possible.
The entire universe is his body, all life is his life. As in a city of
lights, when one bulb burns out, it does not affect the network, so
the death of a body does not affect the whole. With me, all is one,
all is equal.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Song Maker
I MADE a hundred little songs
That told the joy and pain of love,
And sang them blithely, tho’ I knew
No whit thereof.
I was a weaver deaf and blind;
A miracle was wrought for me,
But I have lost my skill to weave
Since I can see.
For while I sang — ah swift and strange!
Love passed and touched me on the brow,
And I who made so many songs
Am silent now.
~ Sara Teasdale
Neither ignorance nor illusion ever happened to you. Find the self
to which you ascribe ignorance and illusion and your question will
be answered. You talk as if you know the self and see it to be under
the sway of ignorance and illusion. But, in fact, you do not know the
self, nor are you aware of ignorance.
By all means, become aware, this will bring you to the self and you
will realize that there is neither ignorance nor delusion in it. It is like
saying: if there is sun, how can darkness be? As under a stone there
will be darkness, however strong the sunlight, so in the shadow of the
“I-am-the-body” consciousness there must be ignorance and illusion.
Don’t ask ‘why’ and ‘how’. It is in the nature of creative imagination to
identify itself with its creations. You can stop it any moment by switching
off attention. Or though investigation.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Knowing is only delusion and
not-knowing is merely blank consciousness.
~ Nan-Ch’uan
Quoted in ‘Zen Wisdom’ Timothy Freke
For enlightenment to happen the perceiver must turn right around
and wake up to the fact that he is face to face with his own nature –
that HE IS IT. The spiritual seeker ultimately finds that he was
already at the destination, that he himself IS what he had been
seeking and he was in fact already home.
~Ramesh S. Balsekar, A Net of Jewels
Think of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, as a shoreless ocean.
Through the cooling influence, as it were, of the bhakta’s love, the water
is frozen at places into blocks of ice. In other words, God now and then
assumes various forms for His lovers and reveals Himself to them as a
Person. But with the rising of the Sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice
melt. Then one doesn’t feel any more that God is a Person, nor does one see
God’s forms. What He is cannot be described. Who will describe Him? He who
would do so disappears. He cannot find his I any more.
~ Sri Ramakrishna
From Ask The Awakened Wei Wu Wei
This ‘real’ nature with whose revelation the Chan Masters are primarily
concerned, or the Atman-’I’ of the Vedantists, is not the far-off,
unreachable will-o’-the-wisp we are apt to imagine, but just the within
of which we know the without. It is just the other side of the medal,
and it lies wherever our senses and our intellect cease to function.
It does nothing, yet it has fashioned the universe. Sustaining the entire
universe, it does nothing at all. All substances are non-different from it,
yet it is not a substance; though it is non-substantial it pervades all substances.
The cosmos is its body, yet it has no body… that infinite consciousness is and
is not. It is even what it is not. All these statements about what is and what is
not are based on logic, and the infinite consciousness goes beyond truth, beyond
logic.
Vasishtha’s Yoga (pp. 377-378)
If the process of manifestation, which involves the full-fledged appearance
of the visible world, never truly involves a departure from the unmanifest,
undifferentiated reality of Shiva, then it follows that the tantric path of
return consists of the recovery of this vision of the undifferentiated unity
of all things.
This vision, which at first appears to annihilate all things into the dark
abyss of Shiva, later grows into the unmilana samadhi, which reveals the
pulsating essence of Shiva actively structuring and maintaining all the
apparently finite and even inert forms of visible reality. The yogin must
come to a vision of the inseparability of all things from Shiva.
~ Abhinavagupta
Remember: if you can cease all restless activity,
your integral nature will appear.
from: The Hua Hu Ching
“If you lose all differentiation between yourselves and others,
fit to serve others you will be.
And when in serving others you will win success,
then shall you meet with me;
And finding me, you shall attain to Buddhahood.”
~ Milarepa
O Rama, two aspects of the “heart” are spoken of here: one is
acceptable and the other is to be ignored. The heart that is part
of this physical body and is located in one part of the body may
be ignored! The heart which is acceptable is of the nature of pure
consciousness. It is both inside and outside and it is neither inside
nor outside. This is the principal heart and in it is reflected everything
which is in the universe, and it is the treasure-house of all wealth.
