Click here to go to the next issue.

XANMA

"When I see that I am nothing, this is wisdom.
When I see that I am everything, this is love.
Between those two my life moves."

Nisargadatta Maharaj
________________________________________________________________________

MELODY

Hello to old and new friends.....

GYLA wrote:

There appears to be a great deal of intellectual give and take that goes
on here. I wandered into your midst in the middle of some sort of flash
point, but it seems that there is much compassion and tolerance here. I
hope that you
will extend them to me.

and from ANTOINE

I am here to share, learn and grow,

Been a while, hello to all of you,

I try to read and write to this list in a state of deliberate and
practiced awareness.

My participation on this list is, and has been a form of meditation in
writing and reading in english.

Thank you for giving me, becoming you, this opportunity to be read and
corrected, as well as that of reading you, becoming me.

MELODY

Your gentle and soothing voices entering this room today remind me very
much of a poem I wrote last year, during a turbulent time much like this
one here these past few days. I offer it to you in gratitude and as a
welcome:


And When the Storm is Over
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


After the fury, the chaos,
the thunder...

When the rains have slowed
from their pelting fury
to that of a quiet weeping....

When the winds of destruction
have wrecked their final havoc,
and left nothing standing
in their wake,

a peaceful calm begins to stir.

Rising
....to face the day after,

a whisper says,

"What a beautiful morning!"
________________________________________________________________________

HARSHA

I wanted to share what I wrote yesterday on tolerance of other
perspectives and modes of expression that might differ from our own.
It seems to me that the Same Self-Light appears to reflect differently
and uniquely through each embodied soul. Our strength of conviction,
when it leads to belittlement of others, reveals our own attachments
which obscure Self-Knowledge. Our strength of conviction, when it leads
to deep and abiding faith in the words of our Gurus and Scriptures leads
to Self-Realization. Our Sages, based on their strength of experience
and understanding (and not just intellectual knowledge of scriptures)
have given us the pearls of wisdom and taught Ahimsa Parama Dharma.
Nonviolence is the first principle on all yoga paths, however one may
conceive them. The fact is that great Sages rise in every tradition and
Truth is not a monopoly of any particular system of thought as Truth
cannot be captured by thought. The Same Truth which is the Light of Self
and only Pure Self-Awareness that is Sat-Chit-Ananda is reflected
through the appearance of different mediums and hence communicated and
spoken of differently. This is demonstrated by the number of
commentaries on each major scripture. Let us make space for others
to express in an attitude of understanding. In making space for others
we only make space for ourselves and we are no where other than in the
Space of Awareness.
________________________________________________________________________

JERRY

This list community has not succeeded because of the heavy hand of a
Diana. She is far more dangerous than a thousand Tims. Her counsel was
to seek legal remedies as drastic as possible, instead of a show of
compassion.

MELODY

Of course it was, Jerry. And to my ears, she explained why. She told
us her story. The story of how no one seemed to care enough to take
action. The story in which her community told her (to her ears,
essentially) "So what if you suffered."

This trouble this week was another chance for her to hear, "what you
suffered matters." "It matters so much that we will make sure it never
happens again.", or so it seemed.

*To her* I imagine, we may have done just what her 'other' spiritual
community did.....minimize her suffering.

When I had a very similar experience a few years ago on a mail list, and
reacted even more strongly than Diana, I wanted to smash the face of my
*new* abuser.

Thankfully, instead, Sandeep wrote to me privately.

He saw my heart underneath my righteous anger. Though I first told him
to jump in the lake (and not to write me again!), my reflecting on his
words and his invitation to free myself from the past (so that I could
taste today for what it is), has been one of the biggest blessings of my
life.

I don't hate Diane. Diane is me, and I love that Xena, Warrior Princess
who was willing to kick any one's ass who dares to threaten the
vulnerable, or seems not to care.

I hope she returns.
________________________________________________________________________

JERRY

...No one could stay in this business if
they took stuff personally. If I took it personally this
would not be the community it is. There's stuff I like and
don't like, as people know! but it comes and goes and my
undying concern is that everyone is okay, Tim, Diana, and
everyone. That's really all I care about as we interact in
this big room with the huge refrigerator on which all our
drawings are stuck.
________________________________________________________________________

SARLO
>...We might even reasonably expect it, given the apparently high level >of
understanding of matters nondual and psychological here. And since, >in a
sense, we are all reflecting each other and partaking of the >collective
(un)consciousness in individual but somewhat similar ways, >his failure to
accept responsibility and look into his stuff is all our >failure. Or no? At
least my belief that this is so is a factor in my >sadness.

