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#2868 -
The Nondual Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
One: Essential Writings
on Nonduality: http://tinyurl.com/2blmhy
Here's a nice fat issue
of the Highlights. Some Zen, some Vedanta, some Sufism, and some
words about where they are is exactly where they
belong, like cauliflower in the casserole. Thanks to people who
contributed material to this issue: Gabriel Rosenstock, David
Spero, Eric Chaffee, and Jess Wells.
Gabriel
Rosenstock send the following. I think you'll enjoy the
links. Try to visit at least one of them.
* JWH essay: "Bodhidharma's Gift oEnlightenment"
describing the transcendental role of Zen's progenitor:
http://hacketthaiku.com/Daruma.html
* Haiku by guest poet and storyteller Sam Yada Cannarrozzi, a
resident
of Lyon, France, at: http://hacketthaiku.com/GuestSamHaiku
* New haiga by Russian/American painter and poet OlgaHooper:
http://hacketthaiku.com/GuestHaigaOriga.html
* Have you viewed: Bug Haiku ? See the complete page-by-page web
version of the popular 1968 book with haiku by JWH and
illustrations by
Earl Thollander. Go to the menu bar and open Haiku, then
'Choose,' then
scroll down to 'Bug Haiku.'
* Poets interested in entering the next James W. Hackett
International
Haiku Award may wish to visit the web site of The British Haiku
Society
at: www.haikusoc.ndo.co.uk
* Recent readers from the nations below indicate the growing
world wide
popularity of haiku: Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) * Christmas
Island *
Fiji * Indonesia * Luxembourg * Sao Tome and Principe * Saint
Vincent
and the Grenadines *Tuvalu * Ukraine * Venezuela * Zimbabwe
Reincarnation as
Organic Metaphor
By David Spero
The philosophical
generosity that birthed the Vedic spirit is completely absent in
today’s world. Our world culture has become religiously
self-righteous and utilitarian. The view that spiritual
realization arises as a gift from nature, a flowering of various
invisible, organic processes, has vanished.
Judeo-Christian-Islamic
theologies assert the existence of a God separate from nature.
Accordingly, they tell us that the world was created for a
two-fold purpose, first to glorify this transcendent, separate
God, and second to redeem the human race in time and space.
However, this view is dualistic in nature and ultimately
incorrect, for nature does not exist in linear time. Nature’s
time is cyclical. An apple tree produces apples year after year
without any ultimate purpose other than the joy of fruition.
Nature’s functioning is not teleological. Humans tend to
hyper-intellectualize, projecting purposes onto other life forms.
They freeze the fluidity of life into rational concepts.
Judeo-Christian-Islamic dualistic theologies have devastatingly
stained the spiritual fabric of our world.
Reincarnation is a
charming, sensuous metaphor for organic life in migration.
Rebirth was not meant to create the impression of a linear march
(of births) through time. Instead it pointed to the world as
fertile soil in which human beings might flourish. The ancient
Vedic rishis, or seers, were ardent lovers of nature – even
nature-worshippers. In the natural world they saw the “reason”
for existence, filled as it was with spontaneous displays of
overwhelming beauty. Skies, seas, mountains, fragrances of sweet
flowers, were meant to lift the human spirit into supra-sensual
ecstasies. Perceptual, emotional, and mental faculties were
spiritually stimulated by natural phenomena. Knowledge and
devotion were like strings on a guitar, fusing into the melodic
rhythm of the total human being. Lila, the spirit of
playfulness, the self-generating power seen in nature, was the
universe’s matrix, the ultimate “reason” for its
existence.
Evolution allows the soul’s
maturation through time, carried by the force of desire. Just as
a flower requires sunlight to live and grow, human beings blossom
through yearning. Desire is not a dirty word, as certain
spiritual traditions insist. Desire’s force serves the
expansion of human consciousness as it matures and deepens into a
painful hunger for God, culminating in moksha, spiritual
liberation. Liberation or moksha is actually desire’s
fruition, not its negation.
The yogas of karma,
jnana, bhakti, and raja were the spiritual paths of action,
discrimination, devotion, and meditation. They conveyed a theme
of adapting any and every form of human activity into the Self or
pure consciousness. These spiritual paths affirmed
compassionately that any type of person could awaken from
dualistic experience, and evolve from the waking state to
unlimited Brahman consciousness.
Samsara, often
referred to as the wheel of birth and death, the field in which
transmigration occurs, literally meant “running together,”
or “wandering.” Samsara referred to living
movement, like that of a meandering river. This non-mechanistic
image starkly contradicts the guilt-ridden idea of rebirth as
retribution. It nullifies the cold notion of physical embodiment
as a mechanical exercise carried out by the indifferent principle
of cause and effect. Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheistic,
utilitarian theologies seeped into the fabric of Hinduism over
the centuries, tainting its immaculate, highly metaphorical,
notion of rebirth.
