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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4183 Sunday, March 6, 2011
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and
the sublimity and marvelous order which reveals itself in nature.
Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he
wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole.
- Albert Einstein, from http://answerlessanswer.com/index.html
You can kiss your family and friends goodbye and put miles
between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your
heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a
world but a world lives in you.
- Frederick Buechner, posted to The_Now2
may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them, men are old
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's Sunday may I be wrong
for whenever men are right, they are not young
and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile
- e e cummings, from Complete Poems, posted to The_Now2
my death poem
waits
for now, a breeze!
- Anna Ruiz, posted to The_Now2
The Sunrise Ruby
In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.
She ask, "Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth."
He says, "There's nothing left of me.
I'm like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness? It has no resistance
to sunlight."
This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
and told the truth!
The ruby and the sunrise are one.
Be courageous and discipline yourself.
Completely become hearing and ear,
and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.
Work. Keep digging your well.
Don't think about getting off from work.
Water is there somewhere.
Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who's there.
- Rumi, version by Coleman Barks, frm The Essential Rumi,
posted to Sunlight
When there is deep abundance
there is nowhere to abide.
There is nowhere to rest
or grasp onto
and yet there is rest.
The sky abides
yet it never rests.
Neither can we say that
the sky is not always at rest.
We talk about the sky
as if it were something
as if it actually exists -
and yet we cannot say that
the sky does not exist.
The sky is nothing but
coming and going.
Everything is perfectly spontaneous.
The coming and going arise mutually
instantaneously.
If the true I is asleep
you will miss the point entirely
and you will continue to dwell
in the world of opposites.
So see the two as one
and the one as empty
and be liberated
within the world of duality.
At first it seems
as if begoing follows becoming.
But look even closer
and you will see
that there are only
flashes of lightning
illuminating the empty sky.
Life and death
becoming and begoing
are only words.
In order to save your life
you must see that you die
instantaneously
moment to moment
instant to instant.
Now where are you going to abide?
And where are you not abiding already?
Indeed there is nowhere
to rest your head
and there is nothing but rest.
So let go of all ideas
about permanence and impermanence
about cause and effect
and about no cause and no effect.
All such notions are dualistic concepts.
The Truth of what you are
is completely beyond all duality
and all notions of non-duality,
and yet it includes duality
and non-duality alike.
Like an ocean
that is both waves and stillness
and yet un-definable
as waves or stillness.
The truth of being
cannot be grasped by ideas
or experiences.
Both waves and stillness
are the manifest activity
or your own self.
But self cannot be defined
by its activity
nor by its non-activity.
The truth is
all-transcendent
ungraspable, all-inclusive
and closer than your own skin.
A single thought about it
obscures its essence.
The perfume of true life
is right in your nose.
There is nothing you can do
to perceive it
and yet you must do something.
I say:
Rest and be taken.
Rest and be taken.
- Adyashanti, from My Secret is Silence: Poetry and Sayings of
Adyashanti