JAN
The saying "man know thyself" is what applies here. Properties of
character always contain opposites like tolerance/intolerance,
patience/impatience, courage/cowardice. The relative weight of these
properties can vary as can the balance between the opposites. From this
perspective it is easy to see each character is unique but nevertheless
constructed from the same building blocks. So the matter isn't success
or failure, it is a matter of compliance with generally accepted rules
and a matter of interpretation of what is accepted and what isn't. In a
case where one temporarily loses self-control, it is easy to rationalize
behavior when back to one's senses and say "no harm done" or "it was a
lab test in compassion". Not blaming has the advantage of not having to
forgive, being mirrorlike under all circumstances. Getting hurt can be
explained as duality; in ultimate Aloneness even the sense of touch is
absent as this sense is the "last reminder" of duality.
________________________________________________________________________

TIM H.
I agree that there are somethings worth fighting for
however, we must be aware of the inherent trap of a
perpetual battle based in 'hate' of 'becoming' the
'thing' that we 'hate'... thus, all we have
accomplished is placing ourselves on the 'other side'
of the equation when, we would all agree, that the
goal should have been to eliminate the equation 'all'
and 'together'.
________________________________________________________________________

GLORIA

>I have very often appreciated, tho sometimes AFTER the fact, Jerry's
>legendary neutrality which creates a space for allowing such >resolutions to
occur.

DAN

And I appreciate the openness of your response, Glo.

G:

>Taking nonduality as a license to do harm to another is the grossest
>misunderstanding of it there is.

D:

Taking nonduality as anything seems to me to be a misunderstanding.
Action brings reaction. This turns the wheel of karma. Who is not upon
this wheel? To react quickly, not to react, to judge, not to judge...
the wheel turns ceaselessly, does it not?

To prevent wrong and promote good, to regulate the community, to
maintain order... this is the age-old project of civilization. Each
ordered social group determines it rules and roles, as it decides who
needs to be defended and how. To protect the innocent, to make safety
for the vulnerable, to understand how to do this while fostering
compassion... this is the challenge for the community.

Judge not lest yet be judged by the same measure by which ye judge. So
regulate the community, but from a quiet place of nonjudgment.

Awareness includes and trancends emotion and intellect. Neither emotion
nor intellect work appropriately when attempting to drive awareness.
When judgment is heaped upon judgment, the simple truth of the moment
may become obscured by drama, intensity, assertions. We each observe
and our observations reflect one to oneself.

The Tao is like water, going where persons disdain to go. Truth is like
the sands of the Ganges, rich and poor walk upon it equally. Awareness
is like space, empty, open, and spacious.
________________________________________________________________________

CHRISTIANA

Petros, Jerry and all.. I was just going to mention that Eckhart Tolle
was going to be in L.A (then Seattle, San Diego and New York)... and
then I notice that he is also speaking at the Inner Directions
conference in March.

I've just spent a blessed evening with him. At an intensive and then
afterwards. What a clear powerful sweet man he is. I feel bathed in
light, stillness and a simple joyful seeing.. and this on the heels of
an intensive with Gangaji and Eli.

I spoke with several people ..none knew of your Salon Jerry.. but all
are interested. Eckhart is very simple.. he wouldn't even have a webpage
except for his publicist. http://www.namastepublishing.com/

The book is written in such a clear current.. he endeavors to use
language which is not too laden with previous associations.
________________________________________________________________________

XANMA

more from *The Door of Everything*;

"Loving your neighbor as yourself ... has a lot to do with silently
holding to your vision of the Christ in him without holding him
responsible for acting in accordance with this high ideal. He may be
filled with shortcomings, but you are to realize that someday they will
all be healed ... He will rise up from his humanhood like the legendary
phoenix arising from its own dead ashes ... all the ages of lost
wandering since he fell from the Garden of Eden along with you will be
no more than a flicker on the timeless face of the eternal cosmos."

