If you seek God with your whole Heart,
then you may be assured that the Grace of God is also seeking
you. Sri Ramana Maharshi
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NDH Issue #1454 - Saturday, June 7, 2003 - Editor: Christiana
If you seek God with your whole Heart,
then you may be assured that the Grace of God is also seeking
you.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
Hua Hu Ching - Chapter Three
Those who wish to embody the Tao must embrace all things.
To embrace all things means first that one holds no anger or resistance toward any idea or thing, living or dead, formed or formless.
Acceptance is the very essence of the Tao.
To embrace all things means also that one rids oneself of any concept of separation; male and female, self and other, life and death.
Division is contrary to the nature of the Tao. Foregoing antagonism and separation, one enters in the harmonious oneness of all things.
- offered by Xan
art: Buddha Sphinx - Robert
Venosa
http://www.ikosmos.com/vgallery/robertv/robertbio.htm
==========================================
Meet a member of our community
Leo Hartong from his book Awakening to the Dream
http://www.awakeningtothedream.com/
Imagine watching a movie in which two
men walk toward
you. The setting is a desert. The sun is blazing overhead,
and a huge mountain range is visible in the distance. One of
the men stops and says to his companion, "Do you realize
that this is all an illusion and we are just variations in one
single light appearing as us, the sun, the sky, and the whole
landscape?" His friend looks puzzled as he continues. "
This
whole world we see is a flat screen, though it appears as if
there is space all around us." Now his friend gets slightly
worried. He thinks perhaps his buddy has been affected by
the heat, so he asks, "Are you feeling all right?"
"Absolutely
fine! It is just suddenly obvious that all this is really nothing
but a very clever illusion appearing on a single
background."
"Really," says his friend getting slightly annoyed.
"Please
show me this background." "Well look, here it is; right
here
touching us, carrying us. It contains everything we see." He
turns and points to the screen. His friend follows his finger,
but sees nothing but the far off mountains.
AdvaitaYZen@yahoogroups.com Pete's translation from his bilingual list
ms: postulate a sudden illumination by
mean of intuitive
understanding. This intuitive, sudden understanding is what
is called nirvikalpa samadhi in Advaita. And I suppose is the
same as Nirvana in Zen, or is it?
Pete: Not quite,
Nirvana- the blowing out of the flame- Is the
complete extinction of all traces of differentiation. Not even
consciousness or unconsciousness could be ascribed to it.
It's the state before conception. The original nature. Only
after death can a liberated being merge with that
permanently. Such a state could be entered while being alive
only temporarily. And yes, it has a liberating effect.
This is just a personal understanding
and might not be
identical with the orthodox view.
Real-Time Online Distance Meditation
The Sun Circle Meditation Hall with
Lance Culp
http://www.enlightenment.com/solstice/index_2.cfm
http://www.enlightenment.com/index.html
Excerpts from Gangaji's You Are That, Vol. 1.
Is it essential to maintain vigilance? Can you give us some guidelines?
Gangaji: Vigilance is
essential. The problem 
with the word vigilance is that it is
misunderstood to mean an imposition of
strenuous discipline. Vigilance is discipline,
but it is the discipline of surrender.
If there is the slightest pulling of
attention from
what is free, from what is boundless and
endless, suffering is experienced. When
suffering is experienced, the habitual
tendency of mind arises to deny truth. By
being vigilant, the capacity of thought to deny
truth is acknowledged and seen through.
If effort is used for the
maintenance of
vigilance, sooner or later there is exhaustion.
However, if you relax your mind, your
individual mindstream is already naturally
aligned with the ocean of pure awareness.
Then alertness, vigilance, surrender, and
discipline are all effortless.
Self-inquiry is vigilance. If in any
moment you feel pulled
towards identification with suffering, ask yourself the
question, Who is suffering?
The belief, I am not That, and the
resulting suffering, must be
faced. Direct experience is self-inquiry. Who is not That?
Who is suffering? In self-inquiry, one uncovers self-denial
through fabrication of thought. Belief in fabricated thought as
reality leads to suffering. In the moment of directly
experiencing the fabrication, the lie is exposed and
annihilated.
