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Nondual Highlights: Issue #2904, Saturday, August 18, 2007, Editor: Mark

It is choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some little thing - food, sex, power, fame - will make you happy is to deceive yourself.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels

While we think it is we ourselves who are making the decisions, events are actually happening on a vastly magnificent scale in which we are merely pawns on a chess board. Free will has, in fact, no bearing at all.

When you find out your source, the seed of your beingness, you will know the seed of the entire universe.

Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels

What else is there?

If I am not in accord with Truth I am in for a shipwreck.

And where am I to find Truth except within, in being true to myself?

But what does Now have to do with that?

Isn't Now and Truth the same?

What is being true to myself except facing What Is completely in every moment?

Truth isn't an idea, or Something Lofty. Truth is the undeniable actuality of What Is.

Why did it take me several decades to realize that?

- Bill Rishel, posted to The_Now2

Insanity: The belief that anything should be in some way other than it is.

- Frank Carson Boyd, posted to The_Now2

This life is deceiving, don't you understand?
And material things are illusion, don't you understand?
And samsaric existence is peace, don't you understand?
And all happiness is a dream, don't you understand?

Criticisms and praise are dreams, don't you understand?
Appearances are your mind, don't you understand?
And your own mind is Buddha, don't you understand?
And Buddha is (Buddha Nature,) don't you understand?
And Buddha Nature is (True Reality,) don't you understand?

And when you realize this, whatever appears is mind.
Throughout day and night, look at your mind.
When you look at your mind, you don't see anything.
When you don't see anything, let go and relax.

When you join this understanding with your experience,
Then ethics, offerings, and so forth - all the positive deeds,
Are, without exception, perfectly complete.

- Milarepa

- posted to DailyDharma, from the dgSangha archives, February 2005, following a meeting that Dharma Grandmother attended, where Ari Goldfield (translator) sang it the day that Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche offered the mind transmission.

The Love That Simply Is

Many of the stories of Jesus describe this deep kind of love. People around him were constantly telling him what wasn't lovable: "This prostitute, we'll stone her to death. God doesn't love people like that." But Jesus, totally connected, knew this love is indiscriminate. It doesn't come because someone is nice or noble. It just is. It loves everyone indiscriminately.

Most of his ministry was founded upon this kind of love. It was even expressed for those who were responsible for his death. He said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." That comes from the love that just will not stop, even in the face of death. That is the voice of love.

The mind may say, "Hey, they are going to kill me. I have a right to withhold love." But the truth doesn't operate by that law; it doesn't play by the rules of the game that the mind would make up. It loves anyway.

Make no mistake: this love doesn't have anything to do with you becoming noble, holy, and worthy. This is a love that's pre-existing. It has always been here and always will be here. It's a love that simply is.

- Adyashanti, from: Emptiness Dancing, posted to adyashantigroup

There is nothing for the mind here tonight. It's like when you're waiting for a doctor's appointment and someone comes out and says, "It will be another 45 minutes." You give in to waiting. You give in to being here. You've read all the magazines and then you're just here. The jig is up. So you drop everything and you just say, "Yes. Okay. Alright. Have me. Here I am." Empty and offered and clueless. Completely available to this mysterious moment.

It's like the moment as a child when you're swinging when you just lean your whole weight back and close your eyes, so that you completely forget everything but this sensation of moving. Giving your whole weight to just this. Just this ride you're taking.

What if you never had to pretend anything again? What if you never had to pretend that you were more than nothing? What if you gave up all the things you hoped to win with this pretending? Just landed here, empty-handed, totally the Holy's tool.

As we sit here, we're being totally saturated, impregnated by the moment. You can even feel yourself grow fat on the presence.

We are this beautiful changelessness, and there is also something here that is unfolding. Something is embodying - the HUMAN BEING. This is the paradox. If we throw out the BEING, we end up tooling around trying to get somewhere without the greater context. If we throw out the HUMAN, we start pretending a lot - yes, all is one, and meanwhile we're nasty. So tell the truth. What do you find here now, outside of the mind? Whatever it is, welcome home.

So what if we stayed here instead of going out hunting for prey? What if we kept that little Gollum within company? The essence of separation, that "Ahhhh!" "Save me, distract me, entertain me, just don't leave me here!" If there's anything that is not resting in this moment, go right there. Don't try to peaceful it away. Don't try to holy perspective it away. Just sit there as a raw longing. Let it stream out your eyes. This is what most of our pretending is trying to hide. So for this little bit that we're together, let's not pretend. Let's sit here as we are. What if we let the room fill up with that, whatever it is. Just hello, here I am, look at the whole thing, see it all, here it is. All the jangly parts and the lovely parts and all the squeamish parts. And the ones that run for cover when the light shines. Just let it all be seen, be offered. That's all the effort is, that's all the drive is, that's all the locomotion is, is trying to get away from just this.

These bodies are longing to be soothed. They're longing to rest here. What a beautiful thing to find a way to move one's body that lets it drop even one iota into just resting here. What a beautiful thing, after the way that we've been taught to drive these poor little animals. It can take a while sometimes for these bodies to catch up to the heart - the heart is open but the body is still acting like there's a war going on. That's when we just sit in this space and just breathe this into our cells.

We are meant to live in every cell as a joyful song of glory at merely being. It's meant to feel good to be here. We got punished for feeling good for being here. We did it wrong, we were too loud, too messy. My daughter regularly has a party about existing. One time she came dancing by me, totally full of herself, and I said, "Are you having a good time being yourself again?" And she just gushed, "Yeah!- Causeless joy. No good reason, just because, whee, I'm here. I rejoice in myself.

There is something so delicious about just being here with you. We spend a lot of our time at some level distracting ourselves from the depth and beauty that there is in being here together. There is a world, a transformational cauldron of presence in simply noticing this hereness and this togetherness, because the core piece of the initial separation thing is "I am alone." So we borrow each other's faces as the face of the God to open that up to the Divine wondering: "Am I alone?"

- Jeannie Zandi

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