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Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
#2622 - Monday,
October 23, 2006 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nondual
Highlights
There is
no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
--Ben Williams
"Horses
and children, I often think, have a lot of the
good sense there is in the world."
--Josephine Demott Robinson
Here's your Daily Poem from the Poetry Chaikhana --
|
See how, shaped
by the excellence of the path, By Shabkar
(Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol) English version by Matthieu Ricard See how,
shaped by the excellence of the path,
|
| ============ Thought for the Day: Never confuse innocence with naivete. ============ |
Here's your Daily Music selection -- Suzin
Green & Sura Hearts on
Fire |
Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol, often referred to simply as Shabkar
(sometimes transliterated as Shapkar), was born in the Amdo
province of northeastern Tibet.
He entered monastic studies at the age of eight and took full
ordination at 21.
As a youth, he resisted pressure from his family to marry and
devoted himself fully to spiritual practice and took full
ordination at age 21. While still a young man, he became
respected for his scholarship. When Shabkar was 25, he took up
the life of a wandering pilgrim and hermit, traveling for the
next thirty years to sacred sites and pilgirmage destinations.
His life as a wandering ascetic and his songs of spiritual
insight became widely known, earning him comparisons with the
great wandering Buddhist yogi-poet Milarepa.
Shabkar was a renowned teacher and lineage holder of the Dzogchen
tradition.
Shabkar was a nature mystic, conversing with sky and mountain and
tree, seeing in them embodiments of teachers and fundamental
truths. He was also famous for his love of animals and, like St.
Francis of Assisi, he is said to have taught wild animals.
We should take a cue from Shabkar and remember to dance and sing
and play on the road to enlightenment. Or, rather, recognize that
we are already dancing; we just need to remove the effort of self
from the pathway...
Have a beautiful day!
Ivan
If It Is Not Too
Dark
Go for a walk, if it is not too dark.
Get some fresh air, try to smile.
Say something kind
To a safe-looking stranger, if one happens by.
Always exercise your heart's knowing.
You might as well attempt something real
Along this path:
Take your spouse or lover into your arms
The way you did when you first met.
Let tenderness pour from your eyes
The way the Sun gazes warmly on the earth.
Play a game with some children.
Extend yourself to a friend.
Sing a few ribald songs to your pets and plants -
Why not let them get drunk and wild!
Let's toast
Every rung we've climbed on Evolution's ladder.
Whisper, "I love you! I love you!"
To the whole mad world.
Let's stop reading about God -
We will never understand Him.
Jump to your feet, wave your fists,
Threaten and warn the whole Universe
That your heart can no longer live
Without real love!
~ Hafiz ~
(I Heard God
Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/If_It_Is_Not_Too_Dark.html Web archive of Panhala postings: www.panhala.net/Archive/Index.html
Al Larus photos http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/shores/35.htm
Long
Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond
As for life
I'm humbled,
I'm without words
sufficient to say
how it has been hard as flint,
and soft as a spring pond
both of these
and over and over,
and long pale afternoons besides,
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched
though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen—
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.
Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort—
along with human love,
dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about
stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,
and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
As for death,
I can't wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?
Mary Oliver
from Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
