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#1910 - Friday, September 3, 2004 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Poem: "II," by Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir.
"II"
When my father was an old man,
past eighty years, we sat together
on the porch in silence
in the dark. Finally he said,
"Well, I have had a wonderful life,"
adding after a long pause,
"and I have had nothing
to do with it!" We were silent
for a while again. And then I asked,
"Well, do you believe in the
'informed decision'?" He thought
some more, and at last said
out of the darkness: "Naw!"
He was right, for when we choose
the way by which our only life
is lived, we choose and do not know
what we have chosen, for this
is the heart's choice, not the mind's;
to be true to the heart's one choice
is the long labor of the mind.
He chose, imperfectly as we must,
the rule of love, and learned
through years of light what darkly
he had chosen: his life, his place,
our place, our lives. And now comes
one he chose, but will not see:
Emily Rose, born May 2, 1993
Learning
A piccolo
played, then a drum.
Feet began to come - a part of the music. Here comes a
horse,
clippety clop, away.
My mother
said, "Don't run -
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."
Then he
came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
its quiet. "That's him," she said.
~ William Stafford ~
(The
Way It Is, 1998)
Web
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Question: How can I be in communion with the sages and the founders of the world's religions? How can I become one with them?
Papaji: By throwing away all the stories you have heard about these people. History will not help you. Stories of people who appeared and disappeared will not help you. Thinking about the ideas that these people taught will not help you. Throw away all your ideas, including all your ideas you have stored up about saints, avatars, prophets, etc. If you want to be one with all these people, then be free yourself. If you can abide in the state in which there are no ideas, you will recognize your identity with all the great beings who have ever lived.
Question: But how can I be free? How can I free myself?
Papaji: By not following any way.
Question: If I do this, how will I know whether I am free or not?
Papaji: You will be free when questions such as these no longer arise. When you have the experience, you will not continue to ask questions about either being or not being.
Question: How can I live every moment in this way?
Papaji: In every instant you are unconditioned and free.
Nothing Ever Happened David Godman vol 3, pp. 42-43
posted to MillionPaths by Gloria
"There
are six traditional ways in which the bodhisattva trains, six
ways of compassionate living: generosity, discipline, patience,
enthusiasm, meditation, and prajna - unconditional wisdom.
Traditionally these are called the six paramitas, a Sanskrit word
meaning "gone to the other shore." Each one is an
activity we can
use to take us beyond aversion and attachment, beyond being all
caught up in ourselves, beyond the illusion of separateness. Each
paramita has the ability to take us beyond our fear of letting
go."
~Pema Chodron
From the book, "The
Places That Scare You", published by
Shambhala.
posted on Daily Dharma by Sherab
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2004)
This movie tells
(in Korean) the story of an old monk who lives in a remote
hermitage along with a small boy whom he has somehow become
obliged to rear. The boy goes bad, and the old monk is forced to
resort to radical measures to save him. An outstanding film in
every way: story, images, photography, acting.
The exquisitely beautiful and very human drama SPRING,
SUMMER, FALL, WINTER… AND SPRING, starring director KIM
Ki-duk, is entirely set on and around a tree-lined lake where a
tiny Buddhist monastery floats on a raft amidst a breath-taking
landscape. The film is divided into five segments with each
season representing a stage in a man’s life. Under the vigilant
eyes of Old Monk (wonderful veteran theatre actor OH
Young-soo), Child Monk learns a hard lesson about the nature of
sorrow when some of his childish games turn cruel. In the
intensity and lushness of summer, the monk, now a young man,
experiences the power of lust, a desire that will ultimately lead
him, as an adult, to dark deeds. With winter, strikingly set on the
ice and snow-covered lake, the man atones for his past actions,
and spring starts the cycle anew… With an extraordinary
attention to visual details, such as using a different animal (dog,
rooster, cat, snake) as a motif for each section,
writer/director/editor KIM Ki-duk has crafted a totally original yet
universal story about the human spirit, moving from Innocence,
through Love and Evil, to Enlightenment and finally Rebirth.
more: http://movieweb.com/movies/synopsis.php2388
New York
Magazine / Peter Rainer:
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/movies/reviews/n_10130/
Wasting Away
"A man becomes
thinner and thinner day by day; he is wasting away.
