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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4425, Sunday, November 13, 2011





The reality and permanence of the object that one imagines oneself to be is an illusory continuity like that of a river, which appears to remain the same yet is composed of entirely different water from one moment to the next.

- Ramesh S. Balsekar, posted to Distillation




It's Not Your Life

It's not your life you said
And I remember exactly where we were
Not the time of year
Or even the weather
But the place on the levee
With the river on the right
As we walked back
And the rusty pump
Down the bank
Among the rocks
And the kingfisher
Cackling in the cottonwoods

And you were fierce
The way you said it
Not detached and indifferent
Like the night before in Forestville
But frustrated almost
Wanting me to get it
Urging me to catch up
So we can play together
On the same court

And I felt so ashamed
For complaining
For having the selfishness
To claim this series of events
As my own
To doubt the authorship
Of this particular short story
And the meanness
To question
The hand I was dealt
When it was not even mine
And I knew it

But mainly I was ashamed
For showing you my ugliness
For letting you see
My limbs bleeding with the pain
Of not getting it

But we played big stick with Honey
And walked on
Back to the car
Between the vineyards
Watching the evening settle over Healdsburg
And slowly my life became a memory
A series of shots
Like this one
With no place left to ask the question
Then whose life is it

For it's not that it's not my life
Over the hills and down the river
Houses friends and harpsichords
Whose life could it be
But mine
No we're not disputing that

(Distracted for a moment
By the cry of an osprey
From the redwood
Looking back
At the place
Where the pain and the pleasure
Were mine
To avoid or pursue)

What we're saying
Back at the car now
Honey climbing in
Doors closing
Click of seat belts
Engine starting
The sudden contentment
Of nothing left to talk about
Is that
This simple crunch
Of tires on gravel
This hum of happiness
This wet dog smell
Is life
Delivered
But unaddressed

- Tony Kendrew




Then who am I?

If this me is not I, then
who am I?
If I am not the one who speaks, then
who does?
If this me is only a robe then
who is
the one I am covering?

- Rumi, from Rumi: Hidden Music, translated by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi, posted to AlongTheWay




Love
is a magician.
Everything it touches
turns into
itself.

- Pamela Wilson




Let Love Wash You

When you wash, let love wet you.
When hungry, eat love.
Dress in love from head to foot
Tread love that squishes between your toes.
What else could mix light with shade
into these billion rippling forms?
See it, savor it, or not,
as you please.

But if you get full like this
a secret smile wears you,
You're like one who sees rainbows, day and night.
Then nothing is needed and all that comes, satisfies.

- Paul Chubbuck




Reverie

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

- Emily Dickenson

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