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#3066 - Monday, February 4, 2008 - Editor: Gloria Lee
It is so important to be more hooked on the truth than on wanting to get rid of identity. Asking, "What is the Truth?" is a demolition project. Most of spirituality is a construction project. We're ascending and ascending.... It just keeps building, and a person feels, "I'm getting better and better." But enlightenment is a demolition project.
- Adyashanti
We are birthed into sangha, into sacred community. It is called the world.
- Adyashanti [Taken together, these two quotes express the theme for this issue.]
The flute of the Infinite is played without
ceasing, and its sound is love:
When love renounces all limits, it reaches
truth.
How widely the fragrance spreads! It has
no end, nothing stands in its way.
The form of this melody is bright like a
million suns: incomparably sounds the
vina, the vina of the notes of truth.
- Kabir
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Songs of Kabir
Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
posted to AlongTheWay
"Many spiritual seekers get "stuck" in emptiness, in the absolute, in transcendence. They cling to bliss, or peace, or indifference. When the self-centered motivation for living disappears, many seekers become indifferent. They see the perfection of all existence and find no reason for doing anything, including caring for themselves or others. I call this "taking a false refuge." It is a very subtle egoic trap; it's a fixation in the absolute and all unconscious form of attachment that masquerades as liberation. It can be very difficult to wake someone up from this deceptive fixation because they literally have no motivation to let go of it. Stuck in a form of divine indifference, such people believe they have reached the top of the mountain when actually they are hiding out halfway up its slope. Enlightenment does not mean one should disappear into the realm of transcendence. To be fixated in the absolute is simply the polar opposite of being fixated in the relative. With the dawning of true enlightenment, there is a tremendous birthing of impersonal Love and wisdom that never fixates in any realm of experience. To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true nonduality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true Emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty dream. I say, Wake up! Then, your heart will be flooded with a Love that you cannot contain."
"If the awakening is taken out of the rarefied atmosphere of simply 'a realization that I have,' and taken into the level of 'my human life, and humanity,' it actually becomes an absolutely, totally unique expression of that truth. Nobody else throughout all of time is going to carry that uniqueness into life."
“All you have to do is say “yes.” Don’t make some big project out of it. Don’t make some big deal out of it. Just say “yes.” You don’t even know what it means to say “yes,” but you say it anyway. You’ll never know what it means to say “yes,” but you do it anyway. Freedom and Love arise when you die into the unknown mystery of being.”
- Adyashanti
"The light of consciousness has no mind to change or alter anything. When you start to see the light that you really are, the light waking up in you, the radiance, you realize it has no intention to change you. It has no intention to harmonize. It has no agenda. It just happens. The Truth is the only thing you'll ever run into that has no agenda. Everything else will have an agenda."
- Adyashanti
source: Emptiness Dancing
Was there a point where the idea of a separate self was
finished for you?
There was a point where the sense of me was done, absolutely, and
then there was a point where the sense of me reappeared. It
was gradual, but over time, I felt myself reincarnating.
The sense of me was reappearing, and at first I was terrified by
it. I thought it meant something. Then I saw that it
didn't make a difference. The sense of me was not separate
from the truth of who I am. Then I really understood what
my teacher had meant when he told me not to cling even to
emptiness, because that is still an exclusion of form. It's
all the same--nothingness, somethingness--all the same continuum.
It was necessary for this mind/body to recognize this, because
there had to be a clinging to emptiness, and an elevation of
emptiness and the sense of no-me. It is a full
circle. I returned to being a regular, ordinary
woman. I am much more ordinary now than I ever have been.
Interview with Gangaji
Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom
posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle
I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God's. (For me, the word God means "reality." Reality is God, because it rules. Anything that's out of my control, your control, and everyone else's control – I call that God's business.)
Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, "You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself," I am in your business. When I'm worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God's business. If I am mentally in your business or in God's business, the effect is separation. Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. To think that I know what's best for anyone else is to be out of my business and is the cause of stress, anxiety and fear.
If you understand the three kinds of business enough to stay in your own business, it could free your life in a way that you can't even imagine. The next time you're feeling stress, ask yourself whose business you're in mentally, and you may burst out laughing!"
- Byron Katie
Loving What Is
posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle
"The remedy for an attachment to the happiness of
becoming is to reflect on impermanence and the "four
fundamental thoughts which turn the mind away from the cycle of
existences." As our attachments start to weaken, we
may experience a certain peace in our mind. Grasping, or clinging
to this mental state of calm may then arise. The remedy for
grasping on to this peaceful state is to meditate on altruistic
love and compassion. We should develop love and compassion within
us until they have become completely natural attitudes for us.
Love and compassion are qualities that will accompany us
throughout our entire spiritual progression: from the moment we
first give rise to the enlightened attitude right up until we
achieve Buddhahood itself. This enlightenment will then be
endowed with the body, speech, mind and qualities of a Buddha.
Through the power of love and compassion, all unfavourable
conditions, the disturbing emotions, samsara and its causes will
be destroyed and completely annihilated. Without love and
compassion, we simply do not have enough energy. Even while we
remain trapped in this prison of samsara, subjected to the
influences of the emotions and karma, the qualities of love and
compassion allow us to be guided in the right direction."
- Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche
From the website http://www.shamarpa.org/teachings/medit-love-comp.php
posted to Daily Dharma