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Nondual Highlights Issue #2109 Sunday, April 10, 2005
You
can complain because rosebushes have thorns,
or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
- Lao Tse, posted to DailyDharma
All verbal teachings are just to cure diseases. Because diseases
are not the same, the remedies are also different. That is why it
is sometimes said that there is Buddha, and sometimes it is said
that there is no Buddha.
True words are those that actually cure sickness; if the cure
manages to heal, then all are true words. If they can't
effectively cure sickness, all are false words.
True words are false words when they give rise to views. False
words are true words when they cut off the delusions of sentient
beings. Because disease is unreal, there is only unreal medicine
to cure it.
- Pai-chang (720-814), posted to AdvaitaToZen
Nobody ever fails in Yoga. It is all a matter of the rate of
progress. It is slow in the beginning and rapid in the end. When
one is fully matured, realization is explosive. It takes place
spontaneously, or at the slightest hint. The quick is not better
than the slow. Slow ripening and rapid flowering alternate. Both
are natural and right.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That - Talks
with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to
JustThis
Q: How can we know that in this quiet that you speak of we will
experience goodness and clarity? Do you presume a benevolent
force in the universe?
CI: Look to your own nature because, after all, we are each a
microcosm of totality, inseparable from the macrocosm. Those
moments that you have known pure love, have they not been the
truest? Have you not felt the most authentic, the most alive?
Through all the strange turns and wanderings of your life, isn't
love what you have always yearned for, what you have wanted to
express, what you have wanted to give? And can you imagine that
on your deathbed the love that you have known and shared will be
all that will have mattered?
So whenever you find yourself in doubt about a benevolent force
in the universe, just return to this, back home, to your own true
nature, love itself.
Q: I know that is true in my heart of hearts. But how does that
explain the horrors that go on in this world?
CI: Love gets twisted sometimes. And it shows up in all kinds of
sad and even tragic ways when it has been perverted, suppressed,
and denied. Though love is everyone's essence, not everyone is
aware of that at all times. Stay with your own knowing of love.
It transforms your vision of the horrors.
Q: It seems that things are worse than ever in our time.
CI: The world has been mad for as long as we know. What is unique
to our time is that through extensive media we have awareness of
the darkness all over the planet simultaneously. This may result
in a quickening of the light, as these polarities are always
dancing with each other. But in any case, choose to rest in your
own true nature and then you meet in the same love that one might
feel for one's own children. Even those whose behavior is an
outrage and whom we might work to deter are seen as wayward
children, blind to the consequences of their actions. "They
know not what they do." You will then stop worrying about
how bad it is in our time. That worry will be transmuted into
compassion and love for what is shining before you.
Q: Will you then know how to be, what to do, how to help out?
CI: Being and doing are one continuum. Action flows from silence
and dissolves back into it. In this, you discover that love is
running the show and you just follow orders. You take dictation.
The love that you are says or does whatever needs to be said or
done and you find yourself as surprised as anyone else by what is
coming through you. It will be completely unique in its
manifestation, something nobody ever taught or told you. After
all, the great ones just went out and did their own thing. The
Buddha, Christ, all of them. They didn't follow anyone else's
formula. They followed only the dictates of their own hearts. And
the power of their integrity in that surrender was such that
religions were created around them, but they themselves were not
out to create religions. They were just living their lives in a
wild, unconventional and creative expression. What moved through
them is now moving through you. You may find yourself blazing for
thousands or you may discover that you were not as pivotal in
changing the world as you once had hoped. In any case, ah so.
- excerpt from a Dharma Dialogue with Catherine Ingram
Let no one imagine contact with the Overself is a kind of dreamy
reverie or pleasant, fanciful state. It is a vital relationship
with a current of peace, power, and goodwill flowing endlessly
from the invisible center to the visible self.
Although he is normally quite unconscious of this connection with
the Overself, once at least in a lifetime there is a flash which
"visits" him and breaks the unconsciousness. He has a
glimpse of his highest possibility. But the clearness and
intensity of this glimpse depend upon his receptivity. They may
amount to little or much.
Without learning, studying or practicing yoga, Heisenberg, famed
nuclear physicist, formulator of the Law of Indeterminacy,
unwittingly entered what is a high goal to yogis,
"Nirvikalpa Samadhi." This happened at times at the end
of the deepest abstract thinking about his subject. Thoughts
themselves ceased to be active. He found himself in the stillness
of the Void. He found himself in the Stillnes of the Void. He
knew then, and he knows today, his spiritual being.
What are the signs whereby he shall know that this is an
authentic glimpse of reality? First, it is and ever shall remain
present. There is no future in it and no past. Second, the pure
spiritual experience comes without excitement, is reported
without exaggeration, and needs no external authority to
authenticate it.
Every man who passes through this experience and holds its
memory, verifies for himself that there is an Infinite Life-Power
pervading the entire universe - also that it is everpresent,
perfectly wise, and all-knowing. Its point of contact with him is
his Overself.
Yes, it is a wonderful feeling, this which accompanies a glimpse
of the higher self: but when it is also merged with a knowing, a
positive perception beyond the need for discussion,
interpretation, formulation, or judgement, it gives the
philosophical seeker a certitude which is like a benediction.
In that golden moment of spiritual awareness, or that longer
period of spiritual ecstasy, he identifies himself no more with
the projection from Mind but with pure Mind itself. In that
severance from its projection, the shadow becomes the sun.
It is a state of exquisite tenderness, of love welling up from an
inner centre and radiating outward in all directions. If other
human beings or animal creatures come within his contact at the
time, they become recipients of this love without exception. For
then, no enemies are recognized, none are disliked, and it is not
possible to regard anyone as repulsive.
- from Perspectives, Vol I; the Notebooks of
Paul Brunton, posted to SufiMystic
The first peace,
which is the most important,
is that which comes within the souls of people
when they realize their relationship,
their oneness with the universe and all its powers,
and when they realize that at the center of the universe
dwells the Great Spirit,
and that this center is really everywhere,
it is within each of us.
-Black Elk, Oglala Sioux, posted to The_Now2