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#2465 - Sunday, May 7, 2006 - Editor: Gloria Lee
sun showers the canal the waves move on and on the light stands still
poem and photo by Sam Pasiencier
Today is the birthday of Rabindranath Tagore, 1861–1941. Indian writer noted for his collection of poetry Gitanjali (1912), based on traditional Hindu themes. He won the 1913 Nobel Prize for literature.
"Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light!
Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life; the
light strikes, my darling,
the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild,
laughter passes over the earth."
photo by Alan Larus
http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/islands/flo.htm
Creativity is more than
just being different. Anybody can play weird - that's
easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple
complicated
is commonplace - making the complicated simple, awesomely simple
- that's
creativity.
- Charles Mingus, as quoted in To Reveal the Creator posted
by Michael Rawls to Inbox Inspiration
Rest In Being
Sitting quietly, feel
what sits there. Explore the body you sit in. Observe the
scintillating field of sensation we call the body. Notice
sensation's wordless
quality. Its sense of simply being humming through the body.
Go within sensation to
that subtle presence by which the sensation is known.
Feel the sensation within sensation. Settle into that sense of
being, of
aliveness vibrating in each cell. Rest in being. Just sit quietly
and know. Let
awareness sink into yourself. Know what knows. Experience
directly that
sense by which you imagine you exist. Enter it wholeheartedly.
Sit in the
center of that hum. Does it have a beginning? Does it have an
ending? Or is
there just a sense of endless being, unborn and undying? Don't
ask the mind,
which always limits itself with definitions, ask the heart, which
cannot name
it but always is it. Rest in being.
- Stephen Levine, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now by Josh Baran
Unconditional Love
is like the rays of the sun. It shines on all equally without
preference or concept. The rays shine on weeds as well as
beautiful flowers.
The sun's rays don't ask "Are you deserving of my
light?"
In Tibetan this notion is called "thugje" or compassion/energy.
Here is a quote from
Nyoshul Rinpoche wherein he uses the term
"unconditional Love" :
From Nyoshul Khenpo's book: Natural Great Perfection (pp 115-116)
"The True Dzogchen
yogis have an open accommodating heart and mind
excluding nothing from their perfect mandala of pure perception.
Brimming
over with Wisdom, unconditional love, and empathy, they do not
need to
adopt any particular way of looking or acting. They do not need
to abandon or
reject anything either. This is called the spontaneous activity,
or carefree
ease of Dzogpa Chenpo. It is not something we can easily imitate.
Yet to
whatever extent we can recognize and participate in it, great
benefit ensues
for oneself and others."
posted by Jax to Dzogchen Practice
Stop Pretending
The great teachings
unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and
joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain,
develop, or
attain them. Like a child standing in a beautiful park with his
eyes shut tight,
there's no need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds and sky;
we merely
need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we
already
are--as soon as we stop pretending we're small or unholy. I could
characterize nearly any spiritual practice as simply being:
identify and stop,
identify and stop, identify and stop. Identify the myriad forms
of delusion
we place upon ourselves, and muster the courage to stop each one.
Little by
little deep inside us, the diamond shines, the eyes open, the
dawn rises, we
become what we already are. Tat Twam Asi (Thou Art That).
- Bo Lozoff, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now, by Josh Baran
At this moment, is there anything lacking? Nirvana is right here now before our eyes. This place is the lotus land. This body now is the Buddha.
- Hakuin
The Mystery of Awareness
I remember the moment
clearly. I had escaped from my sisters, over the
rocks and around the point. I was barely seven. Above me, a rough
escarpment of boulders singing in the midday heat, at my feet a
rock pool of
perfect, inviolable stillness, and beyond, the blue vastness of
the South
Pacific.
There was no other living
creature. I was by myself, barefooted, between
the cliff and the ocean. As I squatted there, watching the
reflection of the
wind in the unrippled pool, hearing its exhilaration high above
me in the
bright emptiness of the sky, I became aware for the first time of
awareness itself. I had no name for it, but I could almost feel
it, as if it had
substance, like the water in the rock pool, or breath, like the
shouting wind.
I saw that I was entirely by myself in a boundless ocean of
awareness. In the
same instant I understood that awareness is the single mystery of
life, that
it enfolds all other mysteries, even the secret of the separate
self.
From that moment I was
indelibly astonished, and I knew that all my life I
would be pinching myself and asking, What is awareness? Nothing
else would
ever command my attention so completely. How could it? For
nothing else
mattered next to the constant pressure, the single compulsion of
this
mystery.
- excerpt from the Introduction to Thomas Byrom's translation of the "Ashtavakra Gita, Heart of Awareness". posted by Xan to Awakened Awareness
Seeing, in
Three Pieces
Somehow we must see
through the shimmering cloth
of daily life, its painted,
evasive facings of what to eat,
to wear? Which work
matters? Is a bird more
or less than a man? *
There have been people
who helped the world. Named
or not named. They weren't interested
in what might matter,
doubled over as they were
with compassion. Laden
branches, bright rivers. * When
a bulb burns out
we just change it --
it's not the bulb we love;
it's the light.
~ Kate
Knapp ~
(Wind
Somewhere and Shade)
Web
version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Seeing.html