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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4010, Saturday, September 11, 2010, Editor: Mark
The experience of the non-dual awareness of rigpa is quite
wonderful. It is freedom from the restless striving of the
samsaric mind. It is not a dull peace, but the opposite. It is
pure wakefulness. It is light, open, radiant, and blissful. When
we are no longer preoccupied with self-centered pursuits based on
the insecurities of the illusory self and its desires and
aversions, the world arises in the purity of the natural state in
a vivid, pristine display of beauty. For the practitioner stable
in rigpa, all experiences arise as an ornamentation of the nature
of mind, rather than as a problem or delusion.
- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, from The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and
Sleep, posted to DailyDharma
You're forgetting that you've forgotten that
you're just pretending to be separate from
everything else.
The Game of Life is played by:
the non-existent ego
trying to expose the non-existent mind
in order to achieve
a non-existent enlightenment
for some non-existent person.
Mind is only a artificial context...a cosmic
stage upon which the ego-based actor struts
and frets his stuff upon.
And, yes, it's the very same stuff that dreams
are made of.
- Chuck Hillig, from Seeds for the Soul, posted to
AlongTheWay
Vasistha said: It is the overthrow of the battery of the senses,
that supplies us with a bridge over the ocean of the world; there
is no other act, whereby we may cross over it (to the other shore
of truth).
Acquaintance with the Sastras, association with the good and
wise, and practice of the virtues, are the means whereby the
rational and self-controlled man, may come to know the absolute
negation of the visible.
I have 'thus told you, O handsome Rama! of the causes of the
appearance and disappearance of the creation, resembling the
heaving and resting of the waves of the sea of the world.
There is no need of a long discourse to tell you that, the mind
is the germ - the arbour of acts, and this germ being nipped in
the beginning, prevents the growth of the tree, and frustrates
the doing of acts, which are the fruits thereof.
The mind is all (i.e. the agent of all actions); therefore it is,
that by the healing of your heart and mind, you can cure all the
troubles and diseases, you may incur in the world.
The minds of men are ever troubled, with their thoughts of the
world and bodily actions; but these being deadened and defunct,
we see neither the body nor the outer world.
The negation of the outer world, and the suppression of the inner
thoughts, serve to curb the demon of the mind, by practice of
self abnegation for a long period of time.
It is possible to heal the inward disease of the internal mind,
by administration of this best and only medicine of negation of
the external world. (Ignoring the outer world, is the only way to
restore the peace of the mind).
It is because of its thoughts, that the mind is subjected to the
errors of its birth and death; and to those of its being bound to
or liberated from, the bonds of the body and this world.
The mind being deluded by its thoughts, sees the worlds shining
before it; as a man sees in his delusion, the imaginary city of
the Gandharvas, drawn before him in empty air.
All these visible worlds consist in the mind, wherein they seem
to exist as the fragrance of the air, consists in the cluster of
flowers containing the essence.
The little particle of the mind contains the world, as a small
grain of sesame contains the oil, and as an attribute is
contained in its subject, and a property abiding in the
substance.
The world abides in the mind in the same manner, as the sun-beams
abide in the sun, and as brightness consists in the light, and as
the heat is contained in fire.
The mind is the reservoir of the worlds, as the snow is the
receptacle of coldness. It is the substratum of all existence, as
the sky is that of emptiness, and as velocity is inherent in the
wind.
Therefore the mind is the same with the world, and the world is
identical with the mind; owing to their intimate and inseparable
connection with one another. The world however is lost by the
loss of the mind; but the mind is not lost by destruction of the
world. (Because the thoughts thereof are imprinted in the mind).
- excerpt from Vasistha's Yoga
Mind is a wonderful force inherent in the Self. That which arises
in this body as 'I' is the mind. When the subtle mind emerges
through the brain and the senses, the gross names and forms are
cognized. When it remains in the Heart, names and forms
disappear. If the mind remains in the Heart, the 'I' or the ego
which is the source of all thoughts will go, and the Self, the
Real, Eternal 'I' alone will shine. Where there is not the
slightest trace of the ego, there is the Self.
- Ramana Maharshi
The Sense of "I am" (Consciousness)
When I met my Guru, he told me: "You are not what you take
yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense 'I am',
find your real Self." I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I
did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at
myself in silence. And what a difference it made, and how soon!
My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously and
not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow
his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within
myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his
teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to
the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am --
unbound.
I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus
the mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for
hours together, with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon
peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal
state. In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I
lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable
silence.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj