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#1596 - Friday, October 24, 2003 - Editor: Gloria    

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
--Marshall McLuhan   


Daily Zen

Do not say, “I understand! I have attained mastery!” If you have attained mastery, then why are you going around asking other people questions? As soon as you say you understand Zen, people watch whatever you do and whatever you say, wondering why you said this or that. If you claim to understand Zen, moreover, this is actually a contention of ignorance. What about the saying that one should “silently shine, hiding one’s enlightenment?” What about “the path is not different from the human mind?”

- Foyan (1067–1120)


The clouds that wander through the sky have no roots, no home,
Nor do the distinctive thoughts floating through the mind.
Once the Self-mind is seen,
Discrimination stops.

-Tilopa, "The Song of Mahamudra"

From "Teachings of the Buddha," edited by Jack Kornfield, 1993. www.shambhala.com.


Viorica Weissman ~ Million Paths

Ojai , California    Tuesday , April 19 , 1983  

...................................                             

That which is immeasurable cannot be measured by words. We are always trying to put the immeasurable into a frame of words, and the symbol is not the actual. But we worship the symbol, therefore we always live in a limited state.   So with the clouds hanging on the tree tops and all the birds quiet, waiting for the thunderstorm, this is a good morning to be serious, to question the whole of existence, to question the very gods and all human activity. Our lives are so short and during that short period there is nothing to learn about the whole field of the psyche, which is the movement of memory; we can only observe it. Observe without any movement of thought, observe without time, without past knowledge, without the observer who is the essence of the past. Just watch. Watch those clouds shaping and reshaping, watch the trees, the little birds. It is all part of life. When you watch attentively, with diligence, there is nothing to learn; there is only that vast space, silence and emptiness, which is all-consuming energy.    

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~           

J. Krishnamurti   Krishnamurti  to Himself   His Last Journal

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  


Gill Eardley ~ Allspirit Inspiration

Some people become deeply peaceful and-almost luminous just
before they die, as if something is shining through the dissolving
form.

Sometimes it happens that very ill or old people become almost
transparent, so to speak, in the last few weeks, months, or even
years of their lives. As they look at you, you may see a light
shining through their eyes. There is no psychological suffering
left. They have surrendered and so the person, the mind-made
egoic "me," has already dissolved. They have "died before they
died" and found the deep inner peace that is the realization
of the deathless within themselves.
~Eckhart Tolle  'Stillness Speaks' 
 


        Freedom means letting go.  People just
        do not care to let go everything.  They do
        not know that the finite is the price of the
        infinite, as death is the price of immortality.
        Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to
        let go of everything.  The giving up is the
        final step.  But the real giving up is in
        realizing that there is nothing to give up,
        for nothing is your own.  It is like deep
        sleep - you do not give up your bed when
        you fall asleep - you just forget it.

                          - Nisargadatta Maharaj
 


Ben Hassine ~ NDS   Limitations  

Jerry I read your comments. I felt I had to write a word or two in response.
I agree with you this can be an important subject to reflect on, so we all
can turn within and find out. Let me try. (O what torture, here I go again).
I have the feeling the only guru worth the name is the Friend. The Friend is
just another word for the simple and evident fact of I AM-ness. All is
basically I AM-ness. I AM-ness doesn't demand anything. It is open, simple
and inviting clarity.

So, why complicate things? The direct path is to stand alone and not depend
on any outside circumstances or people in the role of teachers; for what is
there to teach? There is nothing to teach. The only thing that has to be
understood is that you rather have to unlearn, give up and let go. This is a
very intense and often painfully confronting process, you will have to go
all the way down to "ground zero". I came to the living insight that deep
crises in human life are very direct invitations to burst out of our
self-made prison of concepts and humbly admit we know nothing at all. All
knowledge and opinions are shallow, temporary, ever-changing and therefore
unreal, delusional. Even these words, I admit. Freedom lies in the conscious
acknowledgement of these facts. This leads one to living insight and the so
longed after  SACRED PEACE BEYOND UNDERSTANDING.
Enlightenment is a return to our home: simple unborn openness. Teachers can
be living pointers and encouragement to find out (for) yourself, nothing
more, nothing less. These teachers are rare I guess.

