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Nondual Highlights #2199 - Monday, July 11, 2005 - Editor: Gloria Lee
This issue features photos sent in by one of our readers, Millie Miller. They were taken by her friend Jeff Gardner. Reader contributions are most welcome.
Follow the Calmness
Develop
the mind of equilibrium. You will always be getting praise and
blame, but do not let either affect the poise of the mind: follow
the calmness, the absence of pride.
-Sutta
Nipata
From "365 Buddha: Daily Meditations," edited by Jeff
Schmidt
Another
shortcoming of desire is that it leads to so much that is
undesirable.
-Lama Zopa
Rinpoche, "The Door to Satisfaction"
Copyright Wisdom Publications 2001. Reprinted from "Daily
Wisdom: 365 Buddhist Inspirations,"
edited by Josh Bartok
There is silence between two noises. There is silence between two thoughts. There is silence after noise. There is silence when thought says, "I must be silent," and creates an artificial silence thinking it is the real silence. There is silence when you sit quietly and force your mind to be silent. All those are artificial silences; they are not real, deep, uncultivated, unpremeditated silence. Silence can only come psychologically when there is no registration whatsoever, the brain itself is utterly without movement. In that great depth of silence that is not induced, not cultivated, not practiced, there may come that sense of something immeasurable, nameless.
J.
Krishnamurti
This
Light in Oneself - True Meditation
posted by Gloria Lee to MillionPaths
Keeping
Quiet
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.
The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.
What I want shouldn't be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.
If we weren't unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.
Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll go.
Pablo Neruda
from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Ramana Maharshi's gift to the world was not that he realized the Self. Many people have had a deep realization of the Self. Ramana's real gift was that he embodied that realization so thoroughly. It is one thing to realize the Self; it is something else altogether to embody that realization to the extent that there is no gap between inner revelation and its outer expression. Many have glimpsed the realization of Oneness; few consistently express that realization through their humanness. It is one thing to touch a flame and know it is hot, but quite another to jump into that flame and be consumed by it.
~A
posted by Sampava to ConsciousOneness
Too Many Names
Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays
and the week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your weary scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed out by the waters of night.
No one can claim the name of Pedro,
nobody is Rosa or Maria,
all of us are dust or sand,
all of us are rain under rain.
They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,
of Chiles and of Paraguays;
I have no idea what they are saying.
I know only the skin of the earth
and I know it is without a name.
When I lived amongst the roots
they pleased me more than flowers did,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang like a bell.
It is so long, the spring
which goes on all winter.
Time lost its shoes.
A year is four centuries.
When I sleep every night,
what am I called or not called?
And when I wake, who am I
if I was not while I slept?
This means to say that scarcely
have we landed into life
than we come as if new-born;
let us not fill our mouths
with so many faltering names,
with so many sad formallities,
with so many pompous letters,
with so much of yours and mine,
with so much of signing of papers.
I have a mind to confuse things,
unite them, bring them to birth,
mix them up, undress them,
until the light of the world
has the oneness of the ocean,
a generous, vast wholeness,
a crepitant fragrance.
~
Pablo Neruda
In dark
night live those for whom
The world without alone is real;
In night darker still,
For whom the world within alone is real.
The first leads to a life of action,
The second to a life of meditation.
But those who combine action with meditation
Cross the sea of death through action
And enter into immortality
Through the practice of meditation.
So have we heard from the wise.
-Isha Upanishad
From The Upanishads, translated by Eknath Easwaran, copyright 1987
posted by Michael Bindel to MillionPaths
Buddha in Glory
Center
of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.
Rainer Maria Rilke