Georgia Guidestones
In June 1979, an unknown person or persons under the pseudonym R. C. Christian hired Elberton Granite Finishing Company to build the structure.[2]
Inscriptions
A message consisting of a set of ten guidelines or principles is engraved on the Georgia Guidestones in eight different languages, one language on each face of the four large upright stones. Moving clockwise around the structure from due north, these languages are: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian.
1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.
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Context:
Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey, England, on July 26, 1894, to an illustrious family deeply rooted in England’s literary and scientific tradition. Huxley’s father, Leonard Huxley, was the son of Thomas Henry Huxley, a well-known biologist who gained the nickname “Darwin’s bulldog” for championing Charles Darwin’s evolutionary ideas. His mother, Julia Arnold, was related to the important nineteenth-century poet and essayist Matthew Arnold.
Raised in this family of scientists, writers, and teachers (his father was a writer and teacher, and his mother a schoolmistress), Huxley received an excellent education, first at home, then at Eton, providing him with access to numerous fields of knowledge. Huxley was an avid student, and during his lifetime he was renowned as a generalist, an intellectual who had mastered the use of the English language but was also informed about cutting-edge developments in science and other fields. Although much of his scientific understanding was superficial—he was easily convinced of findings that remained somewhat on the fringe of mainstream science—his education at the intersection of science and literature allowed him to integrate current scientific findings into his novels and essays in a way that few other writers of his time were able to do.
Aside from his education, another major influence on Huxley’s life and writing was an eye disease contracted in his teenage years that left him almost blind. As a teenager Huxley had dreamed about becoming a doctor, but the degeneration of his eyesight prevented him from pursuing his chosen career. It also severely restricted the activities he could pursue. Because of his near blindness, he depended heavily on his first wife, Maria, to take care of him. Blindness and vision are motifs that permeate much of Huxley’s writing.
After graduating from Oxford in 1916, Huxley began to make a name for himself writing satirical pieces about the British upper class. Though these writings were skillful and gained Huxley an audience and literary name, they were generally considered to offer little depth beyond their lightweight criticisms of social manners. Huxley continued to write prolifically, working as an essayist and journalist, and publishing four volumes of poetry before beginning to work on novels. Without giving up his other writing, beginning in 1921, Huxley produced a series of novels at an astonishing rate: Crome Yellow was published in 1921, followed by Antic Hay in 1923, Those Barren Leaves in 1925, and Point Counter Point in 1928. During these years, Huxley left his early satires behind and became more interested in writing about subjects with deeper philosophical and ethical significance. Much of his work deals with the conflict between the interests of the individual and society, often focusing on the problem of self-realization within the context of social responsibility. These themes reached their zenith in Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932. His most enduring work imagined a fictional future in which free will and individuality have been sacrificed in deference to complete social stability.
Brave New World marked a step in a new direction for Huxley, combining his skill for satire with his fascination with science to create a dystopian (anti-utopian) world in which a totalitarian government controlled society by the use of science and technology. Through its exploration of the pitfalls of linking science, technology, and politics, and its argument that such a link will likely reduce human individuality, Brave New World deals with similar themes as George Orwell’s famous novel 1984. Orwell wrote his novel in 1949, after the dangers of totalitarian governments had been played out to tragic effect in World War II, and during the great struggle of the Cold War and the arms race which so powerfully underlined the role of technology in the modern world. Huxley anticipated all of these developments. Hitler came to power in Germany a year after the publication of Brave New World. World War II broke out six years after. The atomic bomb was dropped thirteen years after its publication, initiating the Cold War and what President Eisenhower referred to as a frightening buildup of the “military-industrial complex.” Huxley’s novel seems, in many ways, to prophesize the major themes and struggles that dominated life and debate in the second half of the twentieth century, and continue to dominate it in the twenty-first.
After publishing Brave New World, Huxley continued to live in England, making frequent journeys to Italy. In 1937 Huxley moved to California. An ardent pacifist, he had become alarmed at the growing military buildup in Europe, and determined to remove himself from the possibility of war. Already famous as a writer of novels and essays, he tried to make a living as a screenwriter. He had little success. Huxley never seemed to grasp the requirements of the form, and his erudite literary style did not translate well to the screen.
In the late forties, Huxley started to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and mescaline. He also maintained an interest in occult phenomena, such as hypnotism, séances, and other activities occupying the border between science and mysticism. Huxley’s experiments with drugs led him to write several books that had profound influences on the sixties counterculture. The book he wrote about his experiences with mescaline, The Doors of Perception, influenced a young man named Jim Morrison and his friends, and they named the band they formed The Doors. (The phrase, “the doors of perception” comes from a William Blake poem called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.) In his last major work, Island, published in 1962, Huxley describes a doomed utopia called Pala that serves as a contrast to his earlier vision of dystopia. A central aspect of Pala’s ideal culture is the use of a hallucinogenic drug called “moksha,” which provides an interesting context in which to view soma, the drug in Brave New World that serves as one tool of the totalitarian state. Huxley died on November 22, 1963, in Los Angeles.
