Master Xu Yun - Experience Chan!

1. Experience Chan! It's not mysterious.
As I see it, it boils down to cause and effect.
Outside the mind there is no Dharma
So how can anybody speak of a heaven beyond?

2. Experience Chan! It's not a field of learning.
Learning adds things that can be researched and discussed.
The feel of impressions can't be communicated.
Enlightenment is the only medium of transmission.

3. Experience Chan! It's not a lot of questions.
Too many questions is the Chan disease.
The best way is just to observe the noise of the world.
The answer to your questions?
Ask your own heart.

4. Experience Chan! It's not the teachings of disciples.
Such speakers are guests from outside the gate.
The Chan which you are hankering to speak about
Only talks about turtles turning into fish.

5. Experience Chan! It can't be described.
When you describe it you miss the point.
When you discover that your proofs are without substance
You'll realize that words are nothing but dust.

6. Experience Chan! It's experiencing your own nature!
Going with the flow everywhere and always.
When you don't fake it and waste time trying to rub and polish it,
Your Original Self will always shine through brighter than bright.

7. Experience Chan! It's like harvesting treasures.
But donate them to others.
You won't need them.
Suddenly everything will appear before you,
Altogether complete and altogether done.

8. Experience Chan! Become a follower who when accepted
Learns how to give up his life and his death.
Grasping this carefully he comes to see clearly.
And then he laughs till he topples the Cold Mountain ascetics.

9. Experience Chan! It'll require great skepticism;
But great skepticism blocks those detours on the road.
Jump off the lofty peaks of mystery.
Turn your heaven and earth inside out.

10. Experience Chan! Ignore that superstitious nonsense
That makes some claim that they've attained Chan.
Foolish beliefs are those of the not-yet-awakened.
And they're the ones who most need the experience of Chan!

11. Experience Chan! There's neither distance nor intimacy.
Observation is like a family treasure.
Whether with eyes, ears, body, nose, or tongue -
It's hard to say which is the most amazing to use.

12. Experience Chan! There's no class distinction.
The one who bows and the one who is bowed to are a Buddha unit.
The yoke and its lash are tied to each other.
Isn't this our first principle... the one we should most observe?

Nirmala - How to experience Oneness more deeply

Q: I know intellectually that I am Awareness. I say "intellectually" because I don't yet sense it
as fact. Do you have any additional pointers?

A: Many people have grasped the Oneness and their true nature as Awareness intellectually, but
it is not a common or an ongoing experience for them. It seems there is often a gap between an
intellectual knowing and a more grounded, knowing-in-your-being kind of knowing. The bridge
between these two is, very simply, repeated experiences of Awareness. We tend to only really
know something we have experienced a lot.
For everyone, different amounts of experience are required for that knowing to be felt in an
ongoing way. How many times would it take to do something like flying an airplane before you
felt you knew how to do it? If you piloted an airplane once for two minutes, would you feel you
knew how to fly an airplane? Hopefully not! But if you had flown solo hundreds of times, you
would probably have an ongoing sense that you know how to fly an airplane.
So having a deeper experience of Oneness is usually a matter of having lots of experiences of
Oneness and Presence. However, it can also result from one very strong or long lasting
experience. Although everyone would like to have a single big experience that does the trick,
from my many conversations with people, more often this shift seems to happen gradually, as a
result of a series of experiences.
There is one more point I'd like to share with you. Experiences of Oneness are wonderful and
of great service to this shift, but such experiences are not that important in and of themselves.
Like every other experience, the experience of Oneness comes and goes. And any effort to get
or keep such an experience will cause you to suffer as much as striving to get or keep any other
experience.
While it's profoundly delightful to experience Oneness, a deep knowing of the truth is what
matters. When there is a deep knowing that Presence, or Being, is all there is and that is who
you are, it no longer matters if you're experiencing it in this moment or not. It is similar to how
while it is useful to own an automobile, imagine if you had to experience your car twenty-four
hours a day in order to own a car! Owning a car is much easier than that since you trust the
existence of your car, even if you can't see it in this moment. We have had enough experiences
of the reality of physical objects that we have developed a trust in them, which allows us to
freely move in and out of experiences of our car without doubting that it will still be there when
we need it.
In the same way, with enough experiences of Oneness, you just trust this deeper reality.
Experiences of our true nature are necessary to develop this trust in Oneness, but those
experiences don't have to be ongoing for this knowing and trust to become ongoing. The real
point of spiritual experiences is for the experience of Oneness to become irrelevant because the
deeper sense of knowing is so constant.
There are no techniques or processes that can cause you to experience Oneness or Presence,
and there is no formula for the shift to a deeper knowing and trust. However, spiritual practices
and teachings can put you in a place of curiosity about and receptivity to the spontaneous
arising of Presence. They make it more likely for a spontaneous experience of Oneness or
Presence to arise.

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Rupert Spira - Why am I Not Enlightened Yet?

steven norquist - Already Enlightened

Already Enlightened

Right now you are 100% seeing all the truth that could ever be. You think you are not seeing it but it is impossible to avoid. You are fully enlightened and you could never be otherwise.

