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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3169, Saturday, May 17, 2008, Editor: Mark
Reality is simply the loss of the ego. Destroy the ego by seeking
its identity. It will automatically vanish and reality will shine
forth by itself. This is the direct method.
There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking
reality though in fact we are reality. We think that there is
something hiding our reality and that something must be destroyed
before reality is gained. How ridiculous! A day will dawn when
you will laugh at all your past efforts. That which will be on
the day you laugh is also here and now.
- Ramana Maharsh, from The Essence of Wisdom
People think you have to be going some place, when, in fact, the
ride is plenty.
Ann Patchett, posted to DailyDharma
If life is not play for you, you have made it unnecessarily
serious.
- Swami Amar Jyoti
Let yourself be one big open book. We are a bunch of newborn
babies looking around at each other. No one has taught us
anything yet, so we don't know better than to just drink each
other in. Isn't it thrilling?
We were taught to skip over this being on our way to something
that made sense, so the invitation is to just rest here in
complete nonsense. For no good reason, doing nothing of import,
not having a single coherent thought, just resting in the
nonsensical, this being. Just this. It needs no proof, it needs
no defense. Just because.
There is a vast world outside the world created and interpreted
by the everyday mind, which is very conditioned to think the way
everyone else thinks, to adopt the same strategies that our
forebears attempted to use to bring them everlasting peace and
happiness. Until we either get it completely wrong and run our
ship aground, or we get all the good stuff and we're still
hungry. So this is the good news in this room between worlds
where nothing makes sense. That this being, that this sweet being
that you already are is the source of all that you're hungering
for in every other corner of the external world.
- Jeannie Zandi
Sagacity
Despair to my mother was I in my youth,
For I was considered inept and uncouth;
Unkempt and unruly
Was infant Yours Truly.
Throughout tempestuous puberty
She battled my uncoutherty,
And with a stern unfoolishness
Coped with my unrulishness.
My mother (flushed with her success)
Then tackled my unkemptliness
And with relentless recitude
Conquered my ineptitude.
How well my mother schooled me,
How well my mother fooled me,
At last I've discovered the terrible truth -
It's no fun being ept, kempt, ruly or couth.
-- Roslyn Taylor
Mr Kartoffel
Mr Kartoffel's a whimsical man;
He drinks his beer from a watering can
, And for no good reason that I can see
He fills his pockets with china tea.
He parts his hair with a knife and fork
And takes his ducks on a Sunday walk.
Says he, "If my wife and I should choose
To wear our stockings outside our shoes,
Plant tulip bulbs in the baby's pram
And eat tobacco instead of jam
And fill the bath with cauliflowers,
That's nobody's business at all but ours."
Says Mrs. K., "I may choose to travel
With a sack of grass or a sack of gravel,
Or paint my toes, one black, one white,
Or sit on a bird's nest half the night -
But whatever I do that is rum or rare,
I rather think that is my affair.
So fill up your pockets with stamps and string,
And let us be ready for anything!"
Says Mr. K. to his whimsical wife,
"How can we face the storms of life,
Unless we are ready for anything?
So if you've provided the stamps and the string,
Let us pump up the saddle and harness the horse
And fill him with carrots and custard and sauce,
Let us leap on him lightly and give him a shove
And it's over the sea and away, my love!"
-- James Reeves
The Trouble With Geraniums
The trouble with geraniums
is that they're much too red!
The trouble with my toast is that
it's far too full of bread.
The trouble with a diamond
is that it's much too bright.
The same applies to fish and stars
and the electric light.
The troubles with the stars I see
lies in the way they fly.
The trouble with myself is all
self-centred in the eye.
The trouble with my looking-glass
is that it shows me, me;
there's trouble in all sorts of things
where it should never be.
- Mervyn Peake