Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
#4099 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
The idol of your self is the mother of all
idols.
The material idol is only a snake;
while this inner idol is a dragon.
It is easy to break an idol,
but to regard the self as easy to subdue is a mistake.
- Rumi
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Daylight" posted by Along The Way
Suzuki Roshi's instructions to the cook
When I asked my Zen teacher, Shunryu Suzuki
Roshi, if he had any
advice for working in the kitchen, he said, “When you
wash the rice, wash
the rice. When you cut the carrots, cut the carrots. When
you stir the
soup, stir the soup.” Taking his words to heart, I
found that they had the
power to evoke what lies hidden in the depths of being.
Something
awakens. It is not self, not other, not me, not the world.
To “be mindful
while you work” carries a certain dryness, not to
mention distraction:
doing something—practicing mindfulness besides what
you are doing.
What Suzuki Roshi meant was more like “throw yourself
into it” or
“immerse yourself in what you are doing.”
-Edward Espe Brown, "Leavening Spirit"
CLOSED PATH
I thought that my voyage had come to its end
at the last limit of my power, ---that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.
But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.
Tagore
photo by Alan Larus
more Alan Larus photos: http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/Passing_crow.html
NEW INNER DIRECTIONS WEBSITE
We're pleased to announce the new
Inner Directions website and online
Journal. You'll find some of the best articles from past
issues, plus the
addition of many new articles. Our plan is to add new
content to each of
the Journal categories on a regular basis. We encourage you
to visit
www.InnerDirections.org
and enjoy the content.
In Silence
Be still
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your
Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?
Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.
O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.
“I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them when
All their silence
Is on fire?”
From In the Dark Before Dawn, by Thomas Merton
http://www.innerdirections.org/journal/poetry/the-poetry-of-thomas-merton/