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Nondual Highlights Issue #2451, Wednesday, April 19, 2006, Editor: Mark
There is a saying in the Buddhist traditions:
'Birds cannot fly with one wing.
They have two wings.'
This means that one can never achieve the great awakening without
cultivating the path of compassion as well as wisdom or
emptiness.
- Tulku Thubten Rinpoche
A high officer asked:
If juniors are promoted over oneself the mind is perturbed. Will
the enquiry, ‘Who am I?’ help the man to soothe the
mind under such circumstances?
M.: Yes. Quite so. The enquiry ‘Who am I?’ turns the
mind inward and makes it calm.
D.: I have faith in murti dhyana (worship of form). Will it not
help me to gain jnana?
M.: Surely it will. Upasana helps concentration of mind. Then the
mind is free from other thoughts and is full of the meditated
form. The mind becomes it - and thus quite pure. Then think who
is the worshipper. The answer is ‘I’, i.e., the Self.
So the Self is gained ultimately.
The present difficulty is that the man thinks that he is the
doer. But it is a mistake. It is the Higher Power which does
everything and the man is only a tool. If he accepts that
position he is free from troubles; otherwise he courts them. Take
for instance, the figure in a gopuram (temple tower), where it is
made to appear to bear the burden of the tower on its shoulders.
Its posture and look are a picture of great strain while bearing
the very heavy burden of the tower. But think. The tower is built
on the earth and it rests on its foundations. The figure (like
Atlas bearing the earth) is a part of the tower, but is made to
look as if it bore the tower.
Is it not funny? So is the man who takes on himself the sense of
doing.
- Ramana Maharshi, posted to atma_vichara
You believe in free will.
You believe you make yourself sick.
You believe you choose your own parents.
You believe you can control your dreams.
You believe you can take charge of your life.
You believe there is a child within that you can heal.
You believe you have the power of prayer.
You believe that you can make a difference.
You believe your pain is your fault.
You believe you can do better.
You believe you are responsible.
You believe all sorts of shit.
Ram Tzu knows this-
When God wants you to do something
You believe it's your own idea.
- Ram Tzu
, from No Way for the Spiritually "Advanced",
posted to AlongTheWay
Our success or failure depends upon the harmony or disharmony of
our individual will with the Divine Will.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
It is the Divine Will that is manifested throughout the whole
universe, which has created the whole universe; and it is part of
the divine will that manifests itself through us. Everything we
do in life is governed and directed by that power. ... Now coming
to the question of the will of man as opposed to the will of God:
which is which? We understand the difference when we perceive
that the nature of will power differs only according to whether
it exists in its fullness, or whether it is limited. The will
power in its fullness is divine power; the will power in its
limited state is the individual will.
Resignation is a quality of the saintly souls. It is bitter in
taste but sweet in result. Whatever a man's power and position in
life may be, he has always to meet with a more powerful will, in
whatever form it may manifest. In truth this is the divine will.
By opposing the divine will one may break oneself; but by
resigning oneself to the divine will one opens up a way.
We come to understand that there are two aspects of will working
through all things in life. One is the individual will, the other
the divine will. When a person goes against the divine will,
naturally his human will fails and he finds difficulties, because
he is swimming against the tide. The moment a person works in
consonance, in harmony with the divine will, things become
smooth.
Sometimes things are accomplished without the least effort. When
it is the divine will it is like something floating on water; it
advances without effort. Problems and actions may be achieved in
a moment then, whilst at other times the smallest problem cannot
be solved without great difficulty. One finds that some persons
are very clever and experienced in industrial work or in
politics; and they have striven very hard to attain their goal,
and yet have accomplished nothing; they are always a failure. And
there are others who take up a thing, and without much effort,
without much worry on their part they complete it and attain
their goal.
All this is accounted for by harmony with the divine will.
Everyone experiences such a thing at some time or other. When
things are in harmony with the divine will, everything is there;
we just glance towards a thing and it is found, as in the saying,
'Word spoken, action done.' When we strive with all the material
in our hands and yet cannot achieve our desire, that is when the
matter is contrary to the divine will. Our success or failure all
depends upon the harmony or disharmony of our individual will
with the divine will. ... Contentment and perfect resignation
open up a harmonious feeling and bring the divine will into
harmony with our own. Our blessing now becomes a divine blessing,
our words divine words, our atmosphere a divine atmosphere,
although we seem to be limited beings; for our will becomes
absorbed into the whole, and so our will becomes the will of God.
- posted to SufiMystic
ROUGH METAPHORS
Someone said, "There is no dervish, or if there is a
dervish,
that dervish is not there."
Look at a candle flame in the bright noon sunlight
if you put cotton next to it, the cotton will burn,
but its light has become completely mixed
with the sun.
That candlelight you can't find is what's left of a dervish.
If you sprinkle one ounce of vinegar over
two hundred tons of sugar,
no one will ever taste the vinegar.
A deer faints in the paws of a lion. The deer becomes
another glazed expression on the face of the lion.
These are rough metaphors for what happens to the lover.
There's no one more openly irreverent than a lover. He, or she,
jumps up on the scale opposite eternity
and claims to balance it.
And no one more secretly reverent.
A grammar lesson: "The lover died."
"Lover" is subject and agent, but that can't be!
The lover is defunct.
Only grammatically is the dervish-lover a doer.
In reality, with he or she so overcome,
so dissolved into love,
all qualities of doingness
disappear.
- Rumi, version by Coleman Barks, from The Essential Rumi,
posted to Sunlight