Consciousness alone is the heart of all beings, not the piece of flesh
which people call the heart!
from: Vasishtha’s Yoga
… we should learn to see God in all gifts and works, neither resting
content with anything nor becoming attached to anything. For us there can be
no attachment to a particular manner of behavior in this life, nor has this
ever been right, however successful we may have been.
~Meister Eckhart
Sogyal Rinpoche:
It is important to remember always that the principle of egolessness does
not mean that there was an ego in the first place, and the Buddhists did
away with it. On the contrary, it means there was never any ego at all to
begin with. To realize that is called “egolessness.”
When you are with everyone but me, you’re with no one.
When you are with no one but me, you’re with everyone.
Instead of being so bound up with everyone, be everyone.
When you become that many, you’re nothing. Empty.
~Rumi
The Essential Rumi Barks/Moyne
The Imperson witnesses everything ‘we’ do and everything ‘we’ think (all
psychic and physical manifestation), and that is the great joke. For we
ourselves are the Imperson, and the ‘we’ that acts and thinks is only a
personalisation of the one Unself (Reality) seen as phenomenon, a notion
that as phenomenon has neither permanence nor duration but is renewed every
instant.
Why Lazarus Laughed Wei Wu Wei
When you touch one thing with deep awareness,
you touch everything.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, from Touching Peace
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field,
keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, an angel of the
Lord said unto them, “Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings
of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this
day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
LUKE 2:8-11
“Blessed is the season which engages the
whole world in a conspiracy of love.”
~Hamilton Wright Mabie
SO WHAT IS THERE TO REALIZE?
Peonies bloom on peony trees.
A cat doesn’t become a chicken.
Tulips are tulips, not roses.
Why can’t we realize this true fact?
That to be me is great.
I don’t have to be anyone but me.
I am blooming as I am in my life, just as
a peony blooms on a peony tree.
Further, a beautiful peony flower does not
worry about when it will wilt and fall to the ground.
It does not compete with the flower next to it;
rather it blooms with its whole self.
~ Sensie Ogui, from Zen Shin Talks
The notion of oneself being identical with the body is the cause of
egoism. It is this egoism that entangles all judgments of value in the
preconception that knowledge is acquired through the senses and
the mind or the intellect. This prejudice of egoism is Samsara, the
persistent idea that all knowledge is in terms of space, time and
externality.
~ Swami Krishnananda
Make your mind one-pointed in meditation, and your heart will be
purified… With all fears dissolved in the peace of the Self and all
desires dedicated to Brahman, controlling the mind and fixing it on
me (God), sit in meditation with me as your only goal. With senses
and mind constantly controlled through meditation, united with the
Self within, an aspirant attains nirvana, the state of abiding joy and
peace in me.
Bhagavad Gita 6:12-15
All I know is Love,
And I find my heart Infinite
And Everywhere!
~Hafiz
ALL THIS CAN SOUND RATHER ESOTERIC–
rapture, bliss, impermanence, lack of self–
and it is important not to let the practice
become a cluster of words up in your head.
You don’t want to create an image of yourself,
a stone Buddha like those you see around various
centers, always sitting in the lotus posture
and discerning marvelous wisdom.
The whole point of a book like this, of retreats
and classes, of sitting practice itself, is for you
to take the practice into everyday life,
to practice moment to moment.
You can learn everything I’ve said
just as well by cleaning the toilet.
~Larry Rosenberg,
from Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation
In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help
everybody else.
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The privilege of a lifetime is to be yourself.
~ Joseph Campbell
The particular is born and reborn, changing name and shape, the
gnani is the Changeless Reality, which makes the changeful possible.
The entire universe is his body, all life is his life. As in a city of
lights, when one bulb burns out, it does not affect the network, so
the death of a body does not affect the whole. With me, all is one,
all is equal.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Song Maker
I MADE a hundred little songs
That told the joy and pain of love,
And sang them blithely, tho’ I knew
No whit thereof.
I was a weaver deaf and blind;
A miracle was wrought for me,
But I have lost my skill to weave
Since I can see.
For while I sang — ah swift and strange!
Love passed and touched me on the brow,
And I who made so many songs
Am silent now.
