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HIGHLIGHTS #1170
Sunday, August 18, 2002
Editor: Gloria Lee


ALAN LARUS
from Harsha Satsangh
...
photos by Alan Larus for his poem
may also be seen as attachments or on
Highlights list at Yahoo. (hopefully)


Not at all

like a wave on a beach
your face when you sleep
silence in the corn
the empty sky

no not at all like this
but still ...

the shape of the heart


KHEYALA

8/17/02


Yesterday I was faced with an intense decision. I went in the direction of what
I wanted and before long I started wondering, "Is this okay? Is this the right
thing to do?" I realized I was suffering.

I sat down and closed my eyes. I saw that I was willing to give up what I
thought I wanted because I wanted Peace most of all. I opened my heart and
asked what to do and immediately I knew. In Peace, I called off all movement
of the original choice and followed what I understood to be Right in the
deepest part of me.

----------------------------------------------

Today, the result of that action yielded what I interpreted as a very negative
result! What a shock. I started to cry. I thought to myself, "I asked deeply and
quietly and I received guidance. I followed that guidance and look what
happened? How can I trust this guidance??" Then I noticed I was REALLY
suffering.

Again I stopped and again I got really quiet. I saw that I have an opportunity to
trust even when all of the evidence is screaming, "Doubt! Doubt!" I saw that it
is possible to trust no matter what.

I thought about what it would be like to find my body being brutally strung up
and nailed to a cross and STILL have trust.


MAZIE LANE
from Harsha Satsangh


"True surrender is love of God for the sake of love and nothing
else, not even for the sake of liberation. Love itself is the actual
form of God. That is pure bliss. Call it pure bliss, God, Self, or
what you will. That is devotion, that is realization and that is
everything. The experience of not forgetting consciousness alone is
the state of devotion which is the relationship of unfading real
love, because the real knowledge of Self, which shines as the
undivided supreme bliss itself, surges up as the nature of love. Only
if one knows the truth of love, which is the nature of the Self,
will the strong entangled knot of life be untied. Only if one attains
the height of love will liberation be attained. The experience of
Self is only love, which is seeing only love, hearing only love,
feeling only love, tasting only love and smelling only love, and this
is bliss. God does not reside in any place other than the Heart. Be
sure that the heart is the Kingdom of Heaven."

~ Ramana


HARSHA
from HS

Mace, as you asked, there are references to the Heart throughout Sri
Ramana's "Talks".

Here is some of what I wrote earlier (from HS website.)

http://www.harshasatsangh.com/MagazineV2/harsha/heart.html

We can distinguish between the three hearts. There is the physical
organ that pumps blood, there is the Heart Center of Kundalini Yoga -
a major psychic center, and then there is the Spiritual Heart, which
is beyond the Sahasarara chakra and all the centers. It is the Center
beyond all centers.


In Sanskrit, the word Hridyam is used and that is translated into
English as the Heart. I am not a Sanskrit scholar but Hrid means
Heart or Center. "Hridyam" means "Here is the Center." It is the Same
as Buddha Nature, The Original Nature, Self, Original Face, Shunya,
etc.


When Upanishads mention the Hridyam or Hridya Gufa (Cave of the
Heart) or Ramana Maharshi speaks of the Heart, they are speaking of
this Center of Being...Pure Being, Pure Presence without edges, the
Spiritual Heart. Upon seeing Suzuki's quote, I was actually struck by
the similarity between how I would describe the Heart and the way
Suzuki described the Buddhist perspective. Here is the quote:


"All-knowledge is what constitutes the essence of Buddhahood. It does
not mean that the Buddha knows every individual thing, but that he
has grasped the fundamental principle of existence and that he has
penetrated deep down into the center of his own being."


Again the following quote from Suzuki is stunning for its beauty and
clarity:


D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966)


"Penetrating deep down into the center of one's own being one finds a
nameless transparency, an awake space filled by all the world, from
one's own thoughts and feelings and body to the stars in the heavens.
This still, spacious no-thingness is the heart of everyone's being.
Thus to find this no-thingness is to see that one is fundamentally
united with all beings. At root there is only one - the One."


Awakening to the One is primarily a matter of actual seeing, of bare
attention, rather than intellectual understanding - vital as
understanding is. As Suzuki said, "I see. This is it." This seeing is
not yet another state of mind that comes and goes. It is awake No-
mind, the ground of being that underlies and is the source of all
states of mind, including samadhi. The contents of mind come and go
in No-mind.


The quotes of Suzuki are remarkable in that I (having a totally
different background and training than Suzuki and a close affinity
with Kundalini Yoga) find them resonating with the Truth of Being.



GENE POOLE
from NDS

Greetings All...

I have started a new Yahoo! email list/group
called 'Open Source Spirit'.

The purpose of my new group is to eventually
compile a workable and useful 'open source'
glossary of definitions which apply to the
human experience of 'spirituality'.

'Open source' means... non-proprietary, not
'owned' by any tradition of religion or
predefined source. It also means 'free'... to be
released into the 'wild' of human
communications, to be used, and to be modified
as is found useful.


You can find some ideas as to what is
'open source' here:

http://www.opensource.org/

http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

Membership is open... all are free to join,
but all who join are subject to the 'TOS' as
found in the 'Files' section of my site.

If you would like to join, to participate or
simply to read what we are up to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Open_Source_Spirit/

Thanks...


==Gene Poole==

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