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Nondual Highlights Issue #2256, Saturday,
September 10, 2005
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Written in 1965 as a teaching on reconciliation and overcoming
anger
for his young students who risked their lives daily and many of
whom
perished during the Vietnam War. It is an eloquent expression of
equanimity:
Promise me,
promise me this day,
promise me now,
while the sun is overhead
exactly at the zenith,
promise me:
Even as they
strike you down
with a mountain of hatred & violence;
even as they step on you & crush you
like a worm,
even as they dismember & disembowel you,
remember, brother,
remember:
man is not our enemy.
The only thing worthy of you is compassion
invincible, limitless, unconditional.
Hatred will never let you face
the beast in man.
One day, when you face this beast alone,
with your courage intact, your eyes kind,
untroubled
(even as no one sees them),
out of your smile
will bloom a flower.
And those who love you
will behold you
across ten thousand worlds of birth & dying.
Alone again, I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
on the long, rough road,
the sun & the moon
will continue to shine.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, posted to DailyDharma
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What is mental suffering?
To reject what's happening,
the urgency to escape the now,
is suffering. To have Preferences
leads to suffering. In a world
subject to constant change to
try to manage what we feel, what
we sense leads to suffering. To rest
in quiet undescriminating awareness
is to be free from suffering.
- posted to AdvaitaToZen
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Fiery lust is not diminished by indulging it,
but inevitably by leaving it ungratified.
As long as you are laying logs on the fire,
the fire will burn.
When you withhold the wood, the fire dies,
and God carries the water.
- Rumi, version by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Rumi: Daylight,
Threshold Books, 1994, posted to AlongTheWay
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Tao The Ching
15
In times past
the Complete Thinkers of the Tao
were not obvious
about what they did and
could change to
meet the circumstance,
Their minds,
strong and
widespread,
were too deep to be measured.
Because their minds
are immeasurable,
One can only describe them
unclearly by their appearance.
Slow to start
like one crossing thin ice;
Shy as if surrounded by danger
on all sides;
Careful and polite like a guest;
Unbounded like ice on the point of melting;
Genuine like an
uncarved block;
Hollow like
a cave;
Disordered like
a muddy pool;
And yet who else could
quietly and gradually
change from the muddy to the clear?
Who else could
slowly but steadily
move from the lifeless to the living?
Those who keep the Tao
do not want to be full.
But precisely because they are never full,
They can always
remain open in thought,
They do not become rigid in thought.
- posted to MillionPats
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The Arrows Of Larger Bows
I am a lover,
and from His love
I did not escape.
I am a warrior,
and from the field of battle
I did not escape.
Like a lion, I attacked lions,
but in the middle, like a fox,
I did not escape.
Though my aim was the cupola of heaven,
from the snares of this world,
I did not escape.
I was the medicine for every illness,
but from the pain of others
I did not escape.
I revered the prophets with all my soul,
but from evil company
I did not escape.
I am alive in this little box called life;
I am alive because my soul
did not escape.
The only reason I get hit
by the arrows of his eyes
is because from the arrows of larger bows
I did not escape.
The wounds of battle have turned to victory
because of the pain
I did not escape.
I am floating in a sea of nectar,
filled with every delight,
because of the hardships
I did not escape.
When my Master showed himself to me
I was stunned, I could not move -
From the onrush of both worlds
I could not escape!
- Rumi, Ghazal (Ode) 1658, poetic translation by Jonathan Star
and
Shahram Shiva, A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of
Rumi, Bantam Books, 1992, posted to Sunlight