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#1444 - Wednesday, May 28, 2003 - Editor: Joyce (Know_Mystery)
"Become more and more acquainted with your body on all its subtle levels, the fine vibrations which are really music, because when we talk of things created, they are only vibrations, nothing else, energy in movement and matter. In poetic language we can say the world is created by music. As we are the world, the universe, all the music of the universe is in our body."
~Jean Klein
Quoted by Mazie Lane ~ AdyashantiSatsang
Photograph by Brian Fitzgerald - tuliporange.jpg
Jan Barendrecht ~ HarshaSatsangh
"Ramana's biography shows he was silent unless pressed for an answer. "Silence" is the best pointer: amidst the traffic in a big city, your heartbeat, blood running through the veins are inaudible but in a desertlike mountainous area, at a windless night, they are the only sounds. When the "carnival" of the mind (like chatter) subsides, other issues seem to pop up (yet they were
present all the time). Thus, any talk on K. is superfluous as the issue will present itself in the course of events. Hence it is "enough" to list a few road marks like the roaring sound pointed to as "AUM" which is creed-independent, unlike visions of burning rivers, blue aliens and auras."
Harsha & Bobby Graham ~ HarshaSatsangh
Harsha: OK Bobby.
If a great master tells you that, "everything is
unreal", how would 
you assess the reality or truth of his statement?
Ha. Ha. Ha. :-).
Bobby G: Hi Harsha. Everything is unreal by comparison to
Consciousness. Harsha: Perhaps upon hearing
this, Sri Ramana would smile and beam silently! :-). :-). Another Sri Ramana quiz! How would he answer if
pressed? :-). :-).
Love to all
Harsha
Bobby G: He would say that Everything is real if seen as the Self. If seen as something other then it is unreal. did I pass? (the picture I am working on is looking better)
Painting by Bobby Graham: "Upstream-Detail" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HarshaSatsangh/message/32910
John de Ruiter Quoted by Robert O'Hearn ~ AdvaitaToZen
"Waking up is not necessarily pleasant;
you get to see
why all this time,
you chose to sleep.
When you wake up,
the first thing you will see is
Reality does not exist for you,
you exist for it.
Shocking as it is,
when you let it in,
there is rest.
You do not have to labor anymore
to hold together a reality
that does not exist;
forcing something to be real
that is not real.
You and this life that you have been living
are not real ...
In letting it in,
even through the shock... pain... shattering,
there is rest.
Reality is when
all you want to know is
what is true ...
just so that you can
let it in
and be true.
Reality is not a safe place for you,
the you that you have created.
It is the only place where
you would die;
where there is no room for
your hopes, your dreams.
Once you have let it in,
once you begin to re-awaken,
to let Reality wake you up -
nothing can get it out.
That is the beginning of your end.
Waking up can be much more painful
than the agony of your dream,
but waking up is real ...
And there will be integration;
a merging of reality and you.
You and reality will become one
in a world that does not
accept nor want one,
but two.
You will become a beloved servant
instead of a controlling master ..."
~John de Ruiter
Alan Larus ~ NDS
Thus shall you think
of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn.
A bubble in a stream.
A flash of lightning
in a summer cloud.
A flickering lamp.
A phantom,
and a dream.From The Diamond Sutra, Section 32, translated by Dr. Kenneth Saunders
Photograph by Alan Larus - DSCF0106boble.jpg http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NondualitySalon/message/72586
Gene Poole ~ NDS
The Anteroom
Welcome to the anteroom...
where you already are
Beyond that door is the
realm we all speak of
Some of us speak as tho
we are beyond that door
But if we speak, this is
where speaking is done
Beyond the door there
is no speaking
Beyond the door there
is no-one to speak
Beyond the door there
is no-one to speak to
Here in the anteroom we may
speak to each other
If any of us speaks with
pretense of being beyond
the door, everyone but
the speaker understands
that fantasy is being
woven with words.
Everyone knows that those
who speak, in the anteroom,
are in the anteroom.
Yes, some of us in the
anteroom have been beyond
the door. Some of us spend
considerable time beyond the
door.
Some of us come into the
anteroom to speak of what
we see and know, what we
have, what we have lost,
when we have gone thru
the door.
But anyone who speaks here,
is in the anteroom. Anyone
who speaks here, is not
beyond the door. Anyone who
speaks here, stating that
they speak from behind the
door, is mistaken, and the
mistake will be pointed out.
This is the anteroom, and
we may speak here, of anything.
We speak of and point to the
door. We discuss what lies
beyond the door. Now perhaps
we can understand, that if
speaking is being done, that
the speaker is in the anteroom.
To be in the anteroom does not
imply in any way, an inability to
go thru the door. To speak in the
anteroom does not in any way,
qualify or accurately describe or
explain what is beyond the door.
Those of us who speak here,
who know we are in the anteroom,
know that our words do not
emanate from beyond the door.
Some speakers have the habit
of speaking here in the anteroom,
as though they are beyond the door.
Those of us in the anteroom who
have been thru the door, know
that there is no speaking beyond
the door. We may speak here in
the anteroom, of anything, but
to speak as tho we are beyond
while we are here, reveals a
serious schism in the speaker.
Those of us who talk back to those
who speak as tho they are beyond
the door, are typically answered in
words that the speaker imagines are
from beyond the door.
Wake up, you are in the anteroom;
here you may speak. You may
describe immense infinite vistas,
you may bawl endless tears of
gratitude, you may rant on and
on about what concerns you.
Wake up, speaker. If you speak,
this is where you are; here you may
speak.
Realize that you need not formulate
your speech into cosmic diatribe, to
prove you are not here. If you speak,
this is where you are.
