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#1748 - Friday, March 26, 2004 - Editor: Gloria Lee  

Zen does not confuse spirituality
with thinking about God
while one is peeling the potatoes.
Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

- Allan Watts

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin..... 
But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten 
through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt 
to be paid.Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these 
obstacles were my life.
-   Alfred Souza  

How can we ever lose interest in life?
Spring has come again
And cherry trees bloom in the mountains.

- Ryokan

  Beginners
Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea—“

But we have only begun
To love the earth.

We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
— so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?
— we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet—
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.  

~ Denise Levertov ~  

(Candles in Babylon)


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  If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed for.
-Chinese Proverb

  Welcome to the Save Our Environment Action Center -- a collaborative effort of the nation's most influential environmental advocacy organizations harnessing the power of the internet to increase public awareness and activism on today's most important environmental issues.  

http://www.saveourenvironment.org/  

There are sacred moments in life when we experience in rational and
very direct ways that separation, the boundary between ourselves 
and other people and between ourselves and Nature, is illusion.
Oneness is reality.  We can experience that stasis is illusory and
that reality is continual flux and change on very subtle and also
on gross levels of perception.
-   Charlene Spretnak

  It is a glorious privilege to live, to know, to act, to listen,
to behold, to love. To look up at the blue summer sky;
to see the sun sink slowly beyond the line of the horizon;
to watch the worlds come twinkling into view, first one
by one, and the myriads that no man can count, and lo!
the universe is white with them; and you and I are here.
- Marco Morrow  

Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and
easy answers,  and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory
in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the
multitude of causes and consequences that are  inherent in each
experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex.
- M. Scott Peck

  "The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order."
-Henry Miller  

    The Wisdom of don Juan  

As long as a man feels that he is the most important thing in the world, he cannot really appreciate the world around him.  He is like a horse with blinders; all he sees is himself, apart from everything else.
-From Journey to Ixtlan  

~ ~ ~  

The flaw with words is that they always make us feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment. For this reason, a warrior seeks to act rather than to talk, and to this effect, he gets a new description of the world where talking is not that important, and where new acts have new reflections.

-From Tales of Power  

~ ~ ~  

For an average man, the world is weird because if he's not bored with it, he's at odds with it.  For a warrior, the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable.  A warrior must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous time.
-From Journey to Ixtlan   http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/donJuan.html  

  Tom Hickcox ~ Awareness-theWayToLove   There isn't enough darkness in all the world
to snuff out the light of one little candle.

       Anon
 

    DG ~ Daily Dharma

"Having had an experience of letting go, even just once, proves beyond a
shadow of a doubt that it means getting rid of a great burden. Carrying
one's hate and greed around is a heavy load, which, when abandoned, gets
us out of the duality of judgment. It's pleasant to be without thinking;
mental formations are troublesome.

"If we succeed even once or twice during a day to let go of our
reactions, we have taken a great step and can more easily do it again.
We have realized that a feeling which has arisen can be stopped, it need
not be carried around all day. The relief from this will be the proof
that a great inner discovery has been made and that the simplicity of
non-duality shows us the way towards truth."

~Ayya Khema


From the web site, "Vipassana Fellowship."
http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/khema/allofus/non-duality.php  

  "We jump from picture to picture and cannot follow
The living curve that is breathlessly the same."

Louis MacNeice    

    Daily Buddhist Wisdom  

In learning this path, it is only important to walk on the real
ground, to act on the basis of reality.  The slightest phoniness,
and you fall into the realm of demons.  

-Liao-an 

From "The Pocket Zen Reader," edited by Thomas
Cleary, 1999. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala
Publications, Boston, www.shambhala.com. 

http://www.beliefnet.com

That which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever
you do, you do for your own happiness. To find it, to know it,
to cherish it is your basic urge. Since time immemorial you loved
yourself, but never wisely. Use your body and mind wisely in the
service of the self, that is all. Be true to your own self, love
yourself absolutely. Do not pretend that you love others as
yourself. Unless you have realized them as one with yourself,
you cannot love them. Don't pretend to be what you are not,
don't refuse to be what you are. Your love of others is the
result of self- knowledge, not its cause. Without
self-realization, no virtue is genuine. When you know beyond all
doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are
that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you
realize the depth and fullness of yourself, you know that every
living being and the entire universe are included in your
affection. But when you look at anything as separate from you,
you cannot love it for you are afraid of it. Alienation causes fear
and fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. Only
self-realization can break it. Go for it resolutely.     - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

    Pinkfish ~ Allspirit    

  What is the Heart?

What is the heart? It is not human,
and it is not imaginary. I call it

you. Stately bird, who one moment
combines with this world, and the

next, passes through the boundary to
the unseen. The soul cannot find you

because you are the soul's wings, how
it moves. Eyes cannot see you: you

are the source of sight. You're the
one thing repentance will not repent,

nor news report. Spring comes: one
seed refuses to germinate and start

being a tree. One poor piece of wood
blackens but will not catch fire.

The alchemist wonders at a bit of
copper that resists turning to gold.

Who am I that I'm with you and still
myself? When the sun comes up,

the complicated nightmind of the
constellations fades. Snowforms do

not last through July. The heart-
quality embodied by our master, Shams

Tabriz, will always dissolve the old
quarrel between those who believe in

the dignity of a human being's decisions
and those who claim they're all illusion.

~ Rumi

from "The Glance", trans. by Coleman Barks

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