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#3336 - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights
Greg Goode sends a new writing to the Highlights.
An introduction to White Bison, Inc., an Indian American Organization.
And an article about India sending a mission to a god: the moon.
Awareness is not Personal
Awareness isn't inside the person. Awareness, which is not
physical, cannot therefore be physically limited to a spherical
balloon inside the skull. It's the other way around.
The skin, muscles, bones, sensations, emotions and thoughts are
arisings in awareness. If you grok the possibility of this,
then the stage opens infinitely wide.
Having grokked this, you also won't hang up on the snag of
solipsism, which is a very different thing. Solipsism says
"I am the only mind - I can't prove that others
exist." But notice what it assumes. It assumes
that minds are real, and goes from there. It personalizes
awareness. But your inquiry undercuts this assumption
because you are looking at a much deeper level. Solipsism
won't be a problem for you. The locus of the "I"
is much farther back. How far back? All the way!!
--Greg Goode
http://www.heartofnow.com
White Bison, Inc.,-- http://www.whitebison.org -- is an American Indian non profit organization based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Through White Bison, it's Founder and President Don Coyhis, Mohican Nation, has offered healing resources to Native America since 1988. White Bison offers sobriety, recovery, addictions prevention, and wellness/Wellbriety learning resources to the Native American community nation wide. Many non-Native people also use White Bison's healing resource products, attend its learning circles, and volunteer their services.
White Bison's mission is to assist in bringing 100 Native American communities into healing by 2010. This mission is being realized by means of the many Wellbriety resources, Wellbriety conferences, specialized community training events, Wellbriety coalitions, and the popular grassroots Firestarters circles of recovery groups across the nation.
White Bison is a proud facilitator of the Wellbriety Movement. Wellbriety means to be sober and well. Wellbriety teaches that we must find sobriety from addictions to alcohol and other drugs and recover from the harmful effects of drugs and alcohol on individuals, families and whole communities. The "Well" part of Wellbriety is the inspiration to go on beyond sobriety and recovery, committing to a life of wellness and healing everyday.
~ ~ ~
Here is a Meditation of the Day. To receive a meditation a day, visit http://www.whitebison.org/meditation/index.php
Elder's Meditation of the Day - October 26
"It seems that if Elders can feel that you are open to
learning, they are more than generous with their
teaching."
--Chief Councilor, Lenard George
There is a saying, when the student is ready the teacher appears.
If the Elders sense that you are ready, they will help you see
and learn new things. Most human beings love to share what they
know with people who are excited to listen. If you are talking to
someone and you feel they really aren't listening, you won't want
to tell them much. Before you go talk to the Elders, examine your
motives - are you really excited about listening to them?
My Creator, give me an open mind. ..
October 29, 2008
By TUNKU VARADARAJAN
AN unmanned spacecraft from India — that most worldly and yet otherworldly of nations — is on its way to the moon. For the first time since man and his rockets began trespassing on outer space, a vessel has gone up from a country whose people actually regard the moon as a god.
The Chandrayaan (or “moon craft”) is the closest India has got to the moon since the epic Hindu sage, Narada, tried to reach it on a ladder of considerable (but insufficient) length — as my grandmother’s bedtime version of events would have it. So think of this as a modern Indian pilgrimage to the moon.
As it happens, a week before the launching, millions of Hindu women embarked on a customary daylong fast, broken at night on the first sighting of the moon’s reflection in a bowl of oil. (This fast is done to ensure a husband’s welfare.) But reverence for the moon is not confined to traditional Indian housewives: The Web site of the Indian Space Research Organization — the body that launched the Chandrayaan — includes a verse from the Rig Veda, a sacred Hindu text that dates back some 4,000 years: “O Moon! We should be able to know you through our intellect,/ You enlighten us through the right path.”
One is tempted, in all this, to dwell on the seeming contradiction between religion and science, between reason and superstition. And yet, anyone who has been to India will have noted also its “modernity of tradition.” The phrase, borrowed from the political scientists Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, might explain the ability of devout Hindus — many of them, no doubt, rocket scientists — to see no disharmony between ancient Vedic beliefs and contemporary scientific practice.
The Hindu astrological system is predicated on lunar movements: so the moon is a big deal in astrology-obsessed India. That said, the genius of modern Hinduism lies in its comfort with, and imperviousness to, science. A friend tells me of an episode from his childhood in Varanasi, the sacred Hindu city. Days after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, a model of the lunar module was placed in a courtyard of the most venerable temple in the city. The Hindu faithful were hailing man-on-the-moon; there was no suggestion that the Americans had committed sacrilege. (Here, I might add — with a caveat against exaggeration — that science sometimes struggles to co-exist with faith in the United States in ways that would disconcert many Indians.)
Of course, the Chandrayaan is also a grand political gesture — space exploration in the service of national pride. This kind of excursion may provoke yawns at NASA, but judging from round-the-clock local coverage it has received, the mission has clearly inflamed the imagination and ambition of Indians. Yes, even moon-worshipping ones.
Tunku Varadarajan, a professor of business at New York University and a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, is the opinion editor at Forbes.com.