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Nondual Highlights Issue #2008 Sunday, December 19, 2004 Editor: Mark
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Editor's note: This edition of the HL's is dedicated to the
Woodyard family - Vicky, Bob and Rob, who are dealing with the
ultimate challenge, that of saying goodbye... May their journeys
all be worthwhile...
The two old, simple problems ever intertwined,
Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled.
By each successive age insoluble, pass'd on,
To ours to-day--and we pass on the same.
- Walt Whitman "Life and Death," posted to nondualnow
by Ben Hassine
One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.
- Khalil Gibran, posted to AlphaWorld
Love Untitled 14
I am a fish, caught
and scaled alive,
tossed on the deck,
body heaving with
the other souls
netted in love.
I am flayed and chained
by this wanting,
this hunger for the sea
I come from, for
the taste of salt and
the feel of waves
as I dive through them,
for the bright clicks
of dolphins and
the moans of whales,
for the sound
of your voice and
the taste of your words
on the morning.
When you are away
for the day
my soul is gutted
and sold dockside
at 59 cents per pound.
© Zen Oleary December 18, 2004, posted to SufiMystic
IMPATIENTLY
Too much attracted
to a Material World
that is not Real
she still has Depth.
And of a kind I know...
for I was there... once.
Because of the many Journeys
I have made
forwards and backwards
I know where she is.
And she is Safe.
For in Time to Come...
she will find herself...
within the Depth of the Being...
she is.
She will find herself
without the Earth
and all its Troubles and all its woes.
For already she is touching
the Rim of Bliss...
and reaching.
And from where I am...
I can see...
that the Earth in her...
is fading.
To never be again...
once she has found the Place
from where I'm watching her...
impatiently.
- From the Poems of Gerardus, posted to CosmicCookies
To find a buddha,
all you have to do is see your nature.
Your nature is the buddha.
And the buddha is the person who's free;
free of plans, free of cares.
If you don't see your nature
and run around all day looking
somewhere else, you'll never find a buddha.
- Bodhidharma, posted to DailyDharma
M:There is in the body a current of energy, affection and
intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body.
Discover that current and stay with it. Of course, all these are
manners of speaking. Words are as much a barrier. as a bridge.
Find the spark of life that weaves the tissues of your body and
be with it. It is the only reality the body has.
Q: What happens to that spark of life after death?
M: It is beyond time. Birth and death are but points in time.
Life weaves eternally its many webs. The weaving is in time, but
life itself IS timeless. Whatever name and shape you give to its
expressions, it is like the ocean never changing, ever changing.
Q: All you say sounds beautifully convincing. yet my teeling of
being JUST a person in a world strange and alien, often inimical
and dangerous, does not cease. Being a person, limited in space
and time, how can I possibly realize myself as the opposite; a
de-personalized, universalized awareness of nothing in
particular?
M: You assert yourself to be what you are not and deny yourself
to be what you are. You omit the element of pure cognition, of
awareness free from all personal distortions. Unless you admit
the reality of chit, you will never know yourself.
Q: What am I to do? I do not see myself as you see me. Maybe you
are right and I am wrong, but how can I cease to be what I feel I
am?
M: A prince who believes himself to be a beggar can be convinced
conclusively in one way only: he must behave as a prince and see
what happens. Behave as if what I say is true and judge by what
actually happens. All I ask is the little faith needed for making
the first step. With experience will come confidence and you will
not need me any more. I know what you are and I am telling you.
Trust me for a while.
Q: To be here and now, I need my body and its senses. To
understand, I need a mind.
M: The body and the mind are only symptoms of ignorance, of
misapprehension. Behave as if vou were pure awareness, bodiless
and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when'
and 'how'. Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality.
Don't oppose it and deny it all the time. Keep an open mind at
least. Yoga is bending the outer to the inner. Make your mind and
body express the real which is all and beyond all. By doing you
succeed, not by arguing.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That
Death is present in all we do. It is what makes things profound,
the degree to which death is present in what we say, how it is
integrated into our reality.
Death is the stillness.
So when death comes it comes into who we are. And if the
stillness is deep, if it goes to the center, life and death have
become one.
My concert last night was Rumi's Wedding Night, an honoring of
the tradition that the anniversary of his death be regarded as
the moment of his union with his Beloved, God, Allah, The Friend.
His death was a celebration into the arms of the divine.
But death is a very rich mixture indeed, much more than
celebration, more than sadness. It is the merging of all.
I learned today that my friend Cheryl's father passed away last
night. She had come to my concert and then gone to him as he was
leaving us. I had been to visit him with her, played the flute
for him, told a few stories, and so I was connected to him, felt
his beautiful warrior energy, seen the powerful yet frail old man
the daughter loved.
There is an inexpressible beauty in her choices, no way to
explain.
So in the time of death her grief, love, need for him to stay,
need for him to go, blossom in this perfect moment, a truth so
deeply hurtful as to be beautiful in the finality it touches,
requires.
I saw the clouds in her eyes after the concert as she left,
saying she thought tonight was the night.
And it was.
I remember when my grandmother, Skipper, died when I was in my
early twenties. I remember only feeling the completion of
something so beautiful I could not reconcile it with what death
was supposed to mean. Her life, in her death had become simply
beautiful.
Death becomes the doorway now, for us as well as those who pass.
- Emanations, Copyright © 2004 by John MacEnulty, posted to
truevision
Tonight, take my spirit totally from my body, so that I
may no longer have shape and name in the world!
At this moment I am drunk in Thee - give me another
cup! Then I may be obliterated from the two worlds in Thee,
and be done with it.
When I have been annihilated through Thee and be-
come what Thou knowest, then I will take the cup of non-
existence and drink it, cup after cup.
When the spirit becomes radiant through Thee,
when the candle lights up - if not consumed by Thee it is raw,
raw.
Give me now the wine of nonexistence instant by
instant; when I have entered nonexistence, I will not know
the house from its roof.
When your nonexistence increases, the spirit will
prostrate itself to you a hundred times - oh you to whose
nonexistence thousands of existences are slave!
Give me wine, measure by measure! Deliver me from
my own existence! Wine is Thy special grace, intellect Thy
general grace.
Send up waves from nonexistence to steal me away!
How long will I pace the Oceans shore in fear?
The snare of my king Shams al-Din is catching
prey in Tabriz, but I have no fear of the snare, for I am
within it.
- Rumi, Ghazal 1716, translation by William C. Chittick The
Sufi Path of Love
Only
the man who no longer fears death has ceased to be a slave.
- Montaigne
As long as you do not know how to die and come to life again, you
are but a poor guest on this dark earth.
- Goethe
