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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3800, Sunday, February 7, 2010 Editor: Mark
The next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This
is where the courage comes in. Usually we think that brave people
have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear. When
I was first married, my husband said I was one of the bravest
people he knew. When I asked him why, he said because I was a
complete coward but went ahead and did things anyhow.
The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we
find out that something is not what we thought. That's what we're
going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we
thought. I can say that with great confidence. Emptiness is not
what we thought. Neither is mindfulness or fear.Compassion-not
what we thought. Love. Buddha nature. Courage. These are code
words for things we don't know in our minds, but any of us could
experience them. These are words that point to what life really
is when we let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to
the present moment.
- Pema Chodron, from When Things Fall Apart, posted to
DailyDharma
Self-pity is the worst poverty; it overwhelms man until he sees
nothing but illness, trouble and pain.
Hazrat Inayat Khan, posted to Distillation
Do not sit long with a sad friend.
When you go to a garden,
do you look at thorns or flowers?
Spend more time with roses and jasmine.
- Rumi, version by Coleman Barks from Open Secret, posted to
AlongTheWay
JOY
Be warned, the slightest exercise of preference
will open a gulf as wide and as deep
as the space between heaven and earth.
If you want to encounter your Buddha Mind
don't have opinions about anything,
opinions produce arguement,
and contentiousness is a disease of the mind.
The Gatha of Sang T'san,posted to allspirit
The wise man, by studying nature, enters into unity through its
variety, and realizes the personality of God by sacrificing his
own.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
It may be said that the personality of a man is quite
comprehensible, since his actions exhibit him as a single
individual, whereas God's personality has no clear identification
of its own. The answer is, that variety covers unity.
Hidden things are manifested by their opposites, but as God has
no opposite He remains hidden. God's light has no opposite in the
range of creation whereby it may be manifested to view.
(Jalaluddin Rumi)
The wise man by studying nature enters into the unity through its
variety, and realizes the personality of God by sacrificing his
own. 'He who knows himself knows Allah' (Islamic Saying). 'The
Kingdom of God is within you' (Bible). 'Self-knowledge is the
real wisdom' (Vedanta).
Life starts by distinguishing between the two; life starts us in
this way. If we did not distinguish between the two and we
arrived at that conception of unity of which I have spoken, we
would be missing a great deal in life. It is after distinguishing
these that, without becoming congested, we may come to the idea
of unity which raises us above it all. For instance, when a
person says, 'I will not look at the fault of another' and closes
his eyes, he has missed a great deal. But the one who has seen it
and risen above it has really closed his eyes; he is the person
who deserves to close his eyes from the other side.
The purpose of our life on earth is to come and see all the
distinctions and all the differences, but not to be congested by
them and so to be thrown downwards. We should go on rising above
them all, at the same time experiencing them all. For instance a
man may say, 'I have never thought about anyone who has done me
any good, and I have never considered any harm that has ever come
to me from anyone; I have always had just that one idea before me
and after that idea I kept going'. He may be advanced, he may be
spiritual, he may be pious, and yet he has missed a great deal.
But the one who has received all the good that has come to him
with grateful thanks and felt it, and who has also felt the harm
done to him and forgiven and pardoned it, he is the one who has
seen the world and is going beyond with success.
- posted to SufiMystic
Names and shapes change incessantly. Know yourself to be the
changeless witness of the changeful mind. That is enough.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels