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The Nondual Highlights #2125 - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - Editor: Gloria
“In
truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma
and know it, and those who accept dogma and
don't know it.”
G K Chesterton
Mind Wanting More
Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.
But the mind always
wants more than it has --
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses -- as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.
~ Holly Hughes ~
(America Zen A Gathering of Poets)
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Ordinary
people have been revolving in circles since time immemorial,
being born and dying. Because of clinging fixedly to self-images,
false ideas, and misperceptions, the habits of illusion
eventually
become second nature to them. Even if they suddenly awaken in
this
life and realize that their essential nature is fundamentally
empty
and silent, no different from the Buddhas, nevertheless past
habits
are difficult to remove all at once.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)
by hsin_shang ~ Advaita to Zen
Spring
Assault
Tiny storm troopers in dazzling jumpsuits,
Slaughtering thoughts, snatching attention-
Wild spring flowers cascading down a hillside.
Pete
Huike
asked: If there are people intent on seeking the Path of
Enlightenment, what method should they practice, what method is
most
essential and concise?
Bodhidharma answered: Let them just contemplate mind—this
one method
takes in all practices, and is indeed essential and concise.
- Bodhidharma
by hsin_shang ~ Advaita to Zen
Here's one
for the records.
"As soon as you look at the world through an ideology
you are finished. No reality fits ideology. Life is
beyond that.
That is why people are always searching for a meaning
to life.
But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning
because meaning is a formula; meaning is something
that makes sense to the mind.
Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump
into something that destroys the sense you made.
Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.
Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery
and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind".
Anthony de Mello, SJ
by Dave Sirjue ~ Advaita to Zen
"Mind
and body dropped off! exclaims Dogen in an ecstasy
of release. This state must be experienced by you all;
its like piling fruit into a basket without a bottom,
its like pouring water into a bowl with a hole in it."
-Master Dogen
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"I took a walk. Suddenly I stood still, filled with the
realization that I had no body or mind. All I could see
was one great illuminating Whole - omnipresent, perfect,
lucid and serene. It was like as all-embracing mirror
from which the mountains and rivers of the earth were
projected...I felt clear and transparent."
-Master Han Shan
P: It's interested to note that certain
victims of stroke
claim to have lost awareness of their body, or of an
arm or a leg, or even one side of the body.
Some go as far as ignoring anything that happens to
the right, or left. Obviously then, there is a brain center
which gives us the sense of having a body. Maybe not
only a stroke can affect that center, but certain satori
experiences seem to do that too, at least temporarily.
by Pedsie ~ Advaita to
Zen
A quote
now from Anne Lamott's book "Plan B": "Saint Bette
said that heaven
is where people finally stop talking about their weight and what
they look
like. I feel grateful just to think of Bette Midler's being alive
during my
years on the planet... Gratitude, not understanding, is the
secret to joy and
equanimity. I prayed for the willingness to have very mild
spiritual
well-being. I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of
the Trinity; I
just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood
trees." To
which I say a hearty Amen.
by Barbara ~ Allspirit
There is only one way to
know the Self,
And that is to realize him yourself.
The ignorant think the Self can be known
By the intellect, but the illumined
Know he is beyond the duality
Of the knower and the known.
-Kena Upanishad
Excerpted from The Upanishads, translated by Eknath Easwaran,
copyright 1987.