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#2615 - Monday, October 16, 2006 - Editor: Gloria Lee  

It is not necessary to meet your guru on the
physical plane. The guru is not external.

--Neem Karoli Baba

 


From 'The Buddhist Idea of a Perfect Society'
by Ajahn Sumedho

Transcendence means we no longer cling to the world.
It doesn't mean floating up in the sky and floating away
from it. It means we live for a lifetime within this human
form among all the sensory conditions but are no longer
deluded by them.

It means we use our ability to reflect and contemplate on our
existence to the point where we see it clearly as it is. That is
what we call transcending the world. So one who is transcending
the world can still act and live in the world but in a very clear and
pure way because the world is no longer a delusion. We are not
expecting the world to be anything other than what it is. And the
world is the mind itself, this mind.
  Full article at:
http://www.bodhinyanarama.net.nz/sumedho1.htm

Gill Eardley on Allspirit
 


  There are two ways of looking at rituals. On the one hand, rituals are an external expression of our inner state. And on the other hand, we strengthen and reinforce our inner state by these external actions. Of course, in reality there are not two things, but rather a unified whole. As we practice together sincerely, we become increasingly aware that such notions as internal and external cannot be separated. This awareness is actually the growing realization of the real harmony that underlies everything.


--Taizan Maezumi in On Zen Practice
 


photos by Alan Larus http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/shores/32.htm        

The secret of beginning a life of deep awareness and sensitivity lies in our willingness to pay attention. Our growth as conscious, awake human beings is marked not so much by grand gestures and visible renunciations as by extending loving attention to the minutest particulars of our lives. Every relationship, every thought, every gesture is blessed with meaning through the wholehearted attention we bring to it. In the complexities of our minds and lives we easily forget the power of attention, yet without attention we live only on the surface of existence. It is just simple attention that allows us truly to listen to the song of a bird, to see deeply the glory of an autumn leaf, to touch the heart of another and be touched. We need to be fully present in order to love a single thing wholeheartedly. We need to be fully awake in this moment if we are to receive and respond to the learning inherent in it.


--Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield, in Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart
 


    "When you want to follow what is right but cannot do so, remember
that your authentic nature can easily do so."
    "Let your mind and your spirit go silent. Then there is no
movement, there is no anxious searching for salvation. You sit
there very quietly and you understand what you have been wrongly
doing - trying to excuse your behavior in order to keep your
artificial identity going. The plain fact is, there is never
any excuse for bad behavior. There's no excuse for any human
being hurting any other human being. There is no excuse. Never."
  --Vernon Howard
                    Your Power of Natural Knowing, p. 161


Kindness  

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.  

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.  

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.  

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.  

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~  

(Words From Under the Words: Selected Poems)  

for my daughter....

 
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Kindness.html

 


  Marvin Gaye - Mercy Video
 
Social Change at the Base - Thich Nhat Hanh video


Love and regards,

Ben, posted to Awakened Awareness

PS There are a lot of Thich Nhat Hanh videos here:

video google Thich Nhat Hanh

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