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Tuesday, February 6


There have been a few additions to the Nonduality Salon website.
The quick links are at <http://www.nonduality.com/new.htm>

This is part of what you'll find:

In the Nondual Perspectives section added Nonduality and Yoga,
and the following entries:

James Traverse, Eric Baret, Richard Miller

Added the following extraordinary people to the list of Living
Teachers of Nonduality:

Antoine Carré. "I guess Vertigo comes when one comes to realize
that each little action or movement carries all of life with
it... And Vertigo comes to vanish when there is no one left to
realize that each little action or movement carries all of life
with it..." Antoine had been on this list but was somehow
deleted and due to an oversight was not re-installed. Thanks to
the person who reminded me.

Susan Dane. "Spirituality is about one central thing--not self
promotion or self-improvement, but rather becoming the space
where Spirit lives its life as us. Dedication to this 'striving'
is the wisest investment of our time and energy and the only
true promise of a genuine 'better.'" ... "...through radical and
absolute surrender to the one Spirit, God--upon the moment--the
supposed momentum of the human ego and its many belief-systems
comes to a screeching halt."

Kenneth G. Mills. "My life has been one, hopefully, that could
lead you to find the Key that would erase your robotization and
would allow you to perceive your True Identity. This is not easy
to do. The reason it isn't easy to do is because you have such a
love affair with your everyday experience without realizing it
is built on supposition." ... "'Kenneth Mills' evening gowns are
clearly the work of a Renaissance man. There is poetry in every
pleat, art in every sweep of silk. His creative talent is so
prolific that his designs will remain light years ahead of his
imitators."

James Traverse. "The key to Natural Yoga is to emphasize
Stillness which manifests as emphasizing perceiving (not the
object of perception). In Natural Yoga perceiving, silent
non-localized awareness, is the instrument of transformation.
Space-Silence is the environment of natural yoga." ... "Natural
Yoga is the living union of Movement within Stillness where you
live completely in the perception (Stillness) and the sensations
of stretching (movements) appear in Stillness."

___________________________________________________________________

HARSHA

I will be introducing the contributors to the HarshaSatsangh Magazine on
a
regular basis, many of whom are well known to us already and part of the
internet spiritual community. I have written before about Frankji, a
brother
devotee of Ramana Maharshi. Sri Frankji has a rich background in the
spiritual literature and a comprehensive understanding of the unity
that
permeates all things. His life experiences and long periods of solitude
and
meditation have given him the rare flexibility and universal vision to
meet
everyone on their own ground and at the same time transmit the highest
truth
of the Self. To convey through spiritual insight and power "That" which
words cannot convey is the mark of an accomplished Yogi. This describes
Frankji.

In Frankji's own words from the HS webiste,
http://www.harshasatsangh.com

Frank writes, "Plainview, NY, 1968: Zen unlocks the mystery that in
fact
Reality is Itself an Unfathomable Mystery that defies unlocking! I then
found this Mystery at the base of the teachings of Krishna, Jesus, Lao
Tzu,
Chuang Tzu, Rumi, Osho, Tokusan, Milarepa, Padmasambava... the list goes
on
and on. Its clarity, however, reached its pinnacle for me in the mouna
diksha (silence initiation) of my guru Ramana, who opened the way to the
mounam of Dakshinamurthi to brahman Itself. I stand now naked in the
wilderness, proclaiming loud and clear as the Big Bang Bell of Creation
Itself that Self-realization is already utterly everyone's experience
*here
and now*! That it is the common and most paradoxic of all delusions in
how
we've consistently managed *to go out of our way* to construct the
belief in
our being otherwise!"
(Frank has a website called Pathways to Metaphysics on the secret
teachings
of the Ancients. --(The Editors).


To discover the variety of riches in understanding that Frankji offers,
please go to the website and read his article and you will also find the
link to Frankji' website there as well.

Love to all
Harsha

---------------------------------------
For those of you who are new here to the NDS, I invite you to
join HarshaSatsangha. Jerry and I go way back and realize the
value to be offered by different lists. HS has a slightly
different flavor but a complementary orientation to the NDS. HS
is not right for everyone but it may be right for you. We are
looking for a few good men and women. Join the marines of
nonduality. Meet the over 300 teachers and students of yoga and
meditation in a variety of nondual and dual religious and
mystical traditions. Some one mentioned to me that we are the
largest Sri Ramana group on Yahoo. I don't know if that is true
but you are invited to find out by clicking below.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HarshaSatsangh/join

I also invite you to visit the official HS website at
www.harshasatsangh.com and look at our internet magazine. Please
look at the credits section and you will recognize
internationally renowned people as both editors and
contributors. Our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is David
Hodges. Gloria Lee is the Editor - In - Chief, and Greg Goode is
the Executive Editor and the Philosophy and Religion Editor. We
have a number of excellent editors dealing in Astrology, Yoga,
Tantra, Kundalini, Raw Foods, Vegetarianism and other topics. We
are always on the lookout for talented sages, yogis, meditators,
writers, in case you wish to contribute for future issues.

