Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
#3606 - Monday, July 27, 2009 -
Editor: Gloria Lee
Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
There is Only This
When the great Chinese Zen master
Ta-mei was dying, his students asked him for a final helpful
word. "When it comes, don't try to avoid it; when it goes,
don't run after it," he said. Just then, a squirrel
chattered on the roof. "There is only this, there is nothing
else," said Ta-mei, and then he died.
Can we conceive of what this is? Can this be enough for us? Is
there another reality more real or more wonderful than this? To
know that there is only this is to, as Hui-neng put it, "see
the original nature and not become confused."
- Francis Dojun Cook, How
to Raise an Ox, Wisdom Publications
Silently
and serenely one forgets all words;
Clearly and vividly That appears
When one realizes it, it is vast and without edges;
In its Essence, one is clearly aware.
Singularly reflecting is this bright awareness,
Full of wonder is this pure reflection.
Dew and moon,
Stars and streams,
Snow on pine trees,
And clouds hovering on the mountain peaks.
In this reflection all intentional efforts vanish.
Serenity is the final word of all the teachings;
Reflection is the response to all manifestations.
-
Hung Chih of the Tsao Tung School posted to Daily Dharma
Rest in Natural Great Peace
When I meditate, I am always inspired
by this poem by Nyoshul Khenpo:
Rest in natural great peace
This exhausted mind
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace.
Above all, be at ease, be as natural
and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your
habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your
true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden
self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun.
If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away
in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and
enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of
Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of
Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed,
your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly
like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute
nature.
– Sogyal Rinpoche, The
Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (HarperSanFrancisco)
"In the mind of natural
perfection, certainly, moral discrimination and moral causality
do not exist, yet what remains in nondual 'bodhichitta', both the
ground and the emanation of pure mind, which can only ever be
pure vision and perfect conduct. .... there is no fall from
grace, and there never has been a fall, and in the realization of
that reality where the golden age lies just beneath an
insubstantial, fragile surface of dualistic belief, any moral
dualism becomes a problem rather than the solution.
So stay here, you
lucky people,
Let go and be happy in the natural state.
Let your complicated life and everyday confusion alone
And out of quietude, doing nothing, watch the nature of mind.
This piece of advice is from the bottom of my heart:
Fully engage in contemplation and understanding is born;
Cherish non-attachment and delusion dissolves;
And forming no agenda at all reality dawns.
Whatever occurs, whatever it may be, that itself is the key,
And without stopping it or nourishing it, in an even flow,
Freely resting, surrendering to ultimate contemplation,
In naked pristine purity we reach consummation. "
~Longchepa, translated
by Keith Downman
From "Old Woman
Basking in Front of Computer"...oops! I mean:"Old Man
Basking in the Sun."
~my favorite quote from Longchepa is: "You'll laugh on the
day of awakening, so you might as well laugh now!"
posted to Daily Dharma
A Fisherman
By Ikkyu (Ikkyu
Sojun)
(1394
- 1481)
English version by John Stevens
Studying texts and
stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable
treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the
clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.
-- from Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, Translated by John Stevens