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
Five Fascinating Facts about Aldous Huxley
Interesting trivia about the life of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World
1. Aldous Huxley was the great-nephew of Matthew Arnold. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), the author best known for the dystopian novel Brave New World (1932), could boast the nineteenth-century poet and educational reformer Arnold (1822-88) as his great-uncle. This literary ancestry is worth mentioning at the outset of this list of interesting Aldous Huxley facts, not least because it is often eclipsed in accounts of Huxley’s life by his more famous family connection – namely, his grandfather, the great Victorian biologist T. H. Huxley, who coined the word ‘agnostic’. And while we’re discussing the coining of words…
2. Huxley is credited with the first use of the words bitchy, Dadaist, futurology, nymphomaniacal, and snooty. The Oxford English Dictionary lists Huxley as the first recorded user of these words. Another notable coinage was the sexophone, an imaginary musical instrument that arouses sexual desire, which appears in Huxley’s most famous novel, Brave New World – in the novel, recreational sex is positively encouraged.
Many readers know Brave New World, but how many people know of the sequel Huxley wrote, Brave New World Revisited, published in 1958? Well, despite the title it’s not really a sequel as such: it’s a non-fiction work in which Huxley ponders, just over a quarter of a century on from his original novel, how many of his ‘predictions’ from the novel have come true. His conclusion, gloomily, was that the world is heading for A. F. 632 (the year in which Brave New World is set – the initials stand for ‘After [Henry] Ford’) faster even than Huxley had expected.
3. Aldous Huxley taught George Orwell at Eton. As we’ve remarked elsewhere in our post comprising five fascinating facts about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, this means that the future author of one of the great dystopian novels of the twentieth century taught the future author of one of the other great dystopian novels of the twentieth century. (He was Orwell’s French teacher.) The interesting author connections don’t end there. In 1930, Huxley was one of only ten mourners who attended the funeral of D. H. Lawrence.
4. Walt Disney rejected Aldous Huxley’s synopsis for the screenplay of Alice in Wonderland as ‘he could only understand every third word’. Huxley’s script, which he worked on in the years following the end of WWII, mixes live action and animation and focuses on the friendship between Carroll (or Charles Dodgson, as he was known at the University of Oxford – Carroll, of course, being his pen name) and Alice Liddell.
5. Huxley died on 22 November 1963 – the same day as C. S. Lewis. Huxley died of laryngeal cancer, aged 69 (he took LSD shortly before he died). Neither of their deaths received much press attention, however, as it was also the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Huxley’s later work had a considerable influence on the counterculture of the 1960s, notably Timothy Leary, though perhaps his influence is most clearly displayed by the fact that the rock group The Doors took their band name from Huxley’s 1954 book The Doors of Perception, Huxley’s account of his experiences taking mescaline (Huxley’s title was, in turn, borrowed from another notable drug-user and writer, William Blake). Indeed, many of Huxley’s other book titles are allusions to other works of literature: he took Antic Hay (1923) from Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, Eyeless in Gaza (1936) comes from Milton’s closet drama Samson Agonistes, Those Barren Leaves (1925) is from Wordsworth’s ‘The Tables Turned’, and Brave New World is from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Aldous Huxley Facts
Aldous Huxley was a British author best known for the book A Brave New World. Aldous Huxley was born in July 26th, 1894 to Julia Arnold and Leonard Huxley in Godalming, Surrey, England. His father was a schoolmaster and writer and his mother founded Prior's Field School.
Aldous went blind as a teenager for two or three years, but his eyesight returned sufficient enough to study English at Balliol College, Oxford, but it was always poor for the rest of his life. He graduated with honors.
Aldous Huxley's first published novel was Crome Yellow in 1921, a social satire. His published works include novels, short story collections, poetry collections, essay collections, screenplays, travel books, drama, articles, and even a children's book titled The Crows of Pearblossom.
Interesting Aldous Huxley Facts:
Aldous Huxley's mother died when he was only 14. He became sick in 1911 and his sight was forever damaged.
Aldous Huxley's brother Noel committed suicide in 1914 after suffering from depression.