Here is the list description.

This spiritual discussion group is an open Satsang and is
blessed by Sri Ramana Maharshi, the great Jnani Sage of
Arunachala. HarshaSatsangha is in the best tradition of a joyous
spiritual fellowship for facilitating the Recognition of the
Eternal Reality that is One's Own Self. "I Am That!" This is the
uncompromising, simple, and yet Radical Truth proclaimed in a
variety of ways by the ancient and modern Sages of Hinduism,
Jainism, Buddhism, and Taoism. In Advaita Vedanta, the highest
teaching emphasizes the complete identity of the Individual Soul
with the Supreme Soul. In Tibetan Buddhism, Dzogchen is
considered the supreme teaching and represents the nondual focus
on one's innate wakefulness. How beautiful the variety of
expressions in so many different traditions! We embrace this
variety with great joy and in fellowship in HarshaSatsangha.

No religion or teacher or tradition has a monopoly on the
Essential Truth of Reality which is Our Own Nature. In this
context, HarshaSatsangha focuses on the aspirations and
experiences of individuals on the spiritual path. Everyone
interested in any of the Shiva and Shakti traditions, and the
related yogic and tantric paths as well as those practicing
primarily the cognitive methods of the pure nondual teachings of
great Jnanis such as Ramana Maharshi are welcome to join. The
discussions are typically expected to focus on Self-Realization,
Kundalini Shakti and Its Manifestations, God-Realization, the
Goddess, Enlightenment, and various types of Samadhis (Savikalpa
and Nirvikalpa). Discussion of various teachers and teachings
can also be enriching as long as there is mutual respect and a
feeling of amity in the conversation. Humor and poetry and other
artistic expressions of the spiritual life are encouraged and
supported. May God Bless everyone with Peace, Joy, and
Understanding. May we all nourish and heal each other in the
spirit of Compassion, Wisdom and Love. OM Shanti, Shanti,
Shanti. Peace to all living beings

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HarshaSatsangh/join

________________________________________________________________________


TERRY AND DAN

Great stuff, Dan. I'm sorry to put you on the spot or in the
spotlight, or whatever, and ask questions that beg for answers,
but perhaps more spontaneous eruptions will occur....I have read
that awareness has the twin qualities of cognition and clarity:
I have some vague notion of what clarity might be, but for the
life of me, I can't see how the quality of cognition arises in
that "knowingness" must have a knower and a known (while clarity
suggests just a quality of beingness or non-duality)--is there
some aspect of cognition, or a kind of non-dual cognition...?
Love from a figment of your...Terry.


Hey, Terry!
Great talking to you -
not feeling put on the spot.

Enjoying spontaneous eruptions ;-)

You're right on-target as seen here.
Cognition involves subject and object,
or knower and known, hence "nondual
awareness" (put in quotes because
it doesn't exist ;-) can't be the product
or outcome of cognition.

So, how can cognition, involving the
implied subject for any object, and
vice vers, arise
at all where there is "awareness"?
A related question: how can anything
appear to happen when there is
nothing happening? (It can't be
assumed that cognition refers to
something outside of cognition,
because that assumption *is*
cognition.)

The "real" answer to this is:
be here -- be where cognition
arises. This instant in which
cognition simultaneously
is and is not, and neither is
nor is not. That is the only
"real" clarity on the matter.

Having said that, metaphorically
one could say that cognition
appears (an event appears to happen)
even though nothing "really" happens.
That appearance is possible because
a subject can be implied by an object
simultaneously with an object being
implied by a subject. A present
experience can be implied by a
past experience, just as a past
experience is implied by the
present (the relationship of
present thought and memory,
experience-near cognition and
experience-distant cognition).

You can say that if A is because B is,
and B is because A is, then neither
A nor B can "really" exist. But, there
is nothing in reality (i.e., awareness,
infinity, no-thingness) to prevent such
paradoxical appearance, either. Because
nothing prevents it, it appears to appear.

It appears to itself to have a self
to appear to, but that
appearance of itself to itself always
depends on something appearing
to have appeared. Said simply,
nothing really happens, but
everything appears to happen.
Said even more simply: Nothing!
Everything! Really!

Some have called this the creativity of
the infinite, others have called it maya.
It might be called "infinite inevitability".

When you are right here, where this is
"happening", it's not happening.
Thus, the question is "absorbed" by
the infinite itself -- the question has
no place to arise. That itself is
the "answer".

__________________________________________________________________

JAMES TRAVERSE

“The beginning of wisdom is silence. The second stage is
listening.”

