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#1524 ~ Friday, August 15, 2003 ~ Editor: Gloria
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Gill
Eardley ~ Rumi-Hafiz
With Us
Even if you're not a seeker,
still, follow us, keep searching with us.
Even if you don't know how
to play and sing,
you'll become like us;
with us you'll start singing and dancing.
Even if you are Qarun, the richest of kings,
when you fall in love,
you'll become a beggar.
Though you are a sultan, like us you'll become a slave.
One candle of this gathering
is worth a hundred candles; its light is as great.
Either you are alive or dead.
You'll come back to life with us.
Unbind your feet.
Show the rose garden -
start laughing with your whole body,
like a rose, like us.
Put on the mantle for a moment
and see the ones whose hearts are alive.
Then, throw out your satin dresses
and cover yourself with a cloak, like us.
When a seed falls into the ground,
it germinates, grows, and becomes a tree:
if you understand these symbols,
you'll follow us, and fall to the ground, with us.
God's Shams of Tabriz says
to the heart's bud,
"If your eyes are opened,
you'll see the things worth seeing."
translated by
Nevit Ergin with Camille Helminski
'The Rumi Collection' Ed. Kabir Helminski
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Allspirit Website: http://www.allspirit.co.uk
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Manuel Hernandez ~ A Net of Jewels
"Give up all questions except one
: 'Who am I?'
After all, the
only fact you
are sure of is that you are.
The 'I am' is
certain. The 'I am this' is not.
Struggle to find out what you are in reality.
To know what you
are, you
must first investigate and know what you are not.
Discover all that
you
are not--body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or
that--nothing,
concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you.
The very act of
perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.
The clearer you
understand that on the level of mind you can be described in
negative terms
only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and
realize that
you are the limitless being."
The Wisdom of Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj
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Daily Zen
Meaning to get away from
intellectualization
And avoid word traps,
I sailed across the sea to search for the
Transmission beyond the teachings;
Went on pilgrimages till my sandals broke
And found water in the clear stream,
The moon in the sky.
- Kakua (1143 - ?)
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photo: a grandfather in Bhutan
Lisbeth ~ Monks_Mystics
Repetition
My prayer beads are
strung on my life span.
I am not allowed to skip a single bead:
Sometimes the bead is a seed. Or a bone.
Or jade. Or dry blood. Or
semen. Or crystal.
Or rotted wood. Or a sage's
relic. Or gold.
Or glass. Or a prism. Or
iron. Or clay. Or an
eye. Or an egg. Or
dung. Or a ball. Or a
stone. Or a peach. Or a
bullet. Or a bubble.
Or lead. Or pure light.
No matter what the next bead is, I must
count it.
Perform my daily austerities.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Until repetition becomes endurance. ~ ~ ~
People seldom understand the power of repetition. What is
repeated over and over again can become enduring; what is
done in a moment is seldom lasting. If farmers do not tend
to their fields every day, they cannot expect a harvest.
The same is true of spiritual practice. It is not the grand
declaration or the colorful imitation that means anything.
It is the ongoing, daily living of a spiritual life that has
meaning. Our progress may range from dull to spectacular,
but we must accept both. Each and every day should be
linked together, strung into a long line of prayer beads.
In life, you don't know how many beads you've counted
already, and you don't know how many are yet to come. All
that matters is fingering the one that comes to you now and
taking the spiritual significance of that moment to heart.
Repetition
365 Tao
Daily Meditations
Deng Ming-Dao
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Awareness in Empty Space
Imagine yourself
as a child lying on your back, gazing up into a cloudless sky,
and blowing soap bubbles through a plastic ring. As a bubble
drifts up into the sky, you watch it rise, and this brings your
attention to the sky. While you are looking at the bubble, it
pops, and you keep your attention right where the bubble had
been. Your awareness now lies in empty space.
-B. Alan Wallace, "Tibetan Buddhism From the Ground Up"
Copyright Wisdom Publications 2001. Reprinted from "Daily Wisdom: 365 Buddhist Inspirations," edited by Josh Bartok
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Gene Poole ~ NDS
Space itself is primary,
and universal; in this space,
anything that arises, can be known. Nonpersonal
consciousness is itself this space, whose invisibility
compassionately allows everything to exist.
Space is yet another name for silence; yet these are
merely descriptors. The vast unknown births within
itself, all of what 'we' experience; yet we humans tend
to attribute more reality to the objects of memory,
than to the presence of the unknown, itself.
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Mike ~ E-Zendo
"One morning
when we were all sitting zazen, Suzuki Roshi gave a brief
impromptu talk in which he said, 'Each of you is perfect the way
you
are...and you can use a little improvement.'"
from "To Shine One Corner: Moments with Shunryu Suzuki:
Stories of a Zen Teacher Told by His Students"
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Terry Murphy ~ SufiMystic
from "The Book of
Chuang Tzu," trans Palmer & Breuilly, p196:
The swordsmith of the Grand Marshal was eighty years old, but he
had
not lost any of his skills. The Grand Marshal said, 'Master, you
are so
skillful! Do you have the Tao?'
He said, 'I do have the Tao. From the age of twenty onwards I
have
been devoted to making swords. I pay no heed to anything else, I
look at
nothing but swords. By being so constant, I am now able to do it
without
thinking. Time brings one to such art, so imagine how much more
significant this would be for one who used the same method but
never
ignored anything. Everything would depend on him and everything
would be
achieved!'
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Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(What Do We Know)