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Nondual Highlights Issue #2028 Wednesday, January 12, 2004 Editor: Mark
All
spiritual teachings are only
meant to make us retrace
our steps to our
Original Source
We need not to acquire anything new, only give
up false ideas and useless accretions.
Instead of doing this, we try to grasp something
strange and mysterious because we believe happiness
lies elsewhere. This is a mistake.
- from The Essential Teachings of Ramana
Maharshi, posted to MillionPaths by Gloria
Lee
In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and
learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on
earth
can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.
- J. Krishnamurti, posted to adyashantigroup by JB
It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are
sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer.
But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections
of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article
out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the
biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality,
nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes
of the Universal History.
- Ralph W. Emerson, posted to AlphaWorld by Sandra
Love is the flame which, when it blazes,
consumes everything other than the beloved.
The lover wields the sword of Nothingness
in order to dispatch all but God:
consider what remains after Nothing. There remains but God: all
the rest is gone.
Praise to you, O mighty Love, destroyer of all other "gods.
- Rumi, from Mathnawi V,
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Rumi:
Jewels of Remembrance, posted to Sunlight
Q: What is the nature of the mind?
A: The mind is nothing other than the 'I'-thought. The mind and
the ego are one and the same. The other mental faculties such as
the intellect and the memory are only this. Mind (manas),
intellect (buddhi), the storehouse of mental tendencies
(chittam), and ego (ahamkara); all these are only the one mind
itself. This is like different names being given to a man
according to his different functions. The individual soul (jiva)
is nothing but this soul or ego.
Q: How shall we discover the nature of the mind, that is, its
ultimate cause, or the noumenon of which it is a manifestation?
A: Arranging thoughts in the order of value, the 'I'-thought is
the all-important thought. Personality-idea or thought is also
the root or the stem of all other thoughts, since each idea or
thought arises only as someone's thought and is not known to
exist independently of the ego. The ego therefore exhibits
thought- activity. The second and the third persons [he, you,
that, etc.] do not appear except to the first person [I].
Therefore they arise only after the first person appears, so all
the three persons seem to rise and sink together. Trace, then,
the ultimate cause of 'I' or personality.
From where does this 'I' arise? Seek for it within; it then
vanishes. This is the pursuit of wisdom. When the mind
unceasingly investigates its own nature, it transpires that there
is no such thing as mind. This is the direct path for all. The
mind is merely thoughts. Of all thoughts the thought 'I' is the
root. Therefore the mind is only the thought 'I'.
The birth of the 'I'-thought is one's own birth; its death is the
person's death. After the 'I'-thought has arisen, the wrong
identity with the body arises. Get rid of the 'I'-thought. So
long as 'I' is alive there is grief. When 'I' ceases to exist
there is no grief.
- Ramana Maharshi, from Be As You Are,
posted to MillionPaths by Viorica Weissman
- posted to truevision by Mazie Lane