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Monday, October 1


TONY O'CLERY

Daily Words of the Buddha
October 1, 2001


Whoever takes a stick
to beings desiring ease,
when he himself is looking for ease,
will meet with no ease after death.

Whoever doesn't take a stick
to beings desiring ease,
when he himself is looking for ease,
will meet with ease after death.

Udana II, 3

___________________________________________________________________

GLORIA LEE

Memory alone seems to justify our idea of
continuity, our impression of being the same
individual from our birth until our death rather
than a series of innumerable individuals, each
resembling the other but each one different, in the
end giving the impression of gradual change; so that
this faculty of memory would seem to be the least
illusory element in our 'self' We can claim that
alone as being truly ourselves. Our notion of
continuity has no other basis.

wei wu Wei

****************************************

The Natural State

***
Once Ramaswami Pillai searched for a key. After
sometime he found it.

Maharshi :

The key was in its usual place. It was not lost.
Only his memory of it was not there.
The Self is everywhere.
Not being aware of this due to forgetfulness
of our real nature ,we keep searching for it.


***************** from *********************
" A Practical Guide to Know Yourself"
Conversations with Ramana Maharshi

Compiled and Edited by A.R.Natarajan
**********************************************

_____________________________________________________________________

GENE POOLE

Greetings, Melody!

I admit that I am enjoying your agony.

This is not because I enjoy agony or the idea of
your suffering. I am enjoying it in the same way
that I enjoy the agony of a woman who is giving
birth.

Years ago, I gave birth to myself. The labor was
incredible; 'agonizing' does not adequately
describe the experience. God's own chiropractor
materialized to facilitate this process. Moments
after giving birth, I died, my purpose finished.

Since my birth, I have lived 'with a vengeance'. I
do not hand out soporifics to those who are in the
agony of birthing themselves. Neither do I pander
to those who do not understand the meaning of this
rare and powerful experience.

It is hard to say that a person who is at the very
cutting/ bleeding edge of the womb of worldly
custom deserves everything they get, but it is
true. It is entirely natural for one who 'has the
gumption' to escape, to explode/go super-nova once
the confines/constraints of worldly ways has been
left behind.

How can I explain or even describe, how this
radiant and fiery ferocity is an immediate and most
real love? How can I testify and be understood, to
say that the shocking immediacy of reality itself,
is a good thing, not needing any intermediary
'priests' to lessen or pad the impact of
un-mediated seeing?

Knowing as I do, the unknown and terrifying
deliberateness of this forbidden movement, I also
know that there is really nothing I can say or do,
which can in any way mitigate the agony of feeling
each infinitely tiny particle of oneself being
drawn through a membrane which does not want to let
go, somehow the equivalent of having dental
extractions without anaesthesia.

I do know that the trail of tears ends here, that
the curtain has been pulled aside, the veil rent
asunder, the smarmy and squalid overlay of denial
set afire, the funeral pyre of all that was
futilely hoped, now dying, piece by piece.

Not even hoping to be understood,

Gene Poole

____________________________________________________________________

PETROS (from Petros-Truth list)

Mandalas are the pictorial representation of the
Rectification (right ordering) of the contents of
consciousness as accomplished by the Seer. Not only
the Buddhists and Hindus possess such designs, but
the Western seers, too, like Boehme and Blake and
-- in literary form but still "visual" --
Swedenborg. Mandalas are not the highest
manifestation of the Real, because there is still a
Seer and a thing Seen, obviously. Only when the
mandala itself is surpassed is the Real perfectly
reached. Take this symbol as your mandala for unity
in awakening: imagine an Eye in the center of a
heart, representative of perfected vision and
perfected vitality or emotion. It is the Witness,
the observer, in the very Heart of What Is
Observed. It is subject and object wed, the union
of the ajna (third eye, in the center of the
forehead) and anahatta (heart) chakras.

-- from _Keys to the Gate of Divine Truth_ by
Petros (1997)

___________________________________________________________________

ERIC ASHFORD

AUTUMN

All summer we sail the soul in our inner sky born
upon its sea green heart. The changing of the
season reminds us that there must be an enfolding
as well as an unfolding. A moving inwards to
enclose the experiences of our fervent solstice.
There must be time to read our runes, that the
greening may bring new fullness, from the ripened
term, and from the branch that stretched too far to
hold this time.

Times mercy is that it conserves our significance
as autumnal repose, to mull the new wine internally
for certain awakening. This season of involution,
husbands the gathering to maturity. We let go of
the growing, that it might be the planting of
potential. That the stock of our awareness becomes
the store of foresight.

Autumn changes the way the heart responds to
itself. It no longer opens only to receive, but to
conceive itself in this new wind of change. It
embodies the gifts of the summer, that the harvest
be not depleted by forgetfulness. The womb of
insight envelopes the souls fleeting affairs, to
germinate yet further light.

For every advance of aspiration there is a season
of contemplation that must be the dormitory of new
arising. A time for the bearing of spirit children,
nourished by the fall of the green leaf to grow in
comprehension. Autumnal hearts are the seedbed of
Gods becoming consciousness. They are pregnant with
seasoned purpose, being the vestibule of new
emerging.

Just as a bird that flies too high may wound itself
on the unsupporting air, so the soul must regain
yet greater wings to take the air once more. It
challenges the dusk to be the rebirth of flight.
And so the dusk of the dying season is the nursery
of yet higher revelations of reality.

Autumn is the time of temperate confinement, a time
of quietude, that the soul may absorb the lessons
of its journey in God. This pilgrimage is to the
heart of love, that is both the sanctuary and
inception of all heart traveling. Autumn reforms us
in the likeness of divine renewal. It is the
harbinger of resurrection, and the pause that
inspires our next step.

Here we abide in the unwinding of lights coil, and
pray into the world, the fullness of our
understanding. The leavings of yesterday become the
flowers of tomorrow, and so we say- This much I
have known, and by this, I shall see my way.



Every now and then,
all the green shoots
and tender buds
of a love between people
come shyly up
through the surface of this world,
and we remember that all night
they have been growing together
in the same garden.

Every now and then,
someone drinks a cup of wine,
and for no clear reason,
nourishes the world.
The drop of every heart
becomes a flood,
and we all begin to pour.

Every now and then,
a person will surrender his interests,
accounts, and dogmas.
He will begin to fall like autumn,
just for the sake of losing,
and so we are all changed
by his season.

Love is not tempted
by anything less than itself.
Sleepers awake in every heart.
Every now and then,
autumn drinks the summer down
and we all fall into spring.

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