Al Larus photos: http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/From_a_summer_evening.htm
Three Tantric Buddhist Women's Songs (8th - 11th c.)
"Upon coming into a state of awakened mind (often after years of disciplined practice), many women practitioners of Tantric Buddhism in India would spontaneously speak or sing of their experience.... These poems were recorded by others present at the time, and some have been preserved in volumes assembled by Tibetan-speaking-women--a rare example of women prior to our own time deliberately collecting the poetry and teachings of other women explicitly because they were women."
- 1
KYE HO! Wonderful!
Lotus pollen wakes up in the heart's center--
The bright flower is free from mud.
Where do the color and fragrance come from?
What reason now to accept them or turn away?2
WHO SPEAKS the sound of an echo?
Who paints the image in a mirror?
Where are the spectacles in a dream?
Nowhere at all -- that's the nature of mind!3
KYE HO! Wonderful!
You may say "existence," but you can't grasp it!
You may say "nonexistence" but many things appear!
It is beyond the sky of "existence" and "nonexistence" --
I know it but cannot point to it!
Josie Kane ~ MillionPaths
So, asks Ramana, why not begin from this very point? As he states, "Whatever be the means adopted, you must at last return to the Self; so why not abide in the Self here and now?" Self realization does not involve gaining any kind of intellectual knowledge or adopting a particular set of beliefs. Self-realization," says Ramana, "is not knowing anything or becoming anything." It is simply a state of 'Being', our inherently natural state. Since the mind is only an instrument of the Self, it can never know its true source. Consequently, one can only 'be' That. ~ ~ ~ Ramana Maharshi continually asks us to return to the Source of our true Being. The simple and direct approach he taught eliminates the need to undertake a path of self-improvement, since wherever we go, the Self is always present. There are no special requirements for investigating "who we really are," but he reminds us that earnestness of purpose certainly facilitates the opening of our hearts to infinite Self.
Mathew Greenblatt The Essential Teachings of Ramana Maharshi
Bob O'Hearn ~ AdyashantiSatsang
How can you
understand that silence
-- chaotic or otherwise?
Is it possible for you to capture that silence?
When that silence starts operating through you,
it is something extraordinary,
something vital and living.
This structure which is trying to understand
the nature of it, capture it, contain it
or give expression to it, cannot
co-exist with it.
The difficulty is you seem to know
a lot about this state --
you have imagination.
You imagine it to be what is described
as "Silence is Brahman" and begin to
think about it.
This imagination must go.
That [silence] is something living
and the structure which is trying
to capture it is a dead structure.
All thoughts are dead --
it doesn't matter whose thoughts --
whether those of Shankara, of Ramanuja
or of the hundreds of sages, saints and
saviors we have had and perhaps have still.
It is useless to try to understand that.
How can you capture it?
If there is any such thing as silence,
chaotic or otherwise, living or dead,
it will begin to express itself.
When it expresses itself,
you are not there.
So, you will never know the nature of
that silence at all.
What you call silence is not silence at all.
~U. G. Krishnamurti
http://www.abcgallery.com/I/icons/rublev1.html posted by Wim
Andrei Rublev. The Old Testament Trinity. c. 1410s. Tempera on wood.
142 x 114 c. The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
Jackson Peterson ~ ejackpete@aol.com
Gnosis
Certain forms of
Christianity would have us believe that the
Christos is isolate to the person of Yeshua (Aramaic for
"Jesus")
and that he alone is Christ or the Messiah. However, Gnostic
Christianity holds a very different view of Yeshua and the
Christos.
Yeshua is viewed as a Christ-bearer and the Christos is viewed as
a
Light-Presence; thus, to Christian Gnostics, Yeshua is a mystic:
a
Light-bearer. Rather than something isolate or exclusive to
Yeshua,
the Christos is considered to be embodied by others around the
Master, Yeshua acting as a Center of a Light-Transmission or
Christ
Revelation. Essentially, according to masters of Gnostic
Christian
Tradition, the Light-Presence of the Messiah is not embodied by a
single individual alone but by a matrix of individuals and,
ultimately, is to be embodied by humanity as a whole--giving
birth
to a New and Divine Humanity.
From the Gnostic perspective, Yeshua is akin to the Image of our
Future Self, our True and Divine Self, and belief in the
Incarnation
of the Christos is not merely a belief in the divinity of Yeshua,
but a belief in the Divine Potential within each and every human
being. Thus, to believe that Yeshua is the Incarnation of Christ
is
to believe that the Christos is the True Nature of one's Soul and
Self, and that one is destined to evolve toward Christhood. In
this
sense, Gnostic Christianity is similar to Eastern Wisdom
Traditions
which teach a Path to Enlightenment, and in the Gnostic view the
True Gospel is a Way to the Attainment of Christ Consciousness.
The
idea of "salvation" in Christian Gnosticism is a state
of Self-
realization.
The name of Yeshua in Hebrew connotes this idea of
Self-realization.
It is the Name of Yahweh, which appears throughout the Old
Testament, with the addition of one letter (the Hebrew letter
Shin.)
The Divine Name of Yahweh literally means, "That Which Was,
Is, and
forever Shall Be", and the name Yeshua means, "Yahweh
delivers."
