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#2687 - Monday, January 1, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee  

Nondual Highlights    

There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.

--Zora Neale Hurston
   


 

"Let truth lead you where you do not want to go, and in time
you will want to go."

--Vernon Howard

 


 

"When you live your life in accordance with basic goodness, then you
develop natural elegance.  Your life can be spacious and relaxed,
without having to be sloppy.  You can actually let go of your
depression and embarrassment about being a human being, and you can
cheer up.."
 

--Chogyam Trungpa

From the book; "Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior," published
by Shambhala
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0972009809/angelinc

posted to Daily Dharma

 


    Jasmine comes up...

Jasmine comes up where You step.
You breathe on dirt, and it sails off
like a kite. You wash Your hands,
and the water You throw out shines with gold.

You say the first line of the Qur'an
and all the dead commentators lift their heads.

Your robe brushes a thornbush,
and a deep chord of music comes.

Whatever You break finds itself more intelligent
for being broken. Every second a new being
stands in the courtyard of Your chest
like Adam, without a father or a mother,
but the beginning of many generations to come.

I should rhyme that fifty times!

The beginning of many
generations to come,

a line without any
inclination to end!

But I won't. I close my mouth
in hopes You'll open Yours.

--Rumi
Version by Coleman Barks

posted to Allspirit
   


 

Some students of religion postpone their lives and then wake up one
day and say, "Wait a minute, here I am forty years old and I don't
have a spouse or a career. What am I going to do when I grow up?
They have let things back up as they wait to be enlightened, or to be
settled in mind. This shows a misunderstanding of the nature of
practice. Right practice, the ninth step of the Eightfold Path, does
not involve waiting for the psyche to ripen. The clock is ticking. Right
Practice is taking yourself in hand. For the lay student, it can include
college, a career, and a family. It is to get on with living.


--Robert Aitken, Encouraging Words, Eightfold Path


 


  Renunciation does not have to be regarded as negative. I was taught
that it has to do with letting go of holding back. What one is
renouncing is closing down and shutting off from life. You could say
that renunciation is the same thing as opening to the teachings of the
present moment....
 

Renunciation is realizing that our nostalgia for wanting to stay in a
protected, limited, petty world is insane. Once you begin to get the
feeling of how big the world is and how vast our potential for
experiencing life is, then you really begin to understand renunciation.
When we sit in meditation, we feel our breath as it goes out, and we
have some sense of willingness just to be open to the present
moment. Then our minds wander off into all kinds of stories and
fabrications and manufactured realities, and we say to ourselves,
"It's thinking." We say that with a lot of gentleness and a lot of
precision. Every time we are willing to let the story line go, and
every time we are willing to let go at the end of the outbreath,
thats fundamental renunciation: learning how to let go of holding on
and holding back.
 

--Pema Chodron    


    Suzuki Roshi said, Renunciation is not giving up the things of this
world, but accepting that they go away. Everything is impermanent;
sooner or later everything goes away. Renunciation is a state of
nonattachment, acceptance of this going away. Impermanence is, in
fact, just another name for perfection. Leaves fall; debris and
garbage accumulate; out of the debris come flowers, greenery,
things that we think are lovely. Destruction is necessary. A good
forest fire is necessary. The way we interfere with forest fires may
not be a good thing. Without destruction, there could be no new life
and the wonder of life, the constant change could not be. We must
live and die. And this process is perfection itself. All this change is
not, however, what we had in mind. Our drive is not to appreciate the
perfection of the universe. Our personal drive is to find a way to
endure in our unchanging glory forever....Who hasn't noticed the first
gray hair and thought, Uh-oh.
 

--Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen
 


 

WHAT IS GRACE

 

“What is grace” I asked God.

 

And He said,

 

“All that happens.”

 

Then He added, when I looked perplexed,

 

“Could not lovers
say that every moment in their Beloved’s arms
was grace?

 

Existence is my arms,
though I well understand how one can turn
away from
me


until the heart has
wisdom.”

 

--St John of the Cross

 


 

Every word of every tongue is
Love telling a story to her own ears.
Every thought in every mind,
She whispers a secret to her own Self.
Every vision in every eye,
She shows her beauty to her own sight.
Every smile on every face,
She reveals her own joy for herself to enjoy.

Love courses through everything,
No, Love is everything.
How can you say, there is no love,
when nothing but Love exists?
All that you see has appeared because of Love.
All shines from Love,
All pulses with Love,
All flows from Love--
No, once again, all IS Love!

--Fakhruddin Iraqi

 

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