Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
#3473 -
Monday, March 16, 2009 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
The truth you
believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
- Pema Chodron
Your Opinions are the Problem
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
–From Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki (Tuttle)
Different Worlds
We live in the same world, but in different worlds. The differences come partly from our living in different places. If you live to the east of a mountain and I to the west, my world will have a mountain blocking its sunrises, and yours its sunsets. But—depending on what we want out of the world—our worlds can also differ even when we stand in the same place. A painter, a skier, and a miner looking at a mountain from the same side will see different mountains.
– Thanissaro Bhikkhu,
The Paradox of Becoming
If you need time to
achieve something, it must
be false. The real is always with you; you need
not wait to be what you are. Only you must not
allow your mind to go out of yourself in search.
- Nisargadatta
Maharaj
If you wish to move in the
One Way,
do not dislike the worlds of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to embrace them fully
is identical with true Enlightenment.
The wise person attaches to no goals
but the foolish person fetters himself or herself.
There is one Dharma, without differentiation.
Distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
To seek Mind with the discriminating mind
is the greatest of mistakes.
- Seng-ts'an, Third Zen Patriarch
Hsin Hsin Ming
Translated by Richard B. Clarke
posted to Along The Way
To Begin With, the Sweet Grass (excerpt)
1.
Will the
hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?
Behold, I
say - behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.
2.
Eat bread
and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous.
For one
thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.
And
someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.
7.
What I
loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
through with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do
I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
~ Mary
Oliver ~
(Evidence)
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/To_Begin_With.html
Web archive of Panhala postings: www.panhala.net/Archive/Index.html
music link (left button to play, right button to save)