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Saturday, November 24

MATTHEW FILES

The Bodhisattva vow is traditionally the vow to
forego one's own enlightenment until all sentient
beings have been saved, but a radical
interpretation of the vow is renouncing the whole
notion of enlightenment as any kind of clinging to
individual salvation as separate from the
interdependent web of the whole enchilada. In other
words, if one is not ultimately separate from
anyone else, then there can be no personal
salvation until all sentient beings have been
saved. It is all or none. Bodhisattvas, the true
servants of God, are born from their surrender.
They have dared to not stop even at enlightenment
in their movement toward the fulfillment of the
highest possibility for their existence. The Dalai
Lama said once that he would really like to have
time off to go on lots of meditation retreats and
to practice and to become an enlightened person,
but that obviously he didn't have time to, as he
had all the work of being the Dalai Lama. But then
he thought, "If I did get enlightened, I'd spend
all my time working to help other sentient beings
be happier. And what am I doing Now? I am spending
all my time working to help other sentient beings
be happier. So I guess it's not important to get
enlightened. When one finally gives up one's futile
attempts to make reality conform to one's own
wishes, and allows it to unfold on its own terms,
all the energy that was tied up in foolish attempts
to manipulate the universe is freed up. If the
giving up is partial or shallow, one may end up
simply content or smug, but if the surrender is
deep, there is nothing left to do but to serve
others from the fullness of oneself. Our problem is
that we don't want to surrender what we can
surrender, and we do want to surrender what we
can't surrender. You can come up with a very clear
and concise articulation of nonduality, and you can
speak of it over and over again, and you can
attempt to align your activity to that
articulation. But in fact, organically, unless
you've surrendered to the Will of God, which is
movement but in the domain of nonduality, any state
of nonduality is not mature.

______________________________________________________________

MELODY

"What seems "true" one day, is discovered to be just
another layer to peel away the next."

LOL

Ain't that the truth?

As good a one as it is, even *this* layer of truth
will need to be peeled tomorrow.

It's a great example of one concept that digs deep
and cuts away other concepts, though, isn't it?

______________________________________________________________________

GLORIA LEE

To make any change in your life it must come from
within yourself. I don't like help in those things
I can do, and when you jump over the bar and knock
it down you learn to jump higher.
-- Evelyn Mullin, age 87, my mother

________________________________________________________________________

ASHE

Memory

In the middle of the night
I awoke to a world which was not mine.
I lay in the deepest darkness bewildered, lost.
Where was I?

My mind a void. My army of answers deserted.
Abandoned to the roomful of darkness
which I did but did not know.

Desperately I thrashed about for the straw of a thought,
for anything at all graspable. Unmasking only
the sneering faces of need, the casual indifference
of nowhere and nothing.

Then suddenly, from I don’t care where or even why, a revelation,
precise and pointed; my postal address. My full postal address.

Proof. An affirmation of my life, of living. Of I am. Found.
Sure of myself, my breathing slowly easing into ordinary
as the world of bricks and steel rebuilt itself around me.

Memory. The rubber stamp of existence.
Inking my eyes, my body, my face, my tongue,
pulling history tight up to my chin, I turned over.
I slept again.

____________________________________________________________________

GLORIA LEE

Why God Never Received Tenure at Any University

1. He only had one major publication.

2. It was in Hebrew.

3. It had no references.

4. It wasn't published in a referred journal.

5. Some even doubt He wrote it Himself.

6. It may be true that He created the world, but
what has He done since then?

7. His cooperative efforts have been quite
limited.

8. The scientific community has had a hard time
replicating His results.

9. He never applied to the Ethics Board for
permission to use human subjects.

10. When one experiment went awry, He tried to
cover it up by drowning the subjects.

11. When subjects didn't behave as predicted, He
deleted them from the sample.

12. He rarely came to class, just told students to
read the book.

13. Some say He had His son teach the class.

14. He expelled His first two students for
learning.

15. Although there were only ten requirements, most
students failed His tests.

16. His office hours were infrequent and usually
held on a mountaintop.

http://www.wwd.net/user/jasonb/funny/god_tenure.htm

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