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Sunday, June 10

ALAN KUNTZ

Hello folks..Looking to meet folks who are sitters or those
who want to even learn and begin a daily meditation
practice.My story is I am a 25 year veteran T.M mantra
meditator.When I began meditation I did it in the spirit of
the relaxation response and thought I wanted to become
enlightened..Now I just want to be able to bear the big void
and perhaps meet some friends once a week or bi weekly for
group meditation in the upper room of Coffee McCabra downtown
N.W Portland..This would be a totally open forum but each
week I would bring up a topic of discussion and even teach a
number of meditation practices as taught and practiced by me
from various teachers and groups such as T.M,Centering
prayer,Shambhala Shamatha,Zen zazen-shikantaza,Gurdjieff body
sensation meditation which is also a very old jewish
contemplative meditation practice noted n Rabbi David Coopers
book "God is a Verb" etc We will share excerpts from various
books from the various meditation contemplation
traditions.....In general what I am wanting to do is develope
a discussion group and meditation group whether people do or
can;t or won;t or just don;t pledge allegiance to any
tradition..Everyone would bring their own zafus or gomdons or
meditation cushion....chairs would be provided.Coffee
esspresso,pastry,cookies would be provided on the main floor
at your own expense..The room rents for 20 or 25 bucks per
hour.If we have minimum of 5 -6 people each week this could
be really fun and if the cost of the room is divided equally
it would cost less than a double latte..Any one in Portland
interested in participating in something like this please
contact me at 503-449-4741 or alan_k_97267@yahoo.com I will
be posting a flyer at Coffee McCabra soon along with a print
out copy of nondualitysalon and a list of other groups and
people available in other parts of the world..So bring your
cushion and plan on a good cup of coffee or tea,meet some
friends and sit in silence for a half hour

_________________________________________________________________________

FREEHEART

the mystic plays a flute of
god, the coiled rope in his
basket, lifts and rises,
swaying to the melody.

both ends reach upward,
shiva smiles, the three sway
to the muse.

the river returns, the basket,
empties, and god is no more.

________________________________________________________________________

JAN BARENDRECHT

Shoot Down the Clouds

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NondualitySalon/message/56028>

___________________________________________________________________

ANDREW MACNAB

No doubt earth's human population is larger than sustainable.
No doubt our lifestyles are unsustainable. No doubt both
these things will change. The question is how much pain is
involved, and can we change that.

_________________________________________________________________________

DARLENE STOTT

Forgive me, I'm new here and perhaps I should lurk a bit more
before I jump into the discussion, but...what the heck....

I'm going to ask what relevance any of this has? The group
speaks to duality and our perception of it. What is the
purpose for the perception of pain or discomfort or, for that
matter, this physical existence?

I would say that the purpose is experience. That the
experience is for learning. That the learning brings
non-attachment to dualistic forms. I could take that farther,
but I'll stop there for now.

What relevance does utter turmoil, absolute chaos, here have
to do with non-attached experience? I mean, if, as group of
people existing here, we need to have these experiences to
grow, would you remove them? Or, are you questioning the need
for these experiences and whether we can change them before
they happen?

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

ANDREW MACNAB

Having a purpose requires having an identity.
Or does it?
Is an inuitive response to conditions purposeful?
If one is thirsty, one drinks, without considering purpose.
Naked awareness has no purpose.
Is an unknown purpose still a purpose?

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

DAN BERKOW

How can a collection of experiences make you grow?
Grow into what?
Who is the one who, having experiences, expects
to grow?
Who could possibly remove experiences
that have already happened?
Where are they now?



_______________________________________________________________________

JERRY, SARLO AND MARK

JERRY:
You'll find me on the midway shouting, "Nonduality here! Come
get your nonduality! See a two-headed nondualist! Learn a
mantra that came all the way from the exotic lands of ...
India!"

back to my cotton candy, jerry

SARLO:
There is some profound insight here. The Bearded Lady, to say
nothing of more bizarre hermaphroditic possiblities, must
also be NonDual Manifestations; the other freaks, the
varieties of NonDual Expression; the contortionists, those
flexible, adaptable enough to grow into new ways of being...

I think there is another "Nonduality and..." here.

Ah this.

And even the cotton candy: "100% Artificial!" but still made
of the stuff of existence.

MARK:
How 'bout the karoake?