The simple ordinary awareness that you have of anything that arises either in the world, or in your mind is the truth. There is nothing more to enlightenment than realizing directly that what is appearing in awareness, "before" you take claim of it, is the truth.
The Ultimate Reality is that there is not, nor has there ever been a you to take claim of any object of awareness.

There is no self. Enlightenment is simply pure selfless awareness of everything that arises moment to moment. It is a ghostly feeling of non-being combined with hammering clarity. It is a shimmering beauty beyond earthly description that is felt by emptiness.

You are that emptiness and have always been that. There has only ever been enlightenment. There has only ever been existence/awareness.

Feel the emptiness, your non-being as the universe expands to infinity. Walk into a crowded room and never find yourself. If you can do these then you will know you are already enlightened and in that knowing you will realize you have always known this and yet have never existed to know it.

Whether you rest in your ignorance or your knowledge, you have arrived.

Steven Norquist 2010

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Rumi - Whispering to you

"Make everything in you an ear, each atom of your being,

and you will hear at every moment what the Source is whispering to you,

just to you and for you, without any need for my words or anyone else’s.

You are—we all are—the beloved of the Beloved,

and in every moment, in every event of your life,

the Beloved is whispering to you exactly what you need to hear and know.

Who can ever explain this miracle?

It simply is.

Listen and you will discover it every passing moment.

Listen, and your whole life will become a conversation in thought and act

between you and your Beloved, directly, wordlessly,

now and always."

 

 

Lao Tzu - How ridiculous!

Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference between success and failure?
Must you value what others value,
avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!

Other people are excited,
as though they were at a parade.
I alone don’t care,
I alone am expressionless,
like an infant before it can smile.

Other people have what they need;
I alone possess nothing.
I alone drift about,
like someone without a home.
I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.

Other people are bright;
I alone am dark.
Other people are sharper;
I alone am dull.
Other people have a purpose;
I alone don’t know.
I drift like a wave on the ocean,
I blow as aimless as the wind.

I am different from ordinary people.
I drink from the Great Mother’s breasts.

RADIANCE: The Experience of Light - Dorothy Fadiman, Michael Wiese

At a time when inter-cultural understanding is increasingly fragile,
RADIANCE affirms the presence of a universally shared experience.
Striking natural images, unusual special effects, and poetic narration
are woven together with a wide range of musical selections to develop
an evocative documentary on light, from the physical to the metaphysical.
Through religion, philosophy, art, and architecture, RADIANCE documents
the story of light as a universal symbol of life to people from many cultures.
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, plus images from
Pagan rituals and ancient Egypt are intricately related. This inspiring film
invites the viewer to see how images of light continue through ancient
cultures into the present, connecting the visions and values
of people around the world.

Mary Oliver - The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations, though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver, Dream Work, Grove Atlantic Inc., 1986 & New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1992.

Vashistha - Pure Consciousness

 

The mind should rest in pure consciousness
as pure consciousness.

Consciousness alone is the heart of all beings,
not the piece of flesh which people call the heart!

That Self, or the infinite consciousness,
knows itself by itself; experiences itself in itself by itself.

You are the seer.
You are consciousness.

Consciousness is conscious of itself
as consciousness.

The light of the enlightened itself is Self-awareness.
Behold the light of consciousness within your Self by your Self.

Kabir - I went looking for Him…

image source

I went looking for Him
And lost myself;
The drop merged with the Sea —
Who can find it now?

Looking and looking for Him
I lost myself;
The Sea merged with the drop —
Who can find it now?

Sri Aurobindo – The Word of the Silence

source image   http://manolescent.tumblr.com/

A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,
A world of sight clear and inimitable,
A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,
A greatness pure, virgin of will.

Once on its pages Ignorance could write
In a scribble of intellect the blind guess of Time
And cast gleam-messages of ephemeral light,
A food for souls that wander on Nature’s rim.

But now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence’s ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day.

All turns from a wideness and unbroken peace
To a tumult of joy in a sea of wide release.

http://www.aurobindo.net/

A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,
A world of sight clear and inimitable,
A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,
A greatness pure, virgin of will.
Once on its pages Ignorance could write
In a scribble of intellect the blind guess of Time
And cast gleam-messages of ephemeral light,
A food for souls that wander on Nature’s rim.
But now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence’s ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day.
All turns from a wideness and unbroken peace
To a tumult of joy in a sea of wide release.
- See more at: http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/blog/page/8/#sthash.sbm4uxb2.dpuf

A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,
A world of sight clear and inimitable,
A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,
A greatness pure, virgin of will.
Once on its pages Ignorance could write
In a scribble of intellect the blind guess of Time
And cast gleam-messages of ephemeral light,
A food for souls that wander on Nature’s rim.
But now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence’s ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day.
All turns from a wideness and unbroken peace
To a tumult of joy in a sea of wide release.
- See more at: http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/blog/page/8/#sthash.sbm4uxb2.dpuf

Shams of Tabriz - 40 rules of Love

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