Wu Hsin - Shades of the Prison House

 

Do not deem
Wu Hsin to be insane
Simply because you cannot hear
The music he dances to.
Man is the one who is insane:
His solution to his
Need for security is to
Lock himself away in a prison.
What could be more secure than
A prison?
He passes his time
In a solitary cell labeled “me”.
Believing he is now safe and that
No other can harm him,
He has exchanged freedom
For security.
What is outside
The walls of the prison is the unknown,
Possibly not secure,
Not safe,
Alien, at times hostile, and
Not at all predictable.
Yet what sane man would choose
Prison over freedom?
Man is the one who is insane:
He trades the experience of life,
Here and now,
For time and attention spent
On regretting the past,
Wishing for a better past and
Hoping for a brighter future,
For a future that will right
What is now deemed not right.The laughter of a child,
The blueness of the sky,
All sacrificed on the altar of
Mental preoccupations.
What a waste!
Man is the one who is insane:
Yet, quite normal
Within societal boundaries.
Numerous methods may lead one to
Being more comfortable.
But that is all you get:
One who is more comfortable in their prison,
Not one freed from their prison.
Nothing gets a person out of their prison
Because the person is the prison.

These words are not directed to
Any individual,
Any personality,
Any you.
Instead they go to that
Which supports the “you”,
Sustains the “you”,
Yet is prior to it.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee - Love Is Fire and I Am Wood

Love Is Fire and I Am Wood:
Laylâ and Majnûn as a Sufi Allegory of Mystical Love
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

published in
Sufi: Journal of Mystical Philosophy and Pratice,
Summer 2011

Laylâ and Majnûn is the best-known love story of the Middle East, and for the Sufi is an allegory of mystical love. Sufis are lovers of God, wayfarers travelling through the desert of the world, making the journey from separation back to union with God. For these mystics the relationship with God is that of lover and Beloved, and it is the longing for their Beloved that turns them away from the world, drawing them deeper and deeper into the mystery of the heart. These lovers of God have made Laylâ and Majnûn their own story, full of symbols and images of this great love affair of the soul, a love affair as mad, dangerous and destructive as that experienced by the young man Qays, whose love for Laylâ changes his name to Majnûn, the mad one.

Laylâ is the beloved, Majnûn the lover, and his story is that of the seeker consumed by longing, burnt by love. In Nizami's version, written at the end of the twelfth century, their relationship is rich in Sufi symbolism—as when Majnûn, driven by the pain of separation, creeps to Laylâ's tent:

All the radiance of this morning was Laylâ, yet a candle was burning in front of her, consuming itself with desire. She was the most beautiful garden and Majnûn was a torch of longing. She planted the rose bush; he watered it with his tears.

.... Laylâ could bewitch with one glance from beneath her dark hair, Majnûn was her slave and a dervish dancing before her. Laylâ held in her hand the glass of wine scented with musk. Majnûn had not touched the wine, yet he was drunk with its sweet smell.

continue reading full article:

http://www.goldensufi.org/a_Layla_and_Majnun.html 

pdf download: Here

Wei Wu Wei - You are my 'self'

There is nobody and nothing to be aware of Awareness,
Awareness, I cannot be aware of myself,
For I know no self of which I could be aware.

I am no thing of which to be aware,
As a thing 'you' cannot know awareness,
For 'you' can only be aware as 'I',
When there is no 'me' of which to be aware.

Divided into cognising subject cognising objects,
I cognise all that can be cognised,
Every conceptual thing save what is cognising,
Which, as such, is not conceivable, since it is no thing,
And is no thing, since it is not conceivable.

This is all I am, so simple am I,
Devoid of mystery, majesty, divinity,
Of any attribute whatever.
Being no thing,
How could I have the attribute of any thing?

Why try to glorify me?
I am neither glorious nor not-glorious,
I am neither anything nor nothing,
Neither the presence nor the absence of any thing.
I am this total phenomenal absence
Which is all that phenomenal presence can be.

Then how can I be known?
I cannot.
How can I be experienced?
I cannot.
Only 'God' can be experienced,
And He is my concept, my object.

But when conceptualising is in abeyance,
Time is in abeyance also,
And space, together with all concepts.
Then all that you are I am.
You are my 'self'. I can have no other.

http://www.weiwuwei.8k.com/

Niguma - Mind

You don't have to do anything with your mind,
just let it naturally rest in it's essential nature.
Your own mind, unagitated, is reality.
Meditate on this without distraction.

Know the Truth beyond all opposites.
Thoughts are like bubbles that form and dissolve in clear water.
Thoughts are not distinct from the absolute Reality,
so relax, there is no need to be critical.

Whatever arises, whatever occurs,
simply don't cling to it, but immediately let it go.
What you see, hear, and touch are your own mind.
There is nothing but mind.

Mind transcends birth and death.
The essence of mind is pure Consciousness that never leaves reality,
even though it experiences the things of the senses.
In the equanimity of the Absolute, there is nothing to renounce or attain.

ૐ  

Vajradhara Niguma

Vajradhara Niguma (born 1025) is the full Tibetan name of the Indian yogini Vimalashri; sister, lover and student of Naropa, a Mahasiddhas and once the head of the famous Nalanda University.
Naropa taught different things to each of his students, and Niguma received the teachings that became known as the Nigu Chos-drug. Once Niguma herself had reached enlightenment, she began to pass her knowledge on to others. Her most famous disciple was the Tibetan yogi and Bönpo Khyungpo Naljor, the only one to whom she imparted her most secret teachings. Therefore, the Shangpa school, although officially founded by Khyungpo

Naljor, is in fact based on this transmission from Niguma. 

Shweta Mitra - Fall in love with...

Art by Shweta

Fall in love with the gift being given to you
Not the box it comes in.

Fall in love with the silence
Not the practices that bring you silence.

Fall in love with the truth being revealed to you
Not the guru or system that is delivering the truth.

We miss so much by focusing on the form that delivers the truth to us.
The ego will analyze, judge, defend, a guru or a system.
That is what the ego loves to do.. engage itself in something.
But when we let go the judgment, the analyzing, the defending...
We let the actual teachings in.
These teachings are real subtle and beyond the mind.
Hence the mind does not get it.

Be....
....silent......

Let go the attachment to the gift box
And start enjoying the gift.
The truths being sent to us
The blessings being poured into our lives.

Fall in love with....
The guru in you...
The silence.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......

Links 

https://www.facebook.com/CreationsFromStillness

http://www.zhibit.org/shweta

http://the-journey-inward.blogspot.gr/

http://i-me-and-mind.blogspot.gr/

http://livingunbound.net/ 

St. John of the Cross - What is Grace

‘What is grace’ I asked God.

And He said,

‘All that happens.’

Then He added, when I looked perplexed,

‘Could not lovers
say that every moment in their Beloved’s arms
was grace?

Existence is my arms,
though I well understand how one can turn
away from
me

until the heart has
wisdom.’

 
From: Love Poems from God: by Daniel Ladinsky.