Aldous Huxley wrote a novel when he was 17 but it was not published.
Aldous Huxley's first novel Crome Yellow was a satirical look at life at the Garsington Manor where he had worked during World War I.
Aldous Huxley's works often addressed the potential harm to mankind by scientific progress. Aldous Huxley developed a close friendship with the famous writer D.H. Lawrence while at Oxford. He eventually edited Lawrence's letters following his death in 1930. Aldous novels included Crome Yellow, Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves, Point Counter Point, Brave New World, Eyeless in Gaza, After Many a Summer, Time Must Have a Stop, Ape and Essence, The Genius and the Goddess, and Island. Aldous Huxley moved to Hollywood in 1937 with his wife Maria, and son Matthew. He lived there for the rest of his life.
Aldous Huxley became spiritual soon after moving to the U.S. and meeting Jiddu Krishnamurti. He became a Vendatist.
Aldous Huxley wrote a satirical book After Many a Summer which featured Tarzana College, after spending a great deal of time at Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1939.
Aldous Huxley became a Hollywood screenwriter and began earning $3,000 a week, which in 1938 was a lot of money.
Aldous used a lot of the money he earned as a screenwriter to bring artist and writer refugees to the U.S. from Hitler's Germany.
Aldous Huxley wrote a letter to George Orwell, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, in 1949 to congratulate him on his book. He felt the book was 'profoundly important', and predicted that the government would become all-controlling in the years to come.
Aldous Huxley applied to become a citizen of the United States but because he would not agree to take up arms to defend the U.S. his application was denied several times. He eventually withdrew his application.
Aldous was married twice. His first marriage ended when his wife Maria died. His second marriage to Laura Archera ended when Aldous died of laryngeal cancer.
Aldous Huxley died at the age of 69, on November 22, 1963. When he died, the author C.S. Lewis had also passed away. Both of their deaths were overshadowed by President John F. Kennedy' assassination. Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was good friends with Aldous Huxley. Igor dedicated his final orchestral composition to Aldous.
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
Five Fascinating Facts about Aldous Huxley
Interesting trivia about the life of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World
1. Aldous Huxley was the great-nephew of Matthew Arnold. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), the author best known for the dystopian novel Brave New World (1932), could boast the nineteenth-century poet and educational reformer Arnold (1822-88) as his great-uncle. This literary ancestry is worth mentioning at the outset of this list of interesting Aldous Huxley facts, not least because it is often eclipsed in accounts of Huxley’s life by his more famous family connection – namely, his grandfather, the great Victorian biologist T. H. Huxley, who coined the word ‘agnostic’. And while we’re discussing the coining of words…
2. Huxley is credited with the first use of the words bitchy, Dadaist, futurology, nymphomaniacal, and snooty. The Oxford English Dictionary lists Huxley as the first recorded user of these words. Another notable coinage was the sexophone, an imaginary musical instrument that arouses sexual desire, which appears in Huxley’s most famous novel, Brave New World – in the novel, recreational sex is positively encouraged.
Many readers know Brave New World, but how many people know of the sequel Huxley wrote, Brave New World Revisited, published in 1958? Well, despite the title it’s not really a sequel as such: it’s a non-fiction work in which Huxley ponders, just over a quarter of a century on from his original novel, how many of his ‘predictions’ from the novel have come true. His conclusion, gloomily, was that the world is heading for A. F. 632 (the year in which Brave New World is set – the initials stand for ‘After [Henry] Ford’) faster even than Huxley had expected.
3. Aldous Huxley taught George Orwell at Eton. As we’ve remarked elsewhere in our post comprising five fascinating facts about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, this means that the future author of one of the great dystopian novels of the twentieth century taught the future author of one of the other great dystopian novels of the twentieth century. (He was Orwell’s French teacher.) The interesting author connections don’t end there. In 1930, Huxley was one of only ten mourners who attended the funeral of D. H. Lawrence.
