Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
#2668 - Monday,
December 11, 2006 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nondual
Highlights
The Wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
"You must find your
own way. Unless you find it yourself, it will not be your own
way and will take you nowhere. Earnestly live your truth as you
have found it,
act on the little you have understood. It is earnestness that
will take you
through, not cleverness - your own or another's."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Meet your own self.
Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep
it in mind ceaselessly. You need no other guide. As long as your
urge for truth
affects your daily life, all is well with you. Live your life
without hurting
anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will
take you
speedily to your goal. This is what I call nisarga yoga, the
Natural yoga. It is the
art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love. The
fruit of it is
happiness, uncaused and endless."
posted to A Net of Jewels
The Buddha's teachings are unusual
in that they explain at great length the
nature of his enlightenment and the types of meditative
disciplines he used to
gain his insights. He left us a road map to enlightenment.
Indeed, his chief
motivation for teaching was to lead others to the spiritual
awakening he
experienced. Statements attributed to the Buddha make it very
clear that all
sentient beings have the capacity to become Buddhas, and that his
own
realizations occurred by practicing the Dharma he taught. Over
the past 2,500
years the Buddha's teachings have been tested experientially by
thousands of
the greatest sages of Asia. Many have verified for themselves the
Buddha's
words and have achieved the same realizations he did.
--B. Alan Wallace, Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up
The Peace of
Wild Things:
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free.
Wendell Berry A reader's
contribution by Millie Miller
What is
the whole point of Zen Buddhism?
like asking:
"what is the first patriarch's motive for
coming from the west?"
see below. ;)
this is from D.T.Suzuki in his introduction to:
"Zen in the Art of Archery"
by Eugen Herrigel
~~~
Zen is the 'everyday mind,' as was proclaimed
by Baso; this 'everyday mind' is no more than:
"sleeping when tired, eating when hungry."
As soon as we reflect, deliberate, and conceptulize,
the original unconsciousness is lost and a thought
interferes. We no longer eat while eating, we no
longer sleep while sleeping. The arrow is off the
string but does not fly straight to the target, nor
does the target stand where it is. Calculation which
is miscalculation sets in. The whole business of
archery goes the wrong way. The archer's confused
mind betrays itself in every direction and every
field of activity.
Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done
when he is not calculating and thinking. 'Childlikeness'
has to be restored with long years of training in the art
of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks
yet he does not think. He thinks like the showers coming
down from the sky; he thinks like the wavew rolling on
the ocean; he thinks like the stars illuminating the nightly
heavens; he thinks like the green foliage shooting forth
in the relaxing spring breeze. Indeed, he is the showers,
the ocean, the stars, the foliage.
When a man reaches this stage of 'spiritual' development,
he is a Zen artist of life. He does not need, like the painter,
a canvas, brushes, and paints; nor does he require, like
the archer, the bow and arrow and target, and other
paraphernalia. He has his limbs, head, and other parts.
His Zen-life expresses itself by means of all these 'tools'
which are important to its manifestation. His hands and
feet are the brushes and the whole universe is the canvas
on which he depicts his life for seventy, eighty, or even
ninety years.
Hoyen of Gosozen says: "Here is a man who, turning
the emptiness of space into a sheet of paper, the waves
of the ocean into an inkwell, and Mount Sumeru into a
brush, writes these five characters:
* so - shi - sai - rai - i.
To such, I spread my zagu and make my profound bow."
One may well ask,
"What does this fantastic pronouncement mean?
Why is a person who can perform such a feat
considered worthy of the utmost respect?"
A Zen master would perhaps answer,
"I eat when hungry, I sleep when tired."
If he is nature-minded, he may say,
"It was fine yesterday and today it is raining."
~~~
* so - shi - sai - rai - i
These five characters in chinese ...
literally translated, mean:
"the first patriarch's motive for coming from the
west."
The theme is often taken up as a subject of * mondo.
It is the same as asking about the most essential
thing in Zen.
When this is understood, Zen is this body itself.
posted by t.s. on Nonduality Salon
At that
time, the World Honored One,
wishing to clarify his meaning,
proclaimed these gathas:
"Universal Vision, you should know
that the minds and bodies of
all sentient beings are illusory.
The body is the union of the four elements.
The nature of mind is reducible
to the [six] sensory objects.
When the four elements are separated
from one another, who is the unifier?
If one practices gradual
cultivation like this, all will be pure.
[The nature of Complete Enlightenment]
is umnoving and pervades the dharmadhatu.
There is no contrivance, stopping,
allowing things to be as they are,
annihilation, nor is there one
who actualizes [enlightenment].
All Buddha worlds are like
flowers in the sky.
Past, present and future are
all impartially equal.
Ultimately there is no coming or going.
The newly initiated bodhisattvas
and sentient beings in the Late Age,
in their quest to enter the Buddha Path,
should thus cultivate themselves."
From The Complete Enlightenment Sutra posted by Bob O'Hearn on Garden Mystics