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#2623 - Tuesday, October 24, 2006 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nondual Highlights




India - Poetry International
Rajendra Bhandari

SOME QUESTIONS FROM THE ANNUAL EXAMINATIONS

What could be more explosive
the city’s lonely man
or
the bomber’s lonely briefcase abandoned at some junction?

Memory’s tree, lush branches
laden with fruits
Where are the roots?

Here the breath’s polluted Ganga
flows thus
Where is the sea?
Where its Gangotri?

The body bears the mind’s burden
Or has the history of the body burdened the mind?

To build which palace of faces
must this face become a wall?
And to save which face
must this face become a martyr
Which face? What face?

How many faces
can fit inside one face?

© 1998, Rajendra Bhandari
From: Kshar/Akshar
Publisher: Janapaksha Prakashan, Gangtok, 1998


© Translation: 2003, Anmole Prasad
From: Chandrabhaga Vol. 8
Publisher: Jayanta Mahapatra, Cuttack, 2003

Translator Note: Gangotri: source of the Ganga    

    ts posted the following to Nonduality Salon:  

not one, not two  


logo by ts

quotes from Nagarjuna

Neither from itself nor from another,
Nor from both,
Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.


"Empty" should not be said (or "would be impossible to say"), nor should "Nonempty",
nor "both and neither"; but they are spoken of for the purpose of praj~naptification.
(Causing some gnosis/wisdom, or causing gnosis/wisdom of something; "teaching")


There is nothing whatsoever of samsara distinguishing (it) from nirvana.
There is nothing whatsoever of nirvana distinguishing it from samsara.
(That?) is the limit which is the limit of nirvana and the limit of samsara;
Even a very subtle interval is not found of (between) them.

  ~ ~ ~


The Enlightened man is capable of perceiving both unity and
multiplicity without the least contradiction between them!
~ Huang Po



"Nirvana truly realized ...
is Samsara properly understood."
~ Nagarjuna



IDENTITY
"How does one seek union with God?"
"The harder you seek, the more distance you create between Him and you."
"So what does one do about the distance?"
"Understand that it isn't there."
"Does that mean that God and I are one?"
"Not one. Not two."
"How is that possible?"
"The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song ...
not one. Not two."
~ Anthony de Mello, SJ
 


"False imagination teaches that such things as light and shade, long and short, black and white are different and are to be discriminated; but they are not independent of each other; they are only different aspects of the same thing, they are terms of relation, not of reality. Conditions of existence are not of a mutually exclusive character; in essence things are not two but one. Even Nirvana and Samsara's world of life and death are aspects of the same thing, for there is no Nirvana except where is Samsara, and no Samsara except where is Nirvana. All duality is falsely imagined." (from: Lankavatara Sutra ~ trans D.T. Suzuki)


In terms of practical psychology this means that there is no actual distinction between our ordinary, everyday experience and the experience of Nirvana or spiritual freedom. But for some people this experience is binding and for others liberating, and the problem is to achieve what the Lankavatara calls that "turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness" which effects the transformation.

For what is our ordinary, everyday experience? It is not just our awareness of external circumstances or even such ordinary activities as walking, eating, sleeping, breathing, and speaking; it includes also our thinking and feeling: our ideas, moods, desires, passions, and fears. In its most concrete form ordinary, everyday experience is just how you feel at this moment. In a certain sense Buddhism is very much a philosophy and a psychology of the moment, for if we are asked what life is, and if our answer is to be a practical demonstration and not a theory, we can do no better than point to the moment Now! It is in the moment that we find reality and freedom, for acceptance of life is acceptance of the present moment now and at all times. Acceptance of the moment is allowing the moment to live, which, indeed, is another way of saying that it is to allow life to live, to be what it is now (yathabhutam). Thus to allow this moment of experience and all that it contains freedom to be as it is, to come in its own time and to go in its own time, this is to allow the moment, which is what we are now, to set us free; it is to realize that life, as expressed in the moment, has always been setting us free from the very beginning, whereas we have chosen to ignore it and tried to achieve that freedom by ourselves.

~ from: The Meaning of Happiness ~ Alan W. Watts

 

 

We invent nothing truly
We borrow and re-create

We uncover and discover ..
All has been given .

As the mystics say :

We have only to 'open'
our 'eyes' and 'hearts'

To become 'one' ..
with 'that which Is'

~ Henry Miller ~
~ Mystic Spirit ~

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