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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4256, Saturday, May 21, 2011
Waiting
I saw a wise man dying of starvation.
Leaves fall in the slightest
wind in December.
And I saw a wealthy man beating his cook
for some mistake with the spices.
Since then, I Lalla, have been waiting
for my love of this place to leave me.
- Lalla, from Naked Song - Versions by Coleman Barks,
posted to AlongTheWay
If we could, we would probably all sink completely into this
dream that passes for our waking life, but something keeps
rousing us from our sleep.
No matter how dazed and confused it gets, our drowsy self is
always linked to complete wakefulness.
That wakefulness has a sharp and penetrating quality. It's our
own intelligence and clear awareness that have the ability to see
through whatever blocks our view of our true self - the true
nature of our mind.
- Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, from Rebel Buddha:On the Road to
Freedom, posted to DailyDharma
The world, indeed, is like a dream and the treasures of the world
are an alluring mirage! Like the apparent distances in a picture,
things have no reality in themselves, but they are like heat
haze.
- Buddha. posted to Distillation
The lover of this world is like someone in love
with a wall illuminated by sunrays; he doesn't
realise that the radiance and the splendor do
not come from the wall but from the sun; he gives
his heart to the wall and when at sunset the rays
of sun disappear, he is in despair.
- Rumi, posted to The_Now2
When you see that from a thought
every craft in the world arises and subsists -
that houses and palaces and cities,
mountains and plains and rivers,
earth and ocean as well as sun and sky,
derive their life from it as fish from the sea -
then why in your foolishness, O blind one,
does the body seem to you a Solomon,
and thought only as an ant?
- Rumi, Mathnawi, II:1034-1037, version by Camille and
Kabir Helminski from Rumi: Daylight, posted to Sunlight
At Ease
Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
- Ryokan, from The Enlightened Heart, an Anthology of Sacred
Poetr