~ Sara Teasdale
Neither ignorance nor illusion ever happened to you. Find the self
to which you ascribe ignorance and illusion and your question will
be answered. You talk as if you know the self and see it to be under
the sway of ignorance and illusion. But, in fact, you do not know the
self, nor are you aware of ignorance.
By all means, become aware, this will bring you to the self and you
will realize that there is neither ignorance nor delusion in it. It is like
saying: if there is sun, how can darkness be? As under a stone there
will be darkness, however strong the sunlight, so in the shadow of the
“I-am-the-body” consciousness there must be ignorance and illusion.
Don’t ask ‘why’ and ‘how’. It is in the nature of creative imagination to
identify itself with its creations. You can stop it any moment by switching
off attention. Or though investigation.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The particular is born and reborn, changing name and shape, the
gnani is the Changeless Reality, which makes the changeful possible.
The entire universe is his body, all life is his life. As in a city of
lights, when one bulb burns out, it does not affect the network, so
the death of a body does not affect the whole. With me, all is one,
all is equal.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Song Maker
I MADE a hundred little songs
That told the joy and pain of love,
And sang them blithely, tho’ I knew
No whit thereof.
I was a weaver deaf and blind;
A miracle was wrought for me,
But I have lost my skill to weave
Since I can see.
For while I sang — ah swift and strange!
Love passed and touched me on the brow,
And I who made so many songs
Am silent now.
~Sara Teasdale
Neither ignorance nor illusion ever happened to you. Find the self
to which you ascribe ignorance and illusion and your question will
be answered. You talk as if you know the self and see it to be under
the sway of ignorance and illusion. But, in fact, you do not know the
self, nor are you aware of ignorance.
By all means, become aware, this will bring you to the self and you
will realize that there is neither ignorance nor delusion in it. It is like
saying: if there is sun, how can darkness be? As under a stone there
will be darkness, however strong the sunlight, so in the shadow of the
“I-am-the-body” consciousness there must be ignorance and illusion.
Don’t ask ‘why’ and ‘how’. It is in the nature of creative imagination to
identify itself with its creations. You can stop it any moment by switching
off attention. Or though investigation.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The man of wisdom is devoid of ego even though he may
appear to use it. His vacant or fasting mind is neither doing
anything nor not doing anything. He is outside of volition,
neither this nor that. He is everything and nothing.
~ Ramesh S. Balsekar
“When mind is quiet, all is Self.
When mind moves the world arises.
So be Still, throw away everything and be Free.”
~ Papaji
How can you determine whether at this moment we are sleeping,
and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and
talking to one another in the waking state.
Plato, Theatetus
A human being is part of the whole, called by us universe, a
part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, has
thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a
kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a
kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires
and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task
must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our
circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the
whole of nature in its beauty.
~ Einstein
You know that you are. Don’t burden yourself with names, just be.
Any name or shape you give yourself obscures your real nature.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The World of Love
Since I have heard of the world of Love,
I’ve spent my life, my heart
And my eyes this way.
I used to think that love
And beloved are different.
I know now that they are the same.
I was seeing two in one.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi
From Crazy as we are selected Rubais from the Divan-i Kebir,
translated by Nevid O. Ergin, p. 8.
Alice Walker
“Expect Nothing”
Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough.
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold.
Make of it a parka
For your soul.
Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise.
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
“One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice
the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that
is the place to train.”
~ Morihei Ueshiba
If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
~ Taishen Deshimaru
Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
and tell them: and the truth of truths is love.
~ Philip James Bailey
I take a book from the other side of this desk; I hear the boys playing
ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the
neighboring woods; – in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen.
No wordy discussion is necessary or any explanation.
~ D T Suzuki
That self is empty like space; but it is not nothingness, since it is
consciousness. It is: yet because it cannot be experienced by the
mind and senses, it is not. It being the self of all, it is not experienced
(as the object of experience) by anyone. Though one, it is reflected
in the infinite atoms of existence and hence appears to be many.
This appearance is however unreal… But the self is not unreal. It is
not a void or nothingness: for it is the self of all…
~ Vasishtha
Having realized that you cannot influence the results, pay no
attention to your desire and fears. Let them come and go.
Don’t give them the nourishment of interest and attention.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you
are inwardly that matters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn.
