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Nondual Highlights: Issue #2989, Saturday, November 17, 2007, Editor: Mark
You are the unchangeable Awareness in which all activity takes
place.
Always rest in peace.
You are eternal Being, unbounded and undivided.
Just keep Quiet.
All is well.
Keep Quiet Here and Now.
You are Happiness, you are Peace, you are Freedom.
Do not entertain any notions that you are in trouble.
Be kind to yourself.
Open to your Heart and simply Be.
- Papaji, quoted on Allspirit
It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external
to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause
beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one
but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has
the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you
who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely
recognising what you are......all illness is mental illness....
all disease comes from a state of unforgiveness.
- from A Course in Miracles
What exactly is "Skill In Means" or "Skillful
Means" about? I think it's important to know that the ideal
of Skill In Means (in the context of how it originally arose in
Mahayana Buddhism) is not essentially about learning techniques
or methods to help others, but is rather something very
different. It is about the innate capacity of someone with an
Awakening Consciousness (Bodhichitta) to GENERATE whatever very
specific and different ways of expression and teaching are needed
for every specific student. That is something very different than
learning techniques and methods that can be applied to all
students. It is actually the opposite of having methods transform
students; it is having students transform methods.
Skill in Means is not any of the techniques themselves, nor is it
all of the techniques taken together. It is acting from The Heart
Of Compassion where the teaching is a response to a student's
needs, rather than acting from a pre-existing therapeutic,
psychological or spiritual structure that is being used to
diagnose and treat them.
It is an organic aspect of Bodhichitta (Awakening Consciousness)
that is the integrating factor among all the grab bag of
techniques and ways of teaching, rather than simply a name for
the grab bag itself. Skill in Means is not a product of the
thinking, planning, preparing, discursive and constructing mind,
rather it is teaching as a response to the other, dependent on
the other, not on techniques of a psychological or spiritual
school of thought.
I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with learning
and including techniques and methods from various sources.
Nor am I advocating that we exile all systems of therapeutic (or
spiritual) diagnosis. But I am suggesting that we recognize that
while they may be helpful in specific cases, they are not the
thing in itself and they come with their own conceptual baggage.
- Krishna Gauci
What great doctors do is awaken the doctor within.
- Albert Schweitzer
Try to be, only to be. The all-important word is 'try'. Allot
enough time daily for sitting quietly and trying, just trying, to
go beyond the personality, with its addictions and obsessions.
Don't ask how, it cannot be explained. You just keep on trying
until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure.
What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really
have had surfeit of being the person you are, now see the urgent
need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a
bundle of memories and habits. This steady resistance against the
unnecessary is the secret of success.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled
as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
- St. Francis of Assisi