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#3466 - Monday, March 9, 2009 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights     

Many People, Many Paths, One Dharma

As skillful means we can employ whatever is useful, whatever is truly helpful. For each of us at different times, different traditions, philosophical constructs, and methods may serve us, either because of temperament, background, or capacities. For some, the language of emptiness may be as dry as the desert, while for others it may reveal the heart-essence of liberation. Some may quickly recognize the nature of awareness itself, while others emphasize the letting go of those mind states that obscure it. Some may find that the path of devotion truly empties the self, but for others this way may simply act as a cloud of self-delusion. We each need great honesty of introspection and wise guidance from teachers to find our own skillful path.

-Joseph Goldstein, from One Dharma (HarperOne)  


Ground Your Life

Most of us study Buddhism as though it were something that was already given to us. We think that what we should do is preserve the Buddha’s teaching, like putting food in the refrigerator. Then to study Buddhism we take the food out of the refrigerator. Whenever you want it, it is already there. Instead, Zen students should be interested in how to produce food from the field, from the garden. We put the emphasis on the ground.

- Shunryu Suzuki, from Not Always So (HarperCollins)  


 

Let Go and Keep Your Balance

It is important to realize that to identify oneself as a meditator or a spiritual person or even a Buddhist can be another way to get caught or lose one’s true balance. This is like carrying a raft on your head instead of using it for a vehicle to the other shore. The purpose of meditation is not to create a new spiritual identity, nor to become the most meditative person on the block, who tells other people how they should live. To practice is to let go.

Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield, from Seeking the Heart of Wisdom
 


    Adyashanti and Gangaji ... a quote potpourri Posted to The_Now2 by Jan Roxburgh     Misery needs your conspiracy; it needs your help.
Without your resistance misery cannot survive.

~ Adyashanti



If you want to know something, go elsewhere.
If you want to un-know everything, then sit and listen.

~ Adyashanti



If spiritual practices serve the purpose of stopping the mind,
they are strong allies.
But if they deepen the belief that you are someone in particular
who practices something in particular
in order to get something that you do not believe is already here,
then they are an obstruction.
They keep you spinning around yourself
rather than allowing you to deepen into yourself.

~ Gangaji




Recognize the power of mind, respect the power of mind.
And also recognize the power behind the power, the ocean holding the wave.
Recognize yourself as the ocean, with your stories, your feelings, as waves.
Waves can be beautiful or terrifying, but always they return to the ocean.
Every wave always is made up of the ocean. No wave can ever be separate from
the ocean. Waves of thoughts, waves of emotions, waves of sensations, waves
of events, are all made up of consciousness. And all return to consciousness,
while never being separate from consciousness.
And if this becomes another story, let this go,
and see what is true.

~ Gangaji





"Many spiritual seekers get "stuck" in emptiness, in the absolute, in
transcendence.  They cling to bliss, or peace, or indifference.
When the self-centered motivation for living disappears, many seekers become
indifferent. They see the perfection of all existence and find no reason for
doing anything, including caring for themselves or others. I call this "taking a false
refuge." It is a very subtle egoic trap; it's a fixation in the absolute and all
unconscious form of attachment that masquerades as liberation.
It can be very difficult to wake someone up from this deceptive fixation
because they literally have no motivation to let go of it. Stuck in a form
of divine indifference, such people believe they have reached the top of the
mountain when actually they are hiding out halfway up its slope.
Enlightenment does not mean one should disappear into the realm of
transcendence. To be fixated in the absolute is simply the polar opposite of
being fixated in the relative. 

With the dawning of true enlightenment, there is a tremendous birthing of impersonal Love and wisdom that never fixates in any realm of experience.  

To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken
from all fixed points of view is the birth of true nonduality. If emptiness
cannot dance, it is not true Emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the
empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass,
then you are only looking at your own empty dream. I say, Wake up! Then,
your heart will be flooded with a Love that you cannot contain."

~ Adyashanti



Has it ever occurred to you that you are seeking God with His eyes?

--Adyashanti



You are here. However you imagine yourself to be, you are here.
Imagine yourself as a body, you are here. Imagine yourself as God, you are
here.
Imagine yourself as worthless, superior, nothing at all, you are still here.
My suggestion is that you stop all imagining, here.

~ Gangaji



Can you imagine if you really let it in that you are not a problem
to be solved in any way?
Imagine you knew that anything that would tell you otherwise
is just a movement of thought in the mind that says ,"
Whatever is, isn't the way it is supposed to be."
So the biggest act of compassion starts within.
And when the self is no longer seen as a problem,
this is called "the peace that passes all understanding."

~ Adyashanti




"The light of consciousness has no mind to change or alter anything.
When you start to see the light that you really are,
the light waking up in you, the radiance,
you realize it has no intention to change you.
It has no intention to harmonize.
It has no agenda. It just happens.
The Truth is the only thing you'll ever run into that has no agenda.
Everything else will have an agenda."

~ Adyashanti
Emptiness Dancing




Be still and know yourself as the Truth you have been searching for.
Be still and let the inherent joy of that Truth capture your drama
and destroy it in the bliss of consummation.
Be still and let your life be lived by the purpose you were made for.
Be still and receive the inherent truth of your heart.

~ Gangaji



"Awakening to the truth is a deep realization of what you are as an
experience.
What is it that is listening? What is it that is feeling?
Feel it. Sense it. Welcome it."

~ Adyashanti




Even in the running away from hurting, there is hurting.
In opening unprotected to the experience
that is enslaving you with its torment,
there is the willingness to be free.
Are you willing? Or do you just want to
wait until the world finally gets it and does it your way?

~ Gangaji




You must choose between your attachments and happiness.

~ Adyashanti



"All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit
is to stop seeking something more or better or different,
and to turn your attention inward
to the awake silence that you are."

~ Adyashanti
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