The sea will be the sea, whatever the drop's philosophy...
ππ‘ππ π’π¬ ππ‘π’π¬ π¬ππ₯π ππ‘π¨ ππ¦ π?
Your real nature is stillness, light, expansion without center or periphery. It is unconditioned being, love. But you do not see it for you are a prisoner of your imagination and of second-hand information. You have enclosed yourself in a universe of concepts and beliefs. The ego is only a function, and to identify with it is a lack of true vision. Thoughts, feelings and actions appear in succession before the witness, leaving their imprint in your brain. Recalling them makes you believe in a continuity which is actually non-existent. But memory is a present thought, thoughts of the past occur in the present. In reality there is only presence, non-dual consciousness. We mistakenly take ourselves to be this or that, but there is only the true "I am" beyond time and space.
What is the real nature of the mistake I have made?
Desiring something which is nothing but an illusion, which has no foundation whatsoever; being afraid of truth, which is pure awareness free of thought.
Why would I be afraid of truth?
Because truth is life and you are afraid of living. You take yourself for an object which is born and dies, and you fear dying because you do not know life. It is only an object which is afraid and this object tries by all means to free itself. See that the effort to become free belongs to the belief in an object. The moment you see it turn your head and look behind.
A tribute to Coleman Barks
April 23, 1937 – February 23, 2026
Moses heard a shepherd on the road praying, God,
Where are You? I want to help You, to fix Your shoes
and comb Your hair. I want to wash Your clothes
and pick the lice off. I want to bring You milk,
to kiss Your little hands and feet when it’s time
for You to go to bed. I want to sweep Your room
and keep it neat. God, my sheep and goats
are Yours. All I can say, remembering You,
is ayyyy and ahhhhhhhhh.
Moses could stand it no longer.
Who are you talking to?
The One who made us,
and made the earth and made the sky.
Don’t talk about shoes
and socks with God! And what’s this with Your little hands
and feet? Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like
you’re chatting with your uncles.
Only something that grows
needs milk. Only someone with feet needs shoes. Not God!
Even if you meant God’s human representatives
as when God said, I was sick, and you did not visit me,
even then this tone would be foolish and irreverent.
Use appropriate terms. Fatima is a fine name
for a woman, but if you call a man Fatima,
it’s an insult. Body-and-birth language
are right for us on this side of the river,
but not for addressing the Origin,
not for Allah.
The shepherd repented and tore his clothes and sighed
and wandered out into the desert.
A sudden revelation
came then to Moses. God’s voice:
You have separated Me
from one of my own. Did you come as a Prophet to unite,
or to sever?
I have given each being a separate and unique way
of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.
What seems wrong to you is right for him.
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
these mean nothing to Me.
I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.
It’s all praise, and it’s all
right.
It’s not Me that’s glorified in acts of worship.
It’s the worshipers! I don’t hear the words
they say. I look at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the Reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning,
burning.
Be friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression!
Moses,
those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.
Lovers who burn
are another.
Don’t impose a property tax
on a burned out village. Don’t scold the Lover.
The wrong way he talks is better than a hundred
right ways of others.
Inside the Kaaba
it doesn’t matter which direction you point
your prayer rug!
The ocean diver doesn’t need snowshoes!
The Love-Religion has no code or doctrine.
Only God.
So the ruby has nothing engraved on it!
It doesn’t need markings.
God began speaking deeper mysteries to Moses. Vision and words,
which cannot be recorded here, poured into
and through him. He left himself and came back.
He went to Eternity and came back here.
Many times this happened.
It’s foolish of me
to try and say this. If I did say it,
it would uproot our human intelligences.
It would shatter all writing pens.
Moses ran after the shepherd.
He followed the bewildered footprints,
in one place moving straight like a castle
across a chessboard. In another, sideways,
like a bishop.
Now surging like a wave cresting,
now sliding down like a fish,
with always his feet
making geomancy symbols in the sand,
recording
his wandering state.
Moses finally caught up
with him.
I was wrong. God has revealed to me
that there are no rules for worship.
Say whatever
and however your loving tells you to. Your sweet blasphemy
is the truest devotion. Through you a whole world
is freed.
Loosen your tongue and don’t worry what comes out.
It all the Light of the Spirit.
The shepherd replied,
Moses, Moses,
I’ve gone beyond even that.
You applied the whip and my horse shied and jumped
out of itself. The Divine Nature and my human nature
came together.
Bless your scolding hand and your arm.
I can’t say what has happened.
What I’m saying now
is not my real condition. It can’t be said.
The shepherd grew quiet.
When you look in a mirror,
you see yourself, not the state of the mirror.
The fluteplayer puts breath into a flute,
and who makes the music? Not the flute.
The Fluteplayer!
Whenever you speak praise
or thanksgiving to God, it’s always like this
dear shepherd’s simplicity.
When you eventually see
through the veils of how things really are,
you will keep saying again
and again,
This is certainly not like we thought it was!
Mathnawi II 1720-96, from This Longing: Poetry, Teaching Stories, and Selected Letters, translated by Coleman Barks and John Moyne (Putney, Vt.: Threshold Books, 1988), pp. 19-22
The ignorant one says:
“God is over there.”
And places the sacred at a distance.
The half-awake one says:
“I am God.”
And senses that nothing is truly separate.
The awakened one says nothing.
Not because words are lacking,
but because they are no longer needed.
Who would speak,
and to whom?
The last one neither knows nor does not know.
Not from ignorance,
but because knowing has fallen silent.
He holds no belief.
He holds no doubt.
He seeks no answers.
He is not someone
who has arrived.
He is simply here.
Like breath happening by itself.
Like the stillness between two thoughts.
There, both God and human
cease to be two.
And what remains
needs no name.
Freedom does not come by improving the self,
but by understanding the illusion of the self.
“The self is a bundle of memories, experiences,
words, ideas, images about itself.
This ‘me’ is always seeking — seeking security,
recognition, continuity, pleasure, permanence.
And in that very seeking is conflict.
The self separates, compares, judges, fears, and clings.
Freedom does not come by improving the self,
but by understanding the illusion of the self.
When the ‘me’ is not — when it is seen completely without argument
— then there is relationship without division, action without conflict,
and a mind that is truly free.”
Talks in shri lanka
FROM
If thou dost not prefer Me above every known and unknown thing,
how canst thou relate thyself to my servanthood?
How canst thou say, “God is enough for me,” when thou restest not in the ignorance of the unknown,
even as thou restest in the knowledge of the known?
Thy seeking of Me, that I should teach thee what thou knowest not,
is like thy seeking that I should make thee ignorant of what thou knowest:
wherefore, do not seek of Me, and I shall assuredly satisfy thee.
Muhammad Ibn’Abdi’l-Jabbar Al-Niffari
