another non duality highlights double-issue
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"The nature of reality is this:
It is hidden, and it is hidden, and it is hidden."
--Rumi, 13th-century Sufi mystic
www.touchoftao.com/ newsletter.htm
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Chögyam Trungpa
"There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are stengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques."
"I've told you a ll that constitutes the very core of the truth;
There's no you, no me, no superior being, no disciple, no Guru.
The paramount Reality is self-evident and simple;
I'm nectarean knowledge, unchanging bliss; I'm everywhere, like space."
from: The Song of the Avadhut
http://www2.vuw.ac.nz/staff/ralph_pettman/cutspirit.html
editor's note: this is an Aikido site
"CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM"
There is one spiritual well that waters the whole world. It is fed by a spring of pure water. It is the water of compassion. It is the well of love. All people want to drink there. It is, whether we know it or not, our deepest need. Nothing else will meet this need. Nothing else brings true peace of mind. Nothing else brings real happiness.
Many people draw from this well. Many beliefs and faiths hold out cups to the thirsty.
We often pay whatever is asked for the chance to drink from them. Many of us are desperate. Many of us also live in cash economies, where money is an important measure of worth. We believe that money is the only way to get what we want. If we don't pay, we think we're not getting anything worthwhile. And the more we pay the better we believe the solace will be. This isn't so, but there are plenty of entrepreneurs ready to behave as if it were.
Spiritual commercialists sell something they get for nothing. This can make for a very profitable business. Aikido, too, has often been commercialised in this way.
Institute for Spiritual Materialism
Cyberswami Avidyananda
http://home.austin.rr.com/tnulla/avidya.htm
In his moment of vision, he perceived the world as perfect for its divine purpose, and utterly holy. Upon his return to the world, the distinguished* Cyberswami tested his hard-won wisdom with every available temptation of the flesh, repeatedly, so there could be no mistake. The ancient writings are true; there is _no_ real difference between the spiritual and material worlds. Divine nature permeates both the Manifest and Unmanifest equally, and their seeming separation is but an illusion to maintain the stunningly complex multi-billion year drama of existence.
http://www.dangerangel.org/materialism.html
Spiritual Materialism
I had two psychics from the Berkeley Psychic Institute read me on Friday (Thanks LJ!). Like dueling fiddles, except it was psychics. My dad wants to start the Berkeley Sidekick Institute - with classes like “Be the best #2 you can be!” and “Capes: colors and fabrics” and “Superhero Co-dependence - the pitfalls of sidekick life”. Having a psychic reading is like looking at the back of your head after you get a hair cut. It's interesting to see - but doesn't really matter since you can't see it every day.
One of the psychics called the Dalai Lama “The Daddy Mama” - an appropriate nickname for the most integrated and evolved public figure on the planet. The psychic said that I should ask my Tibetan Lama past life to recede into the mists of time - having him hang out with me in this life is like letting a bus driver have the wheel in a new neighborhood. No Steven Segal jokes please. But I let my inner Tibetan Lama come out to play at the Dalai Lama “concert” at Shoreline Ampitheater yesterday.
I got there around 8am and found a spot on the lawn facing center stage - and more importantly, behind a cute punk rock girl named Gina who had come down from Oregon. She had been to the last 3 days of the Dalai Lama's teachings and was pretty blissed out. After finding the optimal seat, I went shopping. I probably dropped $300 at the Dalai Lama's gig - $50 ticket, $10 to park and $100 for videos of the 3 days I had missed (a ridiculous purchase as I have no TV), plus a wide array of religious tapes, accessories and crap that I have no room for. In every line I stood in, I made the same dumb joke about going home and rereading “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism” - I was laughing, but the people next to me just nodded sagely and looked guilty. The author, Tibetan crazy guy Chogyam Trungpa, would have laughed and asked me to buy him a beer.
http://www.galactic-trading.com/fellowsh.htm
Fellowship of
Spiritual Materialists
I just wanted to let everybody know I started a new religion today.
It's called "Spiritual Materialism
The main purpose of Spiritual Materialism is to help those with less
Stuff than you. Stuff of value being more Holy than cheap, crappy Stuff. So
it is the duty of a Spiritual Materialist with Good Stuff to share it with those
who are less fortunate.
Now I don't like religions with lots of complex moral codes, as I value
freedom of thought and action almost as much as I value Good Stuff.
