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Nondual Highlights Issue #1882 Saturday, August 7, 2004 Editor: Mark

Hi,

These two poems leapt out at me in my reading today and seem to fit well with what's been happening in the past week.

Zen


Two Short Poems by Rumi

(Untitled)

Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?
Why would you refuse to give
this love to anyone?

Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups!
They swim the huge fluid freedom.


This Is Enough

Aphrodite singing ghazals. A sky with
gold streaks across. A stick

that finds water in stone. Jesus
sitting quietly near the animals.

Night so peaceful. This is enough
was always true. We just haven't

seen it. The hoopoe already wears
a tufted crown. Each ant is given

its elegant belt at birth. This love
we feel pours through us like a giveaway

song. The source of now is here.


- contributed to SufiMystic by Zen Oleary

Life In The World

Life in the world is short,
Why shoulder an unnecessary load
Of worldly relationships?
Thy parents gave thee birth in the world,
But the Lord ordained thy fate.
Life passes in getting and spending,
No merit is earned by virtuous deeds.
I will sing the praises of Hari
In the company of the holy men,
Nothing else concerns me.
Mira's Lord is the courtly Giridhara,
She says: Only by Thy power
Have I crossed to the further shore.

- Mirabai

But no sooner is your vessel emptied than it is filled. For nothing can remain empty. If it is not full of something material, it will fill up with air. Just so, the heart is a vessel that cannot remain empty. As soon as you have emptied it of all those transitory things you loved inordinately, it is filled ... with gentle heavenly divine love that brings you to the water of grace, in which I relieve you of this lover's game of going and coming back. I call it a "lover's game" because I go away for love and I come back for love -- no, not really I, for I am your unchanging and unchangeable God; what goes and comes back is the feeling my charity creates in the soul.

To such as those who fully understand this it is granted never to feel my absence. No, I am always at rest in their souls both by grace and by feeling. In other words, they can join their spirits with me in loving affection whenever they will. For through loving affection their desire has reached such union that nothing can separate it from me. Every time and place for them is a time and place of prayer. For their conversation has been lifted up from the earth and has climbed up to heaven.

And so the light runs on, all of you showing it forth, now one way, now another. But the inmost feeling, the ineffable sweetness and perfect union -- you cannot describe it with your tongue, which is a finite thing! Oh how lovely, how lovely beyond all loveliness, is the dwelling place of the soul's perfect union with me! Not even the soul's own will stands between us, because she has become one thing with me.

- Catherine of Sienna, posted to AdyashantiSatsang by Bob O'Hearn

Simply keep Quiet


Let things happen in front of you, and enjoy this universe which is offered to you.

If you are Quiet, there is Peace in your mind and you will find Peace with everybody.

If your mind is agitated you will find agitation everywhere.

So first find Peace Within and you will see this Inner Peace reflected everywhere else. You are This Peace! You are Happiness, find out. Where else will you find Peace if not within you? Just keep quiet, do not stir a thought and you are Free.

Don't entertain any notions. If you do not entertain just one notion in particular you are Free. This notion is "I am the body". This is the notion that really troubles you and you go along and reconfirm it every minute of every day with all your relations with other bodies and objects. When this notion is no longer there you will be Free.

In this Freedom you will see the whole cosmos and all the bodies are you and you are all these bodies. Nothing will change, a mountain will be a mountain and a river will be a river, but your viewpoint will change.

So pick up the notion "I am Free" and both notions will leave you. You are neither bound nor free. You just are what you are. Know this and all the notions will leave you. You are not the body, or the mind, or the intellect, or the world. You are something else. Find out! What is this thing? Just keep Quiet and See. Then it will unfold Itself. It will reveal Itself.

- Papaji from THIS, submitted to MillionPaths by Viorica Weissman

Anacrusis

I can not grasp It.
It is too big;
I am too small.
There is only one answer:
To be grasped by It...
To dance with It.


- Mary Lu Brandwein

More here: http://www.shakuhachi.org/ShakuPoemsVar.htm