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#3863 -
Monday, April 12, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Life is given.
Nothing is earned,
so learn to serve others,
not your own desire and greed
and ego. They steal your energies,
whereas devotion builds your strength
and protects the intelligent flame
that leads to the truth within.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
posted to Along The Way
Here's a
beautiful piece of poetic clarity, from Jed McKenna...
"The enlightened state is not, as is commonly supposed, the
special state. The unenlightened state is the magical,
mysterious, incomprehensible state. Awake is just awake. It's not
something more, it's everything less. My state is natural and
easy. I carry no baggage. I labor under no delusion. I don't
spend my lifeforce animating a fictional persona. All paradox
lies with the unawakened state. The awakened don't have something
that the unawakened are missing, it's the other way around. The
unawakened posess massive structures of false belief. They create
and maintain these vast realms of past, present and future; of
great meaning and importance; of a deep and wide emotional range;
all woven together out of sheer nothingness. Something from
nothing; that's the magic, that's the special state. The
unawakened state is the one that requires such ceaseless
dedication and devotion and which seems so fantastically
improbable. The awakened state is nothing compared to that".
and:
"The lifeforce I'm not using to project a false self is now
available for much more fun and interesting purposes. It's a
whole different universe once all that petty self crap has been
left behind".
posted by Roy
Whenary to Open Awareness
The Conceit of Self
The conceit of self (mana in Pali) is said to be the last of the
great obstacles to full awakening. Conceit is an ingenious
creature, at times masquerading as humility, empathy, or virtue.
Conceit manifests in the feelings of being better than, worse
than, and equal to another. Within these three dimensions of
conceit are held the whole tormented world of comparing,
evaluating, and judging that afflicts our hearts. Jealousy,
resentment, fear, and low self-esteem spring from this deeply
embedded pattern. Conceit perpetuates the dualities of
“self” and “other”—the schisms that are
the root of the enormous alienation and suffering in our world.
Our commitment to awakening asks us to honestly explore the ways
in which conceit manifests in our lives and to find the way to
its end.
- Christina Feldman, "Long Journey to a Bow"
Are you still thinking,
looking, living, as from an
imaginary phenomenal centre? As long as you do that you
can never recognise your freedom.
Wei Wu Wei
The Open Secret
"Whatever it is, I cannot understand it, Although gratitude
Stubbornly overcomes me Until I'm reduced to tears."
~Saigyo
From the book; "The Poetry of Zen," published by Shambhala. posted to Daily Dharma