However, it seems to me that religions need rules, so I created a list of the
major laws of Spiritual Materialism. Here they are (not necessarily listed in order of importance).
1. All Stuff is Holy. Do not break, abuse, misuse or otherwise defile the Holy Stuff.
2. Do not steal anybody's Stuff.
3. Treat your Stuff well, for you may loose it.
4. Giving freely of your Stuff to others is the Most Holy of all Acts.
5. Respect Stuff given to you by others, as you would Stuff you bought yourself.
6. If Stuff breaks, and is not fixable, recycle it, so there can be more Stuff.
7. Whenever possible, strive to make the world around you better through Stuff.
8. If you are skilled, create Stuff.
9. Do not force your will upon the Stuff of others.
10. These aren't the Ten Commandments, so I stopped at nine.
Buddhist Terms Your Guru Never Taught You
I’ve compiled this list of modern Buddhist terms over the last several years through a combination of listening to how American Buddhists talk and coming up with my own terms describing how they behave. I also credit Douglas Coupland for the idea of compiling the list.
If you would like to submit a term for the next issue, please e-mail me at the address above.
| ZEN SICKNESS: Also known as Madhyamika Sickness. The belief that everything is empty, nothing matters, and that the world is illusory. This sickness is usually cured by a Zen master with a big stick who asks: "Does emptiness feel pain?" |
GURO-OMETER: The parameters one uses to quickly access the quality of a Buddhist teacher when first encountered, such as how they walk, the way they speak, or my own personal favorite, how late they show up for an event: the later they show up, the more insight they have.
http://theenterprise.homestead.com/counsellor.html From the ship's counsellor of the USS Enterprise
http://bob.swe.uni-linz.ac.at/EUU/Kaisers/newspirit.html
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
of Kaiserslautern
The New American Spirituality
Above all other descriptions, Spirituality is about fearlessness, about the "brave search for the truth about existence." What is there to fear? The temporal quality of the human condition, which has, in the past, reduced us to absurdism, having come to doubt veracity of traditional solutions. "Some fear the terror of death; some fear the prospect of life unlived; some fear the loss of what we hold dear and familiar. These are not thoughts on which we usually enjoy lingering. Spirituality invites us to linger...with curiosity and openness, and a relaxed fearlessness the Buddhists call 'tranquil abiding.'" This seems to me an outstanding formulation for discussing spirituality among Unitarian Universalists.
http://www.youareall.com/freeing_ourselves.html
Our emotional need to interpret our spiritual experience and systematize it into religious rationalizations has tied us in terrible knots. We are spiritually confused as a species and at each other's throats as a result. Each religion believes its interpretations are the ultimate truth and has fought the most horrific and barbaric wars to prove the point.
Our inherent sense of spiritual unity with each other and with all of nature has been replaced with nonsensical arguments about immaculate conceptions, days of judgment, yugas, bardos, and how many hells there are. This has imprisoned us in self-imposed chains of delusion, from which we must break free.
http://www.innerfrontier.org/Practices/IllusionOfEgo.htm
Inner Frontier
The
Illusion of the Ego
What in us blocks our connection with the spiritual depths? If heaven is real, why am I not in contact with it? All religions and paths address this central question, under a variety of names, the most common today in the West being “ego.” The term ego, in this context, alludes to our deeply ingrained self-referential, self-seeking disposition. Ego cuts us off from other people, from Nature, from God, from our true self, from our true responsibility, and from fulfillment of our destiny. Our ego is the great usurper. It focuses on our local independence, falsely presuming it to be a global independence. The ego convinces us that we are truly separate beings with ultimately separate will, having no inherent connection with other people or with God.
Religions and paths portray the nature of our egoism and how to deal with it in one of two quite distinct modes. Usually, and to our misfortune, the ways reify and solidify ego into a something, an enemy, which must be overcome, which must die, which inherently resides in our tainted nature, which must be purified. True enough. One cannot argue with the accumulated wisdom of great religions. For our modern culture, though, the notion that our ego must die seems frightening. More importantly, the notion that we harbor inherent spiritual taints gets interpreted by our self-bashing, insecure psychology to mean that we are bad ¾ something that we in the West have been trained to believe since childhood. We believe we are not good enough. So we don the knowledge of being corrupt to our core as a mantle of supposed wisdom, and flock to those that teach it. Then the religious teaching about egoism simply gets co-opted by the self-denigrating side of our ego, eagerly adopted and accepted as yet another weakness. We hang our heads and beat our breasts and feel the better for it. Unfortunately, all this only strengthens our egoism and leads us into an endless cycle, akin to a dog chasing its tail.
http://www.realspirituality.com/praise_halfway.html
Halfway Up the
Mountain
The Error of Premature
Claims to Enlightenment
"Caplan's
illuminating book calls into question the motives of the
spiritual snake handlers of the modern age and urges
seekers to pay the price of traveling the hard road to
true enlightenment."
