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#3089 - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Soul of all souls, life of all life
you are That.
Seen and unseen, moving and unmoving
you are That.
The road that leads to the City is endless;
Go without head or feet
and you'll already be there.
What else could you be? --
you are that.
- Rumi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
In the Arms of the Beloved
Translations by Jonathan Star
posted to Along The Way
For this reason the word awakening can be
misleading, it seems to refer to an event in space and time,
whereas it's actually the instantaneous awareness of the timeless
and boundaryless dimension of being. Even though the
energetic phenomena that accompany this awareness-the rush of
bliss, the upsurge of love, the profound peace-can be extremely
appealing, the point is not to focus on the passing states
but to open to the awareness, the timeless presence, that's been
revealed as your very own self. Just as you don't keep
trying to recreate your wedding once you're married, but instead
enjoy your partner and the life you now share, don't keep trying
to recreate awakening, but relax and allow awareness to express
itself through you.
Wake Up Now
Stephen Bodian
P.150
posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle
Stephan Bodian in conversation/interview with Adyashanti:
Stephen:
What's the relationship, do you suppose, between all those years
of sitting zazen and this kensho experience? Did they prime the
pump of awakening? Were they steps leading to awakening? You now
seem to be dismissing the concept of "stages of the
path," yet there appears to be some causal relationship
between your Zen meditation practice and your awakening.
Adya:
I'm deeply grateful for my Zen practice. It ultimately led me to
fail well. I failed at being a Buddhist, I failed at being a
perfect exemplar of the ten precepts, and certainly I failed at
meditation, failed at all my efforts to bust down the
"gateless gate" to awakening that Zen speaks of. And
the fact that I actually got to the point where I failed - and I
failed completely - was useful. Zen provided a place for me to
fail, and I needed that. In fact, I'd say my process wasn't so
much a letting go as an utter failure. Zen did a good job of
letting me fall on my face.
Stephan: What would have been a success - awakening?
Adya: Well, failure was the success - awakening happened through
failure. In that sense I have a great respect for the lineage.
What was transmitted was bigger than all the carriers, it was
even bigger than the lineage, much bigger than Zen, much bigger
than Buddhism.
Stephen: What was that?
Adya: I'd say a certain spark, an aliveness.
Stephen: How has your own enlightenment changed the way you
function in the world: your relationships, your family life, your
everyday behavior? Does being enlightened mean that you never get
angry or reactive or make big mistakes?
Adya: There's no such thing as never getting angry. Enlightenment
can and does use all the available emotions. Otherwise, we would
have to discount Jesus for getting pissed off in the temple and
kicking over the table. The idea that enlightenment means sitting
around with a beatific smile on our faces is just an illusion. At
a human level, enlightenment means that you are no longer divided
within yourself, and that you no longer experience a division
between yourself and others. Without any inner division, you stop
experiencing most of the usual forms of reactivity.
Stephen: Could you say a little more what you mean by no
"inner division"?
Adya: Most human beings spend their lives battling with opposing
inner forces: what they think they should do versus what they are
doing; how they feel about themselves versus how they are;
whether they think they're right and worthy or wrong and
unworthy. The separate self is just the conglomeration of these
opposing forces. When the self drops away, inner division drops
away with it. Now, I can't say that I never make a mistake,
because in this human world being enlightened doesn't mean we
become experts at everything. What does happen, though, is that
personal motivations disappear. Only when enlightenment occurs do
we realize that virtually everything we did, from getting out of
bed to going to work to being in a relationship to pursuing our
pleasures and interests, was motivated by personal concern. In
the absence of a separate self, there's no personal motivation to
do anything. Life just moves us. When personal motivation no
longer drives us, then what's left is our true nature, which
naturally expresses itself on the human dimension as love or
compassion. Not a compassion that we cultivate or practice
because we're supposed to, but a compassion that arises
spontaneously from our undivided state. If we undertake being a
good, compassionate person as a personal identity, it just gets
in the way of awakening.
Stephen: In traditional Buddhism, at least as I practiced it,
there's a taboo against talking openly about enlightenment, as
we're doing now. It seems to be based on the fear that the ego
will co-opt the experience and become inflated. In your dharma
talks you speak in great detail about awakening, including your
own, and in your public dialogues you encourage others to do the
same. Why is that?
Adya: When I was sitting with my teacher, Arvis, we'd all go into
the kitchen after the meditation and dharma talk and have some
fruit and tea, and we'd talk openly about our lives. For the most
part we didn't focus on our spiritual experiences, but they were
a part of the mix. Then these same people would do retreats at
the Zen Center of Los Angeles and have big awakenings, and the
folks in L.A. began to wonder what was happening in this little
old lady's living room up north. Arvis's view was simple: The
only thing I'm doing that they're not, she said, is that we sit
around casually and talk, and what's happening on the inside for
people isn't kept secret or hidden. This way, people get beyond
the sense that they're the only ones who are having this or that
experience. They come out of their shell, which actually makes
them more available to a deeper spiritual process. The tradition
of talking about certain experiences only in private with your
teacher keeps enlightenment a secret activity reserved for
special people. I can understand the drawbacks of being more
open, of course. Some people may blab on about how enlightened
they are, and become more egotistical. But when everything
remains open to inquiry, then even the ego's tendency to claim
enlightenment for itself becomes obvious in the penetrating light
of public discourse. In the long run, both ways have their
strengths and weaknesses, but I've found that having students ask
their questions in public breaks down the isolation that many
spiritual people feel - the sense that nobody else could possibly
understand what they're going through, or that they're so rotten
at their practice, or that nobody could be struggling like they
are. And when people have breakthroughs and talk about them in
public, awakening loses its mystique. Everyone else can see that
it's not just special people who have deep awakenings, it's their
neighbor or their best friend.
Stephen: Would you claim that you are enlightened?
Adya: Well, no, not with a straight face. I would say
enlightenment is enlightened and awakeness is awake. It's not an
experience; it's a fact.
- posted to The_Now2 and Wisdom-l
from Ivan Granger
I periodically receive emails from the
Poetry Chaikhana community with links to YouTube videos of
uplifting talks, poetry readings, and video art. I thought it was
about time to gather the best of those video clips together and
share them with a wider audience, so I created...
Chaikhana Channel
www.youtube.com/user/ivanmgranger
I just set up a new
"channel" on YouTube to play all of these wonderful,
short videos. I've organized them loosely into two playlists:
Poetry Chaikhana - Sacred Poetry Sacred poetry in readings, song, performance, and video art.
Chaikhana Channel - Sacred World Inspired music, satsangs, interviews, performance, animation, and video clips.