Nonduality Salon Highlights, #1989

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Praise Them

The birds don't alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment collects
in chill air. Be glad.
They equal their due
moment never begging,
and enter ours
without parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We're the nervous ones.
If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn't hear
what singing completes us?

"What defines the unawake self more than anything else is its total and absolute fascination with itself."
~ Adyashanti
posted on nondualnow

"Have we shared this together? Because it is your
life, not my life. It is your life of sorrow, of
tragedy, of confusion, guilt, reward, punishment. All
that is your life. If you are serious you have tried
to untangle all this. You have read some book, or
followed a teacher, or listened to somebody, but the
problem remains. These problems will exist as long as
the human mind moves within the field of the activity
of the self; that activity of the self must create
more and more and more problems. When you observe,
when you become extraordinarily aware of this activity
of the self, then the mind becomes extraordinarily
quiet, sane, healthy, holy. And from that silence our
life in everyday activity is
transformed."

~J. Krishnamurti

From personal notes, source unknown.

posted on Daily Dharma

`A Brahmin was having his bath in the river. Then he noticed a
scorpion almost drowning. So he lifted the scorpion and put it on the
ground. But before he could put it on the ground, the scorpion bit
his hand. Many people were sitting around and some said to him, `What
have you achieved? You have spared him only to get yourself bitten'.
His answer was, `I did what I had to do according to my nature. The
scorpion did what it had to do according to its nature'.

---------------

`A rabbi who had the Understanding lived in a tiny room with no
stools to sit on and a desk which served as his bed at night. Anybody
who came to see him had to sit on the ground or stand to talk. One of
his visitors said, `Rabbi, where is your furniture?' The rabbi
said, `Where is yours?' The visitor replied, `I am only passing
through.' The rabbi replied, `So am I.'

www.plotinus.com
posted on MillionPaths

"I see what you too could see, here and now, but for the wrong focus of your attention.You give no attention to your self. Your mind is all with things, people and ideas, never with your self. Bring your self into focus, become aware of your own existence. See how you function, watch the motives and results of your actions. Study the prison you have built around yourself, by inadvertence." - Nisargadatta

“Events in time and space - birth and death, cause and effect - these may be taken as one; but the body and the embodied are not of the same order of reality. The body exists in time and space, transient and limited, while the dweller is timeless and spaceless, eternal and all-pervading. To identify the two is a grievous mistake and the cause of endless suffering. You can speak of the mind and body as one, but the body-mind is not the underlying reality.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Desires are just waves in the mind. You know a wave when you see one. A desire is just a thing among many. I feel no urge to satisfy it, no action needs to be taken on it. Freedom from desire means this: the compulsion to satisfy is absent.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj

“If I ask you what is the taste of your mouth, all you can do is to say: it is neither sweet nor bitter nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what is remains is reality, simple and solid.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Pleasure and pain alternate. Happiness is unshakable. What you can seek and find is not the real thing. Find what you have never lost, find the inalienable.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Discover all you are not. Body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, time, space, being and not-being, this or that - nothing concrete or abstract you can point out to is you. A mere verbal statement will not do - you may repeat a formula endlessly without any result whatsoever. You must watch yourself continuously - particularly your mind - moment by moment, missing nothing. This witnessing is essential for the separation of the self from the not-self.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj
posted on AlphaWorld

A light poem from someone named Ivan today.

I hope you enjoy...

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