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HIGHLIGHTS
#1090
Friday May 31, 2002
Editor: Gloria Lee
http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm
NISARGADATTA
By all means be selfish; the right way. Wish yourself well,
labor at what is good for you. Destroy all that stands
between you and happiness. Be all; love all; be happy;
make happy. No happiness is greater.
Fear and greed cause the misuse of the mind. The right use
of mind is in the service of love, of life, of truth, of beauty.
If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world
will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire
and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so
there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.
Were I very rich, what difference would it make? I am what I am.
What else can I be? I am neither rich nor poor, I am myself.
Posted by
Viorica Weissman on MillionPaths
~~~
hey
you are all asleep
snoring away your days
as well as your nights
what is the nature of awareness
when deep asleep?
ooo - scary stuff boys and girls!
what do you think happens to you
when you awaken to the experience
of the vast universal conciousness
heheheheh?!
oh your poor karma laden ass
ooo-ouch!
matter and spirit
what's the difference?
none - hahahahah!
while away the hours
contemplating flowers
understanding rain
who da buddha, baby?
heeheehee!
you da buddha, baby
ciao - michael
By MICHAEL
READ on NDS
~~~
PICK UPS
New to this list, but not to lists. Those of us who are on some
'Spirtual Path', no matter how defined remind me of hanging out
with local farmers. After "rain and crops", the most
popular
discussions are "Which is the best truck, Ford or
Chevy?" These
debates can continue for decades, even generations. It is never
brought up that no matter which truck used, even Dodge, the
vehicle
that the working farmers use gets the hauling, planting and
harvesting
done. Those farmers who do not put in the work and study required
have less than steller results. Simular w/Seekers or????. We can
be observed debating methods, teachers, words etc., around the
Satsang shop at any opportunity. Just because one Way of seeding
and harvesting works for us; Does that have to be the only True
Way? We still have to drive and read manuals, maps, our self. If
someone's truck is stalled we can give him a lift, but hauling
him into
our preferred garage may not be the best way to get her back on
the road....................... Having said that, Nisargadatta
Maharaj is my
teacher, but others have appeared and continue to be. If I have
been cranking that ignition with no progress, and someone with
jumper cables appears, I'll take that charge! But it is my job to
keep it charged. John
.
JOHN on
SufiMystic
~~~
A
HUNTING PARTY
A
Hunting party
Sometimes has a greater chance
Of flushing love and God
Out into the open
Than a warrior
All
Alone.
From: The
Gift; Poems by Hafiz, Translations by Daniel Ladinsky
What a wonderful hunting party this list represents!
Much love,
Michael
----------------------------
"so... there I was... surrounded by the snarling howling
hounds of
hell... I said "s'up hounds?"... "heh! nada!"
they said... so I made
cookies, (oatmeal raisin)... and we ate them with milk and
giggles"
.
MICHAEL (not
Read, but "eclectic guy") on SufiMystic
~~~
RAMANA
MAHARSHI
Maharshi: If a true seeker is advised to meditate,
many may go away satisfied with the advice.
But some one among them may turn round and ask:
"Who am I to meditate on an object?"
Such a one must be told to find the Self.
That is the finality.
That is vichara.
D: Will vichara alone do in the absence of meditation?
M: Vichara is the process and the goal also.
'I AM' is the goal and the final Reality.
To hold to it with effort is vichara.
When spontaneous and natural it is Realisation.
~~~~~~~~~~
from Talk 390
~~~~~~~~~~
Posted by
Gabriele Ebert on SriRamana
~~~
What is it? Perhaps...
Thank you for your thoughtful responses. At first I started to
answer
you with mind, but that is not what we really want to be doing
here –
playing with intellect and concepts, is it?
There is enormous "help", of course, and yet isn't it
funny how we
frequently assume that Truth is divided – that there is
"Absolute
Truth", and then there are all of us poor slobs somewhere,
divided from that Truth, who are needing some help to get to that
Truth? Few stop to consider that, for Truth to be True, then It
must
be True always and everywhere.
Still, let's let this drop into that place you seem to feel I am
denying – the place of "the very real suffering that is
experienced
by those not yet awakened to their true Position!" Let's for
a moment
put aside all of our notions about enlightenment, Truth,
positions,
Ramana, gurus, shakti, and such, and "feel into" our
present
condition, may we? Can we take this moment to just explore who is
the
one looking out of our eyes?
