Nondual
HighlightsIssue #1819 Saturday, June 5,
2004Editor: Mark
The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love and
intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how
ancient or impressive - it has nothing to do with time. It
happens completely on its own when a human being questions,
wonders, listens and looks without getting stuck in fear,
pleasure and pain. When self concern is quiet, in abeyance,
heaven and earth are open. The mystery, the essence of all life
is not separate from the silent openness of simple listening.
re: the trail of postings from the statement "silence is
what you are"
I found myself reading the conversations about semantics and
duality and was struck by the different writers'
experiences/views of "sound" and "silence".
By no means do i wish to stir any right or wrong use discussions,
i just wanted to share my personal sense of silence. For me, i
have used the word silence to mean something else than the
opposite of sound. I have a different context of silence in the
framework of advaita and general all purpose presence. Silence to
me is an amazing huge vast shimmering soft indescribable
presence. It has such a softness that when i place any of my
focus on it or i surrender into it, I am falling into what i can
only describe as love/peace/wordless radiating pulsing energy
that is so conscious and alive, a sense of knowing but knowing
nothing, just a sense that i love. When silence fills me, all is
created from this space..it is where my grace lives. While sounds
carry many feelings and presence as well...(beautiful cd's pop
into mind such as Deva Premal's Embrace & Satsang), the lack
of sounds referred to as silence in general is not the silence i
think of when i read or use the word here. To me silence is the
place/space/sense when i see or read or hear or feel truth spoken
and i feel a resonation in this silence. It is present when
someone is talking in satsang and their eyes simply fall shut for
a moment and i feel a breathless sensation of being drawn into a
pure presence of silence, i feel a magnetic pull as if, as the
eyes close, the silence becomes even deeper/louder/emptier and
fills with one with some kind of energy that is
uncontainable/indescribable. There is the silence when two people
meet each other's eyes and no words are needed as i experienced
recently at a funeral. Sometimes i have received far more through
this "silence" than through the limits of words. The
silence at a satsang is not about "the absence of
sound", it is a tangible alive awareness for me.
What extends within silence is something so beloved to me, it
shines through everything. Sometimes i most easily feel this in
my heart. I find the silence is often present even admidst the
sounds of daily life, it is like a constant flowing stream of
energy except that it flows everywhere, is transparent completely
and it feels like peace or stillness, flowing stillness. This
silence seems a beautiful emptiness that can hold all sounds, all
thoughts, all things, and all silence. There is nothing that
cannot fall into it with me. When i remember this i am grateful.
For me the silence is my clearest experience of love.
To expound and propagate concepts is simple; to drop all concepts
is difficult and rare
- Nisargadatta, contributed to SufiMystic by Jan Sultan
September 27th 1961, Rome
Walking* along the pavement overlooking the biggest basilica and
down the famous steps to a fountain and many picked flowers of so
many colours, crossing the crowded square, we went along a narrow
one-way street [via Margutta], quiet, with not too many cars;
there in that dimly lit street, with few unfashionable shops,
suddenly and most unexpectedly, that otherness came with such
intense tenderness and beauty that one's body and brain became
motionless. For some days now, it had not made its immense
presence felt; it was there vaguely, in the distance, a whisper
but there the immense was manifesting itself, sharply and with
waiting patience. Thought and speech were gone and there was
peculiar joy and clarity. It followed down the long, narrow
street till the roar of traffic and the overcrowded pavement
swallowed us all. It was a benediction that was beyond all image
and thoughts.
* He was now in Rome. He had flown there on the 25th
- Entry from Krishnamurti's Notebook, submitted to MillionPaths
by Viorica Weissman
The Still-Point of Ecstasy
On the Night of Creation I was awake,
Busy at work while everyone slept.
I was there to see the first wink
and hear the first tale told.
I was the first one caught
in the hair of the Great Imposter.
Whirling around the still-point of esctasy
I spun like the wheel of heaven.
How can I describe this to you?
you were born later.
I was a companion of that Ancient Lover;
Like a bowl with a broken rim
I endured his tyranny.
Why shouldn't I be as lustrous as the King's cup?
I have lived in the room of treasures.
Why shouldn't this bubble become the sea?
I am the secret that lies at its bottom . . .
Sh . . . no more words
Hear only the voice within.
Remember, the first thing He said was:
"We are beyond words."
- Ghazal (Ode) 1529 Interpretive version by Jonathan Star (in
cooperation with the translator Shahram Shiva) in A
Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi
published by Bantam Books, submitted to Sunlight
- Image X-Ray composite of Venus
In the wheel of heaven revolving
mysteries of death and birth,
In the womb of time dissolving,
shape anew a heaven and earth . . .
Burn then to the core of matter,
to the spirit's utmost flame,
Consciousness and sense to shatter,
ruin sight and form and name . . .
Free a million million mortals
on the wheel of being tossed!
Open wide the mystic portals,
and be altogether lost!
- from "The Rite of Jupiter"
in the heart of light
a circling planet revealed
...just for human eyes
