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#3740 -
The Nonduality
Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Happy Hanukah
The Essence of Chutzpah
The Yiddish word Chutzpah
can be translated as gall, brazen
nerve, effrontery, sheer guts plus arrogance; but, as Leo Rosten
observes, no other word, and no other language, can do it
justice.
Here's a sterling
example...
A little old lady sold
pretzels on a street corner for 25 cents each.
Every day a young man would leave his office building at lunch
time and as he passed the pretzel stand he would leave her a
quarter, but never take a pretzel.
And this went on for more
then 3 years. The two of them never
spoke. One day as the young man passed the old lady's stand
and left his quarter as usual, the pretzel lady spoke to him.
Without blinking an eye
she said:
"They're 35 cents
now."
December 9th
Just look. See what is
there within you; it is within us all.
It is already right there, as plain as the nose on your face.
December 10th
If one is All One, there
is only connection; not I am connected.
December 11th
Only here for an instant,
fully expressing itself, and never to be seen again in the same
way.
December 12th
There can only be what
is, and nothing more.
December 13th
The only level is
wherever you are.
December 14th
Where is the person doing
all this moving and attaining all of this bliss?
December 15th
There is no motive or
anything that might view the experience of pain as being
important.
December 16th
When one is awake, when
reality realizes itself, every action is taken without
fragmentation.
It is through that wholeness that compassion is expressed.
December 17th
The self might need to
know or need to be, but it can never grasp compassion and own it
like a possession.
It is not something cultivated, and it cannot be held, stored
away, and pulled out for later use.
December 18th
There are no degrees of
compassion or love, as measurement occurs within memory and
thought.
December 19th
There is no moment to be
in. But what can you do?
Wait for the next moment in order to find out? ;)
December 20th
Seeing what you are, how
you truly behave…
…and sitting with no condemnation, or no lust toward
changing…
…that alone may be enough to thrust you beyond the veil.
December 21st
The believer is full of
conclusions, and empty of curiosity.
December 22nd
If one discounts their
own answers, the gurus become meaningless.
December 23rd
The I is no different
from what it wishes to be free from.
December 24th
All of the teaching you
could ever hope for is there, hidden within your words.
December 25th
You’ll come to the
end on your own soon enough.
December 26th
Can memory tell us
anything about the present moment?
Or can it only be held in front of reality as a filter?
December 27th
It is the greatest
difficulty one might come up against…
…how to see.
December 28th
The ego is built from
what has come before.
This is clear, and easy to see.
December 29th
See this for yourself,
and do not take my word for it.
Go there and find out, and you will never again ask how to live
your life.
December 30th
We sit to see, not to
change.
December 31st
How have you lived your
life during the last 365 days?
PostScript
In the end, only you will
know where you’ve been, what you’ve done, and what you’ve
seen, but all of these things
are insignificant when faced with the truth of what you are. I
can say over and over “You are All One. You
need nothing,” but it is your own energy that will discover
if this is true or not.
It is only for you to see. For you, and no one else…
from http://www.advaita.org.uk/SAND/introduction.htm
Science and
Nonduality Conference
An Introduction
by Paul Marvelly
Arriving at the Embassy
Suites Hotel,
Yet another Mind Body
Spirit Festival. My heart sank.
Then my companion pointed
out they were associated with the catering van outside the hotel.
I was ushered to the registration desk where a very polite,
well-dressed assistant asked me to collect my identity badge
whilst handing me a batch of glossy fliers, conference
particulars and an assortment of stationery. The fact that the
bag containing such effects was orange and had
Running concurrently with
the Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy Conference, which is already
in its tenth year, the Science and Nonduality Conference (SAND)
is very different from what you would expect, given its brief.
The worldwide phenomenon that is ‘nonduality’ has seen
many disciplines hijack the concept for its own purposes thereby
rendering any exact definition defunct.
Nevertheless, conference
organizer, Maurizio Benazzo of Neti Neti Media is undeterred. A
willowy, self-effacing Italian, he outlines his vision on the
SAND website: ‘So what is nonduality? We are well aware that
in the exact moment in which we use words, our concept as an
attempt to describe nonduality … automatically fall[s] into
a world of dualisms ... no word will ever describe what is beyond
time, beyond space, beyond a sense of I, beyond a sense of self.’
He goes on: ‘... the
scientific research of quantum physics, neuroscience, cosmology,
biology and mathematics are giving us theories and results, which
increasingly and curiously are comparable to the conclusions
reached by the ancient spiritual masters.’ Thus Maurizio’s
mission, as he sees it, is to reconnect these seemingly opposite
worlds in a synergic event.
Stephen Wolinsky
With presentations from
some of the world’s leading exponents in their fields –
scientists, philosophers, psychologists, nondual teachers –
the SAND conference offered a smorgasbord of ancient and
contemporary thinking: the enigmatic Stephen Wolinsky and his
workshop, ‘Experience the Teachings of Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj: The Primordial Advaita’; Greg Goode’s
practical and humorous presentation, ‘Stumbling Block to
Nondual Realisation’; and a lecture by the impressive
Marilyn Schlitz, inspiration for one of Dan Brown’s
protagonists in his latest novel, ‘Consciousness Matters:
Mapping the Process of Transformation and Nondual Awareness’;
not to mention screenings from the Cinéma Nondualité Film
Series, an ‘Experiential Room’, and the obligatory
‘meet and greet’ parties to finish it all off.
Indeed, the choice was
almost overwhelming; the fact that so many of the events were run
concurrently was, retrospectively, a blessing in disguise. By the
end of the conference, I felt as if I couldn’t take anything
more in. So what, then, is nonduality? After hearing so many
viewpoints – some intellectually mind-blowing, others
exquisitely simple – it feels even harder to offer a precise
definition. But then, perhaps, that’s the point.
To quote Maurizio again:
‘There are many shades of meaning to the word nonduality. As
an introduction, we might say that nonduality is the
philosophical, spiritual, and scientific understanding of
non-separation and fundamental oneness. Our starting point is the
statement “we are all one,” and this is meant not in
some abstract sense but at the deepest level of existence.
Duality, or separation between the observer and the observed, is
an illusion that the Eastern mystics have long recognized and
Western science has more recently come to understand through
quantum mechanics.
‘Dualities are
usually seen in terms of opposites: Mind/Matter, Self/Other,
Conscious/Unconscious, Illusion/Reality, Quantum/Classical,
Wave/Particle, Spiritual/Material, Beginning/End, Male/Female,
Living/Dead and Good/Evil. Nonduality is the understanding that
identification with common dualisms avoids recognition of a
deeper reality.’