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Gene Poole on NondualitySalon  

(Melody)An agenda - whether hidden or not -
>arises thru the lens of 'personal self'...
>thru a sense of doership, does it not?

Perhaps so. We are also, or mainly, discussing
'programmed' or 'conditioned' responses. In both
cases, deliberate and automatic, any strategy
enacted or planned (the agenda) serves the ends
of the identity in question.

No identity, no agenda...

(M) If one is responding spontaneously,
>non-mechanically, without reason or
>forethought.... without considering the
>consequences of such a response,
>
>it could be said that ones actions are
>without agenda, no?

No. See above.

(M)Or is this a question of tripping over
>semantics?

Yes.

(M) Are you saying that the experience of
>'no-self', of being an "empty flute"
>as Osho described it,
>
>is not possible?
>

No, I am not saying that. Keep in mind, that as
usual, I am not saying, what I am not saying.

If there is only 1, there is the empty flute; if there
are more 1's, (not a number of ones, designated by
'5', etc) each 1 is the empty flute.

It is when the 1 confuses the plurality of 1's as being
a number ('there are 5') that the flute fills with materials
which then disseminate as 'reality'.

The difference comes, in accepting that each
1 is THE one, and that the mere existence of
many 1's does not in any way alter that status of the 1.

To make this even more unclear, there is no
multiplication or division possible, without assigning
''number status' to the 1's. The container-category
of 'number 5' does NOT signify five 1's, but instead,
a quality (the number 5) which belongs only to itself,
not to any 1.


I am the 1,

==Gene Poole==

Jerry Katz on Nondualtity Salon   

I posted the following to the home page of my website at <http://nonduality.com>

"Incense lovers only! If you are fascinated with incense, how it is made, details about the acquisition, storage, blending, burning of ingredients. If you want to hear people speak with passion about incense and with regard for its history, politics, science, and art, spend a little time at Alice's Restaurant, and see if your room is filled transporting scents."

Alice's Restaurant: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlicesRestaurant/ >

They seem to speak mostly about Japanese incense, which seems to be very finely made with great reverence for the product and quality control.

Personally I still prefer good old Indian incense, especially Sai Baba Nag Champa in the blue box. I even use the soap, when I can get it, and I like the oil too. I stocked up on some when I was in California. They sell it real cheap at Venice boardwalk. But I also stop in to buy it in Halifax because I like the girl who works there a real lot. But the Japanese, which I burn too, is exquisite and more delicate.

I'm lucky I can burn incense in my house because I work as live-in support for two schizophrenic gentlemen, and sometimes schizophrenia means hallucination of smells. Incense could freak out some schizophrenics. But these guys are cool about that. They only hear voices and think the weathergirl on television is cursing at them. Fact is, the studios two blocks away and she probably is!

Jerry

Greg Goode on NondualitySalon  

Thanks Jerry,

I'll check the site out later.  I love incense, especially the Japanese and Chinese varieties of aloeswood, made from the resin formed over hundreds of years from the aloe tree.  I went into a Japanese incense store called Ten-Ku-Do in Kamakura Japan a few weeks ago.  I'd been there before; the store is one of my favorite places, and going there is like a pilgrimage.  Kamakura is the birthplace of Japanese Zen and home to the 39-ft-high Kamakura Buddha.  Anyway, when I first entered the store back in 1997, I was amazed, fascinated, "transported," as they used to say.  The aromas were the most sublime I had ever experienced.  Subtle fragrances redolent of burning cedar, sandalwood, aloeswood.  A little spicy, a little sweet, a little like the soapy smell you used to smell in the old fashioned neighborhood barbershops. 

The resin of the aloe tree is being used up faster than it is being formed.  Especially in Japan and China.  Vietnam has more.  Anyway, Ten-Ku-Do has for sale a gnarled resin root from the aloe tree that you can burn little chips from.  It cost $10,000.  I didn't buy it, but did buy a roll of aloeswood sticks from the shop next to the Kamakura Buddha.  I love it and have never found anything like it in the U.S.   So I try to stretch it out, using about 3 sticks per month. 

One can find similar products by mail order from the Shoyeido company, which has a distributor in Colorado.  I think it is www.shoyeido.com.

In Kowloon across the bay from Hong Kong, there are entire streets given over to the sale of incense and supplies for temples and home altars.  You can get very good aloeswood and high quality sandalwood incense there, of many different qualities.  I brought some back.  

There are several African American religious groups here in New York City that make extremely fragrant incense along the lines of the famous blue-box Nag Champa you mention.  They get the plants and fragrances from the Caribbean.

Another I like is Tibetan Green Tara incense, which has a healthy, smoky, medicinal smell.

And then there is the Southwestern cedar chips I burn sometimes.  It reminds me of the lodgehouse I stayed at in Prescott, Arizona, where they burned cedar shavings every morning.

Thanks for the site, Jerry!

--Greg

Gabriele Ebert on Sri Ramana  

a steady river of quietness

  There is something in the man which holds my attention as steel filings are held by a magnet. I cannot turn my gaze away from him. My initial bewilderment, my perplexity at being totally ignored, slowly fade away as this strange fascination begins to grip me more firmly. But it is not till the second hour of the uncommon scene that I become aware of a silent, resistless change which is taking place within my mind. One by one, the questions which I have prepared in the train with such meticulous accuracy drop away. For it does not now seem to matter whether they are asked or not, and it does not seem to matter whether I solve the problems which have hirtherto troubled me. I know only that a steady river of quietness seems to be flowing near me, that a great peace is penetrating the inner reaches of my being, and that my thought-tortured brain is beginning to arrive at some rest."
Paul Brunton: A Search in Secret India, Rider & Company, 1970, p.133  

Mary Bianco on Harsha Satsangh contributes  

NOETIC SCIENCES REVIEW # 30, PAGE 23
SUMMER 1994

Pacem in Terris

By Frederick Franck

Pacem in Terris is a center created by artist-philosopher Frederick Franck with his wife Claske, just 55 miles from Manhattan. It is equally dedicated to Angelo Roncalli (Pope John XXIII), Albert Schweitzer and Daisetz T. Suzuki. "Pacem in Terris is not tied to any particular religion, but to all. . . and to none. For I hope that it may speak also to those who, while shunning religious labels, share fully in the specifically human quest for meaning and for values to live by. For to be human or not to be, that is the question!"

