Click here to go to the next issue

Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day

#1686 - Friday, January 23, 2004 - Editor: Gloria Lee

Nothing

 Nothing sings in our bodies
 like breath in a flute.
 It dwells in the drum.
 I hear it now
 that slow beat
 like when a voice said to the dark,
 let there be light,
 let there be ocean
 and blue fish
 born of nothing
 and they were there.
 I turn back to bed.
 The man there is breathing.
 I touch him
 with hands already owned by another world
 Look, they are desert,
 they are rust. They have washed the dead.
 They have washed the just born.
 They are open.
 They offer nothing.
 Take it.
 Take nothing from me.
 There is still a little life
 left inside this body,
 a little wildness here
 and mercy
 and it is the emptiness
 we love, touch, enter in one another
 and try to fill.   ~ Linda Hogan ~


Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Nothing.html

Web archive of Panhala postings: www.panhala.net/Archive/Index.html
To subscribe to Panhala, send a blank email to Panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.com   music link (left button to play, right button to save)  

A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
http://www.advaita.org


Only those who are able to see their own face without a mirror will
be able to see their true nature.  What kind of seeing is this?  To
see without the mirror is to see not with eyes seeing objects but as
THAT which sees.  It is the in-seeing or insight by Consciousness
itself in which there is no one who is seeing.


~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~


When thought, discipline and experience have done their utmost and
finally accept utter defeat, they then cease to function altogether. 
That state is beyond both words and silence.  It is neither one thing
nor another.  The Absolute noumenon cannot be experienced.  To know
it is to BE it.

Armstrong Ridge - Allspirit  

Stephen Mitchell, Tao Te Ching, Part 2
 
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
 
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.
 
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

Kizaemon Tea-Bowl, Korea, 16th Century (used for Japanese Tea Ceremony, 17th Century). http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n2/gallery/roth_r/slides/figures/Scan38.jpg

In his book The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty, Soetsu Yanagi discusses the The Kizaemon Tea-bowl, a bowl made in Korea in the 16th century and selected by Japanese Tea masters in the early 17th century to be used as an artifact in the Tea ceremony:

This single Tea-bowl is considered to be the finest in the world. . . . to contain the essence of Tea. . . .

In 1931 I was shown this bowl in company with my friend, the potter Kanjiro Kawai. For a long time I had wished to see this Kizaemon bowl. I had expected to see that "essence of Tea," the seeing eye of Tea masters, and to test my own perception; for it is the embodiment in miniature of beauty, of the love of beauty, of the philosophy of beauty, and of the relationship of beauty and life. It was within box after box, five deep, buried in wool and wrapped in purple silk.

When I saw it, my heart fell. A good Tea-bowl, yes, but how ordinary! So simple, no more ordinary thing could be imagined. There is not a trace of ornament, not a trace of calculation. It is just a Korean food bowl . . . that a poor man would use everyday. . . .
  A typical thing for his use; costing next to nothing . . . an article without the flavour of personality; used carelessly by its owner; bought without pride; something anyone could have bought anywhere and everywhere. . . . The kiln was a wretched affair; the firing careless. Sand had stuck to the pot, but nobody minded; no one invested the thing with any dreams. It is enough to make one give up working as a potter. . . .

But that was as it should be. The plain and unagitated, the uncalculated, the harmless, the straightforward, the natural, the innocent, the humble, the modest: where does beauty lie if not in these qualities? The meek, the austere, the unornate?they are the natural characteristics that gain man's affection and respect.

More than anything else, this pot is healthy. Made for a purpose, made to do work. Sold to be used in everyday life. . . . Only a commonplace practicality can guarantee health in something made. . . .

Emerging from a squalid kitchen, the Ido bowl took its seat on the highest throne of beauty. The Koreans laughed. That was to be expected, but both laughter and praise are right, for had they not laughed they would not have been the people who could have made such bowls . . . The Koreans made rice bowls; the Japanese masters made them into Tea-bowls. . . .   Live Journal of Lee Love - Friday, January 16th, 2004   http://www.livejournal.com/users/togeika/  

Scott Reeves - Awareness-The Way to Love   EMPTINESS
Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the Silence of the
monastery would be shattered.

