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#3768 - Wednesday, January 6,
2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
What is a True Person? “As I see it, there isn’t so much to do. Just be ordinary—put on your robes, eat your food, and pass the time doing nothing.” - Master Linji, Teaching 18
Insight can’t be found in sutras,
commentaries, verbal expression, or —isms. Liberation and
awakened understanding can’t be found by devoting ourselves
to the study of the Buddhist scriptures. This is like trying to
find fresh water in dry bones. Returning to the present moment,
using our clear mind which exists right here and now, we can be
in touch with liberation and enlightenment, as well as with the
Buddha and the patriarchs as living realities right in this
moment. The person who has nothing to do is sovereign unto
herself. She doesn’t need to put on airs or leave any trace
behind.
The true person is an active participant, engaged in her
environment while remaining unoppressed by it. Although all
phenomena are going through the various appearances of birth,
abiding, changing, and dying, the true person doesn’t become
a victim of sadness, happiness, love, or hate. She lives in
awareness as an ordinary person, whether standing, walking, lying
down, or sitting. She doesn’t act a part, even the part of a
great Zen master. This is what Master Linji means by “being
sovereign wherever you are and using that place as your seat of
awakening.” We may wonder, “If a person has no
direction, isn’t yearning to realize an ideal, doesn’t
have an aim in life, then who will help living beings be
liberated, who will rescue those who are drowning in the ocean of
suffering?” A Buddha is a person who has no more business to
do and isn’t looking for anything. In doing nothing, in
simply stopping, we can live freely and true to ourselves and our
liberation will contribute to the liberation of all beings.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, "Simply Stop," Fall 2007 Tricycle From
Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go (2007) by Thich Nhat Hanh
Francis Lucille Passivity and non-duality - Francis Answers - 135
Question: Do you think a non-dualistic view of the world leads the individual to passivity in the face of the world's suffering?
Dear Lorenzo,
A non-dualistic view of the world may well lead to systematic passivity in the face of the world's suffering if it is just that, a mere theoretical interpretation of the world. In this case there will often be a conflict between love and reason. A non-dualistic experience of the world will lead to the proper action, compassionate, practical, non judgmental, or to the proper passivity, depending upon the circumstances. The absence of conflict between love and intelligence is the benchmark of proper, impersonal action. Sometimes reason is too harsh and loves win, sometimes love is too weak and reason wins. It doesn't matter which one wins, provided they both agree.
Love,
Francis
http://networkedblogs.com/p22929693
On the "Witness" - Greg Goode
At this point, higher reason has almost finished all the work it can do. The gross world, the subtle world, that body and mind are no longer seen as though they exist outside of awareness. Nothing is experienced as self-sustaining, independent thing, but rather as made of spontaneous arisings in the witnessing awareness.
Having realized the witness, you discover that you've always been home. You no longer feel that you were born or that you will die. If the universe itself perishes, you as awareness will be there.
You don't take any of this personally, because the structures that allowed this are seen never to have existed. You no longer feel lonely, separate or alienated in any way at all. You no longer compare your own spiritual attainments to those of another. You no longer wish to have another's experience, since it no longer seems that experience is in any way personal. Experience has become another term for this same global awareness.
Your experience is utterly sweet and open. The earlier descriptions of awareness as love now fully agree with your direct experience at every moment. It's not that sweetness is experienced as arisings which are pleasant. The sweetness is much deeper than that. It is not an arising object. Rather sweetness is globally felt as the very source and nature of the arisings. Even arisings that would normally be called "pain" are lovingly held as sweetness by this very same sweetness. Nothing is felt to be an exception to this perfect openness, clarity, love and sweetness. This is radical and revolutionary. And it is your natural state.
Greg Goode, Standing as Awareness, Non-Duality Press
posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle
The Real Work
It may be that when
we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no
longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
- Wendell Berry
(Collected Poems)
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Real_Work.html