It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach
you to be yourself.
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance,
and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the
guidance and benefit of others, by expressing in the world
of forms – truth, love, purity and beauty – this is the sole
game that has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other
incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting
importance.
~ Meher Baba ‘Discourses’
Your journey is towards your homeland. Remember you are
traveling from the world of appearances to the world of Reality.
~ ‘Abd’l-Khaliq Ghijuduwani
If you want to love, take the time to listen to your heart.
In most ancient and wise cultures it is a regular practice
for people to talk to their heart. There are rituals, stories,
and meditative skills in every spiritual tradition that awaken
the voice of the heart. To live wisely, this practice is essential,
because our heart is the source of our connection to and
intimacy with all of life. And life is love. This mysterious quality
of love is all around us, as real as gravity. Yet how often we
forget about love.
~ Jack Kornfield
To identify yourself with your personality is more or
less a reflex. You must see, when the reflex comes
up, that it is a kind of feeling of insecurity; you are
looking for a hold.
~Jean Klein
As the rivers flowing east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it,
Forgetting they were ever separate rivers,
So do all creatures lose their separateness
When they merge at last into pure Being.
Chandogya Upanishad
The whole world is you
yet you keep thinking there is something else.
~ Hsueh-Feng
Transcendence implies the surpassing of two things, and the
consequent attainment of a third thing. But there are no ‘things’
in reality, of any kind whatever: there is only the thing-in-itself,
its suchness, which is Reality, revealed when the illusory dualism
of inexistent qualities is dissolved.
~ Wei Wu Wei
Only to the extent that person exposes his or her self
over and over again to annihilation, can that which
is indestructible arise within themselves. In this lies
the dignity of daring.
KARLFRIED GRAF VON DURKHEIM
from The Way of Transformation
THE PRACTICE OF MEDITATION – MINDFULNESS.
is for me a practice of love. Unconscious love is an oxymoron,
an impossibility. To be fully present with oneself and others, I
believe, is the truest love there is. Our courage to enter the darkest
recesses of our hearts and minds births a deliverance from all that
has kept us tight, disconnected and loveless for so long. We forget
and we remember.
~ Gavin Harrison
Inquiring Mind, Fall, 1998
“Queen Mary, she’s my friend
Yes, I believe I’ll go see her again
Nobody has to guess
That Baby can’t be blessed
Till she sees finally that she’s just like all the rest”
(Dylan – Just Like a Woman)
Do not struggle.
Go with the flow of things,
And you will find yourself at one with
The mysterious unity of the Universe.
~ Chuang Tzu
If you look for the truth outside yourself,
it gets farther and farther away.
Today, walking alone,
I meet him everywhere I step.
He is the same as me,
yet I am not him.
Only if you understand it in this way
will you merge with the way things are.
~ Tung-shan
My greatest wealth is the deep stillness in which
I strive and grow and win what the world
cannot take from me with fire or sword.
~Goethe
Through Love all that is bitter will be sweet
Through Love all that is copper will be gold.
Through Love all dregs will turn to purest wine
Through Love all pain will turn to medicine.
Through Love the dead will all become alive.
Through Love the king will turn into a slave!
Translated by Annemarie Schimmel, Look! This is Love
From: AN INTERVIEW WITH ECKHART TOLLE
by MICHAEL BERTRAND
So hardly any of us are going to have some flashing moment of
realization.
Some do, but that’s not necessary. Gradually a state arising
that is inner stillness rather than noise, a state when mind activity
becomes secondary. All the mental noise no longer has the power to
grab you and to draw your attention in so completely that you’re
totally identified with it. You begin to be able to see thinking as
just thinking, not such a big deal, and you realize that all the
problems that you and most humans are burdened with are mental
noise.
There’s no reality to any problem. I’m not saying that challenges
don’t exist in life. Challenges come, but the only way they can exist
is in the Now and that’s the only place where you can face the
challenge by taking action in the Now or surrendering to what is.
In either case it’s not a problem.
You can verify this for yourself by asking, “What problem do I
have at this moment?” When you ask that question the mind becomes
still and you realize this moment is actually fine, because most moments
are fine. Even when they don’t look fine on the surface, if you become
still enough the present moment always has a deep goodness to it
underneath the external appearance of what’s happening in it because
the very power of your being is inseparable from what I call the
Now.
