Nonduality Salon Highlights, #1988

I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts
of life, and see if I could not learn what it had
to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived.

~Henry David Thoreau 'Walden'

Human experience is our laboratory for higher experiment. The world is our school for spiritual discovery. The vicissitudes of personal circumstance are our field for ethical achievement. The great books written by illumined individuals from antiquity till today are our guides.

Those who complain that their opportunities for meditation, study, travel to India, and so on are nil, and that therefore they have no possibility of spiritual growth, need not despair. The common life regarded in an uncommon light, the ordinary activities engaged in from a different standpoint, become part of a spiritual path through which development is possible.

If life is a process of gaining education through experience and reflection, it is also a process of correcting errors and approaching truth, of clearing illusions and perceiving realities.

The ego naturally and understandably revolts bitterly against calamities which are put upon it by chance, by destiny, or by any other apparent cause outside itself. The quester must not accept this emotion but ought to separate himself from it. In this way he advances at a spurt on his quest.

Life presents him from time to time with occasions for improving character and strengthening its weaker places. But whether he accepts them as such, or lets his ego follow its habitual trends without opposition, is his choice.

The various experiences through which we have passed, reflectively and analytically instruct us; the immoderate desires we have checked repeatedly, strengthen us; and the wandering thoughts we have concentrated determinedly, tranquillize us. Life never runs to waste if it thus is attuned to the notes of this quest.

Life is our real school, for it provides the chance to acquire virtue and discipline evil, to nurture the mind and clarify its thoughts.

Today, a haiku by the Irish poet Gabriel Rosenstock.

In its three lines, this haiku accomplishes what all haiku tries to do: It stuns you into silence. On the surface, it is a snapshot of an instant in nature, but the radiance of the sunlight transforming the leaf that has abandoned itself suggests so much more...

Ivan============

The Divine is experienced by the heart.

The intellect, at best, can only trail behind
and take notes.

faint sunlight

By Gabriel Rosenstock
(1949 - )

faint sunlight
injecting the veins
of a falling leaf

-- from Haiku: The Art of Disappearing, by Gabriel Rosenstock (unpublished manuscript)

photo by Sam Pasciencier, http://home.hccnet.nl/sam.pas/transfer/leaving+.jpg

I remember being astounded by the sheer number of them my first full winter here in Wisconsin, last year...and now they are being revealed again, in the nakedness of the trees; nests, many nests... twiggy homes of the little winged creatures. They were there in the Spring, hidden. The lush green foliage protected the miracles of motherhood...birth...first flight. They are abandoned now, of course...but I can't help noticing that sometimes it takes the falling away of all those protective leaves...bareness...openness...simplicity...to reveal "Home".

"The practice of mindfulness defuses our negativity, aggression, and
turbulent emotions, which may have been gathering power over many
lifetimes. Rather than suppressing emotions or indulging in them, here
it is important to view them—your thoughts and whatever arises—with
an acceptance and generosity that are as open and spacious as possible.
Tibetan masters say that this wise generosity has the flavor of
boundless space, so warm and cozy that you feel enveloped and protected
by it, as if by a blanket of sunlight."

~Sogyal Rinpoche

From the book, "Glimpse After Glimpse," published by Harper.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0062511262/angelinc

SNOW ANGELS

Nazeon said, "Life is but melting snow."

Why are you spending so much time building a snowman for a lover? He
will be gone with the morning sun. Why are you worrying about what the
snow lady said about you at the party last night? Her body will melt
before you plot your revenge. All these phantom creatures will one day
disappear in the light. You too. Why fuss so? Better to open your arms,
lie down in the fluff, and make a snow angel. Take her with you
throughout your days. And as she melts in joy, let all that worryin'
melt right along with her. Spend your days in play, in laughter, in
love. Life's ending sky will smother you in frozen rain soon enough.
Open. All the way. Let the supposed hurts and betrayals go. They are
only holding you back from sledding to freedom.

~dg
posted on Daily Dharma

“Everything is made of our Mother, the Earth. Man is part of the living landscape, made of the same natural processes and laws. His body, his thoughts, and his spirit are the product of that landscape; that sun, soil, wind, and air. We are slowly learning to think in terms of a new science called ecology, in terms of inevitable relationships - to recognize that all living things under the sun - the clouds, the rocks, the soil, the streams; and the people and the spirit of the people - are all of the same going concern.”

Henry Wallace “Rain falls, wind blows, plants bloom, leaves mature and are blown away; these phenomena are all interrelated with causes and conditions, are brought about by them, and disappear as the causes and conditions change.”

Buddha (B.C. 568-488)
"At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the plashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons."

Carl Gustav Jung
"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky."

Rabindranath Tagore

posted on AlphaWorld

Vouchsafe your “gift-waves”, O Gurus,
That all phenomenal appearances shall dawn upon me as Psycic-Heat

Vouchsafe your “gift-waves”, O Gurus,
That all phenomenal appearances shall dawn upon me as Illusion

Vouchsafe your “gift-waves”, O Gurus,
That all phenomenal appearances shall dawn upon me as Clear Light

Vouchsafe your “gift-waves”, O Gurus,
That all phenomenal appearances shall dawn upon me as the three bodies of reality

Vouchsafe your “gift-waves”, O Gurus,
That I may be transferred higher and higher

Vouchsafe your “gift-waves”, O Gurus,
That I may be empowered to reach the highest goal.