The initial tendency is to go to mind, but we've played that game
enough to recognize that mind cannot exceed itself. We may then
look
to our emotions, but only with similar results, eh? When mind and
emotion are examined and released from the demand to know, then
what
is left? Usually, we answer something like: "Me". Now,
the
interesting thing is, when we have excused mind and emotions to
go
out and play for the time being while this inquiry is pursued, we
find that we really are unable to nail down this "me".
For most, it
remains some kind of vague amorphous something that resists the
light
of such an inquiry. However, if we persist, not trying to know or
understand, but just persisting in the momentum of this inquiry,
we
may begin to intuit a kind of story that we have been telling
ourselves, a kind of narrative that actually comprises the
content of
our ordinary waking or even sleeping consciousness. In fact, it
seems
to be the driver for all of our sense of self. If we are willing
to
be courageous, we might go a bit further and question:
"Is it true? Is this story true, or more a collection of
beliefs and
assumptions gathered from random conditioning factors, and all
hung
along the clothesline of a central concept – "I"?
We can ask this
question without expecting a yes or know, but just letting it
penetrate, penetrate, and then, if we can be fearless in the face
of
what reveals itself, we can allow a kind of falling off the cliff
of
our certainties, and into the vastness of the unknown, which we
may
be surprised to realize is the Home we have always been seeking.
LoveAlways,
b
BOB on
HarshaSatsangh
~~~
I've only listened to a few A.Watts tapes, and what one picks up
immediately is his sense of humor. It must have been in a funny
story that he admitted that "he was not enlightened". I
thought that
a first rule in the precious interaction between Teacher and
Students is that the Teacher does not Proclaim his Enlightenment.
For example, a snip from an Interview with D.Harding on this
subject:
When asked about Enlightenment.
[DH]: "I don't use the word enlightened anymore; it's a buzz
word,
it's a word which is a very, very tricky one, and I don't say I'm
enlightened and you're endarkened. I do not say that. In fact, I
don't feel that way. I don't feel myself to be enlightened in a
world
of endarkened people.
[Douglas Harding is the inventor of headlessness, also called
"seeing
who you really are," a method of self-inquiry based on
simple,
practical exercises. He was interviewed in 1996 by Kriben Pillay,
editor of The Noumenon Journal.]
I'm not familiar with the reasons why certain Teachers deny their
capacity. For example, Tenzin Gyatso prefers to be referred to as
a "simple monk" (hahaha).
Perhaps it's a matter of finessing the students' entry onto the
spiritual path. One result of denying one's enlightenment to
would be
students is to remove the "illusory" distance between
enlightenment
and endarkenment.
CJ on
HarshaSatsangh
~~~
ALAN
LARUS on HarshaSatsangh
RAYS
I will not go to work today.
I will move my bed to the end of the suns ray.
I am too curious today.
When they bring their coffee cups and papers to the meeting,
I will take a peek around the corner of the universe.
At lunchtime I might be drinking with the gods,
later I will whistle as I take a stroll along the gates of
paradise.
But when dinnertime arrives, I will return,
for your laughter and your smile
as you greet me coming through the door.
I have to introduce myself
My name is Alan in the English language.
I am 47 years old and I live in Norway.
I work with programming analytical systems for corporate
finances.
I found the magasine/ website, and Gloria made me aware of the
Yahoo group.
UNPLUGGED
When I was a boy of ten,
Eliot’s The hollow men,
today I hear the record players voice,
could it have been a feeling of rejoice?
Even when I was a child,
my fantasy it did go wild,
as a man I never wrote an ode,
I spent my nights alone with code.
When I read Secrets of Ishbar
all the words ran from the scar,
inflicted by the liberating thug
hiding in a hole behind the plug
BLEEDING WORDS
flowing
outside inside
within
difficulty
without
respect
between universe
and void
in a sentence by
disappearing
completely breaking
a sacred silence
singing
dancing
always crying
destroying
happy end
creating
laughing
mirror
multiplying
never dying
They yell and whisper.
Won’t let me sleep.
Demand the lost pen,
the old envelope,
the corner of a bill.
When finished
they run back into my sleeve,
disappear in the air,
leaving a sound
like the last vibration from a bell.
Secrets of Ishbar:
http://www.jammu-kashmir.org/KOA/Books/SecretsIshbar/poem9.html