Ultimately the Now is the power of your consciousness prior to
thought, prior to forms arising out of it.
Acquire the courage to believe in yourself. Many of the things
that you have been taught were at one time the radical ideas
of individuals who had the courage to believe what their own
hearts and minds told them was true, rather than accept the
common beliefs of their day.
~ Ching Ning Chu
gnani is the Changeless Reality, which makes the changeful possible.
The entire universe is his body, all life is his life. As in a city of
lights, when one bulb burns out, it does not affect the network, so
the death of a body does not affect the whole. With me, all is one,
all is equal.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Song Maker
I MADE a hundred little songs
That told the joy and pain of love,
And sang them blithely, tho’ I knew
No whit thereof.
I was a weaver deaf and blind;
A miracle was wrought for me,
But I have lost my skill to weave
Since I can see.
For while I sang — ah swift and strange!
Love passed and touched me on the brow,
And I who made so many songs
Am silent now.
~Sara Teasdale
Neither ignorance nor illusion ever happened to you. Find the self
to which you ascribe ignorance and illusion and your question will
be answered. You talk as if you know the self and see it to be under
the sway of ignorance and illusion. But, in fact, you do not know the
self, nor are you aware of ignorance.
By all means, become aware, this will bring you to the self and you
will realize that there is neither ignorance nor delusion in it. It is like
saying: if there is sun, how can darkness be? As under a stone there
will be darkness, however strong the sunlight, so in the shadow of the
“I-am-the-body” consciousness there must be ignorance and illusion.
Don’t ask ‘why’ and ‘how’. It is in the nature of creative imagination to
identify itself with its creations. You can stop it any moment by switching
off attention. Or though investigation.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The man of wisdom is devoid of ego even though he may
appear to use it. His vacant or fasting mind is neither doing
anything nor not doing anything. He is outside of volition,
neither this nor that. He is everything and nothing.
~ Ramesh S. Balsekar
“When mind is quiet, all is Self.
When mind moves the world arises.
So be Still, throw away everything and be Free.”
~ Papaji
How can you determine whether at this moment we are sleeping,
and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and
talking to one another in the waking state.
Plato, Theatetus
A human being is part of the whole, called by us universe, a
part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, has
thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a
kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a
kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires
and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task
must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our
circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the
whole of nature in its beauty.
~ Einstein
You know that you are. Don’t burden yourself with names, just be.
Any name or shape you give yourself obscures your real nature.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The World of Love
Since I have heard of the world of Love,
I’ve spent my life, my heart
And my eyes this way.
I used to think that love
And beloved are different.
I know now that they are the same.
I was seeing two in one.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi
From Crazy as we are selected Rubais from the Divan-i Kebir,
translated by Nevid O. Ergin, p. 8.
Alice Walker
“Expect Nothing”
Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough.
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold.
Make of it a parka
For your soul.
Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise.
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
“One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice
the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that
is the place to train.”
~ Morihei Ueshiba
If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
~ Taishen Deshimaru
Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
and tell them: and the truth of truths is love.
~ Philip James Bailey
I take a book from the other side of this desk; I hear the boys playing
ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the
neighboring woods; – in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen.
No wordy discussion is necessary or any explanation.
~ D T Suzuki
That self is empty like space; but it is not nothingness, since it is
consciousness. It is: yet because it cannot be experienced by the
mind and senses, it is not. It being the self of all, it is not experienced
(as the object of experience) by anyone. Though one, it is reflected
in the infinite atoms of existence and hence appears to be many.
This appearance is however unreal… But the self is not unreal. It is
not a void or nothingness: for it is the self of all…
~ Vasishtha
Having realized that you cannot influence the results, pay no
attention to your desire and fears. Let them come and go.
Don’t give them the nourishment of interest and attention.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you
are inwardly that matters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn.
It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach
you to be yourself.
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance,
and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the
guidance and benefit of others, by expressing in the world
of forms – truth, love, purity and beauty – this is the sole
game that has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other
incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting
importance.
~ Meher Baba ‘Discourses’
Your journey is towards your homeland. Remember you are
traveling from the world of appearances to the world of Reality.
~ ‘Abd’l-Khaliq Ghijuduwani
If you want to love, take the time to listen to your heart.
