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#2775 - Sunday, April 1, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee

Nondual Highlights    

Your purpose is to be at peace,
to love all beings, and to know who you are.
This is the purpose of life.
Slowly you will know this and get through.

                              - Papaji    

posted to Along The Way    

Think of yourself as the individual
and you are sure to die;
think of yourself as the universal
and you enter deathlessness,
for the universal is always and eternally there.
We know no beginning and no ending to the cosmic process.  

Its being IS: we can say no more.
Be that rather than this--
that which is as infinite and homeless as space,
that which is timeless and unbroken.  

Take the whole of life as your own being.
Do not divorce, do not separate yourself from it.
It is the hardest of tasks for it demands
that we see our own relative insignificance amid
this infinite and vast process.  

The change that is needed is entirely a mental one.
Change your outlook and with it
"heaven will be added unto you."  

Paul Brunton — Notebooks Category 21:
Mentalism > Chapter 5: The Key To the
Spiritual World > # 95   Mark Scorelle to Wisdom-l    

    Having access to that formless realm is truly liberating. It frees you from bondage to form and identification with form. It is life in its undifferentiated state prior to its fragmentation into multiplicity. We may call it the Unmanifested, the invisible Source of all things, the Being within all beings. It is a realm of deep stillness and peace, but also of joy and intense aliveness. Whenever you are present, you become "transparent" to some extent to the light, the pure consciousness that emanates from this Source. You also realize that the light is not separate from who you are but constitutes your very essence.
                                                                                                                              
I dentification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate "other." You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is.

Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of "feeling-realization" is enlightenment.
                                      

.....Eckhart Tolle

posted to The Now 2    

  Like the morning mist that dissolves into thin air,
going nowhere but ceasing to be,
waves of conceptualization,
all the mind's creation, dissolve, when
you behold your mind's true nature.
Pure space has neither color nor shape
and it cannot be stained either black or white;
So also, mind's essence is beyond both color and shape
and it cannot be sullied by black or white deeds.
The darkness of a thousand eons is powerless
to dim the crystal clarity of the sun's heart;
And likewise, eons of ignorance have no power
to veil the clear light of the mind's essence.
Although space has been designated "empty",
in reality it is inexpressible;
Although the nature of mind is called "clear light",
its every ascription is baseless verbal fiction.
The mind's original nature is like space;
It pervades and embraces all things under the sun.
Be still and stay relaxed in genuine ease, be quiet
and let sound reverberate as an echo,
keep your mind silent and watch
the ending of all worlds.

--Tilopa    

Bob O'Hearn to Garden Mystics

    The April issue of the TAT Forum is now on-line at www.tatfoundation.org/forum.htm   This issue includes: Transmission by Bart Marshall | Invitation to Adventure by Ernest Shackleton | Poems by Shawn Nevins | Egoless Vector by Arthur Ashe | Working Within by Bob Fergeson | Pride & Precipice by Art Ticknor | Inspiration, Intention & Commitment by Art Ticknor | Humor      

Transmission
by Bart Marshall

In Zen, the word transmission is used to denote the "passing on" of enlightenment through a master-student relationship. It is misleading, in that it implies an energy transference in which enlightenment flows from someone who "has" it to someone who does not.

Still, there's really no better word for what Zen points at with transmission. Enlightenment cannot be "taught" like mathematics or language, or mastered with "practice," like art or music. The Zen master's task is more akin to helping someone born with no sense of humor suddenly break into an uncontrollable belly laugh. Or to trigger in a self-absorbed ego-maniac a spontaneous experience of unconditional love. One never makes "progress" towards this sort of thing. It could happen any moment, or never. And so when Truth stands revealed, it is said transmission has occurred.

Within that metaphor, however, it is perhaps more accurate to say that transmission is occurring always. God, Tao, the One, the Source, the Absolute—whatever we might call it—is in an unceasing state of transmission. Awakening is when reception occurs. (Although this, too, is misleading since there is no receiver.)

Rinzai (Lin-Chi)

God's eternal state of transmission is a standing "invitation to receive" that may be accepted at any moment—but not by the ego-identity. The ego-mind—even one that has spent years "seeking enlightenment"—treats the invitation to receive transmission as a threat, as "the hound of heaven." As long as ego is in control—or believes itself to be—the hound is successfully kept at bay. But if ego is dethroned for even a moment, the hound is upon it, and its name is Grace. Invitation accepted, transmission complete.

Knowing the ego-identity to be the sole "guardian of the gate," the Zen master—with the permission and complicity of the aspirant—goes about the business of undermining and attacking its "authority" in subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, ways.

This is the entire work of Zen. There is no teaching or practice, no zapping, no secret wisdom imparted with words—or rather, whatever there is of this is not the point. The Zen master is up to one thing only—the maneuvering of the seeker's ego-mind into a sufficiently vulnerable position that it might falter just long enough for reception to occur.

The master transmits nothing. He does not "have" enlightenment (no one ever has) so what could he transmit? He is a midwife, a facilitator, an "awakening therapist."

All rests with the aspirant. The Source is as unavoidable as air—the very "space" you now take in. How close is the place you peer out from? How far from it could you stray? To "see" it where do you look? To "know" it where do you go?

See Bart's sites Richard Rose: Zen Master - Poet - Philosopher - Friend and Raleigh Self-Inquiry Discussion Group.

Alan Larus photo

 Tracks

The small birds leave cuneiform
messages on the snow: I have
been here, I am hungry, I
must eat. Where I dropped
seeds they scrape down
to pine needles and frozen sand.

Sometimes when snow flickers
past the windows, muffles trees
and bushes, buries the path,
the jays come knocking with their beaks
on my bedroom window:
to them I am made of seeds.

To the cats I am mother and lover,
lap and toy, cook and cleaner.
To the coyotes I am chaser and shouter.
To the crows, watcher, protector.
To the possums, the foxes, the skunks,
a shadow passing, a moment's wind.

I was bad watchful mommy to one man.
To another I was forgiving sister
whose hand poured out honey and aloe;
to that woman I was a gale whose lashing
waves threatened her foundation; to this
one, an oak to her flowering vine.

I have worn the faces, the masks
of hieroglyphs, gods and demons
bat-faced ghosts, sibyls and thieves,
lover, loser, red rose and ragweed,
these are the tracks I have left
on the white crust of time.

Marge Piercy

from The Crooked Inheritance

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