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#2136 - Saturday, May 7, 2005 - Editor: Gloria
“Those
who see all creatures in themselves
And themselves in all creatures know no fear.
Those who see all creatures in themselves
And themselves in all creatures knows no grief.
How can the multiplicity of life
Delude
the one who sees its unity?”
It is the Self who sees,
hears, smells, touches,
And tastes, who thinks, acts, and is pure
consciousness.
The Self is Brahman, changeless and supreme.
Those who know the supreme Self as formless,
Without shadow, without impurity,
Know all, gentle friend, and live in all.
Those who know the Self, the seat of consciousness,
In whom the breath and all the senses live,
Know all, gentle friend, and live in all.
-Prashna Upanishad
Excerpted from The Upanishads, translated by Eknath Easwaran
from a translation of the Ashtavakra Gita ----- By Dr. Thomas Byrom
12 Fulfillment
First I gave up action, 1
Then idle words,
And lastly thought itself.
Now I am here.
Ridding my mind of distraction,
2
single-pointed,
I shut out sound and all the senses,
And I am here.
Meditation is needed 3
Only when the mind is distracted
By false imagining.
Knowing this,
I am here.
Without joy or sorrow, 4
Grasping nothing, spurning nothing,
O Master, I am here.
What do I care 5
If I observe or neglect
The four stages of life?
Meditation,
Controlling the mind,
These are mere distractions!
Now I am here.
Doing, or not doing,
6
Both come from not knowing.
Knowing this fully,
I am here.
Thinking 7
Of what is beyond thinking
Is still thinking.
I gave up thinking,
And I am here.
Whoever fulfills this
8
Fulfills his own nature
And is indeed fulfilled.
photo by Dave Mason http://3circles.clearwithin.com/Image20.htm
Here's your Daily Poem from the Poetry Chaikhana --
 |
[172] 'Tis
so much joy! 'Tis so much joy! By
Emily
Dickinson 'Tis
so much joy! 'Tis so much joy! |
How can someone
read this poem and not recognize that Emily Dickinson was a
profound mystic (in contrast to the conventional idea that she
was a morbid, heart-broken recluse)?
"'Tis so much joy! 'Tis so much joy!" What an ecstatic
exclamation! The words seem to barely come out in the overwhelm
of the experience.
What is it that she is talking about when she asks alternately
"If I should fail..." and "if I gain..."? She
is refering to the exalted state of ineffable joy itself, the
surprised recognition that she has entered the heavenly state.
The joy mentioned at the beginning is also the heaven with which
she closes the poem. This is what she has "gained" by
venturing "all upon a throw." She is stunned by her
success, she hesitates to believe it is even possible, since she
humbly admits that she is "poor" and imperfect.
Failure, to her, would be to not remain in this state of ecstatic
communion. But she strengthens her determination to attain
"Victory" by recognizing that she has nothing else to
pursue and nothing to avoid, nothing to desire or to fear.
"Life is but Life! And Death, but Death!" Things are
simply as they are and the mind need not project false judgments
of 'good' and 'bad' on them, even on "Defeat." Just to
have gotten as far as she has, even if she ultimately
"fails," she has tasted that ethereal sweetness. So why
fear failure?
"For Heaven is a different thing, / Conjectured, and waked
suddenly in -- " With those lines, she is, in her quiet way,
declaring that she is directly experiencing heaven in that moment
and not indulging in mere imagination. She proclaims that heaven
is a very different experience than what is
"conjectured" or commonly imagined once you actually
awaken into it. The authority of these lines is unmistakable.
The final line, that the joy of heaven "might extinguish
me," could just as well have been written by Rumi or St.
John of the Cross. And, of course, that is the way to final
"Victory": By releasing the little self, the ego, into
that rising joy, the true Self, the divine self, is born.
Ivan
Stand firm in That Which You Are
I said to the wanting-creature
inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or
nesting?
There is no river
at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no
ford!
And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great
absence you will find nothing.
Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a sold place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!
Kabir says this: Just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
Siva—Siva
posted by John to MillionPaths
The matter of life and
death is important; impermanence is swift. Aspirants to Zen all
understand the path, but when you ask them why we live and why we
die, ten out of ten are dumbstruck. If you do on this way, even
if you journey throughout the whole world, what will it
accomplish?
-Tuan-ch'iao
From "Teachings of Zen," edited by Thomas Cleary
"What was it in the
wilderness that gave peace and joy? What was it that
came to us in the forest, the solitude? In either case it was
nothing
else but the depth of our own life, which is silent like the
depths of
the great sea, so silent and still...
...It is the surface of the sea that makes waves and roaring
breakers;
the depth is silent. So the depth of our own being is silent
also. And
this all-pervading, unbroken, inseparable, unlimited,
ever-present,
omnipotent silence unites with our silence like the meeting of
flames."
~Hazrat Inayat Khan
From the dgsangha web page, "Silence."
http://www.angelsinc.com/dgsangha/dgsSilencehtm
There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.
~ Alison Luterman ~
posted by Joe Riley to Panhala
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Invisible_Work.html