Charles Genoud - Gesture of Awareness

A few excerpts from Gesture of Awareness by Charles Genoud:


When we develop true intimacy with our body, we become intimate with ourselves. We learn to be present as a whole. We open to discovery of our essence when the dichotomy of body-mind is dropped.

This is precisely the purpose of the practice of Gesture of Awareness.

In this practice we explore movement to discover the nature of awareness. We inquire even of the sensation of tension in the neck – becoming aware not of the sensation but of the consciousness of it; becoming aware not of the consciousness of it, but of the essence of the consciousness. One does not always have to practice Gesture of Awareness, though, in such a gradual way.

If the body is just a thought, the play of awareness, then ultimately an intimate knowledge of the body is an intimate knowledge of awareness...

..........



....Are we present
in what we do
at every instant?

Or are we doing
the not-yet-here,
that which we are wishing for

In the simplicity
of the experience,

is the doing of what we do
happening
anywhere?

The action is
not located anywhere.

In order for something
to be placed somewhere there needs
to be at least two phenomena.

When there is only one,
there is nothing with respect to
where it may be located.

Bodily sensations are not in the body -
for the sensations themselves,
the sensations are not happening anywhere.

From the left hand’s point of view,
it is not located anywhere.
It is nowhere.

Nothing to improve.

If there were only one universe
and therefore nothing outside it,

could we located the universe?
Here without any possibility
of there is devoid of signification.

Here nondualistically
is meaningless.

