Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
#1637 - Friday, December 5, 2003 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Like
entrusting yourself
To a brave person
When greatly afraid,
By entrusting yourself
To the awakening mind,
You will be swiftly liberated,
Even if you have made appalling errors.
- Majjhima Nikaya
BE
SILENT
Entering
into silence is like stepping into cool clear water. The dust and
debris are quietly washed away, and we are purified of our
triviality. This
cleansing takes place whether we are conscious of it or not: the
very choice
of silence, of desiring to be still, washes away the day's grime.
- Wendy Beckett in "Sister Wendy's Book of Meditations"
Gill Eardley ~ Rumi to Hafiz
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness of never
understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
~ Pablo Neruda
Way of the Water-Hyacinth
by Zawgee
Bobbing on the breeze blown waves
Bowing to the tide
Hyacinth rises and falls
Falling but not felled
By flotsam, twigs, leaves
She ducks, bobs and weaves.
Ducks, ducks by the score
Jolting, quacking and more
She spins through—
Spinning, swamped, slimed, sunk
She rises, resolute
Still crowned by petals.
Translated from the Burmese by Lyn Aye
Overcome your uncertainties
And free yourself
From dwelling on sorrow.
If you delight in existence,
You will become a guide
To those who need you,
Revealing the path to many.- Sutta Nipata
http://www..sliceofjapan.com/bamboo_grove.html
Gill Eardley ~ Rumi to Hafiz
From 'Doing Nothing'
by Steven
Harrison:
There is no need for any new ideology, but there is an urgent
need for each of us to discover the truth of our existence-
firsthand. This self-discovery cannot be instructed. it must
arise of its own necessity.
Yet, upon finding this movement of self-discovery occurring,
it is incumbent that we communicate. This need to communicate
arises directly from the recognition of our basic connection
with all that is around us.. Communication is inherent to that
recognition. We have no choice.
This communication may be through words, or deeds, or silence.
The form will not be important, so long as this communication
is not ideology or an attempt to condition another. Communication
is not the conveyance of an idea from one to another, but rather
the conveyance of silence.
Communication is not from a position. It is not from knowledge
speaking to ignorance. Communication does not result in power,
followers, or organizations.
Communication is the anointment of freedom, the benediction
of love.
Gill Eardley ~ Allspirit Inspiration
From: '
Now is the Knowing' by Ajahn Sumedho
Now you may ask, 'Well if I'm not the conditions of mind, if
I'm not a man or a woman, this or that, then what am I?, Do
you want me to tell you who you are? Would you believe me
if I did? What would you think if I ran out and started
asking you who I am? It's like trying to see your own eyes:
you can't know yourself, because you are yourself. You can
only know what is not yourself - and so that solves the
problem, doesn't it? If you know what is not yourself, then
there is no question about what you are. If I said, 'Who am
I? I'm trying to find myself,' and I started looking under the
shrine, under the carpet, under the curtain, you'd think,
'Venerable Sumedho has really flipped out, he's gone crazy,
he's looking for himself.' 'I'm looking for me, where am I?' is
the most stupid question in the world. The problem is not who
we are but our belief and identification with what we are not.
That's where the suffering is, that's where we feel misery and
depression and despair. It's our identity with everything that is
not ourselves that is dukkha. When you identify with that which
is unsatisfactory, you're going to be dissatisfied and
discontented - it's obvious, isn't it?
Slender clouds. On the pavilion a small rain.
Noon, but I’m too lazy to open the far cloister.
I sit looking at moss so green
My clothes are soaked with color.- Wang Wei (699-759)
http://www.sliceofjapan.com/matsuyama.html
When I Heard the
Learn'd Astronomer
by
Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
Learn for yourself here.
A teacher can’t help you here.
Watch.
But first ask yourself why
You need to be told
Why you have allowed yourself
To stop learning about those things
Most basic to your life.
If you attempt to learn
Without asking those questions,
You can never pass beyond
Technique.
You’ll only trap yourself
Again and again,
A skin’s thickness away
From the living present.- Journeys on Mind Mountain
Scott Reeves ~ Awareness the Way to Love
"If
you make me your authority," said the Master to a
starry-eyed disciple,
"you harm yourself because you refuse to see things for
yourself."
And, after a pause, he added gently, "You harm me too,
because you refuse
to see me as I am."
-Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL: Self-trust is the first secret to success. --Ralph Waldo
Emerson
(1803 - 1882)
Daily Dharma
"It would
be difficult to bring the wild mind under control without
first recognizing that wandering thoughts are in reality never
born and can
therefore neither remain nor come to an end. With this
recognition, not
pursuing thoughts as they arise but remaining in the unbroken
simplicity of
the natural state of the mind is called bodhicitta.
Once you have glimpsed the nature of mind in
this way, your realization
of absolute bodhicitta is deepened through the cultivation of
relative
bodhicitta in its two aspects: aspiring to achieve
enlightenment for the
sake of all beings and actually putting this aspiration into
practice.
As we have seen before, it is not enough to simply wish to help people.
You have to
undertake to truly benefit all beings, just like Chenrezi, and it
is
in order to achieve this goal that you visualize Chenrezi, recite
his
mantra, and meditate on the nature of his wisdom.
As you continue
to practice in this way, deluded thoughts become fewer and fewer,
while wisdom
blooms in your being, enabling you to fulfill the immediate and
ultimate needs of yourself and others."
~Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
http://www.sliceofjapan.com/rice_planting.html
More "Slice of Japan" photos may be seen here:
http://www.sliceofjapan.com/index.html
The mighty ocean has but one taste,
The taste of salt.
Even so, the true way has
But one savor,
The savor of freedom.- Majjhima Nikaya
SOMETIMES
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories
who
could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you
come
to a place
whose only task
is
to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived
out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests
to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to
stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.
~ David Whyte ~
(Everything is Waiting for You)