~Publishers Weekly
"This is a
valuable, timely book, although readers will need to keep
an opening, questioning mind, especially in the sections
devoted t the "hot" issues of authenticity, ego
inflation and corruption with respect to spiritual
teachers."
~Shambhala Sun
http://prose-n-poetry.com/display_work/7647
Illusion
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| Illusion by Giulio
Iacobini I reached the conclusion that everything in life as well as otherwise is an illusion of some kind or other ... Now, illusion is spirit of spiritual nature and everything that ever exists can be explained as a spiritual illusion ... Since the time created we live nothing but a Great Illusion of the time-space ... I was a cadet in the nautical military school in Romania from 1976 to 1983 preparing to become an officer in the Merchant Navy which led me to sailing towards Australia where I am even now in 2002 ... when I am about to reach the age 42 ... The whole of my life is a illusion in my mind ... and since everything is an illusion even God is an illusion ... and I got to continue to feed the illusion of life ... |
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http://www.zen-satsang.org/BooksTapes.htm
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| ~ Adyashanti - from My Secret is Silence |
http://www.ex-premie.org/best/WhyIamnolongerapremie.htm This site is an excerpt from the the ex-premie forum. Premies were what followers of the Guru Maharaji called themselves during the Guru's heydays of the early 1970s. These postings are from former followers of that guru. Nope, I'm not bashing that guru. Let the ex-premies speak for themselves...
Readers Write Back
Here is a bit of satire offered by our most vocal critic and all around curmudgeon, Earl McHugh. Thanks, Earl.
Being That
Recently I was visiting a friend at a lonely
little town in the green hills of West Virginia when I
saw a vast estate with a huge , open gate. Over the gate
was this intriguing sign, " Abandon all
Illusions." Enticed by this admonition, I entered.
As I strolled down a tree-lined path, I soon came upon
a large oak, behind which a long-haired rather
stout old man was talking with a younger, confused
looking man who knelt before him.
I
recognized the older man as Thaddeus Parsnip,
author of that leading book on eternal truth, " I am
Nothing and You are Less than Nothing" and
many others. I crept behind the tree and listened in as
they chatted.
TruthSeeker (
hereafter TS ): why can't I seem to put my mind at ease?
TP: What is this "my mind" ?
TS" you know - the stuff I think with.
TP: what is this " I " shit?
TS:You know, just me.
TP: There is no " I " haven't you learned that
after six weeks with me?
Ts:: Well, I listen very carefully but sometimes I don't
hear you ….
TP: That is you problem. There is no you, no me and no
one here at all.
TS: If that is so, why am I paying $2,000 a week to stay
here?
TP: My son, someone has to pay the upkeep on this spread.
TS: Do you get to keep much of it?
TP: What do you mean, " you." There is no me,
no you, nothing and nobody here.
TS: How did you come to learn such great Truth, oh
Parsnip?
TP: Well, there was always this great
yearning in what I thought was my mind to know more than
I seemed to know, and selling vacuum cleaners in Waco
didn't seem to be providing all the answers I needed. So,
I stowed away on a freighter to Jakarta, and from there I
hid in a load of betel nut being carried to India. A few
weeks later the betel and I were unloaded in a
rather large ashram where a tiny,brown man, clad in a
rather dirty dhoti was reclining in the lap of a curvy,
naked young lady and lecturing to a large crowd of
Westerners who seemed to be sweating quite a lot. The
temperature was 112 degrees.
The Westerners were passing forward
large,wicker baskets, mostly filled with U.S. currency
and a few thousand yen, and prostrating frequently
( or passing out from the heat).
The little brown man, I guessed from the large signs at
the doorway, was Marharshima Moomanji of Gilgamesh,
better known as Gotchaji.He was chewing a large
cheekful of betel nut and smoking some rather
strong-smelling handrolled cigarettes. The naked lady
wiped away the betel-juice that dribbled down his chin.
