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Nondual Highlights Issue #1337 Saturday, February 1, 2003 Editor: Christiana
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Verses from Ikkyu (1394-1481)
From Crow With No Mouth,
translated by Stephen Berg.
my monk friend has a weird
endearing habit he weaves
sandals and leaves them
secretly by the roadside
if there's nowhere to rest at the end
how can I get lost along the way?
oh yes things exist like the echo
when you yell at the foot of a huge mountain
we live in a cage of light an incredible cage
animals animals without end
sick of it whatever it's called
sick of the names
I dedicate every pore to what's here
no words sitting alone night in my hut eyes closed
hands open wisps of an unknown face
my death? who was it anyway always where he was never
no not once ever seeing himself an eyeball speaks
http://hjem.get2net.dk/civet-cat/poetry-stories/ikkyu.htm
http://www.9days2nirvana.com/extracts.htm
Dr
SANJAY GROVER, Extracts from the novel Nine Days To Nirvana
"Nirvana is not some indifferent state of unconcern—but
at
the same time it is. Detached, yet involved—that’s
nirvana.
Inaction in the midst of action—that’s nirvana. Eternal
rest in
the midst of restless activity—that’s nirvana. Not the
cold,
indifferent state of the glacier, but the warm tears of love
make nirvana. I’m glad to be the rain, to join the stream
and
give it the strength to seek the sea. I’m not afraid to be
the
stream once more, for even as the stream I can say, "I am
the ocean. I, the vapour."
"Just as Jesus said, ‘I and my Father are
one,’" I added.
"He should have said, ‘I and the Holy Ghost are
one,’"
exclaimed Vivek. "You must realize that you are not apart
from what you seek. You are a part of it. For You are the
Truth, the Truth is You; tat tvam asi—that art thou. There
is no
distance to be covered. So there is no path, no seeking.
Anyone claiming to show a path is himself misled. All that is
required is the sharpening of awareness, the removal of
veils, the unconditioning of oneself. No guru can know you
better than you yourself—provided you are honest and
sincere enough."
"I have been honest and sincere. And I have been endlessly
tilling the soil of my mind and soul, preparing the ground for a
seed of truth to fall on it and grow."
"Ah! No seed of truth can you nurture! When the truth
arrives,
it arrives not as a seed but as a garden in full bloom!"
Gene
Poole - Extracts from a dialogue at
NondualitySalon@yahoogroups.com
The battle is for possession of 'memory'.
In our lives, specifically what information inhabits our
memory, our bookshelves, our hard drives?
There is a battle for possession of 'memory space' which is
going on right now. Think about it... whose ideas occupy your
mind?
From our abstract ideas we pick only tiny fragments, their
source is the universe itself.
Thinkers even more advanced, consider that our own
universe, is actually a synthetic universe, a 'model', which is
being observed right now.
There is evidence to support that view; science has recently
discovered what may be a 'shell' of 'dark matter' surrounding
our universe. This 'shell' exerts a force which is causing our
universe to EXPAND at an increasing rate. Perhaps
someone is hastening the pace of the experiment?
Error is the primary food of a self-learning system!
In human memory-system... in your memory... there is conflict
between 'versions' of memory... interpretation VS 'what
actually happened'. Humans have not yet awakened to this
awesomely obvious fact; it is this, and this alone, which is
what makes the human machine 'psychotic'.
Who is entitled to confer the label of veracity, on any or all
frames of memory? Who is the approving agency? This is
the real issue.
The entire universe is here to serve us right now.
The 'trick' is to obtain 'administrative privileges'!
You are already being served, as a 'validated user'.
Truth be told, this is what the whole 'enlightenment' enchilada
is actually about.
Buddha 'hacked to root'!
Michael
A. Read TheWayStation@yahoogroups.com
http://virtualom.com/
---
In NDSN@yahoogroups.com, jerry
The following story appeared in The Globe Online:
Headline: Professor notes spiritual side of winter
Date: 1/18/2003
" What words come to mind when you think of
winter? For Gary Schmidt, the word is spiritual."
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/018/metro/Professor_notes_spiritual_side_of_winter+.shtml
Gill
Eardley allspiritinspiration@yahoogroups.com 
no other reality
Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and
therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before
the intellectualization takes
place. There is no other reality.
~Robert Pirsig
Art:
Dennis Wojtkiewicz "Lemon" oil on canvas
Petros
Petros-Truth@yahoogroups.com
"Satsang means: always choose the company of the
superior. The mind will lead you to choose the
company of the inferior. Be alert and avoid this,
because with the inferior you will become inferior.
More and more the ray of consciousness will be lost
into darkness. . . . The ego has to be left. Satsang
means living against the ego, transcending the ego,
always seeking the superior."
-- Osho, from The Mustard Seed
thomas
murphy see-what-is@yahoogroups.com
On intent
Intent embodies one's deepest yearnings
whether notionally based, as in obeisance
to self, family, culture; or organically
based, as in breathing, growing, dying.
