”As always, the wave lives the life of a wave,

and at the same time, the life of water. “

“Most people view themselves as waves and forget that they are also water.  They are used to living birth-and-death, and they forget about no-birth-and-death.  A wave also lives the life of water, and we also live the life of no-birth-no-death.  We only need to know that we are living the life of no-birth-no-death.  All is in the word ‘know.’  To know is to realize.  Realization is mindfulness.  All the work of meditation is aimed at awakening us in order to know one and only one thing: birth and death can never touch us in any way whatsoever.”

~~ Thich Nhat Hanh

From the book, "The Sun My Heart,” published by Parallax Press

Gill Eardley  Allspirit

Rainer Maria Rilke
From 'The Sonnets to Orpheus'

              We are the driving ones.
              Ah, but the step of time:
              think of it as a dream
              in what forever remains.
              All that is hurrying
              soon will be over with;
              only what lasts can bring
              us to the truth.
              Young men, don't put your trust
              into the trials of flight,
              into the hot and quick.
              All things already rest:
              darkness and morning light,
              flower and book.

              trans. Stephen Mitchell

Herons and cattle egrets on the bank of the River Ganges are reflected in the surface of the river in Allahabad, India, on April 28  

Gill Eardley  Allspirit  

"The sage has the sun and the moon by his side. He grasps the universe under his arm. He blends everything into a harmonious whole, casts aside whatever is confused or obscured, and regards the humble as honorable. While the multitude toil, he seems to be stupid and non-discriminative. He blends the disparities of ten thousand years into one complete purity. All things are blended like this and mutually involve each other."

~Chuang Tzu
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/chuang..html

Sandy Carmichael  Allspirit

"When the trees say nothing" A reflection on living a hermit's life

June 23, 1966

Why do I live alone? I don't know....In some mysterious way I am condemned to it....I cannot have enough of the hours of silence when nothing happens. When the clouds go by. When the trees say nothing. When the birds sing. I am completely addicted to the realization that just being there is enough, and to add something else is to mess it all up. It would be so much more wonderful to be all tied up in someone...and I know inexorably that this is not for me. It is a kind of life from which I am absolutely excluded. I can't desire it. I can only desire this absurd business of trees that say nothing, of birds that sing, of a field in which nothing ever happens (except perhaps that a fox comes and plays, or a deer passes by). This is crazy. It is lamentable. I am flawed, I am nuts. I can't help it. Here I am, now,...happy as a coot. The whole business of saying I am flawed is a lie. I am happy. I cannot explain it....Freedom, darling. This is what the woods mean to me. I am free, free, a wild being, and that is all that I ever can really be. I am dedicated to it, addicted to it, sworn to it, and sold to it. It is the freedom in me that loves you....  Darling, I am telling you: this life in the woods is IT. It is the only way. It is the way everybody has lost. ...It is life, this thing in the woods. I do not claim it is real. All I say is that it is the life that has chosen itself for me.  

~from "A Midsummer Diary for M." by Thomas Merton

Mace Mealer  Illuminata   http://home.clara.net/lucypringle/photos/2003/uk03aa.jpg

The Last Is First

    A broken eight
       appears in rape.
       To find the clue
       research the glue.
       A jinn-like code
       reveals the road.
       No past or future known today,
       is present in this fine array.

    Jan Barendrecht  NDS  

The Wheel

       dual speed
opposite directions
friction heat
one wheel
moving by itself  

Jerry Katz  NDS  

Some links to news stories, which now appear on my home page at http://nonduality.com, in case you can't link from this email:
--Jerry  

May 2: The Favorite Game: a review
May 2: Nutrition for the soul
May 1: Moving in the spirit: sacred dance
May 1: Kissing her cubicle goodbye
May 1: Naropa Audio Archive Project
May 1: The outerworld, the innerworld
April 30: Such a long journey
April 30: How Italy's Army Save the Jews
April 29: The Unwanted/The Tapestries
April 28: New Meditation Research

  Viorica Weissman  MillionPaths  

I am - The First Name of God

David Godman

.........................  

One should not push parallels between Judaism and Bhagavan's teachings too far, for orthodox Judaism maintains that God is wholly and eternally separate from the world, whereas Bhagavan taught that the Self is the sole reality, and that the world is an appearance in it, rather than a creation of it. For Bhagavan, the world is being in the same way that God Himself is being, for the two cannot be separated: 'Being absorbed in the reality, the world is also real. There is only being in Self-realisation, and nothing but being.'

     Christian theologians have also taken God's revelation of Himself as 'I am' to indicate that His fundamental nature is being, but they will not concede that creation is in any way a manifestation of God's essence. Take, for example, the following statement by a Catholic theologian:

God is the fullness of being, that is, subsistent existence and subsistent reality, not merely as existent being, a real object, but existence itself, reality itself.

This statement, which I am sure Bhagavan would endorse, is not by some maverick interpreter. It comes from a respected theologian and fits comfortably into the mainstream of Catholic thought on the subject of God as being. However, it cannot be interpreted to mean that the world partakes of God's reality because virtually all Christian sects believe that God created the world ex nihilo, that is to say 'out of nothing'. Matter, say the Christian theologians, is not a part of Him, nor is it an emanation from or of Him. It is, according to them, quite literally conjured up out of nothing. Although the world is brought into existence by Him, Christians will not accept that it partakes in any way of His essential nature. Views to the contrary are known as pantheism and are condemned by Christian theologians as being erroneous or even heretical. So, while Christians are fully prepared to accept that God's revelation of Himself as 'I am' means that His fundamental nature is being, they are not prepared to concede that the world partakes of his beingness in any way. In the worlds of a Vatican Council: 'As being, one sole absolutely simple immutable substance, God is to be declared as really and essentially distinct from the world.' 

     There is another crucial area in which Bhagavan's teaching differ fundamentally from those of both Judaism and Christianity. Bhagavan taught that 'I am' is not merely the real name of God, it also the real name and identity of each supposedly individual person. Extending the notion to its logical conclusion, Bhagavan maintained that if one could become aware of one's real identity, 'I am', then one simultaneously experienced the 'I am' that is God and the 'I am' that is the substratum of the world appearance. The following quotes are typical and summarise his views on the subject: 

It [I am] is the substratum running through all the three states. Wakefulness passes off, I am; the dream state passes off, I am; the sleep state passes off, I am. They repeat themselves and yet I am. 

The egoless 'I am' is not a thought. It is realisation. The meaning or significance of 'I' is God.

'I exist' is the only permanent self-evident experience of everyone. Nothing else is so self-evident [pratyaksha] as 'I am'. What people call self-evident, viz., the experience they get through the senses, is far from self-evident. The Self alone is that. Pratyaksha is another name for Self. So to do self-analysis and be 'I am' is the only thing to do. 'I am' is reality. 'I am this or that' is unreal. 'I am' is truth, another name for Self.

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

from   www.davidgodman.org

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