This would upset the disciples; not the Master, who seemed just as content
with the noise as with the Silence.

To his protesting disciples he said one day, "Silence is not the absence of
sound, but the absence of self."

Anthony de Mello, S.J.

MORSEL: He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the
universe. --Marcus Aurelius   ~ ~ ~   APPEARANCES   The Master always frowned on anything that seemed sensational. "The
divine," he claimed, "is only found in the ordinary."

To a disciple who was attempting forms of asceticism that bordered on the
bizarre the Master was heard to say, "Holiness is a mysterious thing: The
greater it is, the less it is noticed."

Anthony de Mello, S.J.



MORSEL: God has no religion. --Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
 

Jerry Katz - NDSN

King of kirtan Krishna Das speaks frankly about success, self-acceptance,
and the power of just showing up. (Shri Neem Karoli Baba) never
encouraged using that kind of willfulness. It had to be a natural magnetic
attraction. You have to be doing things because you want to do them. Not
because you think they are good for you. You are falling in love with who
you really are. You are falling in love with what lives within you.. And when
we were with Maharaj-ji that way, he ravished you with his beauty. You
could not take your eyes off him! 

There's no difference now. When I sing with a thousand people, it's no
different than singing for him, alone in a room and singing for him. It's that
presence that I'm singing to and entering into, not his personality presence,
but the presence of that love, that compassion, that sweetness. -more-

Ben Hassine - AwakenedAwareness - New Group!   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/awakenedawareness/    

Typed from Open to the Unknown -Dialogues in Delphi-, Jean Klein,  page 53-55   more info: www.jeanklein.org  

Silence, the stillness of which we are speaking, does not belong to  the mind. The mind is a functional tool which works in discontinuity.  So from time to time the mind can be still, but the nature of the  mind is function. Consciousness, silence, stillness, is a continuum.  This continuum is not affected by the functional mind.   There are moments in life when there is no anticipation or thinking  about the past, when we spontaneously live in silence. But because we  only know ourselves in activity and are not informed otherwise, we  take the silent moment for an absence, an absence of activity. Then,  because we do not know the silence behind activity, when we follow  the inner need to be still or to meditate, we get stuck on the level  of the mind as we try not to think, try to empty the mind of objects  in an effort to create silence. But this absence of activity is also  an object. Many books have been written about stilling the mind,  stilling thoughts, but all this is effort, a waste of energy. A  disciplined mind can never be a free mind.  

When we are invited to meditate, we can go into meditation as we go  into a laboratory, on the condition that we already know that the  meditator is the stuff of the mind, a mind which is looking for an  experience of God, or beauty, or silence. In the realization that the  mind can never reach what is beyond it, the meditator has no more  role to play, and there is no object of meditation. When this is  profoundly understood, there is a spontaneous giving up of the reflex  to try to experience what is beyond experience, and one is in  meditation, continual meditation. Understanding is the only way to  reach beyond the mind.  

In meditation without a meditator there is no introversion or  extroversion. There is a popular image in India of a monkey covering  its eyes, nostrils and ears in an attempt to meditate, and there is  another monkey laughing at him. The organs --seeing, hearing,  tasting, smelling, touching-- go on functioning until the end of our  life, but this has nothing to do with meditation. In meditation the  eyes are open, but there is nothing seen; there is what could be  called a sense of visibility. There is hearing, but there is nothing  heard; there is audibility, and so on. In other words, there is  seeing and hearing, without a specific object seen or heard. But the  background, silence, continues.  