(sorry dunno what I'm asking here. I'm just wondering about
the sanctity of marriage and the needs of the poor.) I may
just be feeling a little silly now. Oh, I can smell the
popcorn now! oh, and the elephant shit. And the smell of
ozone from the tattoo parlor. (They have a faulty electrical
heater... I think they want to fix the ozone layer, but don't
understand the thermodynamics of transport phenomena. I don't
either, but I know that diffusion won't get it there in time,
and that a small amount won't create a sufficient gradient to
transport any of it there, but I admire their desire to
help.) Damn! If only the diffusion constant for elephant shit
was several orders of magnitude smaller than it is. Oh well,
when it stops, it's stop fast and probably long before we
notice it. It's interesting how physics plays such a small
role in what we actually perceive. Mostly, we are focussed
elsewhere. Nonetheless, I think it may be important to pay
attention to this global warming thing, even though we don't
understand the physics of it very well. It's important now.

___________________________________________________________________

MELODY

Befriend a Tree
by Osho
from The Everyday Meditator

There is no illusion, no deception when there is no desire,
conscious or unconscious, for any experience of the kind,
when one's wholly indifferent to the coming and going of all
experience, when one is not asking for anything. J.
Krishnamurti

Go to a tree, talk to the tree, touch the tree, embrace the
tree, feel the tree, just sit by the side of the tree, let
the tree feel that you are a good man and that you are not in
the mood to harm. By and by friendship arises and you will
start feeling that when you come, the quality of the tree
immediately changes. You will feel it, on the bark of the
tree you will feel tremendous energy moving when you come.
When you touch the tree, she is as happy as a child, as a
beloved. When you sit by the tree, you will feel many things,
and soon you will be able to feel that if you are sad and
come to the tree, your sadness will disappear just in the
presence of the tree. Then only will you be able to
understand that you are interdependent. You can make the tree
happy, and the tree can make you happy, and the whole of life
is interdependent. This interdependence I call God.

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

GLORIA LEE

There is no illusion, no deception when there is no desire
conscious or unconscious, for any experience of the kind,
when one's wholly indifferent to the coming and going of all
experience, when one is not asking for anything.
--J.Krishnamurti

Trouble is one looks for the experience of 'no experience' :-).
--Gary.

Damn, you ARE good! It just gets subtler and subtler, doesn't
it? There's also a lot of plain old denial out there
masquerading as 'spiritual indifference'.

Still, befriending a tree is cool. I was down at Walmart and
they had this whole bunch of trees and plants in the parking
lot that were practically dead, wilting from lack of water. I
could feel the suffering, it was like screaming. Sometimes
part of 'accepting' the experience that is going on is to
appropriately make a fuss about it, which I did on the plants
behalf. To Walmart its just losing money, talk about
indifference. They gave me a funny look for saying the plants
were suffering, but someone went out to water them. And I'm
not saying this because a tree is like a person,but because a
tree is a tree. --Gloria

______________________________________________________________________

ERIC BLACKSTEAD

Is just me, or does it occur to anyone else on this list that
perhaps UG Krishnamurti is not enlightened, and hence, has
such mediocre and meaningless experience. One thing is clear,
even for those who might think his condition is
significant...this man still has a lot of anger and
prejudical judgement. For a man claiming to lack a self, this
is somewhat problematic. What may be equally significant is
this: if Ramakrishna is enlightened, then, by his own
description, UG is clearly not. In fact, from my readings
there is no one whose experience of enlightenment jibes with
UG's. So...why do accept that he is enlightened?

Perhaps, someone can straighten me out.

_________________________________________________________________

MARK OTTER


The best (sleep) dreams that I have are those in which I wake
up and know I'm dreaming and can adjust the dream to my
latest sexual fantasy... (no, that's not quite true, but
certainly those in which I some how acknowledge my basic love
for everyone and then I wake up and remember the dream.)

I think part of acknowledging my basic love for everyone
(whether this warming Earth is a dream or not) is to do
whatever I can in my human form to slow down the destruction.
I don't think scientists (certainly this one doesn't) know
how fast things will unravel. So there is no reason to delay
a society wide reorganization that slows down energy
consumption, because the rate may be fast, but there is no
reason to abandon all hope and enter depression because it
may be slower than we can respond. Give up your car and your
boat. Send them both to me. My car is over 13 years old and
may not last another 13 years (although I plan to give it the
chance) and my boat is a 17 foot Grumman canoe, that is for
sale because I am unemployed. Oh heck, just send cash. But
stop using your car and boat, because they are endangering
your great great great grandchildren. (But who cares? They
won't be either great or grand. they will be just like any
other children ever born. (Willing to buy into the system
that the ones' they loved so much they came back to this
insane dream to be with bought into even though that was the
only insanity present in the system.) We cannot rule the
Earth, we can only agree to participate in it. Let's
participate as good citizens, whether saving the planet from
human beings is only part of a dream or not.

both and neither, Mark

ps save the planet, guys, I'm planning to use it for
something wonderful.

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