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#1531 - Friday, August 22, 2003 - Editor: Gloria


beach photo by Sam Pasciencier on NDS    

The Summer Day   Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down,
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
     

~ Mary Oliver ~  


Alan Larus ~ HarshaSatsangh

re: wish for pictures

Chilukuri wrote: Dear Sir,

Thank you very much for the lovely photographs of swans! I always
see your heart warming photographs with joy.

May I know whether you have any photographs taken of lotuses (red
and white ) with rising sun falling on them. I want to take that
as the coverpage for my series of books on proverb linguistics
with the title
Suryakamalam (surya = sun ; kamalam =red lotus ) which is the name
of my sister.

I should be immensely thankful to you if you could help me in this
regard.


Yours sincerely,
Chilukuri Bhuvaneswar
~ ~ ~
  I have a lot of pictures of water lilys ( I think it is called in english). I read somewhere that the waterlilys are related to the lotus and are considered to be lotuses in Japan. I found there even exists red wild water lilys here, see the second page on this link.  I will go and look for them when they bloom later in the summer. They are very rare and this is the only one known plant in this country. They tested it to see it was natural and not breeded.     http://www.toyen.uio.no/botanisk/nbf/ofa/nio200001/8-rod_nokkerose..pdf  

~ ~ ~  

Dear Chilukuri Bhuvaneswar,  

I did set off to take the pictures you wished for twice this summer. The first time we started too late, the second time we were also late because the ferryman wanted to eat his dinner before taking us. I tried to reach the pond called Bigpond, but we got stuck in traffic from a football match and we had to turn as the sun was setting. I did get a map and a good description of the way from a girl in a petrol station. So today the sun was shining and as I hate to give up I went back to see if I could find anything.   After some searching I found the pond the girl pointed out on the map, a streetmap with no names on the ponds and lakes, and it was disappointing. Only two white waterlilies and some empty bottles. But this dragonfly was there.  

A teacher passing by with his class told me it was the next pond further into the forest, so I went there. This pond was very long, with no flowers at all. I asked another man and he gave me the direction still further on. At one point I found a sign telling the way and 2.2 km to go. After a while I got suspicious and luckily I met somebody picking blueberries, they told me I was on the wrong path, the pond was behind the sign : ).     So I found the pond. This is in an area where I have never been before and it is very beautiful.  The pond had a lot of dragonflies in all colours and sizes I have not seen anything like this anywhere, and a lot of white lilies too, so it was not a waste of time.  

I did walk along the whole pond down past the last bend as it would be silly to leave without searching every inch of this pond. And of course they had to be there, as only a fool would have travelled so far without knowing.        

              


  Manuel Hernandez ~ A Net of Jewels  

"Be conscious of yourself, watch your mind, give it your full attention.
Don't look for quick results, there may be none within your noticing.
Unknown to you, your psyche will undergo a change, there will be more
clarity in your thinking and feeling, purity in your behaviour.  You need
not aim at these - you will witness the change all the same."

The Wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


Harsha ~ HarshaSatsangh
Dear Shawn,

That quote from Sri Ramana brings back some fond, wonderful and funny memories of the 1970s. I had had some very difficult years of awakening in the early and mid 1970s but somehow (God only knows how!) managed to finish college and graduate with a philosophy degree and devoted myself to full time practice of meditation and teaching of yoga. I was around 22 and after having read the "Talks with Sri Ramana" became totally convinced that I was perfectly enlightened! I was not hesitant to declare myself such if the conversation called for it, even if I was speaking with monks who had been meditating for years! Of course, they thought I was quite egotistical and so on with a flawed and immature personality, etc!. And I thought that they were nice people but unfortunately ignorant. Too bad! :-).