Carl Karasti ~ SufiMystic
"The hardest person to awaken is the one already awake."
~ Tagalog saying
[Tagalog is one of the major languages spoken in the
Philippines, mostly by people from the Tagalog regions
in the main island of Luzon.]
Vicki Woodyard
~ NDS
Ignorance and the Lack Thereof
Recently I was in a roomful of people who were hinting that they didn't know. It was confusing to say the least. One man did his hinting by way of analogy and comparison, letting them trail off into space. "It's as if I were looking for a pickle in an empty barrel....he said, pausing in an ignorance that was likely feigned, "as if I thought I knew the barrel was empty but I didn't!" He
punctuated the last word with an emphatic emptiness. He practically crowed.
I saw a few people gathered around someone else expounding on his innate ignorance, which he believed to be unique to him. He was writing a book based solely on his knowledge of his own feigned inanity. The dedication, he said, was to his mentor, who occupied an important chair in philosophy at a major university. "He wrote the book on his knowledge of hopeless inner stupidity.
And it's going into its second printing."
The third guy was the most impressive, I must say. He came right out and said that 2000 was a very good year of his not knowing and that he had it in his cellar aging even as he spoke. It was vintage vanity. I told him that I would certainly be purchasing a bottle or two for my private collection.
I was about to leave when I saw a mime, just beginning to draw a crowd. It looked like he might be ready for the big time, Cirque de Soleil or something similar. He was showing us that he was trapped in his ignorance. He was
running in a hamster wheel of not knowing. He kept going faster and working harder, a pointer to the ignorance that kept him going.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his competitor, miming that he was peeling a banana. It was obvious that he was anxious to get the crowd on his side. I
glanced at him as he casually threw the nonexistant peel on the floor. It hurt when I stepped on it and fell down a few seconds later. I got up gingerly. He would not soon fool me again. I might be crazy but I am not stupid.
http://www.bobwoodyard.com
Hilary Collins ~ TrueVision
More Mud Eats Me Up
I am wild and totally wetted,
cold cotton sticks like saran wrap to my skin
my roof kissed by fat drops I lay my head back
and they tickle my tongue with stories from a past port
telling tales of the wind who borrowed them up
from an ocean where dolphin and children play
there where sea monsters dive deep
fishing by flashing dayglow sparking pimples
like a neon diner display on their tentacles
I sink to my ankles in water and earth
and I can't help but gasp as one of my shoes
decides for itself there to remain
I watch the mud slurp it all up,
all this, right where the last tomato went in.
Robert O'Hearn & Mazie Lane ~ AdyashantiSatsang
Just the Way You Are
A water bearer in China had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream.
"I am ashamed of myself because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house."
The bearer said to the pot, "Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, and I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you've watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house."
Tykal & Mazie Lane ~ Adyashantisatsang
:-)
Self-Styled
each poem exactly five beats away, opening
like the moment when AhLlaH reflects
of those who live it, of those composed Lights
shaping its style, a stillborn artform duo
flavor, form falanges and hinge
of formlessness freefalling waterfalling
and flair as air & ether
however uh.. however
the peacock rose-regales I, That
spreads its tale and gives a fat Hello
and the fallen quill quivers in the moon that
flows like water pours from Marasan
into the fertile
ground and round and round we
of the blank page paint in hue and tone
flowering up in the Heart-bud
into the beauty we are seeing Love
of whatever’s
beheld and we are held in That.
Photograph from the internet - http://tinyurl.com/d11a
"Sometimes the completely open heart and mind of bodhichitta is called the soft spot, a place as vulnerable and tender as an open wound. It is equated, in part, with our ability to love. Even the cruelest people have this soft spot. Even the most vicious animals love their offspring. As Trungpa Rinpoche put it, `Everybody loves something, even if it is only tortillas.'
Bodhichitta is also 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 bodhichitta."~Pema Chodron, from the book, "The Places that Scare You"
Douglas E Fireman ~ Spiritual-Friends
Dancing Along the Heartridge
Buddhist hymns emanate
the dilapidated temple,
and my heart sighs
a plaintive melody.
As swirling snowflakes
dance along the heartridge
the master appears,
his flashing eyes reminding me
of father's laughter.
Hair, white as my snow-filled
footsteps crunching
back in time
toward love's terrain,
and tears crystalize
in sunlight.
He bows to me, and I to him;
then turning, he climbs
the heart ridge,
and I, walking a new path
lit by moon and starlight,
return to the temple to
pray.
Gill Eardley ~ Allspirit
Compassion in Action
"Acting with compassion is not doing good because we think we ought to. It is being drawn to action by heart-felt passion. It is giving ourselves into what we are doing, being present in the moment - no matter how difficult, sad or even boring it feels, no matter how much it demands. It is acting from our deepest understanding of what life is, listening intently for the skillful means in each situation, and not compromising the truth. It is working with others in a selfless way, in a spirit of mutual respect."
Ram Dass - 'Compassion in Action'
Allspirit Website: http://www.allspirit.co.uk
Eric Ashford ~ TrueVision
Writing Poetry 102
This life is a vast canvas 
that we are largely ignoring.
We should not only paint our dreams
but know who the painter is
and that One, is larger even than life.
Spirit-poets do not need
to make a big splash in the world
but then,
they do not hide themselves.
They just hand over the art work
to be Love in action.
Sometimes they are a mirror,
sometimes they are reflecting
from a light
that is in the painting of their souls.
This is God sculpting their visible truth.
Change is good.
Changing our perspective even better.
You don't have to go to Holland or Paris
to be a Van Gogh.
Painting from internet by Vincent Van Gogh "The Langlois Bridge at Arles" http://tinyurl.com/d12c
