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Monday February 19th

I rather like Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha." One of the great
allegorical novels of the 20th century imo.

While on the subject, I really like Jonathan Livingston Seagull
(Richard Bach) as well. Lots of 'nondual pointers', and a fun
story. Not a well-understood story.

Cheers,

Omkara
___________________________________________________________________________

...

Lately I've been swimming a bit. I've noticed I could stay in the deep
end
of the pool and tread water. Or I could go to the shallow end and stand
up!
I've noticed that the shallow end is a totally different experience.
When I
go to the shallow end, I get to give up my practice of treading water.
I
enter a more fundamental practice.

...

Yes, a person has to get tired of treading water, and come to the
shallow
end, to the whole new experience. I would like to think that NDS is the

shallow end of the pool.

Jerry

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Doc Hobbes:

The difficulty of a divided Godhead.


Three people.
Two want a divided kingdom.
One wants a united kingdom.
Where is the division?

--
Shaking off the snow
a bear and two opened eyes
spoke to the sky.
--TeCha


Hi Doc,
I like the way the poem answers the question. It's elegant!

James

___________________________________________________________________________

Jai Ram:

'how fortunate are you and i
we who have wandered down from fragrant mountains
of eternal now
to frolic in such mysteries
as birth and death....
for ever and a day
or maybe even more...'


dizzy...dizzy...

___________________________________________________________________________


Dear Lists,

Might there be a common theme all these folks are trying to point out?


"Realization is nothing to be gained afresh; it is already there. All that
is necessary is to get rid of the thought 'I have not realized.'"
-- Sri Ramana Maharshi


"If you seek for freedom, you cannot find it. Absolute freedom itself is
necessary before you can acquire absolute freedom. That is our practice."
-- Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, from "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"


"Let this truth go as deep in you as possible: that life is already here,
arrived. You are standing on the goal. Don't ask about the path."
-- Osho


"A man who is seeking for realisation is not only going round searching for
his spectacles without realising that they are on his nose all the time,
but also were he not actually looking through them he would not be able to
see what he is looking for!"
-- Wei Wu Wei


"Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what it is that you
have never lost."
-- Nisargadatta Maharaj


"Knowledge of God is not a future event but an eternal fact of being.
There is not past, present and future for it. It is eternity itself. It
is here and now."
-- Swami Krishnananda


"Playfully, you hid from me. All day I looked. Then I discovered I was
you, and the celebration of That began."
-- Lalla


"As it rises so it falls. Make effort and it rises. Stop effort and it
falls. Make the choice! Stay as simple natural Being without thought or
doership."
-- Papaji


"We think that there is something hiding our reality and that it must be
destroyed before the reality is gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn
when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts. That which will be on
the day you laugh is also here and now."
-- Sri Ramana Maharshi


"Yet, paradoxically, it's all we really are! We are already fully
Self-realized Beings. How this is possible is actually quite simple. You
see, it's only our fantastic Mind that systematically, moment-to-moment,
talks us out of it!"
-- F. Maiello


"We want money, or more sex or a bigger house or a better position, and
finally we think we've gone beyond all that, because now we want
enlightenment. It's just another ambition. It's no different from wanting
any of the rest of it.
It's just another egoic dream. If you let go of that, things are as they are."
-- Arjuna


"When Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a great (though controversial) Tibetan
master, first came to this country, he was renowned for always saying, when
asked the meaning of Vajrayana, "There is only Ati." In other words, there
is only the enlightened mind wherever you look. The ego, samsara, maya and
illusion-all of them do not have to be gotten rid of, because none of them
actually exist: There is only Ati, there is only Spirit, there is only God,
there is only nondual Consciousness anywhere in existence."
-- Ken Wilbur


"If you think you are free, You are free. If you think you are bound, You
are bound. For the saying is true: You are what you think."
-- Ashtavakra Gita


"One may seek a teacher or spiritual path, but such will only provide more
sensation, thought, and experience. One may seek to let go, but this
activity will always depend on there being something to let go."
-- Dan Berkow


"This Grace can never be the result of a long history of spiritual
practices or sadhanas, or following strict rules of conduct or does and
don'ts. That is usually what strengthens the lie of an individual wanting
enlightenment."
-- Carlos Lopez


"THERE IS NO NEED FOR MORE WORDS. JUST BE QUIET, TOTALLY ACCEPT
WHATEVER
ARISES AND THE UNIVERSE WILL TAKE CARE OF THE REST. IF YOU THINK THIS IS
TOO SIMPLE, YOU ARE NOT BEING QUIET NOR ACCEPTING THAT WHICH ARISES."
-- Unknown


"There is nothing that is to be learned. it is more of a process of letting
go... you do not gain anything... how can you gain what has always been and
will always be Reality...."
-- Ganga Karmokar


"Notice how painful it is, to constantly be wanting, wanting. This is our
suffering."
-- Jim Gilman


"There is not point in worry or wonder about worse or better spiritual
conditions, although that game is available. You will not be able to rise
above your present vibration level to stay until you love the way you are
now."
-- Thaddeus Golas


"The very heart of Satsang is the revelation of that which is already and
always eternally silent and everpresent."
-- Hanuman


"Goals, especially the highest and finest, work like over valued ideas, the
roots of delusion that nourish great canopies of sheltering paranoia, these
spreading ideas of size and import which characterize positive goals. Such
belief in an overriding idea about one's purpose in life turns out to be
the very thing which blocks the way and may result in destructiveness."
-- Pat Hawk


"In my sadhana I realized, it's not what I do but what I stop doing that
matters. There was nothing to be changed but simply my attitude, which
required no conscious efforts but simple Awareness."
-- Jinendra Swami


"Do not strive for spirituality. If you do, you will block it. It will be
prevented from coming into your life. That is the most difficult thing for
most people to learn, not to get in their own way. It is already yours. It
has always been so. Relax, be still, and you will see what I mean. It has
never left you."
-- Raymond Karczewski


"It is conditioned thinking that says 'But we don't know that', because we
are fully Aware of it. It is because of the conditioned thinking that we do
not Realize that we are Aware of it. And so we *go* on *quests* try to
'Discover it for myself', all the time under the auspices of our
conditioned thinking. So it is a conditioned quest and a conditioned
discovery."
-- E.J. Light


"A friend and teacher said to me: 'At some point you must decide that you
are finished. Then if you ever catch yourself in the bad habit of trying to
get finished just stop it and keep quiet in the moment.'"
-- Keith Nightingale


"If you feel that you're not That, that's a thought. If you didn't have
that thought where would you be? If you didn't have the thought that you
are not realized, where would you be? What would your state be?"
-- A. Ramana


"Oddly enough, it's the very wanting of enlightenment that pushes it away."
-- Andy Rymer


"To me now, systems of spirituality seem like analogues of those dreams
which prevent waking up (for example, to wet a thirsty throat or relieve
the bladder) by creating a never- ending nocturnal drama of moving towards
the desired goal, encountering and overcoming obstacle after obstacle along
the way, but never actually arriving."
-- John Wren-Lewis

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