Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
#2437 - Monday, April 3, 2006 - Editor: Gloria Lee
"Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points."
D.T. Suzuki
On Bodhicitta:
The Compassionate Heart of the Enlightened Mind
by Shantideva
It is the supreme elixir
That overcomes the sovereignty of death.
It is the inexhaustible treasure
That eliminates poverty in the world.
It is the supreme medicine
That quells the world's disease.
It is the tree that shelters all beings
Wandering and tired on the path of conditioned existence.
It is the universal bridge
That leads to freedom from unhappy states of birth.
It is the dawning moon of the mind
That dispels the torment of disturbing conceptions.
It is the great sun that finally removes
The misty ignorance of the world
Gill Eardley
posted to Allspirit
Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, "You idiot! What's wrong with you? Are you blind?" But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped you is actually blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: "Are you hurt? Can I help you up?" Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion. Then we are in a position to heal ourselves and others.
B. Alan Wallace, Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up
"When you take refuge in Buddha, when you go back to being
fully yourself, you begin to see how you are connected to and
depend on everybody, and how everybody depends on you... In fact,
the practice of taking refuge in Buddha opens your eyes to all
the other precepts. Not killing, not stealing, right conduct, and
working to help other beings: all these come from the condition
of you being you. The condition of you being
you is the source of peace and the source of love."
Tenshin Reb Anderson,
Roshi
Excerpt | Being Upright (Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva
Precepts)
"When walking, standing, sitting, lying down, speaking, being silent, moving, being still-at all times, in all places, without interruption, what is This. These are very important words. True meditation practice is certainly not dependent on being able to maintain some formal sitting posture for great lengths of time. It means just keeping a great question: only 'what am I?'"
Zen Master Seung Sahn,
Zenji Dai Osho
excerpt | The Compass of Zen
"God must be in us, who are made in his likeness. We cannot presume the duality of God and the world. Religion is not to go to God by forsaking the world, but to find him in it. Our faith is to believe in our essential oneness with him, and not in our sensual separateness. God is in us and we in him, must be made the most fundamental faith of all religion."
Soyen Shaku Zenji Dai Osho
Translation by | D.T. Suzuki
Excerpt | Zen for Americans
"When I, a student of
Dharma
Look at the real form of the universe,
All is the never-failing manifestation
Of the mysterious truth of Tathagata.
In every event, in every moment, and in every place,
None can be other than the marvelous revelation
Of its glorious light".
Eido Shimano Roshi
Excerpt | Points of Departure
"This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection. But the people of the world do not awaken to it to it, regarding only that which sees, hears, feels and knows as mind. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling and knowing, they do not perceive the spiritual brilliance of the source-substance. If they would only eliminate all conceptual thought in a flash, that source-substance would manifest itself like the sun ascending through the void and illuminating the whole universe without hindrance or bounds."
Huang Po, Sixth Zen
Patriarch
Excerpt | The Zen Teaching of Huang Po (On The Transmission Of
Mind)
"Just as the sun does not need to motivate itself to radiate light and heat but does so simply because light and heat are its very nature, so a Buddha does not need to motivate himself to benefit others but does so simply because being beneficial is his very nature." Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
"Cease to dwell pessimistically upon the wrongs around you; dwell no more in complaints about, and revolt against, the negativity in others, and commence to live free from all wrong and negative yourself. Peace of mind, pure practice, and true reform lie This Way. If you would have others true, be true; if you would have the world emancipated from misery and negativity, emancipate yourself; if you would have your home and your surroundings happy, be happy. You can transform everything around you if you will transform yourself."
James Allen
Excerpt | Above Life's Turmoil
by Alan
Larus http://www.harshasatsangh.net/blog/
On the 1’st of April I went to Runde
This is the island where my grandfather lived.
On the cliffs on the outside more than 500 000 birds will soon
breed.
Meanwhile here along the road are a few early arrivers,
and some that have stayed through the winter..
Here is the Gull, Crow, Starling and Grey Heron
with the hundred shapes
And the Oystercatchers
going north,
singing all the way at sea level.
Just so, just so
Travel like this
A falling off
the edge of the world
Our song is
sea of bliss
Some pictures:
http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/runde1.htm
http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/runde2.htm