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Nondual Highlights Issue #2004 Wednesday, December 14, 2004 Editor: Mark
Every
day priests minutely examine the Dharma and endlessly chant
complicated sutras. Before doing that, though, they should learn
how to read the love letters sent by the wind and rain, The snow
and moon.
- Ikkyu, from the book, Wild Ways: Zen Poem
of Ikkyu, edited by John Stevens, published
by White Pine Press and posted to DailyDharma
Love not as do the flesh-imprisoned men
Whose dreams are of a bitter bought caress,
Or even of a maiden's tenderness
Whom they love only that she loves again.
For it is but thyself thou lovest then,
Or what thy thoughts would glory to possess;
But love thou nothing thou wouldst love the less
If henceforth ever hidden from thy ken.
Love but the formless and eternal Whole
From whose effulgence one unheeded ray
Breaks on this prism of dissolving clay
Into the flickering colours of thy soul.
These flash and vanish; bid them not to stay,
For wisdom brightens as they fade away.
- George Santayana, posted to AlphaWorld by Sandra
Love Untitled 10
I wake exhausted from
these night adventures spun
from the other side of myself,
this other me I barely know,
one intimate with the stars
and ravaged by hungers
not spoken of in the day that
bleed through and sear my flesh.
There are earthquakes in us,
heavings of the ground that
tumble and disorient,
hungers and yawning chasms that
threaten to swallow us back
to the mud, to planetary fires
that seethe under the surface.
I touch you in these night dreams
and you throw flames at me,
vaporize the ground I stand on,
kill me and strip my skin till I am
a refugee from my own thoughts
left to stumble on bleeding feet.
I wait for the dawn to breathe
from my own lungs yet still you
smoulder in me and capture me
again with morning bliss fires.
© Zen Oleary
December 14, 2004
posted to SufiMystic
If the house of the head is completely filled with crazy passion,
anxiety will fill the heart.
The rest of the bodily members aren't disturbed by thinking,
but hearts are consumed by persistent thoughts.
Take refuge in the autumn gale of fear of God:
let last year's peonies be shed;
for these flowers keep new buds from blossoming,
and it's only for the sake of their growth
that the tree of the heart exists.
Put yourself to sleep and escape from this vain thinking:
then lift up your head into spiritual wakefulness.
Like the Seven Sleepers of the Cave,- pass quickly, O mistress,
into the state of those who are awake
though you would say they are asleep.
- posted to Sunlight
SeaFood
Tumbling out of the darkness like driftwood.
Beached into conscious breath
and struggling to be me.
Gulping this world down again.
Turning over to belly-up into Gods daydream.
Hands opening and closing.
This lust of my Holy Grail, grabbing limbs
and pulling me up as bait
towards more sexual encounters with flesh.
Towards more mind-dances
upon the naked sands of time.
I am strips of a land pointing into the sea.
A peninsular of being, jutting into this longing:
Into a headland of desire
and persisting as a landslip and erosion of myself.
Tumbling and turning over in the surf
of my survival and panting for more.
As I sing my shell-songs from your ocean
all broken open by the beaks of a timeless hunger.
Opening myself like seafood:
Opening the habit of pincer and claw
to reveal this fractured seashell of your pleasure.
This salt scoured thirst of your love
exposed and rolled over again
upon your shore.
- posted to truevision by Eric Ashford
The separate self dissolves in the sea of pure consciousness,
infinite and immortal. Separateness arises from identifying the
Self with the body, which is made up of the elements; when this
physical identification dissolves, there can be no more separate
self. This is what I want to tell you, beloved.
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
You are the supreme Brahman, infinite, yet hidden in the hearts
of all creatures. You pervade everything.
- Shvetashvatara Upanishad