I was teaching yoga then and had little money but never felt poor. There was not much furniture and I used to sleep on the floor. "The Talks" which I used to sleep with beside me had seeped into me so much. I thought if the Sage of Arunachala says, "You are the Self, you are already enlightened, the Self is already Realized," then how can it be contradicted. What power can contradict the words of Bhagavan Ramana on the this matter. I believed it, sensed it, felt it in my bones and in the fiber of my being! Ramana Maharshi also came in my dreams and blessed me which gave me even more confidence and I did not care what others thought. So it was a fun time with many experiences. Later on, after some time, by Bhagavan's Grace alone when I realized the nature of the Heart, the Self, I saw that in our ordinary consciousness, the light is always there. It is obscured at times by the suffering and fluctuations of the mind. I had been perfectly right to trust Sri Ramana's words. 

So the karmas have to be played out. Sri Ramana said that the body (mind) has come into existence and has to go through certain experiences. Joy, sadness, depression, love, relationships, interactions, pleasure, suffering, all are part of the it. And that is OK. So we are all in this boat together. All living beings --- gurus, teachers, students, enlightened, non-enlightened, etc. And I feel great love emanating and great friendship from all directions.

May the suffering and sorrow of all beings cease. May all engage in mutual help and mutual welfare.

Lots of Love
Blessings to the cosmos

May the great compassion of the sages be felt everywhere in in the heart of all beings

Love,
Harsha


 Gill Eardley ~ Allspirit  

There's nothing ahead

Rumi

Lovers think they are looking for each other,
but there is only one search: wandering
This world is wandering that, both inside one
transparent sky. In here
there is no dogma and no heresy.
The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did
about the future, Forget the future.
I'd worship someone who could do that.
On the way you may want to look back, or not,
but if you can say "There's nothing ahead",
there will be nothing there.
Stretch your arms and take hold the cloth of your clothes
with both hands. The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you don't belong with us.
When one of us gets lost, is not here, he must be inside us.
There's no place like that anywhere in the world.

from 'The Essential Rumi" Coleman Barks with John Moyne
Allspirit Website:
http://www.allspirit.co.uk
~ ~ ~  
Birdwings

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralysed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

'The Essential Rumi'
Translated by Coleman Barks/John Moyne

~ ~ ~
  An Irish Blessing

May you have many friends
and may they be as mature
in taste and health and color
and as sought after
as the contents of this glass.

May you have warm words on a cold evening,
a full moon on a dark night,
and the road downhill all the way to your door.

May every hair on your head turn into a candle
to light your way to heaven.
And may God and his Holy Mother
take the harm of the years away from you.

And...may you have no frost on your spuds,
no worms on your cabbage,
May your goat give plenty of milk,
and if you should buy a donkey
please, God, she be pregnant!
from "Against an Infinite Horizon" by Ronald Rolheiser:


Steve Toth ~ SufiMystic  

YOU

When I was young & just learning
how to speak
I discovered the word "you"
Such a wonderful word
You could call anybody "you"
& they would answer
Hello you
How are you?
The people would laugh
& ask "which you do you mean?"
You you I would tell them
& they would laugh some more
So that became my nickname
all around town
O look it's You You

I still like the word "you"
I still call everybody "you"
I love you
I adore you
I mean you
I can't get
enough of you


Terry Murphy ~ SufiMystic  

from "73 poems," by e e cummings

62

now does our world descend
the path to nothingness
(cruel now cancels kind:
friends turn to enemies)
therefore lament,my dream
and don a doer's doom

create now is contrive;
imagined,merely know
(freedom:what makes a slave)
therefore,my life,lie down
and more by most endure
all that you never were

hide,poor dishonoured mind
who thought yourself so wise;
and much could understand
concerning no and yes:
if they've become the same
it's time you unbecame

where climbing was and bright
is darkness and to fall
(now wrong's the only right
since brave are cowards all)
therefore despair,my heart
and die into the dirt

but from this endless end
of briefer each our bliss -
where seeing eyes go blind
(where lips forget to kiss)
where everything's nothing
- arise,my soul;and sing

e e cummings

red lotus by Alan Larus

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