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Nondual
Highlights: Issue #2962, Saturday, October 20, 2007, Editor: Mark
Once all of our conditioning is stripped away, the true self is
as clear as the brilliant sun. Underneath the layers and layers
of conditioning accumulated over the course of a lifetime is a
Buddha whose light shines throughout the whole universe. Inside
the ego shell of conditioning, a glimmer of that light is
actually what brings us to practice to begin with. It is the
bodhicitta, the bodhi mind, the mind that says it does't make
sense that there should be all this pain and suffering, or that
it should be so difficult to just be ourselves the way a tree can
just be a tree or a dog can just be a dog. We humans seem to have
a complicated time with just simply being human. We fight with
each other, kill each other; we bang heads all the time, even
with the ones we love.
From The Eight Gates of Zen, posted to DailyDharma
Let this that has always been running your life have you. This
complete cliff dive in every moment into "I don't
know." I don't know where I am, I don't know who I am, I
don't know what I am, I don't know what I'm here for. Let
yourself be nothing. Just here. Offered. Ahhhh, what a relief.
This is what is asked of us, over and over and over, to offer our
empty hands. To let the things we are holding so tightly just
drop. To give it all up, everything, that does not exist in this
moment here. All that has happened, that we think we somehow need
to do something about, all that we think might happen, or we hope
will happen, every sweet dream that we cling to. This is like
God's loving strip search, give it all over! Something else wants
to live you. And you can feel it.
- Jeannie Zandi
One day a sufi sees an empty food sack hanging on a nail.
He begins to turn and tear his shirt, saying,
Food for what needs no food!
A cure for hunger!
His burning grows and others join him,
shouting and moaning in the love-fire.
An idle passerby comments, "It's only an empty sack."
The sufi says, Leave. You want what we do not want.
You are not a lover.
A lover's food is the love of bread,
not the bread. No one who really loves,
loves existence.
Lovers have nothing to do with existence.
They collect the interest without the capital.
No wings, yet they fly all over the world. No hands,
but they carry the polo ball from the field.
That dervish got a sniff of reality.
Now he weaves baskets of pure vision.
Lovers pitch tents on a field of nowhere.
They are all one color like that field.
A nursing baby does not know the taste of roasted meat.
To a spirit the foodless scent is food.
To an Egyptian, the Nile looks bloody.
To an Israelite, clear.
What is a highway to one is disaster to the other.
- Rumi, Mathnawi III, 3014-30, version by Coleman Barks,
from The Essential Rumi, posted to Sunlight
We are a haystack, the wheat entangled
with the hay;
Through the reviving wind, disentangle
the wheat from the hay,
Let the sorrow go to the sorrow, the joy
to the joy,
Let the mud go to the mud, and the heart
rise to heaven.
- Rumi, version by Muriel Maufroy, from Breathing Truth -
Quotations from Jalaluddin Rumi, posted to AlongTheWay
Forget not that the earth delights
to feel your bare feet
and the winds long
to play with your hair.
- Kahlil Gibran, posted to The_Now2
Spring Morning
Where am I going? I don't quite know.
Down to the stream where the king-cups grow-
Up on the hill where the pine-trees blow-
Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.
Where am I going? The clouds sail by,
Little ones, baby ones, over the sky.
Where am I going? The shadows pass,
Little ones, baby ones, over the grass.
If you were a cloud, and sailed up there,
You'd sail on water as blue as air,
And you'd see me here in the fields and say:
"Doesn't the sky look green today?"
Where am I going? The high rooks call:
"It's awful fun to be born at all."
Where am I going? The ring-doves coo:
"We do have beautiful things to do."
If you were a bird, and lived on high,
You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,
You'd say to the wind when it took you away:
"That's where I wanted to go today!"
Where am I going? I don't quite know.
What does it matter where people go?
Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow-
Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.
- A.A. Milne, from: When We Were Very Young, posted to
The_Now2