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#1978 - Monday, November 15, 2004 - Editor: Gloria
In
Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(American Primative)
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KNOWING
Suppose it were forbidden to say "I know"
and only allowed to say "I believe I know."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Along the Way
Morality
is the attunement of oneself to the
atmosphere one finds oneself
in at any time.
It is always changing with
the evolutionary
process to which the
individual is subject.
Morality is relative from
place to place, time
to time, but the necessity
for morality is
absolute.
- Swami Krishnananda
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
` `
Facets of Spirituality
Complied by S. Bhagyalakshmi
Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1986
AlphaWorld
“I like to feel that I have transcended my destiny.”
- Anaïs Nin
“Each man has only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself. His task is to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else is only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity; and fear of one's inwardness.”
- Hermann Hesse
"Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing.
There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow
people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a
time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over. "
- Octavia Butler, science fiction writer
“If you want to build a robust universe, one that will never go wrong, then you don't want to build it like a clock, for the smallest bit of grit will cause it to go awry. However, if things at the base are utterly random, nothing can make them more disordered. Complete randomness at the heart of things is the most stable situation imaginable - a divinely clever way to build a universe.”
- Heinz
Pagels
MillionPaths
Live your own life. That is to say, where you are, as you are, with what you are... Accept the situation in which you find yourself and try, at the same time, to adapt to it. You cannot escape from it.
(Swami Prajnanpad - from the book: Indian Wisdom, 365 days)
photo by Zen Oleary http://www.pbase.com/digitalnuts/image/36300816
Allspirit Inspiration
From 'Start Where You Are' by Pema Chodron
In terms of "Three objects, three poisons, and three seeds of virtue," when these poisons arise, the instruction is to drop the story line, which means-instead of acting out or repressing-use the situation as an opportunity to feel your heart, to feel the wound; Use it as an opportunity to touch that soft spot. Underneath all that craving or aversion or jealousy or feeling wretched about yourself, underneath all that hopelessness and despair and depression, there's something extremely soft, which is called bodhichitta.
When these things arise, train gradually and very gently without making it into a big deal. Begin to get the hang of feeling what's underneath the story line. Feel the wounded heart that's underneath the addiction, self-loathing, or anger: If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it's fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there's an arrow in your heart and to relate to that wound. When we do that, the three poisons become three seeds of how to make friends with ourselves. They give us the chance to work on patience and kindness, the chance not to give up on ourselves and not to act out or repress. They give us the chance to change our habits completely. This is what helps both ourselves and others. This is instruction on how to turn unwanted circumstances into the path of enlightenment. By following it, we can transform all that messy stuff that we usually push away into the path of awakening: reconnecting with our soft heart, our clarity, and our ability to open further.
~ ~ ~
The finest
qualities of our nature, like the bloom
on fruits, can be preserved only by the most
delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves
nor one another thus tenderly.
~Henry David Thoreau 'Walden'
SatsangDiary
Look nakedly at whatever
appears at the moment it appears. By relaxing in
that state, awareness -- in which there is no grasping at
appearances as
something -- arises nondualistically, intrinsically freed.
From the introduction of the book, "You Are The Eyes of The
World".
With all your science can you tell how it is, and whence it is,
that Light comes into the soul?
- Henry David Thoreau
MillionPaths
102
When vision is focused on the outside, who can know the truth, whether of the real Self or of the world? But, with the mind turned inwards, the sage knows the truth of both by the eye of right awareness.
Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad
http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/rpv_intro.shtml
UnsayMyself
Happiness cannot be
found through great effort and willpower,
but is already present, in open relaxation and letting go.
Don’t strain yourself, there is nothing to do or undo.
Let the entire game happen on its own.
Gendun Rinpoche
After the
game,
the king and the pawn
go into the same box.
- Italian Proverb