In most ancient and wise cultures it is a regular practice
for people to talk to their heart. There are rituals, stories,
and meditative skills in every spiritual tradition that awaken
the voice of the heart. To live wisely, this practice is essential,
because our heart is the source of our connection to and
intimacy with all of life. And life is love. This mysterious quality
of love is all around us, as real as gravity. Yet how often we
forget about love.
~ Jack Kornfield
To identify yourself with your personality is more or
less a reflex. You must see, when the reflex comes
up, that it is a kind of feeling of insecurity; you are
looking for a hold.
~Jean Klein
As the rivers flowing east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it,
Forgetting they were ever separate rivers,
So do all creatures lose their separateness
When they merge at last into pure Being.
Chandogya Upanishad
The whole world is you
yet you keep thinking there is something else.
~ Hsueh-Feng
Transcendence implies the surpassing of two things, and the
consequent attainment of a third thing. But there are no ‘things’
in reality, of any kind whatever: there is only the thing-in-itself,
its suchness, which is Reality, revealed when the illusory dualism
of inexistent qualities is dissolved.
~ Wei Wu Wei
Only to the extent that person exposes his or her self
over and over again to annihilation, can that which
is indestructible arise within themselves. In this lies
the dignity of daring.
KARLFRIED GRAF VON DURKHEIM
from The Way of Transformation
THE PRACTICE OF MEDITATION – MINDFULNESS.
is for me a practice of love. Unconscious love is an oxymoron,
an impossibility. To be fully present with oneself and others, I
believe, is the truest love there is. Our courage to enter the darkest
recesses of our hearts and minds births a deliverance from all that
has kept us tight, disconnected and loveless for so long. We forget
and we remember.
~ Gavin Harrison
Inquiring Mind, Fall, 1998
“Queen Mary, she’s my friend
Yes, I believe I’ll go see her again
Nobody has to guess
That Baby can’t be blessed
Till she sees finally that she’s just like all the rest”
(Dylan – Just Like a Woman)
Do not struggle.
Go with the flow of things,
And you will find yourself at one with
The mysterious unity of the Universe.
~ Chuang Tzu
If you look for the truth outside yourself,
it gets farther and farther away.
Today, walking alone,
I meet him everywhere I step.
He is the same as me,
yet I am not him.
Only if you understand it in this way
will you merge with the way things are.
~ Tung-shan
My greatest wealth is the deep stillness in which
I strive and grow and win what the world
cannot take from me with fire or sword.
~Goethe
Through Love all that is bitter will be sweet
Through Love all that is copper will be gold.
Through Love all dregs will turn to purest wine
Through Love all pain will turn to medicine.
Through Love the dead will all become alive.
Through Love the king will turn into a slave!
Translated by Annemarie Schimmel, Look! This is Love
From: AN INTERVIEW WITH ECKHART TOLLE
by MICHAEL BERTRAND
So hardly any of us are going to have some flashing moment of
realization.
Some do, but that’s not necessary. Gradually a state arising
that is inner stillness rather than noise, a state when mind activity
becomes secondary. All the mental noise no longer has the power to
grab you and to draw your attention in so completely that you’re
totally identified with it. You begin to be able to see thinking as
just thinking, not such a big deal, and you realize that all the
problems that you and most humans are burdened with are mental
noise.
There’s no reality to any problem. I’m not saying that challenges
don’t exist in life. Challenges come, but the only way they can exist
is in the Now and that’s the only place where you can face the
challenge by taking action in the Now or surrendering to what is.
In either case it’s not a problem.
You can verify this for yourself by asking, “What problem do I
have at this moment?” When you ask that question the mind becomes
still and you realize this moment is actually fine, because most moments
are fine. Even when they don’t look fine on the surface, if you become
still enough the present moment always has a deep goodness to it
underneath the external appearance of what’s happening in it because
the very power of your being is inseparable from what I call the
Now.
Ultimately the Now is the power of your consciousness prior to
thought, prior to forms arising out of it.
Acquire the courage to believe in yourself. Many of the things
that you have been taught were at one time the radical ideas
of individuals who had the courage to believe what their own
hearts and minds told them was true, rather than accept the
common beliefs of their day.
~ Ching Ning Chu