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#2847 - Monday, June 18, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nondual Highlights
All things
By Hadewijch
(13th
Century)
English version by Jane Hirshfield
All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast
In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated
I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide
Everything else
is too narrow
You know this well,
you who are also there
-- from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, Edited by Jane Hirshfield
The experience of the
practice itself teaches us
that any conception or ideal of awakened being can
only be a hindrance- neither practice nor awakening
is about our ideas or images. A
nd yet, however limited
the finger-pointing at the
moon, still we point, we turn to one another for
direction. So I have come to think that if the
bodhisattva's task is to continue to practice until
every pebble, every blade of grass, awakens,
surely the passions, difficult or blissful, can also be
included in that vow.
And if awakening is also
already present,
inescapably and everywhere present from the
beginning, how can the emotions not be part of that
singing life of grasses and fish and oil tankers and
subways and cats in heat who wake us, furious and
smiling, in the middle of the brief summer
night?
--Jane Hirshfield
A gold Buddha can't
get through a furnace, a wood
Buddha can't get through a fire, and a clay Buddha
can't get through water. The real Buddha sits
within: enlightenment, nirvana, suchness, and
Buddha-nature are all clothes sticking to the body.
-Chao-chou From "The
Pocket Zen Reader," edited
by Thomas Cleary, 1999.
Do not
undervalue attention. It means interest
and also love. To know, to do, to discover, or
to create you must give your heart to it - which
means attention. All the blessings flow from it.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
posted to AlongTheWay
Swan by Alan Larus http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/shores/swan.htm more photos:
http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/shores/seaside.htm
http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/shores/spider.htm
"All
disciplines are fixations: discipline excludes everything, except
the one thing that one wishes to concentrate upon. Thus one
establishes a dictatorship over oneself and all understanding is
jeopardized. What is absolutely necessary is attention without
strain. When I observe myself, I am really forced to admit that
every day I am the prisoner of a thousand unsatisfied desires, or
desires whose satisfaction brings me no permanent bliss. So it
seems to me that instead of endless running from one desire to
another, it would be better to stop and examine the true nature
of desire. If this investigation is successful you will penetrate
the nature of the true aim of all desire. What any desire really
aims at, is a state of non desire. This non desire is a state in
which we demand absolutely nothing. Thus it is a state of extreme
abundance, of fullness. This fullness is revealed as being bliss
and peace. You now know that you are really seeking nothing else
but fullness and absolute peace. Now that you have understood the
inner nature of your ultimate goal, you perceive that the
ultimate goal is, in fact, not a goal, that is to say an end
towards which you strive, but that the ultimate state can only be
the consequence of relaxing and letting go. Liberation is not to
be obtained by collecting and accumulating, but by being rooted
in a state of being which is truly ours and in which we live
constantly without knowing it. Even if we wished to, we could not
live for a single moment outside of this state."
--JEAN KLEIN posted to TheNow_2
When something arises, one can have the experience that "this is me" or that "I'm back here -- that is not me." Both of these are movements of mind, of afterthought, which is better known as ego. But when the undivided state occurs, two things may happen.
The first can be an awakening to our true nature, which is this undivided state, this undivided being. The second thing that can happen is that the conditioning, the confusion that was innocently passed on through ignorance, can reunify itself.
When conditioning arises within a person who is in an undivided state, where he or she neither takes ownership nor denies it, then there can be a sacred alchemical process through which the conditioning reunifies itself all by itself. Like mud in water, the conditioning naturally just sinks. It's like a natural miracle.
This can be very delicate because, if there is the slightest ownership or the slightest denial of ownership, that process is in some way corrupted. It asks of us an inward softness and openness because this undivided sense is very soft, and we can't search for it like a sledgehammer looking for a nail.
That's the reason spiritual teachings stress humility, which helps us to enter the truth of our being in a gentle and humble way. We cannot storm the gates of heaven. Instead we must allow ourselves to become more and more disarmed. Then the pure consciousness of being becomes brighter and brighter, and we realize who we are. This brightness is what we are.
From: Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti. www.adyashanti.org