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#2998 - Monday, November 26, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee
If you want to be free, get to
know your real self.
It has no form, no appearance, no root,
No basis, no abode, but is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility, but its function
Cannot be located; when you look for it you become
Further from it. When you seek it
You turn away from it all the more.
--Rinzai (d.867?)
posted by Mark Scorelle
to Wisdom-l
Millenium Blessing
There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth
It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.
It is an insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.
We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.
But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.
And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.
And that is what we sing about.
From "Breaking the Drought
Visions of
Grace"
by Stephen Levine, Larsons Publications
posted by Marguerite to
Wisdom-l
Q: What is this big talk about
elimination of the self? How can the self eliminate itself? What
kind of metaphysical acrobatics can lead to the disappearance of
the acrobat? In the end he will reappear, mightily proud of his
disappearing.
M: You need not chase the "I am" to kill it. You
cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality. We call it
atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or moksha-sankalpa,
the determination to be free from the false. Without love, and
will inspired by love, nothing can be done. Merely talking about
Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating. There
must be love in the relation between the person who says "I
am" and the observer of that "I am." As long as
the observer, the inner self, the 'higher' self, considers
himself apart from the observed, the 'lower' self, despises it
and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the
observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection of
manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the
Self, the duality of 'I' and 'this' goes and in the identity of
the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself.
This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes
conscious of himself as the seer; he is not merely interested in
the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being
interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware.
Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality
into focus.
--Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That: Talks with Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj posted by Mark Scorelle to Wisdom-l
"Where? Where can I enter the
way?
How? How can I study?"
Kyosei asked: “ What is the noise outside?”
“That’s the voice of the raindrops, that’s the
rain” the student said.
“Enter from there” Kyosei replied
As
he listened,
Mindlessly,
The eavesdrops entered him.
WAKA ON KYOSEI'S RAINDROP SOUND
http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/RAINDROP_SOUND.htm
photo by Alan Larus
If You Knew
What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't way Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.
A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked a half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
Ellen Bass, from The Human Line
Announcing Pete's new Zen stories blog
Zen Stories by Pete Sierra
http://cerosoul.wordpress.com