Thomas Merton - contemplation

When no one listens

To the quiet trees

When no one notices

The sun in the pool.

Where no one feels

The first drop of rain

Or sees the last star

Or hails the first morning

Of a giant world

Where peace begins

And rages end:

One bird sits still

Watching the work of God:

One turning leaf,

Two falling blossoms,

Ten circles upon the pond.

One cloud upon the hillside,

Two shadows in the valley

And the light strikes home.

Now dawn commands the capture

Of the tallest fortune,

The surrender

Of no less marvelous prize!

Closer and clearer

Than any wordy master,

Thou inward Stranger

Whom I have never seen,

Deeper and cleaner

Than the clamorous ocean,

Seize up my silence

Hold me in Thy Hand!

Now act is waste

And suffering undone

Laws become prodigals

Limits are torn down

For envy has no property

And passion is none.

Look, the vast Light stands still

Our cleanest Light is One!

Ella Wheeler Wilcox - Conversation

CONVERSATION

God and I in space alone

and nobody else in view.

"And where are the people, O Lord," I said,

"the earth below and the sky o'er head

and the dead whom once I knew?"

"That was a dream," God smiled and said,

"A dream that seemed to be true.

There were no people, living or dead,

there was no earth, and no sky o'er head;

there was only Myself -- in you."

"Why do I feel no fear," I asked,

"meeting You here this way?

For I have sinned I know full well--

and is there heaven, and is there hell,

and is this the Judgment Day?"

"Nay, those were but dreams,"

the Great God said,

"Dreams that have ceased to be.

There are no such things as fear or sin;

there is no you -- you never have been--

there is nothing at all

but Me."

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Jac O'Keeffe - Ownership

Jac O' keeffe

Rumi - When you are with everyone but me

When you are with everyone but me,

you're with no one.

When you are with no one but me,

you're with everyone.

Instead of being so bound up with everyone,

be everyone.

When you become that many,

you're nothing.

Empty.

Zen Teaching of Hui Hai

Hui-hai as a young man traveled to the monastery of Ch'an master Ma-tsu about 1,200 years ago and recorded the following conversation:

Ma-tsu: What do you hope to gain by coming here?

Hui Hai: I have come seeking the Buddha-Dharma (i.e. the Way).

Ma Tsu: Instead of looking to the treasure house which is your very own, you have left home and gone wandering far away. What for?

Hui Hai: Please tell me to what you alluded when you spoke of a treasure house of my own.

Ma Tsu: That which asked the question is your treasure house. It contains absolutely everything you need and lacks nothing at all. It is there for you to use freely, so why this vain search for something outside yourself?

~ From the Zen Teaching of Hui Hai: On Sudden Illumination, translated by John Blofeld

Jeff Foster - Seeking the Self

No wonder 'you' cannot see this: this is a freedom that a 'person' will never see. How could a 'person' ever accept that everything happens spontaneously, of its own accord, in the absence of the person? The Tao (or Oneness, or God, or Life, or Spirit, or Emptiness...) has no centre, no mind, no personal volition. It appears as everything, but itself is nothing. Nothing manifesting as a world, as everything there is and is not. And there is only the Tao, which is to say there is no Tao at all. And even to speak of it, even to think of it, even to do that is to lose it forever. And yet the thinking and the speaking are fully the Tao; there is nothing that it is not. It is the no-thing by which everything appears. And it's not even that, because it's not an 'it' at all. When speaking of the Tao, silence is the only way. ~ Jeff Foster

Unmani, Die To Love

oneness beyond all appearances

Just a look, just a touch and all worlds fall away.

Melting into one.

Falling into the other.

Never been separate.

Oneness beyond all appearances.

All boundaries are meaningless.

All concepts, ridiculous.

No me, no you.

No inside, no outside.

~ Unmani, Die To Love

All there is, is this perception. Perception is not owned by a someone or by a body/mind. Perception just is. All that is perceived, is just appearing in perception. All appearances are simply perception, including the appearance of this body/mind or that chair. There is no separation.

I am absolutely alone. There are no others. There is not even a character 'me'. The character 'me' is also a perception. Thoughts are perceived. Emotions are perceived. It is all perceived. What perceives is Life itself. Life perceives the whole play. I am life and as this, I am the play of whatever happens.

Closed eyes and there is only nothing. There is only sensation felt in nothing. This nothing is the emptiness in which everything happens. This nothing is alive. Open eyes and there is a rush of perception. Nothing overflows as everything. Eyes closed or open, the fabric of life is alive nothingness.

~ Unmani, I Am Life Itself

Unmani

Franklin Merrell-Wolf - I Am That

Am I this body of thoughts in my mind? no. One 

gets a little closer to his thoughts than to anything 

else, and it's a little harder to untangle this. But if he 

watches and studies closely enough, the thoughts 

come to me. I accept or reject them. 

That which accepts or rejects them is different from the thought. 

