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Nondual Highlights Issue #2383, Saturday, February 4, 2006
You clever ones
Go looking
For a Master
In a cave
In the Himalayas
Or in the forests
Of Thailand.
If you're less clever
You'll look for him
Somewhere comfortable
Like Ashland, Sedona,
Santa Fe or Santa Cruz.
Wouldn't you be surprised
To learn that
All this time
He was sitting behind a desk
In your bank?
Ram Tzu knows this:
You require your sages
To be in proper uniform.
- Ram Tzu, posted to AlongTheWay
A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer
and his wife open a package.
"What food might this contain?" The mouse wondered - he
was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.
Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning.
"There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in
the house!"
The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said,
"Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but
it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."
The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a
mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The pig sympathized but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr.
Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be
assured, you are in my prayers."
The mouse turned to the cow and said, "There is a mousetrap
in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's
no skin off my nose."
So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to
face the farmer's mousetrap alone.
That very night a sound was heard throughout the house. It was
the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer's wife
rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see
it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.
The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the
hospital, and she returned home with a fever. Everyone knows you
treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his
hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient.
The wife's sickness continued and friends and neighbors came to
sit with her. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.
The farmer's wife eventually died. So many people came to her
funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered for provide enough
meat for all of them.
The mouse looked upon this all from his crack in the wall with
great sadness.
- posted to Nasrudin
Help all other beings as much as you can. In all that you do,
simply
work at developing love and compassion until they have become a
fundamental part of you. That will serve the purpose, even if you
do
not practice the more overt Dharma of prayers, virtuous
activities,
altruistic works, and so on. The 'Sutra That Perfectly
Encapsulates
The Dharma' says:
"Let those who desire Buddhahood not train in many Dharmas
but only
one. Which one? Great compassion. Those with great compassion
possess
all the Buddha's teaching as if it were in the palm of their
hand."
- Patrul Rinpoche, from the book, The Words
Of My Perfect Teacher, translated by The
Padmakara Translation Group, published by Harper Collins, posted
to DailyDharma
EVERY SWEET SONG IS MINE
You are my Sultan, you are my Lord;
You are my heart, my soul, and the faith of mine.
By your breath I am alive;
What is one life? - you are a hundred lives of mine.
Without you, bread cannot feed a man;
You are the water and the bread of mine.
By your touch, poison becomes medicine;
You are the cure and the sweet nectar of mine.
You are the garden, the grass, and the heavens;
You are the cypress, and the laughing jasmine of mine.
I have entered that supreme silence.
Please, you go on . . .
My mouth may open, words may come out,
But you are every sweet song of mine.
- Rumi, Ode 3365, version by Jonathan Star, A
Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi.
Bantam Books, 1992, posted to Sunlight
i carry your heart with me
(i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it
(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear no fate
(for you are my fate, my sweet)
i want no world
(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart
(i carry it in my heart)
- e.e. cummings