"You are not likely to soar through the Door of Freedom yourself if you
have been weighted down with the belief that you must drag your neighbor
along. ... Rather, I would have you literally relax into an awareness
of Presence letting there be light within while you contemplate the
truth for all on earth, expanding your vision to impersonal
consciousness and including them all."
________________________________________________________________________

JERRY

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE (1941)

R.H. BLYTH

Selections from Chapter 14: Don Quixote

Even pleasant things and happy times may contain something
good and profitable for the soul. This attitude to life, of
willing acceptance of all that comes, or rather, all that we
come to, for our attitude to life must be active and not
passive, is expressed as follows, when Don Quixote first
sallies forth in search of adventure, taking no thought for
the morrow:

"He rode on his way, going where it pleased his horse to
carry him, for he believed that in this consisted the very
soul of adventure." (Part One, Chapter 2).

The same attitude of mind is shown in Chapter 50 of the
First Part: we see before us

"...a vast lake of boiling pitch, in which a great number of
snakes, serpents, crocodiles and many other ferocious and
fearful creatures are wallowing about: a voice wails from
the middle of the lake, 'Whosoever thou art, O Knight, who
surveyest this horrible mere, if thou wishest to obtain the
blessing that lies beneath these gloomy waters, show the
might of they valorous breast, and throw thyself into these
black, burning waves; doest thou not so, thou art not worthy
to see the great wonders of the seven castles and their
seven fairies, that lie beneath these lugubrous surges.' No
sooner have these awful words ceased than without a moment's
consideration, without a thought of the danger he runs,
without even taking off his massive arms, commending himself
to God and to his mistress, he dashes into the middle of the
boiling lake. And just when he does not know what will
happen to him, he finds himself among flowery fields beyond
those of Eliseum."

...

Everything depends on the mind. It is the mind which decides
whether a thing is a basin or a helmet. The mind is a
conjurer, a magician, a wizard which can change one thing
into another.

"So it is that what looks to you like a barber's basin, I
see clearly to be Mambrino's helmet, and another man may
take it for something else." Part One, Ch. 25)

The mind can change day to night, grief to joy, hell to
heaven.

"'Let God grant it thus,' answered Don Quixote, 'as I desire
and you have need, and may he be a wretch who thinks himself
one.'" (Part One, Ch. 21)

This freedom of the mind, freedom of the will, consists in
following one's instincts, disdaining all causes and
effects, all rationalizing, to act like life itself which
lives the life of life.

"'This is a good point,' replied Don Quixote, 'this is the
essence of my manner of life; for a knight errant to run mad
for some actual reason or other -- there would be nothing
praiseworthy or meritorious in that! The perfection of it
consists in running mad without the least constraint or
necessity.'" (Part One, Ch, 25)

But for all this talking and boasting there is nothing of
egotism in Don Quixote. He is in a state of Muga, a state in
which he himself is nothing, he seeks nothing for himself,
his personality is always dissolved in the valour and glory
of the action itself. So when Sancho says,

"'These are more than twenty, and we only two, or rather one
and a half.' 'I am worth a hundred', replied Don Quixote."

and we feel that this is an understatement. Don Quixote
underestimates himself; he is worth more than a hundred in
any combat. But all this spiritual strength does not derive
from Don Quixote himself but from his ideal as embodied in
Dulcinea, and so he tells the doubting Sancho Panza with
great fury:

"'Do you not know, you vulgar rascal, you rogue, that were
it not for the valour she infuses into my arm, I would not
have the strength to kill a flea? Tell me, viper-tongued
villain, who has regained the kingdom, beheaded the giant,
and made you marquis (for all this is to me as done and
finished) but the power of Dulcinea which uses my arm as
instrument of her deeds? She fights in me, she is victorious
in me, and I live and breathe in her, receive life and being
itself from her.'" (Part One, Ch. 30)
________________________________________________________________________

GREG

I agree that avoiding the "I" word can address the conditioning aspect
of the belief in an independent I. That is only surface-level. The
I-sense is deeper than the I-word. [snip]

DAN

Also, maybe this is why prophets would not say "I" am telling you this,
but "G-D is saying this". [snip]

GREG

I agree on all this. Actually, in the original post, I was referring to
a teacher who polices others' use of language. [snip]

SKYE

kinda like the suicidal twin, kills sister by mistake. :-)
If i'm gonna knock myself off 'I' will do it myself, thank
you very much....humph

i went to collect a parcel at my post office oneday and the posty said
"would the lady please sign here!"....WELL!....the language policeman in
me just hit the roof! :-)))
________________________________________________________________________

LYNNE

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.

"Yes, Piglet?"

"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw;
"I just wanted to be sure of you."

top of page