 The way home is not a mechanical process of accumulation, there are no
key-figures that can hand over crucial pieces of information to proceed on
our path to some kind of super-conscious everlasting "high". In my view this
is a terrible misconception of the whole concept of liberation -more
concepts, I admit again, yes indeed.

The way home is, rather, a gentle, silent, "organic" and almost unconscious
non-process of undoing, not-knowing, going blank, an impersonal emptying wit
hout volition of all the pain, confusion, clinging, sorrow, suffering in
other words: dying of self. There is nothing mechanical about it. There is
nothing really that can describe this non-process accurate. There is this
Intelligent Love that swallows you up in a healing deed of compassion.
Exactly this intelligent Compassion is the Teacher to be heard. And that
Teacher is always available for free: you are that Teacher, it is the
splendidly shining, boundless diamond within the heart, the compassionate
Friend!

He/She/It is the most sacred of sacred. This Teacher is not asking for
ANYTHING: it is only giving. Love for the sake of Love.

 So I would question anyone claiming to act out of this compassion and build
a profitable, hierarchical rubbish organisation out of it.
I never understood why there are so many teachers$ and book$ out there, or
do I? What, for heavens sake, are we looking for? Are we looking for
freedom?
I don't think we are truly looking for freedom. I think we are looking for
the ultimate psychological security. Freedom in a way is the opposite: total
insecurity!
We simply have to deal with our suffering and fear in a mature and
intelligent way. That is sadhana. To go to the root of it, alone, shy,
humble and eager to discover what is beyond the dark little corner of me in
the hostile world. And the Beyond is waiting to Love for the sake of Love.
The rest is really entertainment.


Well I don't know, I am not so original or intellectual but this I will
repeat over and over for the rest of my little miserable life :-)

Love,

Ben.
 

~ ~ ~  

Hi Ben,

What you say describes where this list is coming from, but has never been
set forth in the list description, and should. This list isn't about gurus,
nor is there an official resident guru, though understandably some will view
certain members as such.

This list vision is closer to the original vision of the I Am list, which
was started in May of '98. It was simply to speak from the I Am, in the way
people know what that is. Some speak from beyond that. Some are trying to
hold onto the I Am. This was Nisargadatta's instruction, to stay with the I
Am. There's no reason to do a whole guru song and dance as people are doing
and which I don't favor. My whole donut crusade was probably a reaction to
that song and dance. Just go out for a donut. Just stay with the I Am. Just
make it simple. That's what this list -- and what (spiritual) life -- is about.

Jerry


Ben Hassine ~ NDS  

Kierkegaard selections/It's cloudy outside and I am inside

I
When around me all has become still, solemn as a starlit night, when the soul is all alone in the world, there appears before it not a distinguished person, but the eternal power itself. It is as though the heavens parted , and the I chooses itself, or, more correctly, it accepts itself. The soul has then seen the highest, which no mortal eye can see and which never can be forgotten. The personality receives the accolade of knighthood which ennobles it for eternity. He does not become someone other than he was before, he becomes himself; consciousness unites.  

II
And when you have died or died to yourself, to the world, then you also died to all immediacy in yourself, also to your understanding. it is when all confidence in yourself or in human support, and also in God in an immediate way, is extinct, when every probability is extinct, when it is dark as on a dark night, it is indeed death we are describing, then comes the life-giving spirit and brings faith.

III
The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

IV
My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known - no wonder, then, that I return the love.

V
To come to oneself in self- knowledge. In self-knowledge. In any other knowledge you are away from yourself, you forget yourself, are absent from yourself?There is only one kind of knowing that brings a person completely to himself -- self-knowledge; this is what it means to be sober, sheer transparency

VI
Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?

VII
When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world ? no matter how imperfect ? becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.
 

~ ~ ~  

"You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else."
  --Herman Hesse    


    When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask,
'Compared to what?'
-- Sydney Harris

~ ~ ~  

Many years ago, I read about a study in which people from different walks of
life were asked: What is the most profound way you feel loved? The number
one response was: "When someone's really listening."
-- Mary Manin Morrissey in "No Less Than Greatness"

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