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#3761 - Wednesday, December
30, 2009 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Truth has to appear only once in a single
mind, for it to be impossible ever to prevent it from spreading
universally and setting everything ablaze.
- Pierre Teilard de Chardin posted to Facebook by Susan
Lucey
December 30 is Ramana Maharshi's birthday. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi
Q: By what indication are
the learned able to recognize the jnani ?
Ramana Maharshi: From the mark of equality towards all
beings one's (attainment of) jnana is inferred.
You have not to proceed anywhere or arrive anywhere. If you get rid or all this proceeding and arriving, all of these notions and intentions, then what do you see? Who are you? How do you feel? Even the intention "I have to stay in silence" takes you out of silence. Give up all notions of staying anywhere. - Papaji
posted to Facebook by Michaela Friedrich
Open and Expansive
The Pali word for lovingkindness is metta. Sometimes, metta is
translated simply as “love.” In our culture, the notion
of love has assumed a complexity that obscures its true nature.
Typically the word love conjures up thoughts of passion or
sentimentality. Metta is neither of these, and this distinction
is crucial.
The practice of lovingkindness is, at a certain level, the
fruition of all we work toward in our meditation. It relies on
our ability to open continuously to the truth of our actual
experience, not cutting off the painful parts, and not trying to
pretend things are other than they are. Just as spiritual growth
grinds to a halt when we indulge our tendency to grasp and cling,
metta can’t thrive in an environment that is bound to desire
or to getting our expectations met.
In lovingkindness, our minds are open and expansive—spacious
enough to contain all the pleasures and pains of a life fully
lived. Pain, in this context, does’t feel like betrayal or
an overwhelming force. It is part of the reality of human
experience, and an opportunity for us to practice maintaining our
authentic presence.
- Sharon Salzberg
Understanding/knowing is not something had
by a mind.
Therefore, contrasting enlightenment with nonenlightened states
of mind is a misnomer.
It is true that you can attain to different types of experience
and different states of mind through various versions of
"spiritual practice."
However, because undivided understanding/knowing/being is not a
state of mind, it cannot be produced - and therefore it is not
the result of anything.
It is not the result of fasting, ingesting a drug, doing a
spiritual practice, having the best teacher, being devoted,
loving, sacrificing, etc.
You cannot and will not produce what is never not the case.
And by its very nature, the never-divided, is never-not-the-case.
The fragmentation of knowing through identification as a
mind-body unit, as a center for knowing - is not actual.
So, how is it that illusion and associated delusions dissolve
away, as never having existed in the first place? (And please
note, the existence of any individual or collective center or
centers, is an aspect of illusion/delusion).
One understands that there is nothing to dissolve away, as by its
very nature, illusion never was there, and delusions had no
center to be held by, to be maintained by.
This is why everyone is befuddled by their concepts of
enlightenment, and all the things they try to do and not to do to
be enlightened.
Deep down, what the person is, is a system of protection, which
is to say, a fear of loss.
Loss of control, loss of possessions, loss of existence, loss of
security, loss of love, loss of attention.
Said in another way, it is a system of grasping, of trying to
hold, of trying to maintain.
Seeing through this attempt, seeing through this activity - is
understanding.
Nothing will lead you to understanding, and nothing will produce
understanding.
It is missed because it cannot be had, and is the end of anything
being held onto.
The only obstacle is the fear of releasing what is held, and thus
understanding that it was never held in the first place.
And what is released includes any attachment to being spiritual,
having a spiritual practice, having a spiritual experience or a
spiritual understanding.
So, understanding is, at the same time, no understanding, nothing
to understand, and no center from which to understand anything.
This simply is.
- Dan -
posted to Open Awareness by Dan Berkow
http://networkedblogs.com/p22634728
Starting on January 1st, StillnessSpeaks welcomes Scott Kiloby to it's Open Awareness Study Group.(Click here to join StillnessSpeaks Open Awareness study Group) on non duality and advaita. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OAStudyGroup/ We strongly recommend that you read Scott's best known book, Living Realization to discover his unqiue style. We think you will enjoy it. Scott Kiloby's PDF download e-book, Living Realization, is available for free by clicking here.