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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3868, Sunday, April 18, 2010, Editor: Mark
The whole cosmos is an implicit unity expressed in duality. The
original interrelated opposites are beingness and non-beingness.
Being can only come out of non-being, precisely as sound only
emanates from silence and light from darkness. The imagined void
of non-being, however, is not emptiness but the very fullness of
potential out of which arises all that exists.
- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
Thirty-Eight
Why scurry about looking for the truth? It vibrates in every
thing and every not-thing, right off the tip of your nose. Can
you be still and see it in the mountain? the pine tree? yourself?
Don't imagine that you'll discover it by accumulating more
knowledge. Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous
for more knowledge. You can't get full eating this way. The wise
person dines on something more subtle: He eats the understanding
that the named was born from the unnamed, that all being flows
from non- being, that the describable world emanates from an
indescribable source. He finds this subtle truth inside his own
self, and becomes completely content. So who can be still and
watch the chess game of the world? The foolish are always making
impulsive moves, but the wise know that victory and defeat are
decided by something more subtle. They see that something perfect
exists before any move is made. This subtle perfection
deteriorates when artificial actions are taken, so be content not
to disturb the peace. Remain quiet. Discover the harmony in your
own being. Embrace it. If you can do this, you will gain
everything, and the world will become healthy again. If you
can't, you will be lost in the shadows forever.
- Lao Tzu, from Hua Hu Ching,, translated by Brian Walker
What a vast, boundless life unfolds before us! Ordinarily. we
spend all our time comparing and discriminating between this and
that, always looking around for something good to happen to us.
Because of that, we become restless and anxious about everything.
We are constantly pursued by anxious misgivings that something
will happen. As long as we base our lives on distinguishing
between the better way and the worse way, we can never find
absolute peace such that whatever happens is all right.
When we let go of our thoughts that distinguish better from worse
and instead see everything in terms of the universal self, we are
able to settle upon a different attitude toward life - the
attitude of magnanimous mind; that whatever happens, we are
living out self alone. Here a truly peaceful life unfolds.
- Kosho Uchiyama, posted to The_Now2
Is it possible for you to embrace uncertainty, and not demand
that you should know what is going to happen to you in your life
situation?
Eckhart Tolle, posted to Distillation
THE SNOW-WORLD MELTS
Think of the phoenix coming up out of ashes,
but not flying off.
For a moment we have form.
We can't see.
How can we be conscious and you be conscious
at the same time and separate?
Copper,when an alchemist works on it, loses its copper
qualities. Seeds in Spring
begin to be trees, no longer seed. Brushwood
put in the fire changes. The snow-world melts.
You step in my footprint and it's gone.
It's not that I've done anything to deserve
this attention from you. Predestination
and freewill: We can argue them,
but they're only ideas. What's real
is a presence, like Shams.
- Rumi, Ghazal 3071, version by Coleman Barks, from Open
Secret, posted to Sunlight
Instead of waging war against thought, we gently invite you to
recognize present awareness as your real identity. Awareness is
the bare naked awake presence that is looking right now. It is
prior to all words, names, bodies, stories, histories, roles,
titles, thoughts, emotions, and all other forms that appear
within awareness. It is not a thing, not an object we can see. It
is presence itself. It is that simple. Anything we think, hear,
see, touch, taste, smell, or experience is an appearance of or
movement within awareness. Awareness is the unchanging, unmoving
space of the present moment. It is inseparable from what you are.
It is the only aspect of your existence that has never come and
gone. When you were twelve years old, twenty years old, and
thirty years old, different thoughts, emotions, states,
sensations, and experiences moved through this awareness. But
this basic, spacious, featureless awareness remained constant and
untouched by these movements.
- Scott Kiloby, from Living Realization