We first spotted the old house while hiking, it must
have been in 1957, in the unspoiled country around
Warwick, New York. Built circa 1840, it had a
dilapidated dignity all its own. It was standing on the
snow-covered banks of the frozen Wawayanda river. [....]

I hoped to create a work of art in which body and mind
were unified, a work of art outside of the art game, and
at the same time a credo outside the religious game. As
I was working on what was becoming a huge sculpture of
stone, wood and earth, a sculpture one could walk into,
sit down in to reflect, to pray, to meet oneself, and
climb out of, refreshed I felt more and more that this
Earth itself is a sacred Space.

While building my Poor Man's Folly, converting a dump
into a sanctuary (instead of the other way around) I
felt a kinship with people who lived thousands of years
ago, with the cave dwellers of Aurignac, with the
cathedral builders, the stonemasons, woodcarvers,
iconmakers of the Middle Ages. I became aware that art,
that glorification of life, is the artist's digging tool
in his search for Meaning, far indeed from "art for
art's sake", for gallery's sake, for fame's sake. The
artist's work, whether he intends it or not, reveals to
himself and to others similarly attuned as in a mirror a
manner of being Human. As Pacem in Terris formed itself
under my hands it spoke to me of the limitless meaning
and preciousness of our human existence. Independent as
it is of all religious institutions, it is dedicated to
the religious attitude to life itself, to our lives as
being human lives. John XXIII spoke of a divine law as
"imprinted on the heart of man". Buddhist scripture
teaches that the Absolute Wisdom is Absolute Compassion
and Absolute Compassion is Absolute Wisdom.

Complete article at:
http://www.noetic.org/Ions/publications/review_archives/30/issue30_23.html

Viorica Weissman on Ramana Maharshi

On Work

................................

Attending to the Self means attending to the work.
Because you identify yourself with the body, you think
that work is done by you. But the body and its
activities, including that work, are not apart from the
Self.

................................

What is the undercurrent which vivifies the mind,
enables it to do all the work? It is the Self. So that
is the real source of your activity. Simply be aware of
it during your work and do not forget it. Take your
time. Keep the remembrance of your real nature alive,
even while working, and avoid haste which causes you to
forget. Contemplate in the background of your mind even
whilst working. . . . avoid haste, which causes you to
forget. Be deliberate. Practice meditation to still the
mind and cause it to become aware of its true
relationship to the Self which supports it. Do not
imagine it is you who are doing the work. Think that the
underlying current is doing it. Identify yourself with
the current. If you work unhurredly, recollectedly, your
work or service need not be a hindrance.
--Ramana Maharshi

K. Chatterjee on Yearnings

Twilight Hours

The waves rose up and beat down against the rocks lined
up along the shores, sending salty sprays beyond all
over; as if revolting against the presence of these gray
rocks, that stand guarding the shores. The air stank of
raw fish and salt. The sand was wet and carried the
caressing touch every time the surf washed away, in thin
columns. Some crabs, of a particular genus, were playing
hide-n-seek with surf, digging into the sand as the
water rushed forth, and crawling out when it receded
back.

There, at a distance, stood a lighthouse, old, gray and
musty. One of the legacies left behind by the British
Rule. Some trawlers, and dinghies were crawling around
looking for fishes, or trades, perhaps. The sun had set,
scrawling the western sky in motley of colors, as a
token of love, perhaps, for his beloved moon. Darkness
had already started spreading its veil over the eastern
horizon, reflecting its shade on the face of ocean.

I stood there, staring at these birds that flew out from
nowhere, and felt the sand being smuggled away from
beneath my feet by the receding waters. Flying back to
their nests, perhaps, these birds. Some fisher-women
were selling fried fish along the beach. Some vending
puffed-rice, ice-creams, shell and pearl necklaces. The
clamor of humans selling and buying dissolved in the
sound of the ocean.

Walking along the shore, I kept looking for shells. The
ones I managed to pick up were small, dull colored and
broken. But somehow they didn’t matter. The moments had
frozen my world. The seeking was fun. What I sought had
gone past its proper relevance, whatsoever. And the
ocean continued to beat the sands, like my own breathing
- a witness to my aimless wandering.

The twilight hours from this one solitary evening of my
life flowed through me, as had all other moments. What
remained was this sense of nothing-ness and silence that
had absorbed me of myself, and had made a spectacle of
all my desires, all my hopes, and everything I stood for
and I fought for. What remained was my own breath,
rising and falling in response to some ancient beat; the
sound of surf, the salt in my hair, and my tears -
pouring out in endless streams.

Marios on Yearnings


LOL,thats why i dont want to speak,much. Because what you believe as truth

on one moment, the other moment is not truth. Soooooo.......


"here it is,

here it is,

here is your sickness,your bed and your pain;

and here is your love,for the woman the men.

May everyone live, may everyone die,

hello my love, and my love goodbye.

here it is,

here it is.

(From Leonard Cohen new CD -ten new songs)

Mountain Ashe on Yearnings

My favourite from that album....


The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win a while, and then its done-
your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it's real,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

And sometimes when the night is slow
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

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