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#2921 - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nondual Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
One:
Essential Writings on Nonduality. Amazon site: http://nonduality.com/one.htm
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Here are two entries from the Spiritual Messages related to Nonduality blog of Krishnanand M, who lives in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. The relationship between cheefulness, enthusiasm, and awareness is contained in the readings.
http://dailyspiritualmessage.blogspot.com/
Life consists of small things, but if you
can bring the quality of cheerfulness to small things, the total
is tremendous. So don't wait for anything great to happen. Great
things happen -- it is not that they don't -- but don't wait for
the something great to happen. It happens only when you start
living small, ordinary, day-to-day things, with a new mind, with
new freshness, with new vitality, with new enthusiasm. Then by
and by you accumulate, and that accumulation one day explodes
into sheer joy. But one never knows when it will happen. One has
just to go on collecting pebbles on the shore. The totality
becomes the great happening. When you collect one pebble, it is a
pebble. When all the pebbles are together, suddenly they are
diamonds. That's the miracle of life. So you need not think about
these great things. There are many people in the world who miss
because they are always waiting for something great. It can't
happen. It happens only through small things: eating, taking your
breakfast, walking, taking your bath, talking to a friend, just
sitting alone looking at the sky or lying on your bed doing
nothing. These small things are what like is made of. This is the
very stuff of life. So do everything cheerfully and then
everything becomes a prayer. Do it with enthusiasm. The word 'enthusiasm'
is very beautiful. The basic root means 'god-given'. When you do
something with deep enthusiasm, God is within you. The very word
'enthusiasm' means 'a man who is full of God'. So just bring more
enthusiasm into life, and fear and other things will disappear on
their own. Never be bothered by negatives. You burn the candle
and the darkness goes on its own. Don't try to fight with the
darkness. There is no way because the darkness does not exist.
How can you fight with it? Just light a candle and the darkness
is gone. So forget about the darkness, forget about the fear.
Forget about all those negative things that ordinarily haunt the
human mind. Just burn a small candle of enthusiasm.
Osho
The man who wants to improve himself can
never be aware, because improvement implies condemnation and the
achievement of a result; whereas in awareness there is
observation without condemnation, without denial or acceptance.
That awareness begins with outward things, being aware, being in
contact with objects, with nature. First, there is awareness of
things about one, being sensitive to objects, to nature, then to
people, which means relationship; then there is awareness of
ideas. This awareness—being sensitive to things, to nature,
to people, to ideas—is not made up of separate processes,
but is one unitary process. It is a constant observation of
everything, of every thought and feeling and action as they arise
within oneself. As awareness is not condemnatory, there is no
accumulation. You condemn only when you have a standard, which
means there is accumulation and therefore improvement of the
self. Awareness is to understand the activities of the self, the
‘I’, in its relationship with people, with ideas, and
with things. That awareness is from moment to moment, and
therefore it cannot be practised. When you practise a thing, it
becomes a habit, and awareness is not habit. A mind that is
habitual is insensitive, a mind that is functioning within the
groove of a particular action is dull, unpliable; whereas
awareness demands constant pliability, alertness. This is not
difficult. It is what you actually do when you are interested in
something, when you are interested in watching your child, your
wife, your plants, the trees, the birds. You observe without
condemnation, without identification; therefore in that
observation there is complete communion: the observer and the
observed are completely in communion. This actually takes place
when you are deeply, profoundly interested in something.
J Krishnamurthy