And then I finally reach this point where I find that 

I must be this something, in some sense, different 

from other people. I'm not the mind, I'm not the 

feelings, I'm not the body—that I see. But I surely 

am, I surely am an individual, apart from others.

now what you've gotten a hold of is a very 

difficult fellow—it's your ego. He can sneak around 

and confuse you like the dickens. You can spend 

years trying to get behind him. And what you do, 

you can get into an infinite regression. you look at 

your ego. All right, here am I and all of a sudden it 

dawns upon you that that which is looking at the 

ego is really the I. So you stick that one out in front. 

you look at it again, but then you realize it couldn't 

be, because here is a something that is observable. 

At last it finally dawns that I AM THAT which is 

never an object before Consciousness. And mayhap, 

at that moment, in your analysis—the Heavens will  open.

Franklin Merrell-Wolff, from "The Induction"

Rabindranath Tagore - Journey Home

Journey Home

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my

voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,

and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own,

and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!'

The question and the cry `Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand

streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!'

from Gitanjali (Song offerings) Here

Francis Lucille - Mind

What can we expect from our meetings?

To learn not to expect. Not expecting is a great art. When you no longer live in expectation, you live in a new dimension. You are free. Your mind is free. Your body is free. To understand intellectually that we are not a psycho-physical entity in the process of becoming is a necessary first step, but this understanding is not sufficient. The fact that we are not the body must become an actual experience that penetrates and liberates our muscles, our internal organs and even our cells. An intellectual understanding that corresponds to a sudden, fleeting recognition of our true nature brings us a flash of pure joy, but when we have full knowledge that we are not the body, we are that joy.

Francis Lucille

A musical break

Al Gromer Khan - Piz Pakiza

On the Seeker and the Way

A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk. 

"It is right before your eyes," said the master."Why do I not see it for myself?""Because you are thinking of yourself.""What about you: do you see it?""So long as you see double, saying 'I don't,' and 'you do,' and so on, your eyes are clouded," said the master."When there is neither 'I' nor 'you,' can one see it?""When there is neither 'I' nor 'you,' who is the one that wants to see it?"

DZOGCHEN - THE SIX VAJRA VERSES

DZOGCHEN Lineage masters

'Although apparent phenomena manifest as diversity ---

yet this diversity is non-dual.

And of all the multiplicity

of individual things that exist,

none can be confined in a limited concept.

Staying free from the trap of any attempt

to say 'it's like this', or 'like that',

it becomes clear that all manifested forms are

aspects of the infinite formless,

and, indivisible from it,

are self-perfected.

Seeing that everything is self-perfected

from the very beginning,

the disease of striving for any achievement

is surrendered,

and just remaining in the natural state

as it is,

the presence of non-dual contemplation

continuously spontaneously arises."

(Quoted in Namkhai Norbu's The Crystal and the Way of Light)

THE GREAT PRAJNA PARAMITA HEART SUTRA

Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva doing deep Prajna Paramita Perceived the emptiness of all five conditions, and was freed of pain.

O Sariputra, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form;

Form is precisely emptiness, emptiness precisely form;

Sensation, perception, reaction and consciousness are also like this.

O Sariputra, all things are expressions of emptiness, not born, not destroyed,

Not stained, not pure; neither waxing nor waning.

Thus emptiness is not form; not sensation nor perception, reaction nor consciousness;

No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;

No color, sound, smell, taste, touch, thing

No realm of sight, no realm of consciousness

No ignorance, no end to ignorance

No old age and death, no cessation of old age and death

A-Hameed Ali - Traveler in the desert

Traveler in the desert
Seeking my heart’s desire,
Drawn by a vague memory
From immemorial past,
Guided by a subtle taste
On my thirsty lips.
When one day
In the middle of the desert
There appears suddenly
As if out of nowhere
A beautiful garden,
Lush green
With running streams
And cool breeze,
With a fragrance of jasmine
That’s so sweet
And so young.
The deeper I go into the garden
The greener the green
And the sweeter the fragrance,
Until I come into the center.
There I behold
With a joyful wonder
The source of the sweet fragrance;
A fountain of abundance,
Spreading out fluidly
Like the tail of the peacock,
Pouring luminous colors
And showering rainbows.
It’s so clear
And so pure
Like the nectar of jasmine,
A syrup so sweet
For it is honey.
I drink and drink
Until my heart is fully satisfied
And my thirst totally quenched.
Knowing with certainty
That there is absolutely nothing else
That my heart desires,
My body and soul
Joyously melt
Into a thickening ocean
Of sweet honey,
And reclining on a tree
With complete ease
Total contentment
And supreme happiness
I lie down
Close my eyes
And take a long awaited rest.
Here a sweet melodious music
Deliciously seeps into my ears.
I feel that I do not hear
Rather drink the sweet music,
That seems to flow like water
From the fountain of Kauther.
I open my eyes
To see my hands
Playing on a harp
A song of love,
And to my delight
I discover that
The harp is naught
But my own heart.

From Heart Dweller 

Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas) website