Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
#2157 - Saturday, May 28, 2005 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Some people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate
again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life,
with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.
-A.H. Maslow
it can never be complicated, corrupted, or stained
"Where exactly is our buddha nature? It is in the skylike
nature of our
mind. Utterly open, free and limitless, it is fundamentally so
simple
and so natural that it can never be complicated, corrupted, or
stained,
so pure that it is beyond even the concept of purity and
impurity.
To talk of this nature of mind as skylike is, of course, only a
metaphor
that helps us to begin to imagine its all-embracing
boundlessness; for
the buddha nature has a quality the sky cannot have, that of the
radiant
clarity of awareness.
It is said: 'It is simply your flawless present awareness,
cognizant and
empty, naked and awake.'"
~Sogyal Rinpoche
From the book, "Glimpse After Glimpse," published by
Harper Row.
posted by Dharma Grandmother to Daily Dharma
If you could only keep quiet,
clear of memories and
expectations, you would be
able to discern the
beautiful pattern of
events. It is your restlessness
that causes chaos.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj posted to Along the Way
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photographer
by T.V. Ramamurthy* (from an article published in The Mountain Path, Jayanti Issue 2005)
The French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson died in early August 2004 at the age of 95. He was instrumental in influencing a generation of photographers on the way they viewed their subjects. In The Decisive Moment, a seminal essay written in 1952 for a book of photographs he released, he wrote about capturing the 'decisive moment': "Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you." This term ' the decisive moment' has become synonymous with him. (The English title of Images a la Sauvett is literally, "Images on the Run") With his relatively unsophisticated 35 mm Leica camera, he created a new direction in his medium. Like Hemingway in English literature or Picasso in painting, he reduced the subject to the barest fundamentals of geometry and revealed the essence of the moment. His work was about plain composition, immaculate clarity, stillness in movement and pure emotion - the decisive moment. Many of his images have a timeless quality because they are so 'true'. Though they do reveal sensations to the eye, the intent is not to excite but calmly reveal the composition's underlying harmony. ......
Other memorable images taken were the late patrician photos of
Sri
Aurobindo and of Swami Shivananda majestically captured sitting
on a tiger
skin by the Ganga, images indelibly impressed on the memories of
their
respective followers.
For Ramana devotees he is best known for the last three photos
taken of
Bhagavan on 4th April 1950. He was also at the ashram the night
Bhagavan attained mahanirvana. In fact, he witnessed the glowing
meteor that
travelled north over Arunachala the moment Bhagavan left his
body. Most
people in the ashramm were so engrossed in the trauma of his
death that
they did not look up into the night sky. The photographer's words
have
been quoted in many books and articles about Bhagavan's last
days.
Some of the photos he took on the subsequent day of devotees in
grief
during the ceremonies for Bhagavan's internment are among his
most
familiar images from his portofolio on India. In the haze of
collective
sorrow he recorded the intense emotions when a great soul
departed from
this physical realm, with a dispassionate eye sensitive to the
individual's despair and disbelief. One does not feel he has
intruded. Quite the
reverse, he is absent from these pictures.
.....to be continued posted by Viorica
Weissman to MillionPaths
I hope that you enjoyed reading the Henri Cartier-Bresson daily installments - All the installments have been assembled together and the article can be read here: http://www.geocities.com/ramana_maharshi_library/Articles/bresson.html
Srinagar, Kashmir, 1948
Photography is nothing. It's life that interests me.
H. Cartier-Bresson
some sites showing his photographs:
http://www.afterimagegallery.com/bresson.htm
http://www.peterfetterman.com/artists/cb/cb.html
http://www.magnumphotos.com/c/htm/TreePf_MAG.aspx?Stat=Photographers_Portfolio&E=29YL53IQ1W7
at above link, clicking on various books gives pages and pages of thumbnail photos to enlarge
grabbing the snake's tail
"We people don't want suffering, we want happiness. But
in fact
happiness is just a refined form of suffering. Suffering itself
is the
coarse form. You can compare them to a snake. The head of the
snake is
unhappiness, the tail of the snake is happiness. The head of the
snake
is really dangerous, it has the poisonous fangs. If you touch it,
the
snake will bite straight away. But never mind the head, even if
you go
and hold onto the tail, it will turn around and bite you just the
same,
because both the head and the tail belong to the one snake.