4. Walt Disney rejected Aldous Huxley’s synopsis for the screenplay of Alice in Wonderland as ‘he could only understand every third word’. Huxley’s script, which he worked on in the years following the end of WWII, mixes live action and animation and focuses on the friendship between Carroll (or Charles Dodgson, as he was known at the University of Oxford – Carroll, of course, being his pen name) and Alice Liddell.
5. Huxley died on 22 November 1963 – the same day as C. S. Lewis. Huxley died of laryngeal cancer, aged 69 (he took LSD shortly before he died). Neither of their deaths received much press attention, however, as it was also the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Huxley’s later work had a considerable influence on the counterculture of the 1960s, notably Timothy Leary, though perhaps his influence is most clearly displayed by the fact that the rock group The Doors took their band name from Huxley’s 1954 book The Doors of Perception, Huxley’s account of his experiences taking mescaline (Huxley’s title was, in turn, borrowed from another notable drug-user and writer, William Blake). Indeed, many of Huxley’s other book titles are allusions to other works of literature: he took Antic Hay (1923) from Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, Eyeless in Gaza (1936) comes from Milton’s closet drama Samson Agonistes, Those Barren Leaves (1925) is from Wordsworth’s ‘The Tables Turned’, and Brave New World is from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Aldous Huxley Facts
Aldous Huxley was a British author best known for the book A Brave New World. Aldous Huxley was born in July 26th, 1894 to Julia Arnold and Leonard Huxley in Godalming, Surrey, England. His father was a schoolmaster and writer and his mother founded Prior's Field School.
Aldous went blind as a teenager for two or three years, but his eyesight returned sufficient enough to study English at Balliol College, Oxford, but it was always poor for the rest of his life. He graduated with honors.
Aldous Huxley's first published novel was Crome Yellow in 1921, a social satire. His published works include novels, short story collections, poetry collections, essay collections, screenplays, travel books, drama, articles, and even a children's book titled The Crows of Pearblossom.
Interesting Aldous Huxley Facts:
Aldous Huxley's mother died when he was only 14. He became sick in 1911 and his sight was forever damaged.
Aldous Huxley's brother Noel committed suicide in 1914 after suffering from depression.
Aldous Huxley wrote a novel when he was 17 but it was not published.
Aldous Huxley's first novel Crome Yellow was a satirical look at life at the Garsington Manor where he had worked during World War I.
Aldous Huxley's works often addressed the potential harm to mankind by scientific progress. Aldous Huxley developed a close friendship with the famous writer D.H. Lawrence while at Oxford. He eventually edited Lawrence's letters following his death in 1930. Aldous novels included Crome Yellow, Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves, Point Counter Point, Brave New World, Eyeless in Gaza, After Many a Summer, Time Must Have a Stop, Ape and Essence, The Genius and the Goddess, and Island. Aldous Huxley moved to Hollywood in 1937 with his wife Maria, and son Matthew. He lived there for the rest of his life.
Aldous Huxley became spiritual soon after moving to the U.S. and meeting Jiddu Krishnamurti. He became a Vendatist.
Aldous Huxley wrote a satirical book After Many a Summer which featured Tarzana College, after spending a great deal of time at Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1939.
Aldous Huxley became a Hollywood screenwriter and began earning $3,000 a week, which in 1938 was a lot of money.
Aldous used a lot of the money he earned as a screenwriter to bring artist and writer refugees to the U.S. from Hitler's Germany.
Aldous Huxley wrote a letter to George Orwell, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, in 1949 to congratulate him on his book. He felt the book was 'profoundly important', and predicted that the government would become all-controlling in the years to come.
Aldous Huxley applied to become a citizen of the United States but because he would not agree to take up arms to defend the U.S. his application was denied several times. He eventually withdrew his application.
Aldous was married twice. His first marriage ended when his wife Maria died. His second marriage to Laura Archera ended when Aldous died of laryngeal cancer.
Aldous Huxley died at the age of 69, on November 22, 1963. When he died, the author C.S. Lewis had also passed away. Both of their deaths were overshadowed by President John F. Kennedy' assassination. Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was good friends with Aldous Huxley. Igor dedicated his final orchestral composition to Aldous.
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?
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