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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3267, Saturday, August 23, 2008, Editor: Mark
The first lesson to learn is to resign oneself to
the little difficulties in life, not to hit out at every-
thing one comes up against. If one were able
to manage this one would not need to cultivate
great power; even one's presence would be
healing. Such a person is more precious than
the branch of the rose, for that has many thorns
but only a few flowers.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan, posted to AlongTheWay
You do bad deeds and hope to get back good
Though bad deserves bad only in return.
God is merciful and kind, but even so,
If you plant barley, wheat won?t grow.
- Rumi, Quatrain #1798, from Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi,
translated by Zara Houshmand.
By our thoughts we have prepared for ourselves the happiness or
unhappiness we experience.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Fighting with another makes war, but struggling with one's self
brings peace.
All our possessions, all that we collect in life, all these
things which we shall have to leave one day are transitory; but
that which we have created in our thought, in our mind, that
lives. A person thinks, 'Some day I should like to build a
factory.' At this time he has no money, no knowledge, no
capability; but a thought came, 'Some day I should like to build
a factory.' Then he thinks of something else. Perhaps years pass,
but that thought has been working constantly through a thousand
minds, and a thousand sources prepare for him that which he once
desired. If we could look back to all we have thought of at
different times, we would find that the line of fate or destiny,
Kismet as it is called in the East, is formed by our thougt.
Thoughts have prepared for us that happiness or unhappiness which
we experience. The whole of mysticism is founded on this.
Joy, sorrow, love, all depend on our thought, on the activity of
our mind. If we are depressed, if we are in despair, it is still
the work of our mind; our mind has prepared that for us. If we
are joyful and happy, and all things are pleasant, that also has
been prepared for us by our mind. It is only when our mind works
without control that unhappiness, sorrow, trouble, pain, or
whatever we experience comes without our intention. No one could
wish to create hell for himself; all would create heaven for
themselves if they could; and yet how many allow their minds to
create these things for them, regardless of their own intention.
'The present is the reflection of the past, and the future is the
re- echo of the present.' Destiny is not what is already made.
Destiny is what we are making. Very often fatalists think that we
are in the hands of destiny, driven in whatever irection in life
destiny wills; but in point of fact we are the masters of our
destiny, especially from the moment we begin to realize this
fact.
Man is responsible for his success and failure, for his rise and
fall. And it is man who brings these about either knowingly or
unknowingly.
- posted to SufiMystic
The state we call realization is simply being oneself, not
knowing anything or becoming anything. If one has realized, he is
that which alone is, and which alone has always been. He cannot
describe that state. He can only be That. Of course, we loosely
talk of Self-realization for want of a better term.
That which is, is peace. All that we need do is to keep quiet.
Peace is our real nature. We spoil it. What is required is that
we cease to spoil it.
- Ramana Maharshi
The person is what I appear to be to other persons. To myself, I
am the infinite expanse of consciousness in which innumerable
persons emerge and disappear in endless succession.
The person, the "I am this body, this mind, this chain of
memories, this bundle of desires and fears" disappears, but
something you may call identity remains. It enables me to become
a person when required.
Nothing troubles me. I offer no resistance to trouble - therefore
it does not stay with me. On your side there is so much trouble.
On mine there is no trouble at all. Come to my side.
Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That