Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
#3304 - Monday,
September 29, 2008 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nonduality Highlights -
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
An issue about views...
From The Heart
of the Buddha's Teaching
Thich Nhat Hanh
Relatively speaking, there are right views and there
are wrong views. But if we look more deeply, we
see that all views are wrong views. No view can ever
be the truth. It is just from one point; that is why it is
called a "point of view." If we go to another point, we
will see things differently and realize that our first view
was not entirely right. Buddhism is not a collection of
views. It is a practice to help us eliminate wrong views.
The quality of our views can always be improved. From
the viewpoint of ultimate reality, Right View is the absence
of all views.
posted to Allspirit Inspiration by Gill
Eardley
The difficulty in the spiritual path is
always what comes
from ourselves. A person does not like to be a pupil, he
likes to be a teacher. If one only knew that the greatness
and perfection of the great ones who have come from
time to time to this world was in their being pupils and
not in teaching! The greater the teacher, the better pupil
he was. He learned from everyone, the great and the
lowly, the wise and the foolish, the old and the young.
He learned from their lives, and studied human nature
in all its aspects.
- Hazrat Inayat Khan
posted to Along The Way
| Self-liberate Even the Antidote |
In case you thought you understood "Examine the nature of unborn awareness," let go even of that understanding, that poise, that security, that sense of ground. Let go even of the idea of emptiness, of openness, of space...so whenever you come up with a solid conclusion, let the rug be pulled out. You can pull out your own rug, and you can also let life pull it out for you.
So if you think that everything is solid, that's one trap, and if you change that for a different belief system, that's another trap. We have to pull out the rug from under our belief systems altogether. We can do that by letting go of our beliefs, and also our sense of what is right and wrong, by just going back to the simplicity and the immediacy of our present experience, resting in the nature of alaya.
From Start Where You Are : A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chodron
September 21, 2008
Whatever happened to “understanding”? Remember when that was a buzzword a few years ago? People were divided between those who had understanding and those who didn’t. I don’t think I had it because I talked about donuts a lot.
When I used to hang around the Muktananda ashram in Santa Monica in 1980, there were people who were “receiving the light” and those who weren’t. I know I wasn’t receiving the light because … because I wasn’t receiving a damn light, that’s why.
Another buzzword: “Are you free?” Someone asked me the other day whether I was free. I said, you mean do I have the time to go get a beer or something? He said, “No, are you FREE.”
“Oh, I got you,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m free or not. I don’t know if I have understanding. I don’t know if I’m receiving the light. I don’t know if I have clarity. But if you want to hang out for a few minutes, fine, If not, fine.”
Another popular thing is the ability to see what’s obvious and to recognize it as “this.” There’s some kind of connection between “obvious” and “this.” Like you’re walking with a fellow nondualist and one of you goes, “Yeah, like it’s all just ‘this’.” Yeah, I get that. I don’t get the other buzzwords, but I get that one.
In a few years we’ll be all nostalgic about the days when “this” was such a cool buzzword. And it’s the only one I get.
I don’t think I had understanding, I was never in the Be Here Now, I definitely didn’t receive the light, and I’m not Free especially if it means I have go around asking people if they’re Free. I’d rather have a cell in San Quentin, thank you.
What I do have is my finger on the pulse of all the buzzwords. I can tell you that they go stale as quickly as a half eaten donut underneath the seat of your car. But when they’re hot and fresh we sink our teeth into them, one after another. Mmmm, the good greasy sugar of carnival food.
from the Nonduality Blog of Jerry Katz at http://nonduality.org/
"Worldly fools search for exotic
masters, not
realizing that their own mind is the master."
BODHIDHARMA
" I haven't got any Buddhism. I live by letting things
happen"
DOGEN
"If you wish to find the Buddha,
first you must look into your own mind,
outside of the mind, there is no Buddha."
HAKUIN
"Our Buddha-nature is there from the very beginning.
It is like the sun emerging from behind clouds.
It is like a mirror that reflects perfectly when it is wiped
clean...
...and returned to its original clarity."
HO-SHAN from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4e9hcqVVfY
Incredible views, Thanks to Ben Hassine.