Utopias and Dystopias Brave New World belongs to the genre of utopian literature. A utopia is an imaginary society organized to create ideal conditions for human beings, eliminating hatred, pain, neglect, and all of the other evils of the world.
The word utopia comes from Sir Thomas More’s novel Utopia (1516), and it is derived from Greek roots that could be translated to mean either “good place” or “no place.” Books that include descriptions of utopian societies were written long before More’s novel, however. Plato’s Republic is a prime example. Sometimes the societies described are meant to represent the perfect society, but sometimes utopias are created to satirize existing societies, or simply to speculate about what life might be like under different conditions. In the 1920s, just before Brave New World was written, a number of bitterly satirical novels were written to describe the horrors of a planned or totalitarian society. The societies they describe are called dystopias, places where things are badly awry. Either term, utopia or dystopia, could correctly be used to describe Brave New World.
Characters:
John - The son of the Director and Linda, John is the only major character to have grown up outside of the World State. The consummate outsider, he has spent his life alienated from his village on the New Mexico Savage Reservation, and he finds himself similarly unable to fit in to World State society. His entire worldview is based on his knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays, which he can quote with great facility.
Bernard Marx - An Alpha male who fails to fit in because of his inferior physical stature. He holds unorthodox beliefs about sexual relationships, sports, and community events. His insecurity about his size and status makes him discontented with the World State. Bernard’s surname recalls Karl Marx, the nineteenth-century German author best known for writing Capital, a monumental critique of capitalist society. Unlike his famous namesake, Bernard’s discontent stems from his frustrated desire to fit into his own society, rather than from a systematic or philosophical criticism of it. When threatened, Bernard can be petty and cruel.
Helmholtz Watson - An Alpha lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering, Helmholtz is a prime example of his caste, but feels that his work is empty and meaningless and would like to use his writing abilities for something more meaningful. He and Bernard are friends because they find common ground in their discontent with the World State, but Helmholtz’s criticisms of the World State are more philosophical and intellectual than Bernard’s more petty complaints. As a result, Helmholtz often finds Bernard’s boastfulness and cowardice tedious.
Lenina Crowne - A vaccination worker at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. She is an object of desire for a number of major and minor characters, including Bernard Marx and John. Her behavior is sometimes intriguingly unorthodox, which makes her attractive to the reader. For example, she defies her culture’s conventions by dating one man exclusively for several months, she is attracted to Bernard—the misfit—and she develops a violent passion for John the Savage. Ultimately, her values are those of a conventional World State citizen: her primary means of relating to other people is through sex, and she is unable to share Bernard’s disaffection or to comprehend John’s alternate system of values.
Mustapha Mond - The Resident World Controller of Western Europe, one of only ten World Controllers. He was once an ambitious, young scientist performing illicit research. When his work was discovered, he was given the choice of going into exile or training to become a World Controller. He chose to give up science, and now he censors scientific discoveries and exiles people for unorthodox beliefs. He also keeps a collection of forbidden literature in his safe, including Shakespeare and religious writings. The name Mond means “world,” and Mond is indeed the most powerful character in the world of this novel.
Fanny Crowne - Lenina Crowne’s friend (they have the same last name because only about ten thousand last names are in use in the World State). Fanny’s role is mainly to voice the conventional values of her caste and society. Specifically, she warns Lenina that she should have more men in her life because it looks bad to concentrate on one man for too long.
Henry Foster - One of Lenina’s many lovers, he is a perfectly conventional Alpha male, casually discussing Lenina’s body with his coworkers. His success with Lenina, and his casual attitude about it, infuriate the jealous Bernard.
Linda - John’s mother, and a Beta. While visiting the New Mexico Savage Reservation, she became pregnant with the Director’s son. During a storm, she got lost, suffered a head injury and was left behind. A group of Indians found her and brought her to their village. Linda could not get an abortion on the Reservation, and she was too ashamed to return to the World State with a baby. Her World State–conditioned promiscuity makes her a social outcast. She is desperate to return to the World State and to soma.
The Director - The Director administrates the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. He is a threatening figure, with the power to exile Bernard to Iceland. But he is secretly vulnerable because he fathered a child (John), a scandalous and obscene act in the World State.
The Arch-Community-Songster - The Arch-Community-Songster is the secular, shallow equivalent of an archbishop in the World State society.
Popé - Popé was Linda’s lover on the New Mexico Savage Reservation. He gave Linda a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.
