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Nondual
Highlights Issue #2562, Wednesday,
August 23, 2006, Editor: Mark
Love wants
to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
He wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
She is in such a "playful drunken mood"
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.
- Hafiz, from The Gift,
translated by Ladinsky
Hey darlin's! Let's not run! Let's unpack our bags and
stick around. Let's take it on the chin! Look at
betrayal, fear, uncaring right in the eye! Tear their
phony masks off! They have no power over us but those
flimsy supposed-to-be-scary masks! Rip them off! And
then let's laugh and invite them to a cup of tea! or
in dear Hafiz' honor, a glass of Love's wine! Let's
play, yes! In making friends of all the emotions that
threaten to turn our world upside down, joy becomes
our Beloved! Really worth sticking around for. Emaho!
~dg
- Hafiz poem and commentary posted to DailyDharma
O you who have gone astray, why are you
searching all over the world?
He is not outside you. Why search for Him?
- Rumi, tranlated by Muriel Maufroy, from Breathing
Truth - Quotations from Jalaluddin Rumi,
posted to AlongTheWay
By our thoughts we have prepared for ourselves the
happiness or unhappiness we experience.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Fighting with another makes war, but struggling with one's self
brings peace.
All our possessions, all that we collect in life, all these
things which we shall have to leave one day are transitory; but
that which we have created in our thought, in our mind, that
lives. A person thinks, 'Some day I should like to build a
factory.' At this time he has no money, no knowledge, no
capability; but a thought came, 'Some day I should like to build
a factory.' Then he thinks of something else. Perhaps years pass,
but that thought has been working constantly through a thousand
minds, and a thousand sources prepare for him that which he once
desired. If we could look back to all we have thought of at
different times, we would find that the line of fate or destiny,
Kismet as it is called in the East, is formed by our thought.
Thoughts have prepared for us that happiness or unhappiness which
we experience. The whole of mysticism is founded on this.
Joy, sorrow, love, all depend on our thought, on the activity of
our mind. If we are depressed, if we are in despair, it is still
the work of our mind; our mind has prepared that for us. If we
are joyful and happy, and all things are pleasant, that also has
been prepared for us by our mind. It is only when our mind works
without control that unhappiness, sorrow, trouble, pain, or
whatever we experience comes without our intention. No one could
wish to create hell for himself; all would create heaven for
themselves if they could; and yet how many allow their minds to
create these things for them, regardless of their own intention.
'The present is the reflection of the past, and the future is the
re- echo of the present.' Destiny is not what is already made.
Destiny is what we are making. Very often fatalists think that we
are in the hands of destiny, driven in whatever direction in life
destiny wills; but in point of fact we are the masters of our
destiny, especially from the moment we begin to realize this
fact. ... Man is responsible for his success and failure, for his
rise and fall. And it is man who brings these about either
knowingly or unknowingly.
- posted to SufiMystic
If you want to be free,
Get to know your 'real' Self.
It has no form, no appearance,
No root, no basis, no abode.
But is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility,
But its function cannot be located.
Therefore when you look for it,
You become further from it ...
When you seek it,
You turn away from it all the more.
- Linji, posted to Mystic_Spirit
Food and clothes sustain
Body and life .
I advise you to learn
'Being' as is.
When it’s time,
I 'move' my hermitage and go,
And there’s 'nothing' ...
... To be 'left behind'.
Layman P’ang, posted to Mystic_Spirit
The moon's the same old moon,
The flowers exactly as they were,
Yet I've become the 'thingness'
Of all the things I see!
Bunan, posted to Mystic_Spirit