Now here
nowhere.

~~~

Can the most dense place
of presence be found in the head
or heart or wherever else?

is the place with the densest sense of being
right in the experience itself?

Is the place with the densest sense of being
right in bodily sensation
when there is bodily sensation?

right in the experience itself:
in a thought
when there is a thought?

What if we bring our attention,
our awareness, to a specific place,
any specific place, any part of the body?

If we try as meditators to bring our awareness to our walking we’ll be
in the profane place in front of the temple.

When we bring our attention somewhere
we’re in the profane world.

Bringing our awareness
to any experience means we’re not
in the most dense place of existence.

We don’t need to bring our awareness anywhere -
awareness is always within the arising
of the experience itself.


We don’t need to make any separation
between bodily sensations and awareness.
Bodily sensations are already awareness.

Thought is already awareness.
We don’t need to bring
awareness to the thought.

What we’re exploring
is not the body
but the body’s awareness.

We’re just exploring
the body of awareness.

We may wonder where
the body’s awareness is,
imagining it’s in the body.

but the body’s awareness will only be
in the body if we stand outside ourselves
trying to figure out where it is.

The center gives orientation.
It’s not located anywhere.

The experience of the body’s awareness
or the thought’s awareness is not located anywhere
from the standpoint of the experience.


There is nothing outside
the experience of the body’s awareness.

Awareness is not located anywhere.
It is not situated in space.

for space would then be something known by
experience: it’s not a characteristic
of awareness itself.

In our exploration
it’s not necessary
to  direct our awareness.

Rather, let awareness
play out on its own.

Rest simply with experiences,
with bodily sensations,
thoughts.

If one tries to bring awareness
someplace then one may not
be complete.

And so now you know
where the place to be is.
 

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Rashani Rea - Wu said to Wei

 

Wu said to Wei,
“There’s a natural
unfolding
a non-way of sorts
in which love
invisibly happens
through
(not to) us
without effort
or action
yet
with impeccable
precision
as finely focused
as a scalpel’s
incision
as purely
mysterious
as a cocoon’s dying
into a butterfly
or moth,
as deifying
and wondrously wild
as an impecunious mystic
remembering
the silk lining
on her clothen
robe
or winning the lottery
without having
bought a ticket.

love moves
ever-bloomingly
from silence into song
through song back
into silence,
sometimes fiercely
other times tenderly.
It has no preferences
IT simply knows
without knowing
the way moonlight
touches,
like a single tear
from shiva’s eye
it sees
the rudraksha beads
that wait
to be touched
by the devotee’s
loving fingers.”

“And,”
Wei reminded Wu,
“Once struck,
the singing bowl
simply sings
effortlessly
and unstoppably.
The vibration
of particles may cease
but since energy
like love
can not be created
or destroyed
it simply changes
into a different form.”

“So too,”
whispered the wind,
“the delicate scent
of ylang ylang
permeates the entire garden
and one small candle
can fill a darkened room,
‘doing nothing’
yet transmuting everything.”

Through love
we “do” without doing
there is nothing to do
and nothing not to do.
Not ‘doing’ something
and not ‘not doing’ anything,
love co-arises.

We can never know it
we can only BE it.

There’s an innocent
spontaneity, ancient
as a song line
in Gonwanaland,
moving inexorably
like ground water
beneath a barren desert.

Indisplaceable
like ether
the rapturous
spirals of love
hold
and permeate
all objects
and all beings.

Love is the greatest
euthanasia
for the conceptual mind.
In its mystery
we are destined to find
more than we ever imagined
and less than we ever feared.

Rashani

James Broughton - Easter Exultet

Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.
Quit your addiction
to sneer and complain.
Open a lookout.
Dance on a brink.
Run with your wildfire.
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut.
Not dawdling.
Not doubting.
Intrepid all the way
Walk toward clarity.
At every crossroad
Be prepared
to bump into wonder.
Only love prevails.
En route to disaster
insist on canticles.
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane.
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
Honeymoon with Big Joy!

Dr. Kuntimaddi Sadananda - Does Advaita believe in reincarnation?

Q: Does Advaita believe in reincarnation?

A: To answer simply, Advaita is not based on any single soul - there is no soul and not-soul at that ultimate understanding - there is only one non-dual sat chit and ananda. Existence-consciousness-ananda cannot be divided. If one sees divisions they are only apparent and not real. If one takes the apparent as real, then all others factors become as real.

Jiiva (soul) itself is a notion and when that notion is taken as real - all other problems become as real as jiiva. Hence reincarnation and transmigration of soul are all real in that frame of reference.

Look at this way: gold, iron and copper look different if these difference as taken as real. They can exist in different forms - now as ring, now as bangle, now as chain, now as bracelet - gold undergoing transmigration or reincarnation into different forms.

If one understands that all are nothing but electrons, protons, neutrons etc., then from that perspective gold, iron, copper are just bunches of electrons, protons and neutrons - which themselves are nothing but energy-states.

I can understand as a scientist they are all one - yet I can transact in the world taking gold as different from iron and copper. Transactions are done at one level while understanding is at the ultimate level - there is no confusion if one understands correctly. I know that the sun neither rises nor sets but I can still appreciate the beauty of sunrise and sunset.

