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#3585 - Monday, July 6, 2009 -
Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - The first periodical
publication on nonduality - Submissions welcome
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Tangled Together
The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. This understanding is expressed in the term nonduality. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.
Joan Halifax Roshi, Essential Zen (Harper Collins)
Things As They Are
Dharma, the truth of things-as-they-are, acts upon us to help us awaken to liberation. Dharma isn't a person; it isn't a being to be supplicated to. It's just the way things work, the reality of the universe unfolding as a process in time. The Buddha discovered and taught about a portion of this universe, and science can reveal a portion too, as can any contemplation or activity that accords with the way things actually are…. This is deep trust in the Dharma.
Jeff Wilson, Buddhism of the Heart (Wisdom Publications)
If the mind is happy,
not only the body
but the whole world will be happy.
So one must find out
how to become happy oneself.
Wanting to transform the world
without discovering one's true self
is like trying to cover the whole world with leather
to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns.
It is much simpler to wear shoes.
~ Ramana Maharshi
---
gill
http:allspirit.co.uk
Nobody Makes It Up that Mountain
The truth is nobody
makes it up that mountain,
no matter what the guidebooks
and signposts say,
and each time you slip
it seems such a simple thing
that brought you down:
your shoelaces need tightening,
the load adjusting,
you must not let that thought
come to distract you again.
But if you really want to reach
the promised land, fall back.
It lies behind you;
it is where you go in the afternoon
when you lean away from the world
and watch the sun sink
behind the trees.
It is the meadow you left
in your childhood, just to see
if you could find it again.
from http://www.mysticpoets.us/
posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle
John Wheeler - Let the Pointer Go
John: But you already know what they were trying to say. So let the pointer go. And that’s why Nisargadatta said at the start when I said all these people were studying his teachings but when he died he said forget my teachings. He knew exactly what you’re saying cause if you just keep going back to all the words it’s not it. So when you drop all the words and you don’t even think 'I am That' and it is just you are what you are: that. And because it’s present and because it is a reality, because it’s not conceptual, and because it’s who we are. We can actually come to understand it, recognize its qualities, see the truth of that because it’s not rocket science and you know. I am aware. I am present. I have a nature of some sort. And it’s worthwhile to, if you feel, or you may not even be interested and you might just say, hey, there’s nothing wrong with me anymore.
(laughter)
John: It’s to see well what is the nature of my being? Is it a thought? Is it a concept? Does it have any suffering? Does it come and go? All of these things to me are totally (false), we can resolve them very easily. Not by studying I am That or something like that because then we’re only studying someone else's pointer. The only way you can see this stuff is by checking it out to see what do I actually see about the nature of being. And that’s, as they say in those traditions, that’s where the words and thoughts turn back. Because you can’t take the I am That, Thou art That, you can’t take it there.
(#12) I’m glad.
John: It’s like a backpack full of boulders. You’ve gotta let it go. So if somebody said, I am That and somebody didn’t know who they were, they said, there’s a reality (and) you are that and the person said, well what does that mean? and they look to see that they are and then the pointer was discarded and then they said, oh, I’ve looked at that. I know this as my direct experience. That’s when like the Buddha’s raft is thrown overboard. Because he actually says in there, he says, if you keep following the dharma too long it will poison you. Because his whole dharmic teaching is only concepts. So when you get to that so-called other shore, as they say, it’s just a metaphor, but you don’t keep carrying that around because it would kill you. Because it just is a burden.
So I’m glad you can see that. We are permitted to let go of the pointers.
(laughter)
John: And you’re also permitted to stop going to satsang. And stop pursuing awakening. And stop going to other people that have a transmission. It’s all bullshit because none of that applies because you have everything. Because that pointer, even though it’s a conceptual pointer, what we’re basically saying is, you know, that is it.
John Wheeler
Rockville, MD
May 30-June 1
posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle