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#3215 - Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights      

Your Brain is not the Only Part of Your Mind with Ripples

That everything is included within your mind is the essence of mind. To experience this is to have religious feeling. Even though waves arise, the essence of your mind is pure; it is just like clear water with a few waves. Actually water always has waves. Waves are the practice of the water. To speak of waves apart from water or water apart from waves is a delusion. Water and waves are one. Big mind and small mind are one. When you understand your mind in this way, you have some security in your feeling. As your mind does not expect anything from outside, it is always filled. A mind with waves in it is not a disturbed mind, but actually an amplified one. Whatever you experience is an expression of big mind.

The activity of big mind is to amplify itself through various experiences. In one sense our experiences coming one by one are always fresh and new, but in another sense they are nothing but a continuous or repeated unfolding of the one big mind.


-Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Dharma Quote of the Week www.snowlionpub.com  

Why do we want to be wise and compassionate? If it's because we would simply like to be wise and compassionate, we are off course, because the "I" cannot attain wisdom and compassion. Wisdom and compassion can only be revealed once the "I" has disappeared. When we reach this level, we will be able to benefit others. In the meantime, it is the blind leading the blind. All true religions seek to gain access to that level of consciousness which is not ego-bound. In Buddhism, it is called the unconditioned, the unborn, the deathless. You can call it anything you like. You can call it atman. You can call it anatman. You can call it God. The fact is, there is a subtle level of consciousness which is the core of our being, and it is beyond our ordinary conditioned state of mind. We can all experience this. Some people experience it through service, others through devotion. Some even think they can experience it through analysis and intellectual discipline. Buddhists usually try to access it through meditation. That's what we are doing. Breaking through to the unconditioned in order to help others break through to the unconditioned. But we have to start where we are, from right here. We start with these minds, these bodies, these problems, these weaknesses, and these strengths.  

--from Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism by Venerable Tenzin Palmo, published by Snow Lion Publications  
http://www.allspirit.co.uk  

A Moment to Forget

'Mindfulness, or awareness, does not mean that you should think and be conscious "I am doing this" or "I am doing that." No. Just the contrary. The moment you think "I am doing this," you become self-conscious, and then you do not live in the action, but you live in the idea "I am," and consequently your work too is spoiled.

You should forget yourself completely, and lose yourself in what you do. The moment a speaker becomes self-conscious and thinks "I am addressing an audience," his speech is distributed and his trend of thought broken. But when he forgets himself in his speech, in his subject, then he is at his best, he speaks well and explains things clearly.

All great work--artistic, poetic, intellectual or spiritual--is produced at those moments when its creators are lost completely in their actions, when they forget themselves altogether, and are free from self-consciousness.


-- Walpola Rahula, in What the Buddha Taught

From 'Mysticism of Now' by Rafael Catala  

Anytime we have a problem, we can go within and ask, "How am I doing?" Meditation several times a day is important because it allows for a complete pause and that pause brings reflection. If we get involved in the rat race of life we may find ourselves going a thousand miles an hour, and we won't even know where we are going. But if we stop and go into communion, we will always move with optimum speed. Go within your consciousness and your consciousness will allow you to rest as you go a thousand miles an hour. It is like riding a bicycle; once we are proficient at it, we can rest even though we are pedalling at tremendous speed. It requires an attitude of consciousness to be able to do something fast and still be restful and have time to ponder. It has nothing to do with speed, it has to do with an attitude of consciousness. The crux of the matter is the attitude with which we do it.  

When ballet dancers are spinning, it is their capacity to rest while they spin that makes them appear so graceful and harmonious. When birds fly, they too are at rest. Actually they fly with grace, and so it is with us. We are learning to use this instrument we call our body and this instrument we call our intellect, gracefully.  

This is why we are here on this Earth. One day we will wake up and see that we never made any mistakes-they were just practice exercises. We identified with some of the processes and we thought they were the hardest things in the world, and then perhaps we even felt guilty about them. Once we have mastered them we will forget all the trials and tribulations associated with them. It is the process of living gracefully that brings heaven on earth. We do it at the optimum rhythm of our being.  

How many people on this Earth think that all there is to them is a body? That is only the beginning stage. Eventually we get into a deeper rhythm and we think it is the mind. Now we have the mind to work with, and later on we see it is the soul. Still at an early stage, our vision of the soul is enclosed, almost like a big bubble. Finally, the bubble breaks and we see that all there is to us is infinity. There is neither time nor space, only the conscious awareness that I Am.  

Wherever I look I Am. Whatever I am aware of, I Am.  

Remember that Jesus said, "Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there." (The Gospel of Thomas Saying 77) Where are we? Everywhere! This is the realization of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. We look out at this Earth and there are all these people on different levels of consciousness. They are all infinite, but they are not all aware of it. It is a process, and this is why patience is so important in this life.  

--- gill  http://www.allspirit.co.uk  

   
Parable  

Some fishermen pulled a bottle from the deep. It held a piece of paper, with these words: "Somebody save me! I'm here. The ocean cast me on this desert island. I am standing on the shore waiting for help. Hurry! I'm here!"
 
"There's no date. I bet it's already too late anyway.
It could have been floating for years," the first fisherman said.
 
"And he doesn't say where. It's not even clear which ocean," the second fisherman said.
 
"It's not too late, or too far. The island Here is everywhere," the third fisherman said.  

They all felt awkward. No one spoke. That's how it goes with universal truths.  

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~
  (Poems New and Collected 1957-1997, trans. S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh)



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