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Nondual Highlights Issue #2396, Saturday, February 18, 2006, Editor: Mark
The relationships you keep have a great effect on
you: you become what you associate yourself with.
So stay only in holy company, only travel with those
in the same boat. Nothing is better than satsang
so keep your friends here. Associate only with
those going in the same direction and go to Truth
at any cost.
- Papaji, from The Truth Is,
posted to AlongTheWay
Suzuki Roshi once told us a story from his childhood that left a
particularly poignant taste in my mouth. Food is not just food.
The entire universe comes along with it. Human nature makes its
appearance bite after bite.
As a boy of perhaps ten or eleven, Suzuki Roshi had been sent by
his father to study with another Zen teacher who was his father's
disciple. There were apparently four or five boys altogether. In
the spring they would help their teacher make daikon pickles. The
long white radishes would be put in barrels with salt and nuka
(rice bran), layer upon layer.
We used to make these pickles at Tassajara. The mixture is dry at
the outset, but as the barrel sits, water comes out of the
radishes, moistening the nuka, and the radishes become salted. At
least that's how it's meant to work. The salt acts as a
preservative. The rice bran provides flavor and perhaps
nutrition.
One year at the temple in Japan a batch of pickles the boys and
their teacher made didn't quite make it--a number of the radishes
developed noticeably 'off' flavors, which happens when there is
not quite enough salt. What to do when something doesn't turn out
the way it should, the way you wanted, the way you planned. The
teacher served them anyway! All well and good for him, but boys
will be boys, and the young Suzuki Roshi and his companions
refused to eat them. Each day the pickles would be served, and
each day studiously avoided.
At last Suzuki Roshi decided to take matters into his own hands.
One night he got the pickles, took them out to the far end of the
garden, dug a hole, and buried them. Isn't that what you do with
something distasteful? Dig a hole, put the rotten stuff in, and
cover it with dirt. A straightforward, elegant solution,
returning earth to earth. Let it compost. Keep it covered.
Yet life is not always that simple. The next day the pickles were
back on the table! Things that you bury don't always stay there.
What an unpleasant surprise, and what a sinking feeling to have
what you were trying to hide come out into the open. The teacher,
however, did not say anything about the pickles having been
buried, or whether or not he knew who had buried them. He merely
stated that those pickles would have to be eaten before they got
anything else to eat.
Sometimes we have no choice. At last we have to taste and digest
what we find distasteful. Suzuki Roshi said that it was his first
experience of "No-thought," when the conceptualizing
mind stops, and one experiences something non-reactively with no
added comments. Chew and swallow. Chew and swallow ... He only
could eat the pickles if his mind did not produce a single
thought.
The world itself is swallowed up. For a time the storyline
disappears. No more "This is awful," "How
distasteful," "How unfair," "What did I do to
deserve this," or even "Yuck," because then you
would have to spit the pickle out, or choke it up. Just chew and
swallow.
We need to be able to conceptualize, to decide what is good to
eat and what is not, yet we can suffer a lot by trying to have
nothing but delicious experiences. Inevitably we will have to
chew on and digest some difficult, painful moments.
We would like to say, "Skip the pickles," but this is
the great dilemma that life serves up: not everything is tasty
and cooked to perfection and there is no way to avoid all that is
unpleasant. If we become too finicky we just don't eat.
The dirt of our life contains both good and bad, sweet and
pungent. The cook unearths what is there, and labors to make it
nourishing.
- Ed Brown, from Tomato Blessings and Radish
Teachings: Recipes and Reflections Stories of life and practice
with Shunryu Suzuki, posted to
NondualitySalon
Just as a mother at the risk of life
Loves and protects her child, her only child,
So one should cultivate this boundless love
To all that live in the whole universe
Extending from a consciousness sublime
Upwards and downwards and across the world
Untroubled, free from hate and enmity,
And while one stands and while one walks and sits
Or one lies down still free from drowsiness
One should be intent on this mindfulness -
This is divine abiding here they say.
But when one lives quite free from any view,
Is virtuous, with perfect insight won,
And greed for sensual desires expelled,
One surely comes no more to any womb.
- Buddha, Sutta Nipata, from Being Nobody
Going Nowhere published by Wisdom
Publications, posted to DailyDharma
Life is God
Life is more than just an illusory reflection of its source, more
than a dream-like appearance in consciousness, as advaitists are
inclined to theorize.
Existence is multidimensional and complex. Existence is the
ultimate _expression of divine conscious creativity. It is
created out of consciousness, to give God a vicarious experience
of limitation and the satisfaction of reunion as each soul
finally finds freedom from the suffering of samsara, the world.
When the ultimate reunion of mahaparanirvana devours the soul,
the cosmic orgasm gives Source and the soul the experience of
ultimate ecstasy.
Those who are connected to that fully enlightened soul are
showered with grace for months. Life and existence are
consciousness-in-motion.
The universe is the immanent aspect of God; it is part of the
multidimensional reality of the seven realms of the Whole. The
illusion is not the world but the individual ego. This divine
creation is God’s means of creating the suffering and
separation that must precede your awakening. The ego is
essentially an illusory over-identification with an individual
part of life called 'me'.
Every body-mind-soul is unique, individual, and a part of the
flow of life. Egocentric over-identification with 'me, myself and
I' creates separation and neuroses. When the ego dissolves, you
still exist as an individual body-mind-soul but the obsession
with 'me' disappears and the flow of life carries you where it
wants to go. This allows you to live consciously in the flow of
life without advaita’s unnecessary adornment - an unhelpful
rejection of existence as illusory.
The doctrine that the world is illusory is unverifiable by and
unhelpful to humans. Existence is created in the cosmic mind of
God, and in this sense is a divine dream. But the universe is
real and does exist independent of human observation. The
illusion that you must transcend is your own mind, your personal
dream machine: the maya of ego. Let the universe be real and
focus on transcending your unhealthy preoccupation with 'me'.
- taken from the 2006 edition of the book UNITY
-The Dawn of Conscious Civilization by
Maitreya Ishwara, posted to ConsciousOneness
Beautiful Radiance Within
Re-arranging the furniture
in your outer life
does not bring you closer
to contentment.
Contentment
is what you are
beyond thought.
Contentment is
here and now
and the only way
to get closer to here
and now
is to be
here and now
to notice that
you are
here and now
using whatever technique that works for you.
The path of awakening is not a romantic one.
It does not require going
to this place and that place,
but requires the constant attention
in now using whatever method attracts you.
And using the tools available,
sitting in the presence of an enlightened teacher,
immersing yourself in
Ocean Euphoric/Shakti Silence.
To be in that shakti-meditative presence
letting go of who you think you are,
where you think you've been,
what you know,
what you believe
unscrewing the flood cap
and letting it
all flow out of you.
It is challenging,
it reduces you to nothing,
to awareness itself.
And in this conscious presence
beyond mind you see the true beauty,
and that everything is of this beauty.
And this is the greatest reward:
to see that you are of
this beautiful radiance.
To rest in and as
this beautiful radiance.
Blessings,
- Kip, posted to ConsciousOneness