Yahweh represents the one Being-Consciousness-Force or Life-Power
which is the Source of all, and Yeshua represents a conscious
unification with the Source; hence a state of Truth-Consciousness
(Christ Consciousness). In essence, the Blessed Name of Yeshua
means "knowledge of truth that will set you free." This
truth is the
awareness of one's Soul and Self inseparable from Yahweh.
Glimpses of this truth are certainly to be found in the gospels
that
appear in the Holy Bible, but it becomes more obvious in gospels
that were not included in the Bible, such as the Gospel of St.
Thomas, which was among the scrolls found at Nag Hammadi by an
Arab
peasant in 1945. This gospel is quite different than those that
appear in the Bible. Instead of an interpretive story, the Gospel
of
St. Thomas is composed of wisdom sayings, the interpretation of
which is left completely to the reader. It is a book meant to
support an oral tradition and to encourage a spiritual quest for
the
direct experience of the Spirit of Truth. The first saying or
verse
of the gospel makes this perfectly clear. Basically, it is a
proclamation of the gospel as a record of "secret
sayings" that were
spoken in the presence of Didymos Judas Thomas by Yeshua and
tells
us that if we gain understanding of the sayings, we will be
spiritually empowered and free from death, which is to say Self-
realized. No one can really say whether St. Thomas actually wrote
this gospel, but the dedication of the gospel to his name is
significant, for Didymos literally means "a twin." If
Yeshua is
speaking to a disciple called Didymos Judas Thomas, then it
alludes
to the disciple as being like unto Yeshua or resembling
him--hence
the idea of the disciple as a Christ-bearer in the same way Lord
Yeshua is a Christ-bearer. Thus, the disciple to whom these
sayings
are spoken is one who knows the Indwelling Christ within himself,
and it is implicit that one who reads and contemplates the Gospel
of
St. Thomas is to recognize Christ indwelling her or himself and
to
identify her or himself with that Light-Presence. Yeshua may well
have spoken these sayings, but the sayings may also have been
spoken
by the Indwelling Christ within the one who wrote them. From the
Christian Gnostic perspective, either way they are authentic
teachings of the Christos. Whether uttered by Christ indwelling
Yeshua or Christ indwelling the disciple, the same Light-Presence
has revealed Itself.
In this light, the sayings in the Gospel of St. Thomas may be
contemplated and meditated upon as sayings emerging from the
Indwelling Christ within ourselves, as though a still, small
voice
is speaking them inwardly as we read and contemplate and meditate
upon them. Study and contemplation of any Scripture in this way
can
lead to deep intuitive insights and can easily become an
experience
of contact with the Light-Presence within us. This is the purpose
of
the Gospel of St. Thomas, and from the Gnostic perspective, it is
the purpose of any Wisdom Teaching or Scripture--a way to enter
into
the knowledge and communion of the Divine Presence and Power
within
ourselves and our lives. It is interesting to note the many
different gospels we have: the Gospel according to St. John, the
Gospel according to St. Thomas, the Gospel according to St. Mark,
and so on. If one studies them, they clearly do not tell the same
story nor represent a static or fixed view of Yeshua or the
Christos. In fact, each gospel actually represents the knowledge
and
understanding of Christ in the experience of the person who wrote
it. In this we gain a sense of Original Christianity--rather than
a
fixed doctrine and dogma, it was a living experience of the
Christos
(a living spiritual experience rather than a religion). It
suggests
that every "Christian" had his or her own unique
gospel, his or her
own knowledge and understanding of the Truth and Light as it was
revealed in his or her own experience of Christ. In this sense we
may say that Original Christianity was Gnostic, for gnosis is a
Greek word meaning "knowledge," specifically knowledge
and
understanding acquired through direct spiritual or mystical
experience, and a Gnostic is anyone who has acquired such
spiritual
knowledge to one degree or another. Essentially, according to the
Christian Gnostic view, the True Gospel is one's own experience
of
the Truth and Light, which is "the knowledge of truth that
will set
you free." When the Christos is understood in this way, the
fact
that some people may use the name Buddha or Krishna or another
name
for the Light-Presence does not present a problem, for by
"Christ"
we mean the Spirit of Truth or Light-Presence in whatever form it
might appear. Every human being is unique and individual,
therefore
every individual's experience of the Truth and Light will be
unique
to her or himself, as will the Holy Gospel she or he brings forth
from within her or himself. It could well be in modern times, for
example, that some people's experience of extraterrestrials is an
experience of the Christos! After all, in a technological age, it
would be quite logical that spiritual experiences might assume a
technological form in consciousness. In terms of Self-empowerment
and Self-realization, the only question in the Gnostic view is
whether or not the individual having a psychic or spiritual
experience is able to recognize the Light-Presence (Indwelling
Christ) within him or herself, because it is this inward
recognition
that opens the way to various degrees of Enlightenment and
Liberation ("Salvation").
This is the key to understanding the Gnostic Christ: the
recognition
and realization of the Light-Presence or Indwelling Christ within
oneself and the bringing forth of that Light and Truth from
within
oneself. The message of Gnostic Christianity is that we are
powerful
spiritual beings, whether or not we are conscious of it--the only
question is how we receive our empowerment and actualize the
Light-
Presence in us. To this end, Gnostic Christianity is replete with
methods of mystical prayer, meditation, and sacred ritual, all of
which have the aim of Self-empowerment and Self-realization.