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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4318, Saturday, July 23, 2011
We only come to dream, we only come to sleep;
It is not true, it is not true
That we come to live on Earth.
Where are we to go from here?
We came here only to be born,
As our home is beyond,
Where the fleshless abide.
Perchance, does anyone really live on Earth?
The Earth is not forever, but just to remain a short while.
- Author unknown (to me anyway...)
Once you realize that there is nothing in the world, which you
can call your own, you look at it from the outside as you look at
a play on the stage, or a picture on the screen, admiring and
enjoying, but really unmoved. As long as you imagine yourself to
be something tangible and solid, a thing among things, actually
existing in time and space, short lived and vulnerable, naturally
you will be anxious to survive and increase.
- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
Your purpose is to be at peace,
to love all beings, and to know who you are.
This is the purpose of life.
Slowly you will know this and get through.
- Papaji, from The Truth Is, posted to AlongTheWay
Once
In a while
The fish and I will chat
In the silent
Language:
We look
into each other's eyes and smiile,
And they often
Say,
"Hey, Hafiz
We see you know the joy of
Our existence.
We see you have discovered how meditation
Can free you from land,
Mind, debts, alimony - the
Whole works.
And like
Us
Let you carouse all day
In
God."
- Hafiz, from The Gift: Translations by Daniel Ladinsky.
posted to AlongTheWay
The Lover is ever drunk with love;
He is free, he is mad,
He dances with ecstasy and delight.
Caught by our own thoughts,
we worry about every little thing,
But once we get drunk on that love,
Whatever will be, will be.
- Rumi, Quatrain 55, poetic version by Jonathan Star and
Shahram Shiva, from A Garden Beyond Paradise - The Mystical
Poetry of Rumi, posted to Sunlight
Birdsong From Inside The Egg
Sometimes a lover of God may faint
in the presence. Then the beloved bends
and whispers in his ear, "Beggar, spread out
your robe. I'll fill it with gold.
I've come to protect your consciousness.
Where has it gone? Come back into awareness!"
This fainting is because
lovers want so much.
A chicken invites a camel into her henhouse,
and the whole structure is demolished.
A rabbit nestles down
with its eyes closed
in the arms of a lion.
There is an excess
in spiritual searching
that is profound ignorance.
Let the ignorance be our teacher!
The Friend breathes into one
who has no breath.
A deep silence revives the listening
and the speaking of those two
who meet on the riverbank.
Like the ground turning green in a spring wind,
like birdsong beginning inside the egg.
Like this universe coming into existence,
the lover wakes, and whirls
in a dancing joy,
then kneels down
in praise.
- Rumi, Mathnawi III, 4664-93, version by Coleman Barks,
from The Essential Rumi, posted to Sunlight