In this laboratory you should also be aware of the coming and going  of your breath. Neither control nor direct it; simply listen to it,  be aware of it. I would say, go knowingly into the process of  breathing; go knowingly into the exhalation, which is a natural  giving up of all effort. Let the exhalation die in silence, and let  the inner need of the body to inhale come up. In this breathing the  whole psychosomatic body comes to a very deep relaxation, and there  comes a moment when there is a spontaneous giving up of the process  of breathing, and we remain as objectless presence, as objectless  awareness. What is important is that we have a glimpse of this  objectless presence so that we can later recognise it. It happens  very often before the body wakes up in the morning or in the interval  between two thoughts or between two perceptions. And it is also in  the state of admiration or wonderment or astonishment. Finally, there  is a switchover, and one is established in objectless presence in all  activities, whether sleeping, eating, thinking or walking. It is a  constant mediation. One must be informed of this and keep it in view,  or meditation will become a bad habit, and one day you will find you  are blocked in your so-called meditation, stuck in a subtle subject- object relationship which you cannot break out of.  

Vioroca Weissman - MillionPaths  

Jean Klein - the inner nature of your ultimate goal

"All disciplines are fixations: discipline excludes everything, except the one
thing that one wishes to concentrate upon. Thus one establishes a
dictatorship over oneself and all understanding is jeopardized. What is
absolutely necessary is attention without strain. When I observe myself, I am
really forced to admit that every day I am the prisoner of a thousand
unsatisfied desires, or desires whose satisfaction brings me no permanent
bliss. So it seems to me that instead of endless running from one desire to
another, it would be better to stop and examine the true nature of desire. 

If this investigation is successful you will penetrate the nature of the true aim
of all desire. What any desire really aims at, is a state of non desire. This non
desire is a state in which we demand absolutely nothing. Thus it is a state of
extreme abundance, of fullness. This fullness is revealed as being bliss and
peace. You now know that you are really seeking nothing else but fullness
and absolute peace. 

Now that you have understood the inner nature of your ultimate goal, you
perceive that the ultimate goal is, in fact, not a goal, that is to say an end
towards which you strive, but that the ultimate state can only be the
consequence of relaxing and letting go. Liberation is not to be obtained by
collecting and accumulating, but by being rooted in a state of being which is
truly ours and in which we live constantly without knowing it. Even if we
wished to, we could not live for a single moment outside of this state." 

JEAN KLEIN 

  Viorica Weissman - MillionPaths  

THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN                             

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The long evening shadows were over the still waters, and the river was becoming quiet after the day. Fish were jumping out of the water, and the heavy birds were coming to roost among the big trees. There was not a cloud in the sky, which was silverblue. A boat full of people came down the river; they were singing and clapping and a cow called in the distance. There was the scent of evening. A garland of marigold was moving with the water, which sparkled in the setting sun. How beautiful and alive it all was—the river, the birds, the trees and the villagers.

We were sitting under a tree, overlooking the river. Near the tree was a small temple, and a few lean cows wandered about. The temple was clean and well swept, and the flowering bush was watered and cared for. A man was performing his evening rituals, and his voice was patient and sorrowful.. Under the last rays of the sun, the water was the color of newborn flowers.

Presently someone joined us and began to talk of his experiences. He said he had devoted many years of his life to the search for God, had practiced many austerities and renounced many things that were dear. He had also helped considerably in social work, in building a school, and so on. He was interested in many things, but his consuming interest was the finding of God; and now, after many years, his voice was being heard, and it guided him in little as well as big things. He had no will of his own, but followed the inner voice of God. It never failed him, though he often corrupted its clarity; his prayer was ever for the purification of the vessel, that it might be worthy to receive.

Can that which is immeasurable be found by you and me? Can that which is not of time be searched but by that thing which is fashioned of time? Can a diligently practiced discipline lead us to the unknown? Is there a means to that which has no beginning and no end? Can that reality be caught in the net of our desires? What we can capture is the projection of the known; but the unknown cannot be captured by the known. That which is named is not the unnamable, and by naming we only awaken the conditioned responses. These responses, however noble and pleasant, are not of the real. We respond to stimulants, but reality offers no stimulant: it is.

The mind moves from the known to the known, and it cannot reach out into the unknown. You cannot think of something you do not know; it is impossible. What you think about comes out of the known, the past, whether that past be remote, or the second that has just gone by. This past is thought, shaped and conditioned by many influences, modifying itself according to circumstances and pressures, but ever remaining a process of time. Thought can only deny or assert, it cannot discover the new.

  http://www.lifepositive.com/

top of page