Nonduality Salon Highlights, #1576

There is no good and no evil. In every
        concrete situation there is only the
        necessary and the unnecessary. The
        needful is right, the needless is wrong.
        The situation decides.

        Every situation is a challenge which
        demands the right response. When the
        response is right, the challenge is met
        and the problem ceases. If the response
        is wrong, the challenge is not met and
        the problem remains unsolved. Your
        unsolved problems - that is what
        constitutes your karma. Solve them
        rightly and be free.

                          - Nisargadatta Maharaj

The universal is present in the individual.
Just so, liberation comes from recognizing
the subtle in the gross, the unity in diversity,
the similarity in differences, the truth in untruth, the light in darkness, the life in death.
This is real liberation.

Nityananda

You do not have to abandon worldly
activities in order to attain effortless
unconcern. You should know that worldly
activities and effortless unconcern are
not two different things---but if you keep
thinking about rejection and grasping,
you make them into two.

Zen Master Yuan-Wu

Autumn

All summer long we have sailed the sea green soul
and now the falling flame of Autumn
curls the leaf of time once more.

I love to listen to the breathing of trees
as they go to sleep in the timbered halls of rest.
To walk in the accord of natures agreement
as the mist walks
drifting unhurriedly along in a golden quietude
and at one with the stream and bough
as they settle down upon a seabed of slumber.

Autumn is the death of nothing
for death knows no sleep as this.
Only the living wine of being can ripen into seasons.
Only the changeless could portray such beauty.
All paths pass through this falling foil of bronze re-birthing
that silence, may once again, seed our thoughts
and find us matured to be restored
as new grass again.

Eric Ashford

Just look away from all that happens in your mind and bring it to the feeling
"I am". The "I am" is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction.
Ultimately even the "I am" will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting
what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling "I am" merely helps in
turning the mind away from everything else. When the mind is kept away from its
preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in
it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known;
and yet you recognize it at once as your own nature. Once you have passed
through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind
may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return,
provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken,
delusions and attachments end, and life becomes supremely concentrated in the
present.

- Nisargadatta

"As I drove through the wintry landscape on my way there, everything seemed more fluid. The mountains, trees rocks, birds, sky, were all losing their differences. As I gazed about, what I saw first was how they were one; then, as a second wave of perception, I saw the distinctions. A lovely calm pervaded everything. From that day forth I have had the constant experience of both moving through and being made of the "substance" of everything. This is what is experienced first - the stuff of Unity, its texture, its flavour, its substance. This non- localized, infinite substance can be perceived not with the eyes or ears or nose, but by the substance itself, out of itself. When the substance of Unity encounters itself, it knows itself through its own sense organ. Form is like a drawing in the sand of oneness, where the drawing, the sand, and the finger that draws it are all one." From: 'Collision with the Infinite' by Suzanne Segal

The world is very seriously beautiful.

This is not some sort of delusional distraction or escapism.

Call it enterism, or entrism. It really is extraordinary and incredibly and deeply beautiful.

It is important to seriously observe the beauty and to do it constantly.

It's not some kind of sixties acidhead thing to do.

It's the stuff of powerful mystics and spiritual teachers.

And it makes perfect sense.

When we love we think more clearly, our body chemistry is in a healing mode, and life becomes sweet and beautiful.

When we miss out on the beauty we change the world in negative ways. We may hurry through situations, especially relationship things.

We project what we are doing onto others, think they are thinking what we're thinking, or the way we are thinking. So we miss the beautiful things beautiful people are doing.

Practice entrism. Smell the flowers. Look at the clouds. Go outside just to be outside, not to do something.

Love the world. That is the important thing you have to do today.

A big 10/4 to that.

Eman8tions
Copyright © 2003 by John MacEnulty
10/4/2003, St. Louis, MO

It’s the season of spiders spinning webs,
this fall that feels like the death of life,

that makes us turn inward and scour ourselves
for some glimpse of green, some still tender shoot

as we wander in the graveyard of our yesterdays,
some with the earth still barely tamped down,

where I remember your whispers in moonlight
under the lime tree, your words of enchantment,

that put an extra sun in the morning sky that
wore your name and lit up the corners of my soul,

I search for the taste of your scent, your words,
but you took them with you when you left,

tore gaping holes in me, and the spiders came,
built their webs of reasons why, of what went wrong,

I see ghosts in the fall, stumble in the pothole of you,
then smile at the split apples on the ground with their

drunken ecstatic wasps, those winged lovers at a feast.
and I envy them their waspness and their frenzy.

© Zen Oleary
October 4, 2003

About this mind...
In truth there is nothing really wrong with it.
That the mind is not peaceful
is because it follows moods.
Sense impressions come and trick it into happiness, suffering, gladness and sorrow,
but the mind's true nature is none of those things.
The untrained mind gets lost and follows these things,
it forgets itself.
Then we think that it is we
who are upset or at ease or whatever.
Our practice is simply to see the Original Mind.
So we must train the mind to know those sense impressions,
and not get lost in them.

You cannot shun sunlight
No more than a suave rose
Survives without its liquid beams.
Plant your inner space with seed
Where feathers of flame play gracefully.
There is something higher we know
But you say not more,
Not this, not that; I do not know.
You are tied up in nots,
But beyond your cautious nots
You must see and say what
Really is without not knowing.

Once again the children and I are fighting a battle
    using spring grasses.
Now advancing, now retreating, each time with more
     refinement.
Twilight--everyone has returned home;
The bright, round moon helps me to endure the
    loneliness.

The Autumn nights have lengthened
And the cold has begun to penetrate my mattress.
My sixtieth year is near,

Yet there is no one to take pity on this weak old body.
The rain has finally stopped; now just a thin stream
    trickles from the roof.
All night the incessant cry of insects:
Wide awake, unable to sleep,
Leaning on my pillow, I watch the pure bright rays of
    sunrise.

O, that my priest's robe were wide enough to gather
    up all the suffering people
In this floating world.
~Ryokan

From the book, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom," written by Jack Kornfield and
Joseph Goldstein. Published by Shambala Publications.

The Texture of Being
by Roy Whenary"We do not need to search in order to find our true Being. We already are it, and the mind which searches for it is the very reason why we cannot find it."
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ENLIGHTENMENT BLUES. My Years with an American Guru, By Andre van der Braak.
THE LANKAVATARA SUTRA. An Epitomized Version, Translated by D.T. Suzuki. Compiled/Edited by Dwight Goddard.