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Nondual Highlights Issue #2506, a belated Saturday, June 24, 2006, Editor: Mark
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
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When
mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Green Canoe
I don't often get the chance any longer
to go out alone in the green canoe
and, lying in the bottom of the boat,
just drift where the breeze takes me,
down to the other end of the lake
or into some cove without my knowing
because I can't see anything over
the gunwales but sky as I lie there,
feeling the ribs of the boat as my own,
this floating pod with a body inside it...
also a mind, that drifts among clouds
and the sounds that carry over water —
a flutter of birdsong, a screen door
slamming shut-as well as the usual stuff
that clutters it, but slowed down, opened up,
like the fluff of milkweed tugged
from its husk and floating over the lake,
to be mistaken for mayflies at dusk
by feeding trout, or be carried away
to a place where the seeds might sprout.
- Jeffrey Harrison, from Feeding the Fire.
Whether you are going or staying
or sitting or lying down
The whole world is your 'own self'
You must find out ...
Whether the mountains
rivers, grass, and forests
Exist in your 'own' mind or ...
exist 'outside' it
Analyze the ten thousand things
Dissect them minutely
And when you take this to the limit
You will come to the limitless
When you search into it
you come to the end of search
Where thinking goes no further
and distinctions vanish
When you smash the citadel of doubt
then the 'great All' is simply ...
'yourself'
- Daikaku, posted to Poetic_Mysticism