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Issue #1318 - Monday, January 13, 2003 - Editor: Jerry
Randy Simpson
http://www.smallpebble.com
A zen student thought that he had accomplished all that he needed to know. His teacher said he was not ready yet to teach, but he ignored him and taught anyway. Several years later another Zen teacher heard this renegade student giving a teaching and commented "one chopstick"
Tomas
see what is
effortless spontaneity
What is happiness worth
when you have to strive and labor for
it?
True happiness is spontaneous and
effortless.
--- Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Happiness is effortless spontaneity.
inputs = sensation and
intuition;
outputs = thought and
behavior;
results = recollections and
expectations.
Transcendence is immediate;
not remote.
Inference and implication
beckons perilous distraction
entertained only under constraint.
Every object and property of identity
demands an appropriate scope.
Only nothing is global,
itself to be ultimately negated.
In seeing as one-self
time, extension and all that would be else
shrink to nonexistence.
All is one;
one is all;
all and one are nothing.
We appear to be
who we think we are.
By that specification
behavior ranges
from imbecilic to paradigmatic
when judged against a backdrop
of randomly fractalizing experience.
Take it or leave it.
it matters not.
One is who one is
in the moment.
~ tomas
Science will lead to spiritual evolution: Goodall
UNI
BANGALORE: Greater scientific knowledge
would put the
human being on the path to spiritual evolution and
ultimately spiritual enlightenment, according to
primatologist Jane Goodall.
Speaking at a public lecture organised by
the Kengal
Hanumanthaiah foundation as part of the international
symposium 'science and the spiritual quest' on Saturday
night, she said that despite wars and violence,
environmental degradation, poverty and social inequality,
there was reason for hope. The ''human being's scientific
brain, the resilience of nature and indomitable human
spirit'' gave her hope.
Dr Goodall was the first person to
establish that
chimpanzees had a complex social structure, made tools,
ate meat and had relationships much as human beings do.
''they teach us that the lines between humans and the
rest of the animal kingdom are blurred,'' she observed.
S
tating that human activity had pushed the
chimpanzees to
the brink of extinction, she informed that their numbers
had fallen from about two million 100 years ago to just
about 150,000 today. ''the solution to the problem lies
in reducing poverty in the developing world and curbing
the extravagant and unsustainable lifestyles of the
rich,'' she said.
Dr Goodall also chided the United States
for its
belligerence towards Iraq and India and Pakistan for
their possession of nuclear weapons.
Oxford University mathematics professor
Roger Penrose,
who spoke on 'Brain and Computers,' said that computer's
ability consisted only of computation while the brain was
capable of performing multi-dimensional functions.
Prof Penrose, who is seeking to establish a
physical
basis for consciousness, observed that a new theory
bridging the classical and quantum theories was needed to
explain the workings of the universe.
Rajya Sabha MP and member of the Atomic
Energy Commission
Raja Ramanna said India was compelled to acquire nuclear
weapons and remained essentially a pacific nation.
Founder of the Art of Living foundation Sri
Sri Ravi
Shankar said that over millennia India had not
experienced any difficulty reconciling science and
spirituality. Both were regarded as approaches leading to
the goal of truth and enlightenment, he added.
from http://www.newindpress.com/news.asp?id=IEK20030112115841
J.P.
NDS
Fight Club
Some prefer Neo (Keanu Reeves) from the
Matrix as a
prototypical image icon of the 'liberated man'.
I kinda prefer the paranoid, schizoid self-anarchist Tyler
Durden.
:)))
From the breathtakingly brilliant beautiful powerful WAKE UP love
it or hate it film 'Fight Club' (1999) directed by David Fincher
(Seven, 1995; The Game, 1997) based on a 1996 Chuck
Palahniuk novel.
Everyman Tyler Durden speaks thusly:
"I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have
ever lived -- an entire generation pumping gas and waiting
tables; or they're slaves with white collars. Advertisements have
them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs they hate so they
can buy shit they don't need.
We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place.
We have no great war, or great depression.
The great war is a spiritual war. The great depression is our
lives.
We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires
and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't.
And we're learning that fact. And we're very, very
pissed-off."
Interesting essay by Adrienne Redd - Masculine Identity In the
Service Class:
http://www.criticism.com/md/fightclub.html
A Taoist take on the film:
http://strykerxbase.tripod.com/writings/taoism.htm
And some heavy psychosocial grokking for the
metacritic in all of
us:
"'Enjoy your fight!' Fight Club as a symptom of the Network
Society"
http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/soc080bd.html
Viorica Weissman
When I first came to Bhagavan, I saw a bright light, like the sun, and Bhagavan was in the midst of it. Later on I used to see a light between my eyebrows. Once I saw a big light come out from Bhagavan's head and fill the hall. In that light everything disappeared, including Bhagavan. Only the feeling of 'I' was floating in the luminous void.
When I related these experiences to Bhagavan, he said:
"Yes, such visions do occur. To know how you look you must look into a mirror, but don't take that reflection to be yourself. What is perceived by our senses and mind is never the truth. All visions are mere mental creations, and if you believe in them, your progress ceases. Inquire to whom the visions occur, who is their witness. Free from all thoughts, stay in pure awareness. Out of that don't move."
Eternal Bhagavan , by Shantammal -
from RAMANA SMRTI SOUVENIR
Petros
Petros-Truth
Inquire always within oneself, not being
taken in by any outward or inward
object, thought, emotion, or belief. Inquire, "To whom does
this apparent
object appear? To whom do these thoughts appear?" and let
the question be
felt rather than heard as words.
Pure Silence: Lessons in Living and
Dying
by Mark McCloskey
Pure Silence: Lessons in Living and Dying, is an audio CD produced, written and presented by Mark McCloskey. McCloskey is a businessman (a seafood importer), married with two children, living in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. The CD, consisting of eleven tracks, is professionally packaged, produced, and shipped. The first and last tracks match a professional female voiceover and instrumental music composed by McCloskey, smoothly and appropriately complimenting McCloskey's spoken text, which is the body of this work.
From the CD liner: "The tracks on this CD were recorded as is: spontaneously. After spending some time abiding in silence I picked up a microphone and started speaking from my heart with all sincerity. There was no rehearsal; nothing was written beforehand. Rather, all the words arose from the Pure Silence of Being itself. I have merely spoken them to you with my own voice. The tracks were made over a period of 4 weeks in my home as I felt the truth well up in my heart. The real Author of these is the One Self, the One Spirit, that which has been called 'I AM'."
This CD would be of value to anyone whose practice or simple pleasure includes listening to a speaker who comes from the silent place within. The CD may be ordered at McCloskey's website: www.puresilence.org. As of this writing, there is a link to some thirty minutes of sample tracks.
--Jerry Katz