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Issue #1299 - Wednesday, December 25, 2002 - Editor: Jerry
Maria Martinez of San Ildefonso Pueblo
San Ildefonso Pueblo is a quiet community located 20 miles
northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico. ... Life in the Tewa-speaking
village on the Pajarito Plateau is filled with love for one's
neighbor and respect for the God-given gifts of the earth.
http://www.mariapottery.com (click
on 'Biography')
from Daily Dharma
"Bodhicitta is equated in part with compassion - our
ability to feel the
pain that we share with others. Without realizing it we
continually
shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us. We put up
protective walls made of opinions, prejudices, and strategies,
barriers
that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. These walls are
further
fortified by emotions of all kinds: anger, craving, indifference,
jealousy and envy, arrogance and pride. But fortunately for us,
the soft
spot - our innate ability to love and to care about things - is
like a
crack in these walls we erect. It's a natural opening in the
barriers we
create when we're afraid. With practice, we can learn to find
this
opening. We can learn to seize that vulnerable moment - love,
gratitude,
loneliness, embarrassment, inadequacy - to awaken
bodhicitta."
~Pema Chodron
dg
from Daily Dharma
"..in the final stages of our spiritual journey, we
return to an original innocence. This is the Child of
the Spirit for whom all things are new. The child is
at home in the reality of the present, able to enjoy,
to respond, to forgive, and to share the blessings of
being alive." ~Jack Kornfield
Today, let's release our Divine Child and return to
our Original Innocence. Let's laugh, love, and have
fun in every circumstance that arises - only This is
who we are! As Thomas Meron has said if we return to
seeing the Divine Child in each of us, "We would
probably fall down and worship each other." And
probably have a jolly good time while we're at it. ~dg
Kornfield quote from the book, "After The Ecstasy,
The
Laundry," published by Bantam.
Jan Sultan
from Advaita to Zen
The Untrained Mind - Lama Surya Das
We all have so many random thoughts and concerns, it can
seem as though the
air around our heads is filled with flak rather than just clouds,
space,
and light.
Dharma teachers sometimes refer to the stream of consciousness of
a person
with an untrained mind (most of us, much of the time) as a
continuous
stream of delusion.
This continuous stream is built up through years (or lifetimes)
of deeply
confused habitual and distorted thinking.
We think so much, yet we truly know and understand so very
little.
Mind Control - Maharshi
People often ask how the mind is controlled.
I say to them, 'Show me the mind and then
you will know what to do.' The fact is that
the mind is only a bundle of thoughts. How can
you extinguish it by the thought of doing so
or by a desire? Your thoughts and desires are
part and parcel of the mind. The mind is simply
fattened by new thoughts rising up. Therefore
it is foolish to attempt to kill the mind by
means of the mind. The only way of doing it is
to find its source and hold on to it. The mind
will then fade away of its own accord.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
Photos of Ramana Maharshi
http://www.dabase.net/maharshi.htm
"The enlightened one, nude or clad in a patched garment made of rags gathered from roads, follows the path which is devoid of virtue and vice and stays in an empty abode, absorbed in the pure, stainless, homogeneous Being."
"He attains the supreme, eternal Self whether he appears to have perfect self-control or not, whether he appears to have withdrawn his senses well or not, whether he appears to have gone beyond activity or not."
"To all things, from the practice of religious laws and duties to liberation, we are completely indifferent. How can we have anything to do with attachment or detachment? Only the learned imagine these things."
--Avadhuta Gita