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#3404 - Tuesday, January 6,
2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
In Anchorage, Alaska, a group holds evenings of cinema nondualite'. Here is the information and link. I have not included phone numbers or addresses:
CINEMA NONDUALITE’
ANNOUNCEMENT
Next Gathering: Friday, January 16, 2009
Movie: The Lives of Others
Although Truth cannot ever be known, it can be realized (by no one). Sometimes, all it takes is a good movie to trip the wire.
The foundational practice of Advaita—or the Pathless Path of Nondualism—is to ask questions. The right questions. Ultimately, it’s to ask the rightest question of all—the one that explodes in the mind of the questioner, destroying any further questions once and for all. Along with whoever would pretend to have any questions to begin with.
In this group we watch movies that have the greatest potential for triggering the right question for each of us. Not movies that carry a “message.” Not movies that purport to “teach” or “inspire” or “elevate.” No, just funny, fallible, tragic stories that speak to the full range of human folly and splendor. Just stories. Albeit stories that harbor within them the latch of a trapdoor. Through which you might fall....
For January: Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film, 2007: The Lives of Others (in German). Stark, chilling...and finally, surprisingly: redemptive. About spying and being spied on. Who’s spying on you?
When: Friday, January 16
What: Light Potluck at 6:15, movie at 7:15. Discussion to follow.
Learn more here:
http://www.meetup.com/NewSpirituality/
Rodney Stevens's blog http://radianceofbeing.blogspot.com/
Ah, my annual holiday walk along the
Horseshoe at the University of South Carolina, in Columbia. The
Horseshoe is the heart of the campus, with its lush lawn and
brick-path promenade that showcase nearly a dozen 19th-century
buildings and a multitude of towering trees, including Southern
magnolias and majestic live oaks. As always at this time of the
year, there are less than a handful of people about.
My secret place is in one of the five gardens that are located
between and in the rear of the various buildings. Within the
garden's firebrick walls, there are is a snug greenhouse with its
opalescent exterior; dormant rose bushes and vines; cropped crape
myrtles flaunting their smooth, cinnamon trunks; and, slightly to
the rear of the space, a circular, softly-pruned rosemary bush. I
dip my hands into the leaves and gently rub their
evergreen fragility between my fingers. Several seconds is all
that is needed before my hands are pungent with the herb's aroma.
I sit on a bench in front of the gun-metal, three-dish fountain
(its steady murmurs formed by a thin stream of water). Again and
again, I bring my cupped hands to my face and relish the
camphoraceous scent. Through the years, it has always been a
delight to come here and savor the quietness. But this year,
having finally become clear on who and what I truly was, I
discover that there is a space within the quietness, a space that
is--at once--subtle, beginningless, and profound.
I then do something that I don't often take the time to do: I
simply sit with THIS...Anyone entering the area would
intriguingly (or annoyingly) think I was meditating or praying.
But no, all seeking has stopped; and if I were praying, it would
be for thanks, not supplication. There is just this sitting with
the wafts of rosemary and the soft gurgles of water. Or as Dogen
Zenji wrote--
Awakened, the one great truth:
Black rain on the temple roof.