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#2674 - Monday,
December 18, 2006 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nondual Highlights
I exhausted myself,
looking.
No one ever finds this by trying.
I melted in it and came home,
where every jar is full,
but no one drinks.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
posted to Along the Way
The Wisdom of Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj
"What is the worth of a happiness for which you must strive
and work?
Real happiness is spontaneous and effortless."
....................................................
"Delayed reaction is wrong reaction. Thinking, feeling and
action must
be a unity and happen together with the situation requiring
them." posted to A Net of Jewels
"Enlightenment
is not separate from washing dishes or growing lettuce.
To learn how to live each moment of our daily life in deep
mindfulness
and concentration is the practice."
--Thich Nhat Hanh
posted to Daily Dharma
Alan Larus http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/shores/red_cabin.htm
"If you just stopped
thinking for a while and sat back to reflect on your
own mind, you would be surprised to realize that you are at
peace....
You were born with this
peace-nature of the mind; otherwise you would
not be what you are would you? You did not run around meditating
to
bring about this peace to yourself: you did not learn from
someone or
some book to make possible this peaceful state in yourself. In
other
words, " you " had nothing to do with it. Peace is a
natural mind-state in
every one of us. ...It is our greatest gift; so why do we think
we have no
peace of mind?"
(from "Living Meditation, Living Insight" p. 36)
About Dr. Thynn Thynn . . .
For Western practitioners of Buddhist insight, the application of mindfulness in daily life, rather than abstract theory, is what connects them most to the teachings. Dr. Thynn Thynn speaks most eloquently on how the path of mindfulness may be available to householders with full responsibilities of jobs and family. Her teachings is a unique presentation of traditional Theravada teachings for lay people, and shows a strong flavour of Zen and Krishnamurti. Dr. Thynn Thynn is a medical doctor-turned-artist from Burma and a Dhamma teacher.
Dr Thynn Thynn's book "Living Meditation, Living Insight" is in its seventh reprint and can be requested here:
http://www.buddhanet.net/drthynn.htm
Thanks to Earl McHugh for sending this quote and book recommendation.
Ego is like a room
of your own, a room with a view with the temperature
and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own
way.
You'd just like to have a little peace, you'd like to have a
little happiness,
you know, just gimme a break.
But the more you think
that way, the more you try to get life to come out
so that it will always suit you, the more your fear of other
people and
what's outside your room grows. Rather than becoming more
relaxed, you
start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do
go out,
you find the experience more and more unsettling and
disagreeable. You
become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more
you
try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.
--Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are
"Q. Does success exist on the human level?
A. There is a condition which is labeled as success, but it is
powerless to bring happiness. It is neither good nor bad, right
nor wrong to succeed in worldly projects. What is self-defeating
is to identify with either success or failure, and to try to get
a feeling of self from them."
--Vernon Howard's Pathways to Perfect Living, p. 76
The Buddha's maps
for the journey to wisdom and happiness are
attractive to many people because they are so simple.
Essentially, he
taught that it doesn't make sense to upset ourselves about what
is
beyond our control. We don't get a choice about what hand we are
dealt
in this life. The only choice we have is our attitude about the
cards we
hold and the finesse with which we play our hand. When the Buddha
taught
his ideas twenty-five hundred years ago, many people understood
him so
well as soon as they heard him that they were happy ever after.
The
people who didn't understand him immediately needed to practice
meditation, and then they understood.
--Sylvia Boorstein, It's
Easier Than You Think