That is advaita in spite of dvaita - that is no incarnation in spite of reincarnation. Karma (action) is at the transactional level. At the absolute level I realize that I am never a kartRRi (doer). That is Advaita. Advaita in spite of dvaita. 

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John O'Donohue - Grace: A Permanent Climate of Divine Kindness

Grace is one of the most majestic words in theology. It suggests the sublime spontaneity of the divine which no theory or category could ever capture. Grace has its own elegance. It is above the mechanics of agenda or operation. No one can set limits to the flow of grace. Its presence and force remain unmeasurable and unpredictable. Grace also suggests how fluent and seamless the divine presence is. There are no compartments, corners or breakages imaginable in the flow of grace. Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness. It suggests a compassion and understanding for all the ambivalent and contradictory dimensions of the human experience and pain. This climate of kindness nurtures the sore landscape of the human heart and urges torn ground to heal and become fecund. Grace is the perennial infusion of springtime into the winter of bleakness."

from: — Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

Anonymous - The Primordial Calling | the longing of the Heart

Calling to you across millennia,
For aeons of time-
Calling-calling... since always...

It is part of your being, My voice,
But it comes to you faintly
and you only hear it sometimes;

"I don't hear", you say,
"what is it and where?"

But somewhere you hear,
and deep down you know.
For I AM that in you which has been always:
I AM that in you which will never end.

Even if you say, Who is calling?
Where will you run? Just tell Me.
Can you run away from yourself?

For I AM the Only One for you;
there is no other,

Your Promise, your Reward AM I alone
Your Punishment, your Longing
and your Goal ...

Credit: Travelling the path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters
edited by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

reblogged from http://www.mysticsaint.info/

Heart Sutra

The Bodhisattva Avolokita,
While moving in the deep course of perfect understanding,
Shed light on the five skandas
And found them equally empty.
After this penetration he overcame ill-being.



Listen, Shariputra,
Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
Form is not other than emptiness;
Emptiness is not other than form.
The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness.



Here, Shariputra,
All dharmas are marked with emptiness.
They are neither produced nor destroyed.
Neither defiled nor immaculate.
Neither increasing nor decreasing.
Therefore, in emptiness there is neither form, nor feeling, nor perceptions.
No mental formations, no consciousness.
No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind.
No form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no objects of mind.
No realms of elements from eyes to mind consciousness.
No interdependent origins and no extinction of them.
(From ignorance to death and decay)
No ill-being, no cause of ill-being, no end of ill-being, and no path.
No understanding, no attainment.



Because there is no attainment,
The Bodhisattvas, grounded in perfect understanding,
Find no obstacles for their minds.
Having no obstacles, they overcome fear,
Liberating themselves forever from illusion and realizing perfect nirvana.
All Buddhas in the past, present, and future, thanks to this perfect understanding,
Arrive at full, right, and universal enlightenment.



Therefore one should know that perfect understanding
Is the highest mantra,
The unequalled mantra,
The destroyer of ill-being
The incorruptible truth.
A mantra of prajnaparamita should therefore be proclaimed.
This is the mantra:


Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha.
Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha.
Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha.

Timothy Conway - THE "TRUTH" OF WHAT IS"

THE "TRUTH" OF WHAT IS

There is only Awareness—Spirit, the One Self, God, Tao, Buddha-nature, Allah, etc.

And "Thou art That" (Chandogya Upanishad, VI.viii.7).

Awareness is That which is right now looking through your eyes, hearing through your ears, touching, smelling, tasting, thinking, etc., and Awareness is also That which is currently manifesting as all that you sense or think. It is who you really are, and what everything essentially is. The universe of body-minds is Its dream-play, Its imaginary projection, which is beginningless and is manifest on a number of "planes" or "levels" of being, as the human, animal, plant, and rock levels, the hell, ghost, demon, angel, and god levels. There is no satisfaction inherent in this universe (on whatever level, even heaven, which is still structured in terms of the subject-object alienated polarity, and which is an impermanent abode from which individual ego-souls must return to work out their karma on the human level).

There is satisfaction only in Awareness, which subsumes and transcends all levels, and which is absolute bliss, peace, and well-being.

One cannot know, perceive, find, or grasp Awareness as an object of experience, since it is not an object, but the eternal subject, or, better to say, that which subsumes and transcends the subject-object polarity. One can only be Awareness, abide or remain as Awareness, and not be ignorantly identified with any of its projections (the dream-objects of Awareness, such as thoughts, percepts, memories, plans, fears, desires, emotions).

Pure Awareness, sans identifications, happens when:

1) there is no sense of separation between a "me, over here" and a "you (it, them) out there"—that is to say, when all is intuited as the nondual Self/Being/Awareness;

2) whatever happens in the field of awareness is perfectly OK and loved as the [poignant manifestation of the One] God-Self;

3) one's behavior is spontaneous, free of ego-deliberation and hesitancy; and

4) there is no more identification with arising desires or fears, likes or dislikes, attractions or aversions.

So just abide as pure Awareness.

Timothy Conway-Enlightened-Spirituality