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Nondual Highlights #2073 - Saturday, March 5, 2004 - Editor: Gloria
"I think that all poets are sending religious messages, because poetry is, in such great part, the comparison of one thing to another... and to insist, as all poets do, that all things are related to each other, comparable to each other, is to go toward making an assertion of the unity of all things." - Richard Wilbur
THE SKY'S SHEETS
When He touches me I clutch the sky's sheets,
the way other
lovers
do
the earth's weave
of clay.
Any real ecstasy is a sign
you are moving
in the right
direction,
don't let any prude tell
you otherwise.
- St. Theresa
Your true substance is concealed in falsehood,
like the taste of butter in buttermilk.
Your falsehood is this perishable body;
your truth is that exalted spirit.
For many years, this buttermilk of the body,
is visible and manifest, while the butter, which is the spirit,
is perishing and ignored within it-
until God sends a prophet, a chosen servant,
a shaker of the buttermilk in the churn,
who skillfully shakes it, so that you might know
your true self which was hidden.
- Rumi [Mathnawi IV, 3030-3034]
'Jewels of Remembrance' Camille and Kabir Helminski
Reality as it is
becomes the right view of the meditator. Thinking of it as it is
becomes the right thought. Awareness of it as it is becomes the
right awareness. Concentration on it as it is becomes the right
concentration. Actions of the body and speech are then aligned to
reality as it is. In this way the meditator develops and is
fulfilled.
- Majjhima Nikaya
From "Buddha Speaks," edited by Anne Bancroft, 2000
Time is in the mind, space is in the mind.
The law of cause and
effect is also a way of
thinking. In
reality all is here and now and
all is one.
Multiplicity and diversity are in
the mind only.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
Your strongest held beliefs about "how things
are" will draw
into your life those very experiences
that will work to
support and prove your strongest
held beliefs about
"how things are."
The Universe loves you
so completely that itıs
compelled to present
itself to you in ways that will
tend to validate your
strongest held beliefs - no matter
how self-limiting or
off-the-wall those beliefs might be.
In short, the Universe
wants to make you right.
- Chuck Hillig
What I point out to you is only that
You shouldn’t allow yourselves
To be confused by others.
Act when you need to,
Without further hesitation or doubt.
People today can’t do this.
What is their affliction?
Their affliction is in their
Lack of self-confidence.
If you do not spontaneously
Trust yourself sufficiently,
You will be in a frantic state,
Pursuing all sorts of objects
And being changed by those objects,
Unable to be independent.- Linji (d.867
You can say
anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing,
they soar and descend . . . I bow to them . . . I love them, I
cling to
them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down . . . I
love
words so much . . . The unexpected ones . . . The ones I wait for
greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop . . . Vowels I love
. . .
They glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish,
they are
foam, thread, metal, dew . . . I run after certain words . . .
They
are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem . . . I
catch them in midflight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean
them,
peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a
crystalline
texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like
algae, like agates, like olives . . . And I stir them, I shake
them,
I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I
let
them go . . . I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like
slivers
of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts
from
the waves . . . Everything exists in the word . . .
From Memoirs by Pablo Neruda (NY: Penguin, 1974), p. 53.
