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Nondual Highlights Issue #2338 Saturday, December 10, 2005, Editor: Mark
When the energy of love is strong in us, we can send it to beings
in all directions. But we must not think that love meditation is
only an act of imagination--we imagine our love as being like
waves of sound or light, or like a pure, white cloud that forms
slowly and gradually spreads out to envelope the whole world. A
true cloud produces rain. Sound and light penetrate everywhere,
and our love must do the same. We have to observe whether our
mind of love is present in our actual contact with others.
Practicing love meditation in the sitting position is only the
beginning.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, from the book,Teachings On Love,
published by Parallax Press.
Satsang
October 23, 2005
Om Om Om
(Silence)
N.: The Reality of the Self ever alone is. The real cannot be
made more so. This has been clearly taught by Sri Bhagavan. The
real cannot be made more real, and therefore, Self-Realization is
not new attainment. The Real can no more be made to be more real
than your existence can be made more existent. It is not
possible.
If the misidentification, which is purely ignorance, with what is
not the Self is abandoned, the Reality of the Self which alone is
shines brilliantly in its own Light. Therefore, efforts in
sadhana, or spiritual practice, inquiring to find out who you
are, are directed merely at dissolving misidentification. If the
misidentification with the body, the mind, and the sense of being
an individual entity, or ego, is abandoned, everything is already
accomplished.
Every kind of imagined limitation, and every limitation is only
imagined, has it roots and for its very substance, some
misidentification; some conception of oneself as an individual or
ego, endowed with some kind of form, which is usually the body.
Ask, though, yourself deeply if you are the body or if you can be
a body, and, if you inquire in such a manner, all the limitations
associated with being a body vanish, just as the
misidentification itself does.
Similar is it with the mind. Can you possibly be what you think,
whatever the thought is? It is imperative to be free from
thought. Can you be a thought? Where is the connection between
your Existence, which is of the nature of pure Consciousness, and
some thought?
What is it that seems to define an individual that is carved out,
as it were, from the space-like infinite Consciousness, our real
Being? What is it that makes for individuality? It cannot be
thought and the body, for these are appended to this so-called
individual as if they were clothing or sheaths wrapping it up.
What marks off the individual called "I"? Inquiring,
"Who am I?", seeing where this "I" rises, or
from what, is the inquiry according to Sri Bhagavan. Turning your
mind inward, examine keenly, what is it that is "I".
(Silence)
For Being itself, there is no appearance of ignorance and no
disappearance of ignorance, For Being itself, which is the
Reality, there is no birth of the unreality and no perishing or
death of the unreality. With and for the individual is the
illusion, the unreal. If you inquire and know yourself, at once
and for all eternity, you see That which alone exists. Nothing
has divided the forever- indivisible. The Nondual is purely
nondual. Nothing has broken off from it, to be outside of it or
divided within it. It is not correct to think that you are
separate from it in any degree. It is not correct to even think,
"That is a part of me," as if it were the most interior
part. Though it is proclaimed to be your inner Existence, you
must realize the Truth that you have no outer existence; that is,
no other existence than pure Existence, which is Brahman. It is
the only Self and the only thing that exists.
As it is the only thing that exists; in This, is full peace. In
This, is perfect Bliss. This Being-Consciousness-Bliss is unborn
and imperishable. It never changes. Perceive this changeless
Existence, by virtue of inquiry, to be the only Existence that
you are. If you see what you are, you see what is. If you
misperceive what you are and take yourself to be an individual,
there is something else also that is. Where there is a self,
there is something other. Where there is an individual, there is
differentiation. In the Knowledge of yourself, realize that there
is no individual just pure Being, and then there is nothing else,
and there is no differentiation.
(Silence)
If you inquire into the nature of the one who seems as if a bound
individual, you will find only bondage-free Being, and this
called Liberation or Self-Realization.
So, then, know yourself.
- Nome, posted to MillionPaths
everywhere
the aroma of God
begins to arrive
look at these people
not knowing their feet from head
as they begin to arrive
every soul is seeking His soul
every soul parched with thirst
they've all heard the voice
of the quencher of thirst
everyone tastes the love
everyone tastes the milk
anxious to know
from where the real mother
begins to arrive
waiting in fever
wondering ceaselessly
when will that final union
begin to arrive
Moslems and Christians and Jews
raising their hands to the sky
their chanting voice in unison
begin to arrive
how happy is the one
whose heart's ear
hears that special voice
as it begins to arrive
clear your ears my friend
from all impurity
a polluted ear
can never hear the sound
as it begins to arrive
if your eyes are marred
with petty visions
wash them with tears
your teardrops are healers
as they begin to arrive
keep silence
don't rush to finish your poem
the finisher of the poem
the creator of the word
will begin to arrive
- Rumi, Ghazal (Ode) 837, translation by Nader Khalili, Rumi,
Fountain of Fire, Cal-Earth Press, 1995, posted to Sunlight
It's that
There's nothing that you do.
There's nothing that you don't do.
It's that
It's all there right in front of you.
Nothing is moved away from.
Nothing is moved toward.
Nothing arising is resisted.
Anything arising is beheld with full intensity.
Such is the moving with grace through
the fire of living.
- Bill Rishel, posted to AdvaitaToZen