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#2854 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nondual Highlights http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
One: Essential Writings on Nonduality: http://tinyurl.com/2blmhy
"You must first
remember yourself in order to make
things right, after which you can forget yourself to
make things easy." --Vernon Howard
"... in
Buddhism we're not that interested in talking
about the Buddha himself. Nor was he; he wasn't
interested in people believing in him, so to this day
Buddhism has never encouraged its followers simply
to believe in the Buddha. We have always been more
interested in understanding human psychology, the
nature of the mind. Thus, Buddhist practitioners
always try to understand their own mental attitudes,
concepts, perceptions and consciousness. Those are
the things that really matter."
--Lama Yeshe
posted to DailyDharma
One finds that no
matter how sincere one's
intention to be attentive and aware, the mind rebels
against such instructions and races off to indulge in
all manner of distractions, memories and fantasies. .
. . The comforting illusion of personal coherence and
continuity is ripped away to expose only fragmentary
islands of consciousness separated by yawning gulfs
of unawareness. . . . The first step in this practice of
mindful awareness is radical self-acceptance. Such
self-acceptance, however, does not operate in an
ethical vacuum, where no moral assessment is made
of one's emotional states. The training in mindful
awareness is part of a Buddhist path with values and
goals. Emotional states are evaluated according to
whether they increase or decrease the potential for
suffering. If an emotion, such as hatred or envy, is
judged to be destructive, then it is simply
recognized as such. It is neither expressed through
violent thoughts, words, or deeds, nor is it
suppressed or denied as incompatible with a
"spiritual" life. In seeing it for what it is--a
transient
emotional state--one mindfully observes it follow its
own nature: to arise, abide for a while, and then pass
away.
--Stephen Batchelor
We tend to be
particularly unaware that we are
thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream
of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very
little respite for inner quiet. And we leave precious
little room for ourselves anyway just to be, without
having to run around doing things all the time. Our
actions are all too frequently driven rather than
undertaken in awareness, driven by those perfectly
ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the
mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get
caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging
our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to
go and may not even realize we are headed for.
Meditation means learning how to get out of this
current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it,
and then use its energies to guide us rather than to
tyrannize us. This process doesn't magically happen
by itself. It takes energy. We call the effort to
cultivate our ability to be in the present moment
"practice" or "meditation practice."
--Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Lord is in Me
By Kabir
(15th
Century)
English version by Andrew Harvey
The Lord is in me, and the Lord is in you,
As life is hidden in every seed.
So rubble your pride, my friend,
And look for Him within you.When I sit in the heart of His world
A million suns blaze with light,
A burning blue sea spreads across the sky,
Life's turmoil falls quiet,
All the stains of suffering wash away.Listen to the unstruck bells and drums!
Love is here; plunge into its rapture!
Rains pour down without water;
Rivers are streams of light.How could I ever express
How blessed I feel
To revel in such vast ecstasy
In my own body?This is the music
Of soul and soul meeting.
Of the forgetting of all grief.
This is the music
That transcends all coming and going.
-- from Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations from the Sufi Wisdom, by Andrew Harvey / Eryk Hanut
http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/shores/consumed.htm
CONSUMED IN GRACE
I first saw God when I was a child, six years of age.
the cheeks of the sun were pale before Him,
and the earth acted as a shy
girl, like me.Divine light entered my heart from His love
that did never fully wane,though indeed, dear, I can understand how a person's
faith can at time flicker,for what is the mind to do
with something that becomes the mind's ruin:
a God that consumes us
in His grace.I have seen what you want;
it is there,a Beloved of infinite
tenderness.
St Catherine of Siena