"In the same way, both happiness and unhappiness, or
pleasure and
sadness, arise from the same parent -- wanting. So when you're
happy,
the mind isn't peaceful. It really isn't! For instance,
when we get the
things we like, such as wealth, prestige, praise or happiness, we
become
pleased as a result. But the mind still harbors some uneasiness
because
we're afraid of losing it. That very fear isn't a peaceful state.
Later
on we may actually lose that thing, and then we really suffer.
Thus, if
you aren't aware, even if you're happy, suffering is imminent.
It's just
the same as grabbing the snake's tail -- if you don't let go it
will
bite. So whether it's the snake's tail or its head, that is,
wholesome
or unwholesome conditions, they're all just characteristics of
the Wheel
of Existence, of endless change."
~Ajahn Chah
posted by Dharma Grandmother to Daily Dharma
simply the total awakeness
Shariputra asked: "When a follower attains the great
insight of perfect wisdom, does that follower then covet and
cultivate omniscience, infinite knowledge?"
The Buddha answered: "Such a follower never covets or
cultivates infinite knowledge. That very attitude of not coveting
and not cultivating reveals everything to him and he sees all
possible structures--from objects of the senses to buddhas--to be
transparent in their nature. This radiant transparency is, in
fact, simply the total awakeness of a buddha. The now-awakened
follower becomes, in this way, immersed in infinite wisdom and
blossoms spontaneously as omniscience itself."
-Prajnaparamita
From "Buddha Speaks," edited by Anne Bancroft, 2000
'Be Not Afraid'
None
of what you've learned in college means anything without the
courage to use it in the world.
By Anna Quindlen
Adapted from the commencement address delivered May 17, 2005 to Barnard College.
concluding excerpt:
There is plenty to fear out there. Last year I gave into it myself, writing a column at just this time called "An Apology to the Graduates," telling the class of 2004 how sorry I was about the unremitting stress they have been under all their lives.
In part I wrote:
There's an honorable tradition of starving students; it's just that, between outsourcing of jobs and a boom market in real estate, your generation envisions becoming starving adults. Caught in our peculiar modern nexus of prosperity and insolvency, easy credit and epidemic bankruptcy, you also get toxic messages from the culture about what achievement means. It is no longer enough to make it; you must make it BIG. You all will live longer than any generation in history, yet you were kicked into high gear earlier as well. Your college applications looked like the resumes for middle-level executives. How exhausted you must be.
Here is what awaits you: you will be offered the option of now becoming exhausted adults, convinced that no achievement is large enough, with resumes as long as short stories. But what if that feels like a betrayal of self, a forced march down a road trodden by other feet, at the end of which is--nothing you truly care for?
Fear not. Remember Pinocchio? There is a Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder. It is you, your best self, the one you can trust. The only problem is that it is sometimes hard to hear what it says because all the external voices and messages are so loud, so insistent, so adamant. Voices that loud are always meant to bully.
Do not be bullied.
Earlier this year I attended a session of Dennis Dalton's Political Theory class. The students were studying the Tao. Professor Dalton graciously gave me my own pocket-sized copy. I now read it every day, especially this passage. It makes me despair of ever saying anything original. And it keeps me honest.
It says:
In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.
When you are content to be simply yourself,
And don't compare or compete,
Everybody will respect you.
We live in a world in which the simple, the generous, the enjoyable, the completely present, above all the "simply yourself" sometimes seem as out of reach as the moon. Do not be fooled. That is not because anyone has found a better way in the millennia since the Tao was written. It is because too often we are people shadowed by fear. The ultimate act of bravery does not take place on a battlefield. It takes place in your heart, when you have the courage to honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations and yes, your soul by listening to its clean, clear voice of direction instead of following the muddied messages of a timid world.
That voice is strong now. Go take a leap of faith and fearlessness into the arms of the great adventure of an authentic life. Courage, and congratulations. Bless you all.
entire speech at: http://www.beliefnet.com/dailyinspiration/1052805.htm