What can the matter be? He does not suffer want. 'No certainly
not,'
says the physician, 'it doesn't come from that, it comes
precisely
from eating, from the fact that he eats out of season, eats
without
being hungry, uses stimulants to arouse a little bit of appetite,
and
in that way he ruins his digestion, fades away as if he were
suffering want.' So it is religiously. The most fatal thing of
all is
to satisfy a want which is not yet felt, so that without waiting
till
the want is present, one anticipates it, likely also uses
stimulants
to bring about something which is supposed to be a want, and then
satisfies it. And this is shocking! And yet this is what they do
in
the religious sphere, whereby they really are cheating men out of
what constitutes the significance of life, and helping people to
waste life."
- Soren Kierkegaard
Thanks to Sandy for the above... gill
posted by Gill Eardley on Allspirit Inspiration
? Apt Coincidence ?
I
once sat with a book of hafiz poems, struggling
with a relationship issue. I asked for insight about how
this person felt about me. I opened the book and read
these words:
"how can that moron over there really be God".
:-)
I think opening books in this way can give us insight,
prod our unconscious mind, nudge us along a little
or just give us a laugh. I do it often.
gill
Teamwork (sangha) ...
The September issue of
the TAT Forum is now on-line at
www.tatfoundation.org/forum.htm
This month's contents:
The Engineer
and the Robot by Richard Rose | Introduction
to Franz Hartmann by Richard Rose | Preface to
Magic, White & Black by Franz
Hartmann | Spiritual
Action by Bob Cergol | Silence by Bob
Fergeson | From the
Experience of No-Self by Bernadette
Roberts | Poems by Shawn
Nevins | Further
Impressions of the Headless Way by Shawn
Nevins | Do Not Fear
the Darkness by Art Ticknor | Critical Path
to Nirvana by Art Ticknor | Humor | Reader
Commentary
Selections
from
The Experience of No-Self
by Bernadette Roberts
... Our psychological notions of
despair and anxiety are mere toys of self-defense compared to the
burden-of-unknowing, against which there isn't a single
defense.... Self is
man's compensation for a state of unknowing....
... I sometimes came upon a certain sadness concerning the rock-bottom emptiness of man and nature.... I felt bad about the fact that man lives his whole life in the false expectation that some ultimate reality lies hidden somewhere behind, beneath, or beyond what is. And I remembered my own life of searching and looking and now saw what a complete waste it had been.
By experience I knew that thinking would never solve the problems of life....
One thing is for sure: as long as we are caught up in words, definitions, and all that the mind wants to cling to, we can never see how it [i.e., life - Ed.] works. And until we can go beyond our notions regarding the true nature of life, we will never realize how totally secure we really are, and how all the fighting for individual survival and self-security is a waste of energy.
Generosity
"These days,
most people prize things like
visions of deities, clairvoyance, or miraculous
powers; but without bodhicitta you could still go
to the lower realms, and being clairvoyant or
having such powers would be of no benefit. When
you have this bodhicitta mind, you may not make
much effort in other things, but you will have
the root of Mahayana Dharma. If you already have
this mind, even giving a ball of barley dough to
an animal will be a cause for you to gain full
enlightenment."
~Kyabje Pabongkha
Rinpoche
From "Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand"
posted on Daily Dharma by Sherab
http://www.geocities.com/dharmamom/quotes.html
On animals
The Maharshi's care for animals is legendary. After being stung
by a scorpion he gave the following response.
I
stepped unwittingly on a scorpion and hurt it, so it stung me in
return to remind me of its existence.
Animals can think like human beings. We must not imagine they are
senseless creatures. Some who have been in contact with people
can understand words and conversations. The
Maharshi pointed to a cow and said she could think intelligently.
One night, a sleeping snake fell down from the roof of the
Ashram hall. The Maharshi ordered the men to
take a lantern to light
its path to the door and told them not to hurt it. Regarding
the snakes which infested the place, be
said, 'We have come to their abode as
guests and so we have no right to molest them. Let us leave them
in peace'.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
posted on MillionPaths by Michael Bindel
From
the book, "Conscious Immortality"
by Paul Brunton and Munagala Venkataramiah, published by Sri
Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, South India. This book is available
for purchase from our bookstore, for $9.95 plus shipping and
handling. For more information, e-mail or telephone the AHAM
Center (USA). Or visit our web site Bookstore: http://www.aham.com/bookstore/index.html
A recent caller at Gloria's front door
