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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3625, Saturday, August 15, 2009, Editor: Mark
Nothing satisfies some appetites,
but wild plants ease my hunger.
Free of untoward desires,
all things bring me pleasure.
Tattered robes warm frozen bones.
I wander with deer for companions.
I sing to myself like a crazy man
and children sing along.
- Ryokan, from The Poetry of Zen, posted to DailyDharma
The pot in which I brew my tea
Is dented and more than a bit tarnished,
But I still enjoy the tea.
The house I live in
Needs a coat of paint and several shingles,
But I sleep well at night.
The body I use to live my life
Is wrinkled and slowing down,
But I am alive and I rejoice.
I am not the body in which I live,
I am the life itself.
- Mark Otter
When you don't require anything from the world and nothing from
God, when you don't desire anything, when you don't strive for
anything, don't expect anything, the divine will enter you,
unasked and unexpected.
- Nisargadatta Maharj, posted to ANetofJewels
Passive awareness is a state in which there is no effort; it is
to be aware without judgment, without choice, not in some
ultimate sense, but in every way; it is to be aware of your
actions, of you thoughts, of your relative responses, without
choice, without condemnation, without identifying or denying, so
that the mind begins to understand every thought and every action
without judgment. This evokes the question of whether there can
be understanding without thought.
- J. Krishnamurti, posted to The_Now2
"Now consider this: if there were nothing but silence, it
wouldn't exist for you; you wouldn't know what it is. Only when
sound appears does silence come into being. Similarly, if there
were only space without any objects in space, it wouldn't exist
for you"
"Nothing could `be' without space, yet space is
nothing"
"When you are utterly and totally `present', you encounter
it as the still inner space of no-mind."
"When space and time are realized within as the Unmanifested
"no-mind and presence" external space and time continue
to exist for you, but they become much less important. The world,
too, continues to exist for you, but it will not bind you
anymore."
"Hence, the ultimate purpose of the world lies not within
the world but in transcendence of the world. Just as you would
not be conscious of space if there were no objects in space, the
world is needed for the Unmanifested to be realized. You may have
heard the Buddhist saying: "If there were no illusion, there
would be no enlightenment." It is through the world and
ultimately through `you' that the Unmanifested knows itself. You
are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold.
That is how important you are!"
Excerpts from The Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle, pgs
116-117), posted to The_Now2