Drop the story instantly. Instantly! To
be hooked you must be
feeding the storyline with more commentary or searching for
release through a different storyline. Drama might appear
from past feedings, but it cannot continue without present
feeding.
Be very aware of how you maintain past,
present, and future.
Vigilance breaks the imaginary bonds called "me" and
"my
drama."
Lonny J Brown ENLIGHTENMENT ONLINE The Newsletter for Spiritual Cyberspace
His article: THE BODY ELECTRONIC
begins with: A driving
premise of EOL is that there is a big difference between several
billion people inhabiting the earth, and several billion mutually
accessible inhabitants, and that
difference could be crucial.. for our survival as well as our
enlightenment.
and ends with: I believe
Cyberspace is the vital neural-electronic
infrastructure necessary for this world-awakening. What do you
think?
To subscribe: http://www.holistic.com/lonny/enlitonline.htm
Michael Gluckman book and newsletter:
http://www.light-up-your-life.com
My first direct experience of this
Freedom 
came when I was in the seventh grade. I was
a very curious guy and used to ask lots of
questions — you know, the kind where you
really don’t know the answers.
I remember asking my teacher a
barrage of
questions about our science lesson.
Exasperated, my teacher said, "Michael your
mind moves too fast". Naturally, I looked to
see if my mind was moving too fast. To my
amazement I couldn’t find my mind — just a
depth of peace and joy that I couldn’t even
fathom.
It took me about three decades of
searching
and studying to discover what I experienced
at that moment.
Finally, I stopped all of my
studies and took
the advice of my teachers and the very
scriptures that I read. If someone points to
the moon don't look at their finger — look
where the finger points, the moon; don’t look
at the words— look where they point; I went
diving into my very core.
From Michael's e-book "Making Your Wisdom Come Alive":
If you investigate, and find the source
of happiness, you will
be in for a pleasant surprise. You will find an ocean of joy
that's so deep that no matter how the waves toss and turn on
the surface, you will remain still and at peace. This depth that
you discover is yourself and not an experience that comes
and goes. It is that which you feel intuitively as remaining
constant, even when the winds of the world seem to toss you
about.
Your Self-Nature is so deep that it is
even free from the
rising and falling of the worlds. That is a way of saying free
from death itself. That is because when you are born, by your
own direct experience, the world seems to come into
existence, and when you die the world seems to go like it
never existed at all. And yet at this depth we remain at home
and at peace. This is why at our very core, in the depth of our
heart we feel as if we will never die.
art: Michael Green http://www.greenartprints.com/index.html
Michael L AdvaitaToZen@yahoogroups.com
You can read the entire book "The
Lazy Mans Guide to
Enlightenment" online:
http://www.lcars.eu.org/sarah.peter.nelson/lazyman/lazyman.html
Two of my favorite links are:
more than 200 quotes by Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj on the
importance of practice and how to practice:
http://uarelove1.tripod.com/NISARGADATTA_QUOTES.htm
One of the most beautiful and detailed
descriptions of the
experience of Self Realization ever written:
http://uarelove1.tripod.com/REALIZATION.htm
TAT Forum http://www.tatfoundation.org/forum.htm#2
The Silent Mind, by Bernadette Roberts
I wish I understood the
mechanism of 
self-consciousness, or how it is possible
for the mind to bend back on itself, for if I
did, I could more easily convey a better
understanding of no-self and its most
noticeable effect -- the silent mind. But
whatever this mechanism is, the state of
no-self is the breaking up of a self-conscious
system whereby the mind can no longer see
itself as an object; and at the same time it
loses the ability to find any other object to
take its place, because when there is no self
there is also no other.
I might add that the mind has never had the
ability to see itself as a subject -- this would
be as impossible as the eye seeing itself; yet
I think this very impossibility may be the clue
to the type of consciousness that remains
when consciousness without a knowable
subject or object becomes the whole of it.
This type of consciousness is not available to
our ordinary way of knowing, and because it
cannot be experienced or understood by the
relative mind, it falls squarely into the realm of
the unknown and the unknowable.