A Hebrew Sage

“Listening is a primitive act of love in which a person gives
himself to another’s word, making himself accessible and
vulnerable to that word.”

Unknown

______________________________________________________________________

From an interview in "The Sun" magazine with Bo Lozoff, founder
of The Prison Ashram Project.

Bo: In 1990 I gave a worksop at a prison in Loisiana.(at that
point he had been doing prison work for over 15 years). The
place was like a modern day slave plantation; all the prisoners
were black. This was in the heat of the summer and there were
about 60 men in the workshop. One man stood up and said in a
quaivering voice, "I just can't believe that i'm getting to see
Bo Lozoff in my prison. You wrote me personally one time". He
held up a little scrap of paper as if it were a religious relic.
I did what I'd done many times before, something i was very
proud of; I said to him " You and I are just the same. We're
both seekers. What you're feeling, you feel not toward me but
toward God". In other words I cut his experience to shreds. I'd
been doing that for years, because I rationally believed that I
couldn't let people mistake the messesnger for the message. I
was very proud of my humility. Through my meditation practice I
soon came to realize that my professional modesty was a
completely self- centered reaction. I should have made *him* the
center of the experience. There is nothing wrong with devotion,
whether it is to a human being, a deity, a tree, or a stone.
It's a wonderful a beautiful experience. It was important for
this man in that Loisiana prison to express his admiration for
someone who had helped him turn his life around, and I should
have let him have that experience. I didn't have to let it swell
my head, but I had to let him have it. Instead I cut him down.
Because of that, I vowed not to go into a prison again until I
was mature enough to allow people to express their gratitude,
appreciation, admiration, and affection without worrying about
what it meant for me. So I spent three years in retreat because
of that one isntance. My point is that when we deceive
ourselves, even in a way that's popularly considered ok, our
practice will point it out. If we have a fairly quiet mind and
something inside of us seems to say over and over "you did
something wrong, you did something wrong." We ask "What?" And
that something says "Keep looking, you'll see". And then if
you're willing to act on what you've done you may gain some
understanding about yourself and about the world.

--contributed by Matthew Files

----------------------------------------

GLORIA LEE

Thank you Matthew. There is an arrogance behind needing to
correct others, even when disguised as wanting to help. And it
is especially evident when it isn't asked for. What is said here
about devotion applies to many more examples of letting people
have their experience, their insight, their way of expressing
whatever.

_________________________________________________________________

DOC HOBBES

I have often thought that the finger pointing at the moon was
the masters way of saying "There... it is behind there".

___________________________________________________________________

HUR

A visitor asking Nisargadatta about paths, practices and
devotion

Maharaj: For meditation you should sit with identification with
the knowledge "I am" only and have confirmed to yourself that
you are not the body. You must dwell only in that knowledge "I
am"--not merely the words "I am." The design of your body does
not signify your identification. And also, the name which is
given to you or to the body is not your correct identity. The
name which is imposed on you, or the name which you have heard
about you--you have accepted that name as yourself. Similarly,
since you have seen your body, you think you are the body. So
you have to give up both these identities. And the indwelling
knowledge that you are, without words, that itself you are. In
that identity, you must stabilize yourself. And then, whatever
doubts you have, will be cleared by that very knowledge, and
everything will be opened up in you...

Visitor: My question is, is there a useful way for arriving at
moksha and are there particular signs for distinguishing which
paths are the best for us?

M: You just listen to all this, whatever is being said here;
follow that, abide in that and be that. Don't ask me about other
paths. The path I am expounding, you listen to that, and abide
in it...

V: I am interested especially in practice, how to start it.

M: Forget all about physical disciplines in this connection. I
am telling you that the indwelling principle. "I am," the
knowledge that you are, you have to *be* that. Just be that.
With that knowledge "I am," hold on to the knowledge "I am."

V: It is difficult to abandon attachment to action; even in this
way it is not easy always to remember "I am," the truth of the
atman.

M: You know that you are sitting here; you know you are, do you
require any special effort to hold on to that "you are"? You
know you are; abide in that. The "I am" principle without words,
that itself is the God of all Ishwaras.

V: Is devotion not useful as an initial step?

M: First step or second step, I have the first and final step at
the same time! The knowledge "I am," without words, itself is
the Ishwara. He, Ishwara, does not want another (Maya) agent or
intermediary. Direct.


Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The Ultimate Medicine"
Edited by Robert Powell
Blue Dove Press

________________________________________________________________________

XAN

Life is a meaning-free zone.... illusion is otherwise.

____________________________________________________________________

DAVID HODGES

Hi Everyone,

I just posted some snow pictures of the aftereffects from New
England's big snow storm of last night. This morning I walked to
work and took some pictures along my route. I put three of the
pictures on my web site and my online journal:

http://www.outermost.com or
http://wandertheearth.livejournal.com

Enjoy!

David

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