The rebirth process was
carried out by the vasanas, infinitely subtle, wave-like
energy patterns. Vasanas transmigrated from body to body,
bridging incarnations. Curiously, the word vasana comes
from the root VAS, which means “to perfume.” A human
being “perfumed” from body to body. Vasanas,
trans-fleshly fragrances, organic blueprints of matter and
psyche, were the potentialities of consciousness, acting to
transform matter into energy, and vice versa. A reincarnated
human being was hardly considered a heap of residual, karmic
debris. He was a floating fragrance, evanescent as a wisp of air,
seeking a proper nervous system, one that would in-breathe him
into human form.
This ethereal view of
rebirth may sound effeminate and oversimplified in today’s
overly patriarchal spiritual climate. A circular, self-generating
reality cannot be grasped by a mind obsessed with purposes.
Reincarnation, organically understood through metaphors,
exasperates the strategies of the rational mind to obliterate a
spontaneous ontology. Only a mind freed from utilitarian
consciousness can grasp the reality of a purposeless existence. Time,
space, and nature vibrate as webs of energetic frequencies,
organic nexuses through which living forms grow. These
frequencies may be grasped intuitively by a poetically liberated
awareness.
The ancient Vedic
understanding of reincarnation remains a brilliant, liberating,
and life-affirming metaphor, vivified in an aboriginal, spiritual
innocence, solidifying a vast, organic, evolutionary process.
Eric Chaffee
sends the following from http://sufiatlanta.homestead.com/tensufithoughts.html
The Ten Sufi
Thoughts from The Way of Illumination, by Hazrat Inayat Khan (The
Message Volume 1)
1.There is one God, the
Eternal, the Only Being; none else exists save God.
2.There is one Master,
the Guiding Spirit of all souls, who constantly leads all who
follow towards
the light.
3.There is one Holy Book,
the sacred manuscript of nature, the only scripture which can
enlighten
the reader.
4.There is one Religion,
the unswerving progress in the right direction towards the ideal,
which
fulfills the life's purpose of every soul.
5.There is one Law, the
Law of Reciprocity, which can be observed by a selfless
conscience together
with a sense of awakened justice.
6.There is one Family,
the human family, which unites the children of earth
indiscriminately in the
parenthood of God.
7.There is one Moral
Principle, the love which springs forth from self-denial, and
blooms in deeds
of beneficence.
8.There is one Object of
Praise, the beauty which uplifts the heart of its worshipper
through all
aspects from the seen to the unseen.
9.There is one Truth, the
true knowledge of our being within and without which is the
essence of
all wisdom.
10.There is one Path, the
annihilation of the false ego in the real, which raises the
mortal to
immortality and in which resides all perfection.
Jess Wells
sends the following:
I Must Belong
Somewhere
Leave the bright blue
door on the whitewashed wall
Leave the death ledger
under city hall
Leave the joyful air in
that rubber ball today
Leave the lilac print on
the linen sheet
Leave the bird you killed
at you father’s feet
Let the sideways rain in
the crooked street remain
Leave the whimpering dog
in his cold kennel
Leave the starlet on her
pedestal
Leave the acid kids in
their green fishbowls today
Leave the sad guitar in
its hardshell case
Leave that worried look
on your lover’s face
Leave the orange embers
in the fireplace remain
Everything it must belong
somewhere
A train off in the
distance, bicycle chained to the stairs
Everything it must belong
somewhere
I know that now, that is
why I’m staying here
Leave the ocean’s
roar in the turquoise shell
Leave the widower in his
private hell
Leave the liberty in that
broken bell today
Leave the epic poem on
its yellowed page
Leave the gray macaw in
its covered cage
Let the traveling band on
the interstate remain
Everything it must belong
somewhere
Sound stage in
Everything it must belong
somewhere
I know that now that is
why I’m staying here
Yeah, I know that now,
that is why I’m staying here
Leave the secret talks on
the trundle bed
Leave the garden tools in
the rusted shed
Leave those bad ideas in
your troubled head today
Leave the restless ghost
in his old hotel
Leave the homeless man in
that cardboard cell
Let the painted horse on
the carousel remain
Everything it must belong
somewhere
Just like the gold around
her finger or the silver in his hair
Everything it must belong
somewhere
I know that now, that is
why I’m staying here
I know that now, that is
why I’m staying here
In truth the forest hears
each sound
Each blade of grass as it
lies down
The world requires no
audience
No witnesses, no
witnesses
Leave the old town drunk
on his wooden stool
Leave the autumn leaves
in their swimming pool
Leave the poor black
child in his crumbling school today
Leave the novelist in his
daydream tomb
Leave the scientist in
her Rubik’s cube
Let the true genius in
the padded room remain
Leave the horse’s
hair on the slanted bow
Leave the slot machines
on the riverboat
Leave the cauliflower in
the casserole today
Leave the hot bright
trash in the shopping malls
Leave the hawks of war in
their capitals
Let the organ’s moan
in the cathedral remain
Everything it must belong
somewhere
They locked the Devil in
the basement, threw God up into the air
Everything it must belong
somewhere
You know it’s true,
I wish you’d leave me here
You know it’s true,
why don’t you leave me here?
written by, Conor Oberst
Hi Jerry,
I really dig this folky
song by Conor Oberst and his band Bright Eyes. Oberst (raised in
the
here's another cool
poem:
http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16657