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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3260, Sunday, August 17, 2008, Editor: Mark
Just as a speck in the eye, by causing inflammation, may wipe out
the world, so the mistaken idea: "I am the body-mind"
causes the self-concern, which obscures the universe. It is
useless to fight the sense of being a limited and separate person
unless the roots of it are laid bare. Selfishness is rooted in
the mistaken ideas of oneself. Clarification of the mind is yoga.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
The conditioned mind is always taking on God's job, wondering
what people are doing and why they do it. But that is none of
your business, none of your concern.
You can just start walking through life with this natural
openness to what is and be that way under all conditions at all
times. That's what the true Self has been doing all along.
When your true nature is realized, it is not as if you will have
some amazing experience, and after that you say, "Okay
world, I'm ready."
The deepest experience is when you realize that this open,
radiant, empty mind and open, radiant heart have always been
open. They don't need to open; they are not going to open;
openness has always been here. You no longer see two, you see the
One in and as everything.
People feel so vulnerable and put up defenses. But putting up
defenses is like walking out into the starry night and trying to
wrap a little coat around vast infinite space.
The vastness just flies out through the arms and the ood. You
have this silly little coat out in the vast space and protect
yourself inside it and think maybe someday you will open the
buttons and be spiritually liberated. Probably not. It's more
likely that someday you will stop identifying with the silly
little coat. Free yourself of all limiting identities and embrace
the infinite.
What allows this opening to take place at a great depth is to
realize we are already the openness into which we are opening. If
we keep identifying with the human aspect of ourselves, we think,
"My God, I am opening into something too big for me."
When we really let go and fall into this open silence, we can't
find any end to it. It has been eternally here from before the
beginning and, in that, our humanness finds a welcoming to open
itself. This is so because we are not opening ourselves into a
mystery that is alien, or foreign, or different, but into what we
have always been.
- Adyashanti, from Emptiness Dancing, posted to The_Now2
Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but
accepting that they pass away.
- Aitken Roshi, posted to The_Now2
I am neither the doer nor the enjoyer.
Actions have I none, now or then.
I have no body, nor am I bodiless.
How can there be mine and not mine?
I have no flaws like attachment,
Nor any suffering arising from embodiment.
Know me to be the singular Self,
As vast as space itself.
- excerpt from the Avadhuta Gita, translated from the
original Sanskrit by Georg Feuerstein, posted to The_Now2
The great sea
Has sent me adrift
It moves me
As the weed in a great river
Earth and the great weather
Move me
Have carried me away
And move my inward parts with joy.
- Song of Uvavnuk, posted to The_Now2
If you understand, things are just as they are;
if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
- Zen Proverb, posted to The_Now2