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#2853 - Sunday, June 24, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nondual Highlights
Our friend from across the pond in England, Gill Eardley, is resuming her Allspirit Inspiration list. Gill has been a presence on the internet lists for many years and also has an outstanding website. I'd like to preface sharing her newsletter with an inspiring video from the British version of American Idol, there called Britains Got Talent, showing the first appearance of Paul Potts. You'll see why. (And thanks to nm rai for sending it.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA
Welcome to the second issue of the Allspirit Inspiration newsletter. This newsletter will be sent out twice weekly, and I hope you enjoy reading it. If you have any of your own work you would like to submit for inclusion, please email it to me.
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gill www.allspirit.co.uk
Exquisite Truth
This is an exquisite truth:
Saints and ordinary folks are the same from the start.
Inquiring about a difference
Is like asking to borrow string
when you've got a good strong rope.
Every Dharma is known in the heart.
After a rain, the mountain colors intensify.
Once you become familiar with the design of fate's illusions
Your ink-well will contain all of life and death.
~Master Hsu Yun
The Beauty Of The Days Gone By
Down The Road - Van Morrison
When I recall just how it felt
When I went walking down by the take
My soul was free, my heart awake
When I walked down into the town
The mountain air was fresh and clear
The sun was up behind the hill
It felt so good to be alive
On that morning in spring
I want to sing this song for you
I want to lift your spirits high
And in my soul I want to feel
The beauty of the days gone by
The beauty of the days gone by
It brings a longing to my soul
To contemplate my own true self
And keep me young as I grow old
The beauty of the days gone by
The music that we used to play
So lift your glass and raise it high
To the beauty of the days gone by
I'll sing it from the mountain top
Down to the valley down below
Because my cup doth overflow
With the beauty of the days gone by
The mountain glen
Where we used to roam
The gardens there
By the railroad track
Oh my memory it does not lie
Of the beauty of the days gone by
The beauty of the days gone by
It brings a longing to my soul
To contemplate my own true self
And keep me young as I grow old
And keep me young as I grow old
And keep me young as I grow old
And keep me young as I grow old
Chinese
Art and Greek Art Rumi
The Prophet said, "There are some who see Me
by the same Light in which I am seeing them.
Our natures are ONE.
Without reference to any strands
of lineage, without reference to texts or traditions,
we drink the Life-Water together."
Here's a story
about that hidden mystery:
The Chinese and the Greeks
were arguing as to who were the better artists.
The King said,
"We'll settle this matter with a debate."
The Chinese began talking,
but the Greeks wouldn't say anything.
They left.
The Chinese suggested then
that they each be given a room to work on
with their artistry, two rooms facing each other
and divided by a curtain.
The Chinese asked the King
for a hundred colors, all the variations,
and each morning they came to where
the dyes were kept and took them all.
The Greeks took no colors.
"They're not part of our work,"
They went to their room
and began cleaning and polishing the walls. All day
every day they made those walls as pure and clear
as an open sky.
There is a way that leads from all-colors
to colorlessness. Know that the magnificent variety
of the clouds and the weather comes from
the total simplicity of the sun and the moon.
The Chinese finished, and they were so happy.
They beat the drums in the joy of completion.
The King entered their room,
astonished by the gorgeous color and detail.
The Greeks then pulled the curtain dividing the rooms.
The Chinese figures and images shimmeringly reflected
on the clear Greek walls. They lived there,
even more beautifully, and always
changing in the light.
The Greek art is the Sufi way.
They don't study books of philosophical thought.
They make their loving clearer and clearer.
No wantings, no anger. In that purity
they receive and reflect the images of every moment,
from here, from the stars, from the void.
They take them in
as though they were seeing
with the Lighted Clarity
that sees them.
~Rumi Mathnawi, I, 3462-3485, 3499
'Delicious Laughter' Coleman Barks
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm by
Wallace Stevens
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
http://www.allspirit.co.uk/calm.html
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