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#2454 - Sunday, April 23, 2006 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nondual Highlights
"Any glimpse into the
life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the
larger and better in every way."
- John Muir
Hum
What is this dark hum
among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that's all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They're small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to
understand
that life is a blessing. I have found them — haven't you?
—
stopped in the very cups of the flowers,
their wings
a little tattered — so much flying about, to the hive,
then out into the world, then back, and
perhaps dancing,
should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn't anything in this
world I don't
admire. If there is, I don't know what it is. I
haven't met it yet. Nor expect to. The
bee is small,
and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and
read books, I have to
take them off and bend close to study and
understand what is happening. It's not
hard, it's in fact
as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,
it's love almost too fierce to endure,
the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the
honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us.
Mary Oliver
At Blackwater Pond : Mary Oliver
Reads Mary Oliver (Audio CD)
by Mary Oliver (Narrator)
From AudioFile
Pulitzer Prize-winning
poet Mary Oliver reads 42 of her poems from various collections.
Oliver writes as a naturalist, and her deceptively simple
meditations on peonies and goldfinches always reward with deeper
meaning. Listening to these poems is to be awash in their
beautiful language and imagery. Oliver reads clearly and with a
steady tone that gives the poems a repetitive sameness they don't
suffer on the page. Then again, as Oliver writes in her
introduction, "They are neither oracular nor authoritative
nor, I hope, are they read either in shyness or a too sufficient
certainty." What is certain is that the opportunity to hear
a poet read her own work is a gift. Lovely packaging makes this
collection a keepsake. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2006, Portland,
Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
available from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807007005/sr=8-3/qid=1145848357/ref=pd_bbs_3/102-6595857-8134561?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Questions from the Crucial Points
Q: If rigpa is
self-validating, then is rigpa awareness of
awareness? In other words, is rigpa knowledge of perception
or is it
only perception? What do you think?
Jax: There is
Awareness and the energy of Presence. One can be Aware
of one's thoughts, ego or "I" without being
Present to one's Awareness. One's Awareness
energy(Presence) is itself manifesting as the ego or thought
instead of as Presence. That "energy" instead of
manifesting as "thought" or ego, can simply be present
to its base of Awareness. In that case, that energy, now
manifests as "clarity" or Presence, and the intrinsic
nature of "clarity" or Presence of Awareness is
yeshe, or primordial Wisdom (gnosis or self-knowledge which
is non-conceptual). In full Presence of Awareness
there is no thought or ego, as that same energy now is fully
being just Presence or "pure attentive noticing"
from moment to moment, instead of elaborating itself into
thought etc. And
you are right... there is only the ocean and it's waves.
Thoughts and objects are just the waves. The experience of
perceiving is also a wave experience... everything is your self
or non-self... (blah, blah, blah..) Does that help? Best, Jax
posted to Way-of-Light
A
monk can be very gentle, very peaceful, while there are no hard
words to assail him. But when hard words are directed at him, it
is then that he must be really gentle and peaceful.
- Majjhima Nikaya
From "The Pocket Buddha Reader," edited by Anne Bancroft, 2000
It
is necessary to pray to Him with a longing heart. The kitten
knows only how to call its mother, crying, "Mew, mew!"
It remains satisfied wherever its mother puts it. And the mother
cat puts the kitten sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes on the
floor, and sometimes on the bed. When it suffers it cries only,
"Mew, mew!" That's all it knows. But as soon as the
mother hears this cry, wherever she may be, she comes to the
kitchen.
- Ramakrishna
From "Teachings of the Hindu Mystics," © 2001 by Andrew Harvey
Mother of the Universe...
Let us,
when swimming with the stream,
become the stream...
Let us, when moving with the music,
become the music...
Let us, when rocking the wounded,
become the suffering...
Let us live
for the grace beneath all we want,
let us see it in everything and everyone,
till we admit to the mystery
that when I look deep enough into you,
I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear
in the recess of your heart, you recognize it
as your secret which you thought
no one else knew...
O Let us
have the courage
to hold each other when we break
and worship what unfolds...
Let us embrace
that unexpected moment of unity
as the atom of God...
O nameless
spirit that is not done with us,
let us love without a net
beyond the fear of death
until the speck of peace
we guard so well
becomes the world...
~ Mark Neppo ~
(The Book of
Awakening)
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Earth_Prayer.html
where
every man a
track
seeing way ahead
it‘s a looking back
carrying this skin
the dark embrace,
growing from within
the half and the whole, from the split pole
shine the light, and here is grace ,
the cool shadows of the leaves
thousand petals up above
could this ever be
was it not by
love
?
poem and photo by Alan Larus