Intent is far from fickle wishfullness,
though it embraces even that.
Intent is the momentum of an individual
organism cradled in its milieu of
undifferentiated consciousness.
Personal intent is a shallow veneer
applied pursuant to perception.
To the extent personal intent
harmonizes with universal momentum
one thinks, speaks and acts truly.
This symphony is experienced as
personal power, though in
truth personality bears no influence.
Suffering is discord between
reverberating universe and
resonant personality.
ken
highcountry - from his LiveJournal
snipped reflections to the Columbia Shuttle crew
To The Stars I’ve been trying all day to come up with what I
want to say about the obscene tragedy that was this
morning, and the words are still not coming easily.
The men and women of Columbia died while fulfilling
mankind’s highest dream, deepest longing: to go to the
stars. It has been the dream of the race since we first saw
the stars in the night sky, as we huddled in our caves. These
people represent our dreams, and they travel for us. They
carry all of us with them, and our dreams ride quietly beside
them.
It is the living who are touched the most deeply by death.
Those who go on, because they must go on. It is the living
who must bear the terrible burden of grief, which is like an
anchor around the soul, weighing us down and keeping us
bound to the earth.
To the crew of the Columbia, what I am trying to say is
just
this: Thank You.
Art:
"Inner Offering" Atman Victor
Mary
Bianco NDSN@yahoogroups.com
Between Science and Spirituality
By John Horgan
Can mystical spirituality be reconciled with science
and, more broadly, with reason? To paraphrase the
mystical philosopher Ken Wilber, is the East's
version of enlightenment compatible with that of the
West? If so, what sort of truth would a rational
mysticism give us? What sort of consolation?
http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i14/14b00701.htm
Advaita and Science: A Unified Theory
of Spirituality and Science Nitin Trasi MD (Ob-Gyn)
DGO http://www.here-now4u.de/eng/advaita_and_science_.htm
Mumbai
(Bombay), India edited by Carla Geerdes
Jesus
said, "That they all may be One; as thou, Father, art in
me, and I in thee, that they too may be One in us". (11)
We must understand that Enlightenment is not some
esoteric or magical process, Enlightenment does not give a
man magical powers, nor make him a superman.
Enlightenment is simply the disappearance of an illusion
which made him see everything from the point of view of a
'me', Enlightenment does not make a person all-knowing.
Enlightenment is a change in perspective, a change of
focus, a paradigm shift. It is a shift from the constricting,
individual focus of a 'me' to a view of life in its totality, a
shift
from being a circle with the illusory 'me' as centre, to a circle
whose circumference is everywhere and whose centre is
nowhere. Thus the knowledge that comes with
Enlightenment is not a temporal knowledge but is rather an
intuitive insight into the way things are in their totality.
How can we explain Enlightenment in medical terms?
To begin with, it can be shown that man's persistent belief in
his separate selfhood is a result of his capacity for symbolic
thought, which gives him the ability to conceptualise 'himself'
as something over and above and apart from the body-mind.
The actual mechanism of this illusion is also easily
explained. It is known that the left cerebral hemisphere is 
responsible for verbal and logical knowledge and skills. One
of its functions is to relate different events logically and make
sense out of them. The left brain takes unrelated events and
attempts to relate them by concocting a 'story'. It is the left
hemisphere which does the job of selecting from the
abundance of sensory inputs that the brain is bombarded
with, and by it's selective editing it tries to maintain a
coherent belief system, a 'consistent storyline.' The left
hemisphere's job is thus to create a working model of the
world and try to maintain it at all costs. The right hemisphere,
on the other hand, tries to detect anomalies.
It is the left part of the brain which is thus responsible for
the
illusion of a 'self' and the illusion of separateness from the
rest of the universe. The belief in a separate 'self' is
programmed into our brains right from the early formative
years of childhood by parents, religion and society, and it
seems to fit in rather neatly with our linear, symbolic way of
thinking. The left brain then builds further on this framework.
It, by its very nature, tends to selectively pick up and
remember events which would seem to support this belief,
and selectively - unconsciously - edits those which point
against it. By this constant filtering of information, it thus
maintains this fiction of a separate self. But there is a
threshold level up to which this selective editing can be
successfully carried out by the left brain. This level is
different
in different people.
Depending upon the level of this threshold, which is the
strength with which a person clings to his beliefs, even
obvious inconsistencies pointed out by the right brain may
be ignored. But when this threshold level is surpassed,
something dramatic happens. When the information from the
right brain reaches this threshold, it forces the left
hemisphere to revise the entire model and start from
scratch. This is a paradigm shift. The left brain tries to cling
to the existing model, the right tries to force paradigm shifts.
Enlightenment is a paradigm shift - the most radical that
there can be. The entire old, individualistic, me-centred
world-view is ripped up, and is replaced by a new world-view
which is no more me-based, but is instead universal in
outlook 'from no centre at all,' as J. Krishnamurti has said.
That is why Enlightenment is sudden though its effects will be
gradual. It is not a question of a slow transformation, rather it
is a total scrapping of an old model and its replacement with
a new one. Only in this case, there is no new 'model' in the
real sense of the word, there is no more 'storyline'. That is
why things are seen 'as they are' and 'from no centre at all'.
The brain has realised that there need not be a storyline. It
no more burdens itself by constantly trying to fit things into
the picture.
In conclusion, the sage is a person who has 'purged himself
of selfness,' whose personal 'I' is dead.
"I live, yet not I, but Christ - the eternal Logos - liveth
in me."
- St. Paul
And the 'not-I' which remains is the same as what other
people call 'God.'
So then, finally, what is God?
God or the Truth or Reality is simply the Consciousness or
Energy which animates our bodies and sees the Universe
through our senses. It is another name for the Subjectivity
which perceives all the objects through 'us'. It only appears
as if 'we' are doing the seeing.
Even when 'we' talk about It, the 'It' that we conceptualise is
not the real It. The real It is That by which we are doing this
very conceptualising. Indeed, in reality we cannot talk or
even think about It for It is that which is doing the talking or
the thinking.
'You cannot think about God because it is He who is doing
the thinking.' -Ken Wilber
Can the dagger stab itself? Can the hand grasp itself? Can
the ocean dive into itself? Can the eye see itself? Can the
tongue taste itself? Can the flower smell its own perfume?
Can the mirror reflect itself? - Jnaneshvara
Art: "Face Masks 2" Dennis Nechvatal
Harsha
HarshaSatsangh@yahoogroups.com
The state of the Self is natural.
Sages called it the Sahaj state.
It means easy and natural.
So, you have to see what is easy 
and natural for you and what
comes natural to you. What practice
and path are natural differ according
to the needs of people. You need not
seek or follow some "advaita expert
or master" as such a person may
simply be a novice. It is not difficult
to sound like an advaita master.
So do not focus on whether a path
is direct or gradual and be in a rush
towards enlightenment. It is all silly talk.
Wedded to either the "direct" approach or the
"gradual" approach, one misses the obvious. Both the
"direct" and "gradual" depend on each other
for meaning and have no basis in the Reality of the Self. The
Self Always Is. It is not seen by "another" Directly.
Neither is it approached by "another" gradually. Self
Reveals It Self Alone to It Self.
You Are the Self.
Art: SkyDancer "Rose of Sharon II"
Readers
respond
Vicki Woodyard NondualitySalon@yahoogroups.com
Dear Sirs and Madames,
You have requested feedback from your readership...or was
that from your reader's hip....or was it from your hip
readers....
To get right to the point, your magazine, the Nondual
Highlights, is popular with me because it is free. I am always
on the lookout for a free lunch. Sometimes I spread out my
copy of the Nondual Highlights at the bus stop and sit on it
until the bus comes. At other times, I take it to the Waffle
House and work your daily crossword puzzle. When I am
moved to do so, I call perfect strangers and read it aloud
over the telephone.
Your editors are surely among the most perspicacious that I
have ever known...and I could recommend a deodorant for
that. Their wisdom in knowing what to select and what to
omit reminds me of a Ouija board that I once owned. I had to
give it away when it attacked someone. But back to the
point. Your blue pencil should be enshrined in the Crayola
Box of Fame. I applaud you for your editing. I would like to
invite you to attend a supermarket opening in my small
hometown. You can cut the ribbon. I know that you are good
cutters (and pasters).
Well, that about sums up my feelings for the marvelous,
overwhelmingly free magazine. I have sometimes been
allowed to contribute my rambling essays here. This enables
me to tell my friends that I am a published writer. I am waiting
for there to be a category for published readers. That would
be all-inclusive.
Keep up the good work and I will keep reading you until the
cows or Lassie come home--whichever comes first.
A devoted (and demented) reader
~~~~~~~~~~~~
iamom
LiveJournal.com
Nonduality Salon News article This article was in this
morning's Nonduality Salon News, and I think it's really worth
the read. It makes me value this independent community and
others like it, for how well we are able to express ourselves
clearly to each other. Granted, LJ isn't mainstream media,
but since I tend to avoid most mainstream media anyway,
this does it for me.
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-01/23vltchek.cfm
NDS
News often contains great nuggets each day, by the
way. If you're interested in subscribing and getting links to a
variety of interesting, alternative and independent news
sources, you can do so here. I get the daily digest, which
usually contains between 2 and 10 articles in a given day. It's
maintained by the founders of Nonduality Salon.
"Any
life is made up of a single moment — the moment in which a
man finds out, once and for all, who he is."
-Jorge Luis Borges