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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3324, Sunday, October 19, 2008, Editor: Mark
Even in a stiff gale,
Even with cloudless skies,
Many fathoms down, it's dark,
Sea depths are always calm.
Whales know this,
They visit the surface, but live deep.
Pete, posted to NondualitySalon
Lost in the forest...
Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.
Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.
Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind
as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood -
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.
Pablo Neruda
When storm-clouds rumble in the sky and
June showers come down,
The moist east wind comes marching over the heath
to blow its bagpipes amongst the bamboos.
The crowds of flowers come out of a sudden,
from nobody knows where,
and dance upon the grass in wild glee.
Mother, I really think the flowers go to school underground.
They do their lessons with doors shut,
and if they want to come out to play before it is time,
their master makes them stand in a corner.
When the rains come they have their holidays.
Branches clash together in the forest,
and the leaves rustle in the wild wind,
the thunder-clouds clap their giant hands and
the flower children rush out i dresses of
pink, yellow and white.
Do you know, mother, their home is in the sky,
where the stars are.
Haven't you seen how eager they are to get there?
Don't you know why they are in such a hurry?
Of course, I can guess to whom they raise their arms,
they have their motheras I have my own.
- Rabindranath Tagore, from The Crescent Moon
Surrendering
If you persist in trying to attain what is never attained (It is
Tao's gift),
If you persist in making effort to obtain what effort cannot get,
If you persist in reasoning about what cannot be understood,
You will be destroyed by the very thing you seek.
To know when to stop,
To know when you can get no further by your own action,
This is the right beginning!
- Chuang Tzu, translated by T.Merton
Letting go of thoughts
The mind remains undetermined in the great Void.
Here the highest knowledge is unbounded.
That which gives things their thusness cannot be delimited by
things.
So when we speak of 'limits', we remain confined to limited
things.
The limit of the unlimited is called 'fullness.'
The limitlessness of the limited is called 'emptiness.'
Tao is the source of both.
But it is itself neither fullness nor emptiness.
- Chuang Tzu, translated by T.Merton
Many spiritual seekers get "stuck" in emptiness, in the
absolute, in transcendence. They cling to bliss, or peace, or
indifference. When the self-centered motivation for living
disappears, many seekers become indifferent. They see the
perfection of all existence and find no reason for doing
anything, including caring for themselves or others. I call this
"taking a false refuge." It is a very subtle egoic
trap; it's a fixation in the absolute and all unconscious form of
attachment that masquerades as liberation. It can be very
difficult to wake someone up from this deceptive fixation because
they literally have no motivation to let go of it. Stuck in a
form of divine indifference, such people believe they have
reached the top of the mountain when actually they are hiding out
halfway up its slope. Enlightenment does not mean one should
disappear into the realm of transcendence. To be fixated in the
absolute is simply the polar opposite of being fixated in the
relative. With the dawning of true enlightenmet, there is a
tremendous birthing of impersonal Love and wisdom that never
fixates in any realm of experience. To awaken to the absolute
view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed
points of view is the birth of true nonduality. If emptiness
cannot dance, it is not true Emptiness. If moonlight does not
flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on
every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty
dream. I say, Wake up! Then, your heart will be flooded with a
Love that you cannot contain.
- Adyashanti, posted to The_Now2