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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3394, Sunday, December 28, 2008, Editor: Mark
Buddha: Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk
of her own life, even so, cultivate a boundless heart towards all
beings. Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole
world.
Jesus: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I
have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down
one's life for one's friends.
Buddha: If you do not tend to one another then who is there to
tend to you? Whoever who would tend me, he should tend the sick.
Jesus: Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least
of these, so you have done it unto me.
Buddha: Consider others as yourself.
Jesus: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Posted to DailyDharma, from the Parallel Sayings of Buddha and
Christ, on the web site: Heartland Sangha:
http://www.heartlandsangha.org/parallel-sayings.html
When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like
a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.
- Shunryu Suzuki
An Inner Revolution
The enlightenment I speak of is not simply a realization, not
simply the discovery of one's true nature. This discovery is just
the beginning - the point of entry into an inner revolution.
Realization does not guarantee this revolution; it simply makes
it possible.
What is this inner revolution? To begin with, revolution is not
static; it is alive, ongoing, and continuous. It cannot be
grasped or made to fit into any conceptual model. Nor is there
any path to this inner revolution, for it is neither predictable
nor controllable and has a life all its own. This revolution is a
breaking away from the old, repetitive, dead structures of
thought and perception that humanity finds itself trapped in.
Realization of the ultimate reality is a direct and sudden
existential awakening to one's true nature that opens the door to
the possibility of an inner revolution. Such a revolution
requires an ongoing emptying out of the old structures of
consciousness and the birth of a livng and fluid intelligence.
This intelligence restructures your entire being - body, mind,
and perception. This intelligence cuts the mind free of its old
structures that are rooted within the totality of human
consciousness. If one cannot become free of the old conditioned
structures of human consciousness, then one is still in a prison.
Having an awakening to one's true nature does not necessarily
mean that there will be an ongoing revolution in the way one
perceives, acts, and responds to life. The moment of awakening
shows us what is ultimately true and real as well as revealing a
deeper possibility in the way that life can be lived from an
undivided and unconditioned state of being. But the moment of
awakening does not guarantee this deeper possibility, as many who
have experienced spiritual awakening can attest to. Awakening
opens a door inside to a deep inner revolution, but in no way
guarantees that it will take place. Whether it takes place or not
depends on many factors, but none more importnt and vital than an
earnest and unambiguous intention for truth above and beyond all
else. This earnest intention toward truth is what all spiritual
growth ultimately depends upon, especially when it transcends all
personal preferences, agendas, and goals.
This inner revolution is the awakening of an intelligence not
born of the mind but of an inner silence of mind, which alone has
the ability to uproot all of the old structures of one's
consciousness. Unless these structures are uprooted, there will
be no creative thought, action, or response. Unless there is an
inner revolution, nothing new and fresh can flower. Only the old,
the repetitious, the conditioned will flower in the absence of
this revolution. But our potential lies beyond the known, beyond
the structures of the past, beyond anything that humanity has
established. Our potential is something that can flower only when
we are no longer caught within the influence and limitations of
the known. Beyond the realm of the mind, beyond the limitaions of
humanity's conditioned consciousness, lies that which can be
called the sacred. And it is from the sacred that a new and fluid
consciousness is born that wipes away the old and brings to life
the flowering of a living and undivided expression of being. Such
an expression is neither personal nor impersonal, neither
spiritual nor worldly, but rather the flow and flowering of
existence beyond all notions of self.
So let us understand that reality transcends all of our notions
about reality. Reality is neither Christian, Hindu, Jewish,
Advaita Vedanta, nor Buddhist. It is neither dualistic nor
nondualistic, neither spiritual nor nonspiritual. We should come
to know that there is more reality and sacredness in a blade of
grass than in all of our thoughts and ideas about reality. When
we perceive from an undivided consciousness, we will find the
sacred in every expression of life. We will find it in our
teacup, in the fall breeze, in the brushing of our teeth, in each
and every moment of living anddying. Therefore we must leave the
entire collection of conditioned thought behind and let ourselves
be led by the inner thread of silence into the unknown, beyond
where all paths end, to that place where we go innocently or not
at all - not once but continually.
One must be willing to stand alone - in the unknown, with no
reference to the known or the past or any of one's conditioning.
One must stand where no one has stood before in complete
nakedness, innocence, and humility. One must stand in that dark
light, in that groundless embrace, unwavering and true to the
reality beyond all self - not just for a moment, but forever
without end. For then that which is sacred, undivided, and whole
is born within consciousness and begins to express itself.
- Adyashanti
Keep Quiet! Don't stir a thought. Look within. There, you will
find your own True Nature, where it has always been!
- Papaji
Tenderness touches everything,
and moves right through everything.
It brings us back to who we are.
- Neelam
Ramana's great question was, "Who am I?"
Nowadays it's easy to see that we are this formless intelligence
inside. Yet so many of us, in our innocence, still think that
thought is thought, and that it's an object, and that it's going
to be there for eternity, yacking away about nothing, bothering
us.
Now, if we are not who we are, how come everything else is who
they are? Wouldn't it make more sense to say, "Well, if I'm
not my role, maybe nothing else is its role."
And rather than wondering what that role is, just ask it
directly, "Who are you?" It's so much faster than
trying to figure it out.
You don't ask it, "Who am I?"
One of thought's functions is to project onto you, because you
have no form. It has to come up with projection after projection,
and just in case you relax out of your role it has to create an
diversion, quickly.
So ask it, "Who are you?"
Curiosity is the way wisdom gets revealed inside. It is the
forerunner of wisdom. Curiosity aries and, if you sit with it,
connected right underneath is the wisdom. They are not two.
Each one of these servants inside, from the most irritating of
emotions, can reveal an incredible amount of wisdom when you
interview it. First of all they show you their functions, and if
you have ever had curiosity about how creation was created, or
how bodies function, or what the nature of emotion is, or the
nature of thought, or the nature of wisdom, all of it is there.
These are amazing biocomputers, and you can ask and they will
reveal anything you want to know.
Be really tender with thought. The pressure we put on it is
extraordinary. It's only because thought is also the great
mystery that it is able to function with all that pressure of
disapproval and dislike and aversion and "I wish you would
be quiet" - and all our rude projections: that you are not
spiritual and you are the only thing keeping me from my freedom,
and would you please just shut up!
That is why in all the great spiritual taditions, at their heart
is tenderness - just to be kind inside, and then everything
rights itself. Fear rests. Confusion rests. Everything that was
perturbing the system rests. Because they know that when you are
tender inside you no longer need their services, because you have
returned to your true nature.
- Pamela Wilson