I used to believe that in order
to know of the self's existence,
it was not necessary for the mind to reflect back on itself -- to
make itself an object or to be self-conscious, that is; instead,
I believed that the basic awareness of thoughts and feelings
went right on, and was present whether I reflected on them or
not. Now, however, I see this is not the way it works. I see
this is an error, but an error it is only possible to realize
once
self-consciousness had come to an end. It seems that on an
unconscious level this reflexive mechanism goes on so
continuously, it makes no difference if we are aware of this
mechanism on a conscious level or not. In turn, this means
that when the mechanism is cut off, we not only lose
awareness of the self -- or the agent of consciousness on a
conscious level -- but we lose awareness of the self on an
unconscious level as well. Stated more simply: when we can
no longer verify or check back (reflect) on the subject of
awareness, we lose consciousness of there being any
subject of awareness at all. To one who remains
self-conscious, of course, this seems impossible. To such a
one, the subject of consciousness is so self-evident and
logical, it needs no proof. But to the unself-conscious mind,
no proof is possible.
The first question to be asked is
whether or not
self-consciousness is necessary for thinking, or if thinking
goes right on without a thinker. My answer is that thinking
can only arise in a self-conscious mind, which is obviously
why the infant mentality cannot survive in an adult world. But
once the mind is patterned and conditioned or brought to its
full potential as a functioning mechanism, thinking goes right
on without any need for a self-conscious mechanism. At the
same time, however, it will be a different kind of thinking.
Where before, thought had been a product of a reflecting
introspective, objectifying mechanism -- ever colored with
personal feelings and biases -- now thought arises
spontaneously off the top of the head, and what is more, it
arises in the now-moment which is concerned with the
immediate present, making it invariably practical. This is
undoubtedly a restrictive state of mind, but it is a blessed
restrictiveness since the continual movement inward and
outward, backward and forward in time, and in the service of
feelings, personal projections, and all the rest, is an
exhausting state that consumes an untold amount of energy
that is otherwise left free.
What this means is that thinking goes
right on even when
there is no self, no thinker, and no self-consciousness; thus,
there is no such thing as a totally silent mind -- unless, of
course, the mind or brain (which I view as synonymous) is
physically dead. Certainly something remains when the mind
dies, but this "something" has nothing to do with our
notions
or experiences of a mind, or of thought, or of ordinary
awareness.
What I call a "silent mind,"
therefore, is a purely relative
experience belonging to a self-conscious state wherein
silence is relative to its absence, its opposite, or to some
degree of mental quietude. But in a fully established
non-relative state -- which is non-experiential by ordinary
standards -- there are no longer the variations, degrees, or
fluctuations that could be known as the silent mind. This
does not mean we cannot pass beyond the mind to "that"
which remains when the self-consciousness falls away, but it
does mean that whatever lies beyond the mind has no such
tool for its description.
From The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey.
art: Michael Green
http://www.selfdiscoveryportal.com/maxsys.htm 
Sri Ramana Maharshi: The solution to your problem is to see who has it.
Alred Pulyan: Suppose truth is a rabbit. This rabbit is in a field -- a large field. Round the field are very high walls -- creeds & dogma! So -- find your damn rabbit!! And remember the rabbit knows your thoughts & so as you resolve to go one way to catch it, it knows & evades you!
Nisargadatta, dialogue
43.
In the light of consciousness all sorts of things happen and
one need not give special importance to any. The sight of a
flower is as marvelous as the vision of God. Let them be.
Why remember them and then make memory into a
problem? Be bland about them; do not divide them into high
and low, inner and outer, lasting and transient. Go beyond,
go back to the source, go to the self that is the same
whatever happens. Your weakness is due to your conviction
that you were born into the world. In reality the world is ever
recreated in you and by you. See everything as emanating
from the light which is the source of your own being.
Tat Foundation forum: http://www.tatfoundation.org/forum.htm#7a
Poems by Shawn Nevins
The usual part of me is missing, 
but that causes no confusion.
Instead, I am free
to roam possibilities --
care-less moments of Love.
*
Now, I hear
two voices --
the voice of life and of death.
Once, life was my whole
and its sound, my joy and sorrow.
Now, all my action is balanced with no action --
the board is continually erased.
Such a relief to be unconcerned with chalk dust.
I am written and erased --
the holy sound and silence.
I became honest, tired, and determined
in order to hear.
art: Susan Prout http://www.angelicreflections.com/susan/index.html