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#3603 -
Friday, July 24, 2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
I was interviewed by Mandee
Labelle on her radio show for Dalhousie University.
Listen to it here:
http://yogaheart.ca/yogaheartradio/index.htm (scroll down to find the link.)
Saturday, July 25, we're holding what we call "nonduality
satsang" here in Halifax at 1313 Hollis St. at 1PM.
Nonduality Satsang is basically another form of the Highlights or
Nonduality.com or Nonduality Salon email forum: That is, it's an
open and free expression of nonduality. At the satsang, I'm going
to recite a few lines from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself and show
how they expose the basic teaching of nonduality. By way of
preparing myself for that talk, I'm including what I plan to say
here in today's Highlights. A briefer version was published in
issue #3378:
http://nonduality.com/hl3378.htm and also in my blog at http://nondualty.org
-Jerry Katz
Walt Whitman:
Living the Paradox of Nonduality
In Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, he begins Song of Myself:
(1)
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease … observing a spear of summer
grass.
(2)
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes....the shelves are crowded
with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let
it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume....it has no taste of the
distillation....it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever....I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and
naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
An interpretation of the first verse:
(1)
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease … observing a spear of summer
grass.
These lines describe the paradoxical nature of nonduality and
show us how to live the paradox.
The paradox is that we are the same or all one — “every
atom belonging to to me as good belongs to you.” — AND
everything is distinct: “observing a spear of summer
grass.”
Poetically, it comes across that this paradox belongs to us, it
is what we are.
How to live the paradox? Celebrate. Lean and loafe and invite
your soul. Your soul is your unfettered individuality (rather
than your neurotic, stressed-out individuality)
An interpretation of the second verse:
(2)
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes....the shelves are crowded
with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let
it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume....it has no taste of the
distillation....it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever....I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and
naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
In the second verse Whitman reveals once again that he likes
individual things, duality, the shelves crowded with perfumes.
From solitude to crowds, to the smells of life, humanity, and the
world, Whitman likes it. However, he knows that if he lets his
attention drop, he could be swallowed up by the concerns of man,
worry, consumerism, desperation, and fear. He will not let that
happen: "I shall not let it."
While he says he likes the perfumes, he sings that it is the
atmosphere that he loves. The atmosphere is nondual, has no
taste, depicts our oneness or nondual nature.
To know the atmosphere is to know the nondual nature of reality.
We hear talk of gurus stripping us of our egos, of standing naked
before the truth, of shedding the veil that hides the truth.
Whitman knows that to contact the atmosphere is to be natural, in
nature — “by the bank of the wood,” where water
meets soil, where man meets atmosphere — and
“undisguised and naked.”
Conclusion:
These two introductory verses of Song of Myself reveal that the
perfume and the atmosphere, oneness and individuality can be
identified as separate ways of being. The contratradiction, the
paradox posed by the two ways of seeing and being is resolved by
seeing that the two ways are what one is. We are both nonseparate
and highly individualistic. Such is "myself." The way
to live out of that paradox, the way to live life, is to
"celebrate myself." One who knows an ongoing joy and
humor, even in the midst of problems, stresses, and challenges,
know the paradox and celebrates it.