Creeping out from under the load of betel nut, I
slipped up to this old man." What is the Truth ?
" I asked. His slightly reddish eyes blinked
in my direction, and he said:
" What do you mean? There is NO truth,
there is no you, no me and definitely no Truth. The only
thing that matters is that there is only Seeingness,
Hearingness and Beingness and what you think is
"you"doesn't exist and what is called
"I" doesn't exist either.
"Then", I said softly," just what is
there?"
"There is only THAT and the
sooner you realize it, the better off you will be. I am
THAT and you are THAT and the rest of it is all delusion,
I tell you young d**khead."
Struck dumb with the revelation of this great
truth. I asked him, when I recovered my breath," How
did this incredible epiphany come to you?"
" Well," he said, "I had been begging in
the gutters of Calcutta for 30 or 40 years and drinking
jars of nettitnetti whenever I collected a few rupees.
One day a tourist gave me an actual U.S. dollar bill.
This was enough for 10 jars of nettinetti. I drank those
down, slept a week or so and when I awoke in some clinic
the missionaries ran, this great insight was with
me and it has never left me."
Thad then
said, " Not
being a total fool, I ran out of there as fast as I
could, joined a band of traveling hippies from Kansas and
they naturally brought me back home. I have devoted the
rest of my life to imparting this Wisdom to puddingheads
like you in my 14 great books, 212 tapes and
several annual retreats. It beats selling vacuum
cleaners."
Earl McHugh
http://www.realization.org/page/namedoc0/pilgrimage_to_self/pilgrimage_to_self_8.htm by Jinendra Swami
Circle of Desire
The essence of liberation is in
breaking the Circle of Desire
As an infant all you desired was food and comfort
Then your desire for nice clothings and 'stuff '
was so much necessary in your youth
But as you 'matured', your desires 'progressed'
to having spouse, house, wealth, and child too
Then with 'age', when you have possessions, positions,
and credentials, you reach deep understanding of life
Now your mind desires, 'god' or enlightenment too
So from clothing, to spouse, to desire for 'god'
You imagine you've made great progress in life
In reality nothing has changed
But the objects of your desires
Know that the essence of liberation is
In breaking the Circle of Desire
The rich and the poor
The servant and the master
The 'grahastha' and the 'sadhaka'
The disciple and the 'so-called spiritual man'
And also all those still rooted
in 'Longing' of 'some kind'
They're all equal in their illusions
Still Circumscribed by the Circle of Desire
Do I 'know'?
Do I 'understand'?
How can I be attached, and still attain Liberation?
Your so called progress is simply a change
From one illusion to another
Maybe from a material to a spiritual illusion
But your life is still full of delusions
All your 'Actions' are
to 'gain' something and 'avoid' other things
Your efforts for the future are affected by your past
You Forget in the process the 'present' is a Fact
Can you Act without any motive?
Just observe your every action
It gives a 'Desired fruit'
or may be an 'Undesired fruit'
But is there a way you can act
so 'no fruit' accrues to you ?
Know that without Renunciation
You cannot experience 'no fruit'
Isn't that really the Truth?
But, Renunciation is not in the act
It cannot be learned nor taught
The secret is revealed to you
When you experience
a state of 'Changeless Desire'
You will know exactly how to live and act
So 'no fruit' accrues to you
You think you have progressed by having virtue of
'Wanting nothing, Doing nothing, Being nothing'
But, aren't you still caught up in Circle of Desire?
Be Aware and realize
From the Circle of Desire
Arises all ideas of acceptance and rejection
How can pleasure and pain be absent
while you are Perturbed?
Leave aside all 'ideas' of acceptance or rejection
And remain Steadfast and Equanimous
Then, through self-experience you'll know
In Enlightenment
Pleasure and Pain don't dissolve
Nor is there Freedom from their experiences
But it's Wisdom that acts as an armor
Protecting you from either pain or pleasure
Any experience leave no imprint on the mind
This is Freedom from the mind
And it is 'this state of mind'
That brings Freedom from all Actions
Be Aware
You are always conscious of 'what Changes'
Can you be Conscious
of 'That which does not Change'?
Know that 'this state of mind' is the Essence
that brings liberation from the Circle of Desire
It's when nothing else is wanted
amazingly the Reality is right there!!
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