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#2264 - Sunday, September 18, 2005 - Editor: Gloria Lee
"If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it."
To be a man of knowledge one needs to
be light and fluid.
- Yaqui Mystic
Although there are countless
teachings that instruct how to obtain enlightenment in a future
life, almost all of them are nothing more than expedients. As the
ultimate instruction there is simply no teaching that is superior
to the true practice of the awakening to one's own nature.
-Hakuin, "Zen Master Hakuin"
From "365 Buddha: Daily Meditations
The Madhyamika school traces its origin to
Nagarjuna, the brilliant philosopher and formidable dialectician
who flourished in the late second century A.D. Taking Buddha's
advocacy of the Middle Way between harmful extremes, between avid
indulgence and austere asceticism, and between sterile
intellectualization and suffocating mental torpor, Nagarjuna
developed a rigorous dialectical logic by which he reduced every
philosophical standpoint to an explosive set of contradictions.
This did not lead to the closure of scepticism, as the less
vigorously pursued pre-Socratic philosophies did, but rather to
the elusive standpoint that neither existence nor non-existence
can be asserted of the world and of everything in it. The
Madhyamikas, therefore, refused to affirm or deny any
philosophical proposition. Nagarjuna sought to liberate
the mind from its tendencies to cling to tidy or clever
formulations of truth, because any truth short of Sunyata, the voidness of reality, is inherently
misleading. Relative truths are not like pieces of a
puzzle, each of which incrementally adds to the complete design.
They are plausible distortions of the truth and can seriously
mislead the aspirant. They cannot be lightly or wholly
repudiated, however, for they are all the seeker has, and so he
must learn to use them as aids whilst remembering that they are
neither accurate nor complete in themselves.
http://sped2work.tripod.com/nagarjuna_2.html
posted to NDS by Era
Read myths. They teach you that you can
turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols.
Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion,
because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts
-- but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message.
Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of
being alive. Myth tells you what the experience is.
- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
 |
[235] Here's a message for the faithful By Han-shan (Cold
Mountain) English version by Red Pine (Bill Porter) Here's a
message for the faithful |
photos by Alan Larus http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/more_small_things.htm
...to "the tongue of the Invisible", Shams-ud-Din Muhammad Hafiz,
believed to have been born on September 15th, 1320, in what is now
Shiraz, Iran.
Let my words become like a skilled
Potter's hands,
Quieting,
Smoothing your life
With their knowledge,
Reaching into your tender core
and spreading you out
Like the morning
That leaps from the sun's amused wink
Onto hills, brows and the backs of so many
Beautiful laboring beasts.
God's duty is to make perfect
All your movements of mind, of limb,
And your ascending shape of laughter.
Watch the way my hands dance
With their diamond-edged brilliance
Cutting you open with music,
Reaching into your heart
And spilling the night sky-jar you carry
That is always full of giggling planets and stars.
My words are a divine potter's wheel.
If you stay near to me,
Please,
Stay near to me --
And Hafiz will spin you into
Love.
trans. Daniel Ladinsky
posted to Sunlight by Farishtah
a very short video clip of Yogananda
and his guru Shri Yukteswar
i came across a little while ago & thought y'all might like
to see...
http://s39.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0L1S8X56NV78R2A3ORM7OX6QYR
posted to
unsaymyself by Tykal
Ed. note: For more information about Shri Yukteswar http://www.angelfire.com/yt/Yukteswar/ http://www.writespirit.net/authors/sri_yukteswar/ and
Sri Yukteswar is pictured at the extreme upper left of the crowd on the cover of the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Yukteswar_Giri
Sri Yukteswar: "Mukunda (Yogananda's boyhood name), why don't you get an astrological armlet?"
Yogananda: "Should I, Master? I don't believe in astrology."
Sri Yukteswar: "It is never a question of belief; the only scientific attitude one can take on any subject is whether it is true. The law of gravitation worked as efficiently before Newton as after him. The cosmos would be fairly chaotic if its laws could not operate without the sanction of human belief."
From: Autobiography of A Yogi Chapter 16
http://www.writespirit.net/authors/sri_yukteswar/quotes_sri_yukteswar/
Dear Richard,
Thanks for this unexpected plug for the
reforestation scheme on Arunachala, but it it not the
one you mentioned. The trees on the way to Skandashram
were planted by the Arunachala Reforestation Society
about ten years ago. This organisation was run by an
Australian, John Button, in the 1990s. He is now back
in Europe and for the last few years I have been
house-sitting his house for him here in
Tiruvannamalai.
The project that appears on my site is a newer one.
It is based next to Palakottu, the area adjacent to
Ramanasramam where many of Bhagavan's sadhu devotees
lived in the 1930s and 40s. It is called The Mountain
of Medicine Project and its goal is to reforest as
much of Arunachala as possible in the next few years.
Since the monsoon started this year about 20,000 young
trees have been planted on the southern side of the
hill, the side where Ramanasramam is sited. A similar
number was planted last year and about 60% of them
survived their first summer.
The project also includes a scheme to construct a
forested children's playground and recreational area
at the foot of the mountain. For those of you who know
the Ramanasramam area I will say that as you leave
Palakottu to start the inner pradakshina, the main
reforestation project is on the right and the
children's park is on the left.
The project is supported by cash donations from
devotees and visitors. The government has donated many
acres of unused land to the project, a major bonus
since private land near Ramanasramam is selling for
over $10 a square foot (really!).
If anyone feels inspired to support this eminently
worthy project, he/she can get in touch with me.
Best
Wishes
David Godman
[ www.davidgodman.org ]
PS The Arunachala Puranam, the Tamil scripture that
chronicles the divine events that surround Arunachala,
says that anyone who plants a garden on Arunachala
goes to heaven. A rather unadvaitic sentiment, but a
nice idea. I incline more to Richard's idea that to
plant and nurture a tree on Arunachala is worship of
God, an adornment of God's physical form.