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#3490 - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Pema Chodron, Alan Watts, Andreas Moritz, and their books.
Oprah interviews Pema Chodron. Excerpts from http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/omag_200802_ocut/1
OPRAH: You also wrote in When
Things Fall Apart that every day gives us an opportunity to
either open up or shut down, and that the most precious
opportunity presents itself when you think you can't handle
whatever is happening. So if, in that moment, you can train
yourself to open up instead of shutting down…
PEMA: That's exactly when you get a real transformation.
OPRAH: Don't you think that's hard, though? I mean, life
is slamming you against a wall and you're supposed to say,
"Let me open up and get slammed some more"?
PEMA: Of course it's hard. I devote my life to trying to
find a way to say this so that it resonates with people. It
begins with meditation—you just sit down with yourself. It's
a way of being completely open to whatever is happening in your
mind, and you realize your mind is wild and crazy and all over
the place. The instruction is so simple: Just keep coming back to
your breath. Then you say, "This is almost impossible!"
It isn't, but I know how hard it is. That's why I have a passion
for finding a way to communicate that you can have an appetite
for life as it is rather than life as you want it to be.
...
OPRAH: You're very well known in spiritual circles. You
walk into a room and people say, "Oh, Pema Chödrön, I read
your books, thank you for all your wisdom…" Can you
ever have a bad day and get ticked off at people?
PEMA: You mean can I afford to, because my reputation is
at stake? Well, as much as I value my teacher, I value my
children, my family, and an old friend because they don't regard
me as this big deal. My son—Oprah, this was so wonderful—recently,
my son very sweetly said, "Mom, tell me honestly: What does
your Buddhism have to do with the fact that you get so uptight
about things?" I just roared with laughter. I said, "It
has nothing to do with my Buddhism at all, except that I don't
flagellate myself for it." Your family and your old friends
still see you as the person you always were. Without them, you
could think you were pretty hot stuff. ...
OPRAH: What would you
consider the fundamental pearl of wisdom from the teachings of
the Buddha?
PEMA: Oh my goodness! From all the fundamental pearls of
wisdom… Can I put it in Christian terms?
OPRAH: Yes, I'll accept that.
PEMA: It would be something like "Do unto others as
you would have them do unto you." Also, stay open to
whatever life presents you with, because it will teach you
something if you'll let it. It's about keeping an unbiased heart
and mind. A lot of it is forming an unconditional friendship with
yourself as you begin to see all the stuff you've been running
away from.
When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodron http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590302265?ie=UTF8&tag=nondualitysal-20&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=1590302265
Hi Jerry-- I was rumaging through my library of non-duality books and came across an old paperback by Alan Watts called The Book (On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are) written in 1966 by Alan Watts and came across many fantastic concepts and am quoting below (merely one):
Chapter Five, "SO WHAT?" @ Pg 124-5:
"Thus when the line between myself and what happens to me is dissolved and there is no stronghold left for an ego even as a passive witness, I find myself not in a world but as a world which is neither compulsive nor capricious. What happens is neither automatic nor arbitrary: it just happens, and all happenings are mutually intedependent in a way that seems unbelievably harmonious. Every "this" goes with every "that". Without others there is no self, and without somewhere else, there is no here, so that--in this sense--self is other and "here" is "there". When this new sensation of self arises, it is at once exhilarating and a little disconcerting. It is like the moment when you first get the knack of swimming or riding a bicycle. There is the feeling that you are not doing it yourself, but that it is somehow happening on its own, and you wonder whether you will lose it--as indeed you may if you try forcibly to hold on to it. In immediate contrast to the old feeling, there is indeed a certain passivity to the sensation as if you were a leaf blown along by the wind, until you realize that you are both the leaf and the wind. The world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside: they move together inseparably, and at first you feel a little out of control because the world outside is so much vaster than the world inside. Yet you soon discover that you are able to go ahead with ordinary activities--to work and make decisions as ever, though somehow this is less of a drag. Your body is no longer a corpse which the ego has to animate and lug around. There is a feeling of the ground holding you up, and of hills lifting you when you climb them. Air breathes itself in and out of your lungs, and instead of looking and listening, light and sound come to you on their own. Eyes see and ears hear as wind blows and water flows. All space becomes your mind. Time carries you along like a river, but never flows out of the present: the more it goes, the more it stays, and you no longer have to fight or kill it."
The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679723005?ie=UTF8&tag=nondualitysal-20&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=0679723005
Lifting the Veil of Duality, by Andreas Moritz http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976571536?ie=UTF8&tag=nondualitysal-20&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=0976571536
In The Gap Of Non-Judgment
Healing does not need to take long. In fact, if it does it is
likely to be incomplete. According to Japanese research studies,
spontaneous remission and complete cure of cancer occurs when
those afflicted with the disease move into the gap of
non-judgment or non-duality, i.e., when they relinquish all needs
or desires to have it one way or the other. This cannot be
accomplished by will or by use of the rational mind. It may occur
when someone faces death and, oddly, loses all hope for survival.
Giving into death may take someone into the gap of their eternal
spirit self, provided this is in the person`s highest interest.
Thus, consciously losing the fear of dying and stepping into
one`s essence may instantly stimulate the body`s immune system
into a powerful response that can dismantle egg-sized malignant
tumors in the brain, bladder, intestines, etc., within less than
24 hours, in some instances within as little as 15 seconds. There
are thousands of documented cases like these.
What is most interesting in these cases of spontaneous remission
is that the healing merely (if that is not enough) consisted of
gaining freedom from judgment, of accepting one`s situation at
that moment. Fighting for life doesn`t get you to this magical
place of the Divine moment, for effort and struggle are born out
of fear. Giving up one`s desire to live, on the other hand, is
born out of resignation, frustration and merely represents the
other end of duality awareness. However, accepting death without
trying to avoid or enforce it moves you into the Divine moment
where miracles take place.
Of course, we don`t all have to face death, either our own or
someone else`s, in order to find the opening to slip into the
Divine moment. Life provides us with plenty of other
opportunities that can serve in the same way. All we need to do
is to keep our eyes, ears and hearts open to receive and accept
these opportunities, many of which may show up in the disguise of
problems and misfortunes. In due time, our polarized duality
consciousness becomes anchored in the singularity of Self. The
body simply follows suit. Once we lose our polarity thinking,
that is, our mode of reference to what we believe is right and
wrong or good and bad, the DNA of our body begins to lose its
polarity mode as well. As soon as we are able to accept whatever
is, which means all our strong and weak sides, our successes and
failures, fears, anger, and guilt, etc., our body will move,
automatically and spontaneously, out of its polarity mode.
Excerpt from
http://www.naturalnews.com/025808.html