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Nondual Highlights Issue #2400, Wednesday, February 22, 2006, Editor: Mark
You live in illusion and the appearance of things.
There is a reality, but you do not know this.
When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing.
And being nothing, you are everything.
That is all.
- Kalu Rinpoche, from After the Ecstasy the Laundry, by
Jack Kornfield, posted to DailyDharma
Silence of the mind, which is the result of
a deep understanding, that meditation is
a natural, spontaneous meditation which
just happens.
- Ramesh Balsekar, from A Net of Jewels, posted to
AlongTheWay
The secret of the 'receptive'
Must be sought in stillness;
Within stillness there remains
The potential for action.
If you force empty sitting,
Holding dead images in mind,
The tiger runs, the dragon flees ...
How can the 'elixir' be given?
- Sun Bu-er, posted to Poetic_Mysticism
Papaji, I live next door to a car repair shop by your house.
Sometimes I feel that my only impediment to spiritual progress is
the racket of the mechanics banging on the cars. How can we
remain quiet when the senses are continually drinking in the
environment? After all, that's their job.
When a child is learning how to walk, his parents give him
walking aids. When he grows up and learns how to walk
independently, he throws them away. So, in the beginning, if you
find that you are disturbed when you are meditating, it will be
better to change the environment. I will give you the following
advice. When you choose a house or an environment to live in, you
must first look at the neighbourhood. Is it full of garbage and
pigs? Noisy people? A fish market? A supermarket? You must avoid
all these things in the beginning. You can go to the forest to
meditate.
Then, when you have learned the art of meditation, you can sit in
the middle of a fish market or on Shalimar Crossing or Hazrat
Ganj. Once you have mastered the art of meditation, you will not
hear noise. You will not hear anything. When you are truly
meditating, you will be in the same state that you were while you
were sleeping. But you will be awake at the same time. This is
called sleeping while being awake. Until you have learned this,
it is better to avoid uncongenial environments. See what your
neighbourhood is like before you move in. The neighbourhood has
to be good. The neighbourhood is even more important than your
own apartment. Find people to live among who are following your
own way of life. Teachers like to be with teachers, philosophers
with philosophers, workers with fellow workers. They all very
much like to be with each other. But once you have learned the
art of true meditation, you can do whatever you like, wherever
you like.
- excerpt from interview with Papaji by Jeff Greenwald
When you sit in deep meditation, your sense of being is totally
infused with the knowledge "I am" only. In such a state
it will be revealed to you intuitively as to how and why your
sense of "I-am-ness" emerged.
- Sri Nisargadatta, from The Nectar of Immortality