The Warden - The Warden is the talkative chief administrator for the New Mexico Savage Reservation. He is an Alpha.
Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey, England, on July 26, 1894, to an illustrious family deeply rooted in England’s literary and scientific tradition. Huxley’s father, Leonard Huxley, was the son of Thomas Henry Huxley, a well-known biologist who gained the nickname “Darwin’s bulldog” for championing Charles Darwin’s evolutionary ideas. His mother, Julia Arnold, was related to the important nineteenth-century poet and essayist Matthew Arnold.
Raised in this family of scientists, writers, and teachers (his father was a writer and teacher, and his mother a schoolmistress), Huxley received an excellent education, first at home, then at Eton, providing him with access to numerous fields of knowledge. Huxley was an avid student, and during his lifetime he was renowned as a generalist, an intellectual who had mastered the use of the English language but was also informed about cutting-edge developments in science and other fields. Although much of his scientific understanding was superficial—he was easily convinced of findings that remained somewhat on the fringe of mainstream science—his education at the intersection of science and literature allowed him to integrate current scientific findings into his novels and essays in a way that few other writers of his time were able to do.
Aside from his education, another major influence on Huxley’s life and writing was an eye disease contracted in his teenage years that left him almost blind. As a teenager Huxley had dreamed about becoming a doctor, but the degeneration of his eyesight prevented him from pursuing his chosen career. It also severely restricted the activities he could pursue. Because of his near blindness, he depended heavily on his first wife, Maria, to take care of him. Blindness and vision are motifs that permeate much of Huxley’s writing.
After graduating from Oxford in 1916, Huxley began to make a name for himself writing satirical pieces about the British upper class. Though these writings were skillful and gained Huxley an audience and literary name, they were generally considered to offer little depth beyond their lightweight criticisms of social manners. Huxley continued to write prolifically, working as an essayist and journalist, and publishing four volumes of poetry before beginning to work on novels. Without giving up his other writing, beginning in 1921, Huxley produced a series of novels at an astonishing rate: Crome Yellow was published in 1921, followed by Antic Hay in 1923, Those Barren Leaves in 1925, and Point Counter Point in 1928. During these years, Huxley left his early satires behind and became more interested in writing about subjects with deeper philosophical and ethical significance. Much of his work deals with the conflict between the interests of the individual and society, often focusing on the problem of self-realization within the context of social responsibility. These themes reached their zenith in Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932. His most enduring work imagined a fictional future in which free will and individuality have been sacrificed in deference to complete social stability.
Brave New World marked a step in a new direction for Huxley, combining his skill for satire with his fascination with science to create a dystopian (anti-utopian) world in which a totalitarian government controlled society by the use of science and technology. Through its exploration of the pitfalls of linking science, technology, and politics, and its argument that such a link will likely reduce human individuality, Brave New World deals with similar themes as George Orwell’s famous novel 1984. Orwell wrote his novel in 1949, after the dangers of totalitarian governments had been played out to tragic effect in World War II, and during the great struggle of the Cold War and the arms race which so powerfully underlined the role of technology in the modern world. Huxley anticipated all of these developments. Hitler came to power in Germany a year after the publication of Brave New World. World War II broke out six years after. The atomic bomb was dropped thirteen years after its publication, initiating the Cold War and what President Eisenhower referred to as a frightening buildup of the “military-industrial complex.” Huxley’s novel seems, in many ways, to prophesize the major themes and struggles that dominated life and debate in the second half of the twentieth century, and continue to dominate it in the twenty-first.
After publishing Brave New World, Huxley continued to live in England, making frequent journeys to Italy. In 1937 Huxley moved to California. An ardent pacifist, he had become alarmed at the growing military buildup in Europe, and determined to remove himself from the possibility of war. Already famous as a writer of novels and essays, he tried to make a living as a screenwriter. He had little success. Huxley never seemed to grasp the requirements of the form, and his erudite literary style did not translate well to the screen.
In the late forties, Huxley started to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and mescaline. He also maintained an interest in occult phenomena, such as hypnotism, séances, and other activities occupying the border between science and mysticism. Huxley’s experiments with drugs led him to write several books that had profound influences on the sixties counterculture. The book he wrote about his experiences with mescaline, The Doors of Perception, influenced a young man named Jim Morrison and his friends, and they named the band they formed The Doors. (The phrase, “the doors of perception” comes from a William Blake poem called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.) In his last major work, Island, published in 1962, Huxley describes a doomed utopia called Pala that serves as a contrast to his earlier vision of dystopia. A central aspect of Pala’s ideal culture is the use of a hallucinogenic drug called “moksha,” which provides an interesting context in which to view soma, the drug in Brave New World that serves as one tool of the totalitarian state. Huxley died on November 22, 1963, in Los Angeles.
