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#3998 - Monday, August 30, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee

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

nyone who enjoys inner peace is no more broken by failure than he is
inflated by  success. He is able to fully live his experiences in the context
of a vast and  profound serenity, since he understands that experiences
are ephemeral and that  it is useless to cling to them. There will be no
“hard fall” when things turn bad and  he is confronted with adversity. He
does not sink into depression, since his  happiness rests on a solid
foundation. One year before her death at Auschwitz,  the remarkable
Etty Hillesum, a young Dutchwoman, affirmed: “When you have an 
interior life, it certainly doesn’t matter what side of the prison you’re on.
. . . I’ve  already died a thousand times in a thousand concentration camps.
I know  everything. There is no new information to trouble me. One way or
another, I  already know everything, and yet, I find this life beautiful
and rich in meaning. At  every moment.” 
 

Changing the way we see the world does not imply a naive optimism or
some artificial euphoria designed to counterbalance adversity. So long as
we are slaves to the dissatisfaction and frustration that arise from the
confusion that rules our minds, it will be just as futile to tell ourselves
“I’m happy!” over and over again as it would be to repaint a wall in ruins.
The search for happiness is not about looking at life through
rose-colored glasses or blinding oneself to the pain and imperfections of
the world. Nor is happiness a state of exaltation to be perpetuated at all
costs; it is the purging of mental toxins such as hatred and obsession
that literally poison the mind. It is also about learning how to put things
in perspective and reduce the gap between appearances and reality. To
that end we must acquire a better knowledge of how the mind works and
a more accurate insight into the nature of things, for in its deepest
sense, suffering is intimately linked to a misapprehension of the nature
of reality.

- Matthieu Ricard, "A Way of Being"

full article: http://www.tricycle.com/insights/way-being


Essential Silence

There is an essential silence that continually blesses us all. I feel it
as I type words into the void. It unreels like an old movie, the kind
where no voice was able to be heard.  It breathes life into the words of
this world. It animates everything. Trees know it and rocks absorb and
emit it. Stars beam it down to us in the form of light. How blessed we
are to be that silence and to share it freely. We do that because it is
effortless. A strained silence is noisy whereas essential silence is a
benediction on this weary world.

The silence seeps in around the cracks of suffering. Like light, it is
who we are. As love, it transforms ugliness into grace and grace into
miracle. I tend a piece of this silence. I am farming it so that flowers
grow tall and the soul’s lushness is revealed petal by petal, word by word.

Silence is the essence of us all. The void from which we spring peppers
the world with hallelujahs. It softens the suffering soul and revives
the desert landscape. It also shows us the beauty of the desert and the
dark valleys of loss. Lest I become overwrought, I shall stop on  a
dime’s worth of words so you can feel like a millionaire within it all.

Vicki Woodyard
http://www.vickiwoodyard.com


   

More photos by Alan Larus

http://www.ferryfee.com/Bluesky/Shores/Yesterday_and_today.html

 

http://www.ferryfee.com/Bluesky/Shores/Yesterday_and_today_2.html


  THE CORNUCOPIA  

Grapes grow up a difficult and
sloped terrain. A soft line of poplars
shimmer in the disappearing light.
At midnight, the poor move
into the train stations of Italy,
spread out blankets for the children,
and pretend to the police they have tickets
and are waiting for a train.  

The statue of Bacchus is a contrast
with his right hand holding a shallow but
wine-brimming cup. His left hand
reaches easily into the cornucopia
where grapes ripen and burst open.
It is a vivid dream: to wake
from the statue's grace and life force
to the suffering in the streets.  

But the truth is the cornucopia
is open to all who are alive,
who look and feel the world in
its pristine beauty -- as a dragonfly
hovering in the sunlight over clear
water; and who feel the world
as a luminous world -- as green plankton
drifting at night in the sea.  

~ Arthur Sze ~    

(The Redshifting Web)  
Web version:
www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Cornucopia.html  

Web archive of Panhala postings: www.panhala.net/Archive/Index.html

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