Utopias and Dystopias Brave New World belongs to the genre of utopian literature. A utopia is an imaginary society organized to create ideal conditions for human beings, eliminating hatred, pain, neglect, and all of the other evils of the world.
The word utopia comes from Sir Thomas More’s novel Utopia (1516), and it is derived from Greek roots that could be translated to mean either “good place” or “no place.” Books that include descriptions of utopian societies were written long before More’s novel, however. Plato’s Republic is a prime example. Sometimes the societies described are meant to represent the perfect society, but sometimes utopias are created to satirize existing societies, or simply to speculate about what life might be like under different conditions. In the 1920s, just before Brave New World was written, a number of bitterly satirical novels were written to describe the horrors of a planned or totalitarian society. The societies they describe are called dystopias, places where things are badly awry. Either term, utopia or dystopia, could correctly be used to describe Brave New World.
Characters:
John - The son of the Director and Linda, John is the only major character to have grown up outside of the World State. The consummate outsider, he has spent his life alienated from his village on the New Mexico Savage Reservation, and he finds himself similarly unable to fit in to World State society. His entire worldview is based on his knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays, which he can quote with great facility.
Bernard Marx - An Alpha male who fails to fit in because of his inferior physical stature. He holds unorthodox beliefs about sexual relationships, sports, and community events. His insecurity about his size and status makes him discontented with the World State. Bernard’s surname recalls Karl Marx, the nineteenth-century German author best known for writing Capital, a monumental critique of capitalist society. Unlike his famous namesake, Bernard’s discontent stems from his frustrated desire to fit into his own society, rather than from a systematic or philosophical criticism of it. When threatened, Bernard can be petty and cruel.
Helmholtz Watson - An Alpha lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering, Helmholtz is a prime example of his caste, but feels that his work is empty and meaningless and would like to use his writing abilities for something more meaningful. He and Bernard are friends because they find common ground in their discontent with the World State, but Helmholtz’s criticisms of the World State are more philosophical and intellectual than Bernard’s more petty complaints. As a result, Helmholtz often finds Bernard’s boastfulness and cowardice tedious.
Lenina Crowne - A vaccination worker at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. She is an object of desire for a number of major and minor characters, including Bernard Marx and John. Her behavior is sometimes intriguingly unorthodox, which makes her attractive to the reader. For example, she defies her culture’s conventions by dating one man exclusively for several months, she is attracted to Bernard—the misfit—and she develops a violent passion for John the Savage. Ultimately, her values are those of a conventional World State citizen: her primary means of relating to other people is through sex, and she is unable to share Bernard’s disaffection or to comprehend John’s alternate system of values.
Mustapha Mond - The Resident World Controller of Western Europe, one of only ten World Controllers. He was once an ambitious, young scientist performing illicit research. When his work was discovered, he was given the choice of going into exile or training to become a World Controller. He chose to give up science, and now he censors scientific discoveries and exiles people for unorthodox beliefs. He also keeps a collection of forbidden literature in his safe, including Shakespeare and religious writings. The name Mond means “world,” and Mond is indeed the most powerful character in the world of this novel.
Fanny Crowne - Lenina Crowne’s friend (they have the same last name because only about ten thousand last names are in use in the World State). Fanny’s role is mainly to voice the conventional values of her caste and society. Specifically, she warns Lenina that she should have more men in her life because it looks bad to concentrate on one man for too long.
Henry Foster - One of Lenina’s many lovers, he is a perfectly conventional Alpha male, casually discussing Lenina’s body with his coworkers. His success with Lenina, and his casual attitude about it, infuriate the jealous Bernard.
Linda - John’s mother, and a Beta. While visiting the New Mexico Savage Reservation, she became pregnant with the Director’s son. During a storm, she got lost, suffered a head injury and was left behind. A group of Indians found her and brought her to their village. Linda could not get an abortion on the Reservation, and she was too ashamed to return to the World State with a baby. Her World State–conditioned promiscuity makes her a social outcast. She is desperate to return to the World State and to soma.
The Director - The Director administrates the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. He is a threatening figure, with the power to exile Bernard to Iceland. But he is secretly vulnerable because he fathered a child (John), a scandalous and obscene act in the World State.
The Arch-Community-Songster - The Arch-Community-Songster is the secular, shallow equivalent of an archbishop in the World State society.
Popé - Popé was Linda’s lover on the New Mexico Savage Reservation. He gave Linda a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.
The Warden - The Warden is the talkative chief administrator for the New Mexico Savage Reservation. He is an Alpha.
Nondual Quotations:
http://www.vivekananda.org/quotes.aspx
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
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
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