May Sarton - In Time Like Air

Consider the mysterious salt:
In water it must disappear.
It has no self. It knows no fault.
Not even sight may apprehend it.
No one may gather it or spend it.
It is dissolved and everywhere.

But, out of water into air,
It must resolve into a presence,
Precise and tangible and here.
Faultlessly pure, faultlessly white,
It crystallizes in our sight
And has defined itself to essence.

What element dissolves the soul
So it may be both found and lost,
In what suspended as a whole?
What is the element so blest
That there identity can rest
As salt in the clear water cast?

Love, in its early transformation,
And only love, may so design it
That the self flows in pure sensation,
Is all dissolved, and found at last
Without a future or a past,
And a whole life suspended in it.

The faultless crystal of detachment
Comes after, cannot be created
Without the first intense attachment.
Even the saints achieve this slowly;
For us, more human and less holy,
In time like air is essence stated.

May Sarton Collected Poems 1992 

David Whyte - Enough

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now

http://www.davidwhyte.com/biography.html

“The poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back for the poet once this frontier has been reached; a new territory is visible and what has been said cannot be unsaid. The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say difficult truths from which it is impossible to retreat. Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good; all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable; but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time; to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms, in the passage of a few short lines.”

John Grenafege - pointers

free download

Reflections of the Only

If you really want to know that which is your own eternal true natural Self, first show you are worthy of that grace by being silent and refusing to continue being owned by a thought stream of delusion. Stop being so easily transfixed by the continual lies of a mind, truly non-existent outside of the very words and language which contain it! Mind and its fleeting ‘isness’ and reality, are only when the words appear and are accepted as truth belonging to someone. And that ‘someone’ needs to continually be re-enforced by the story that’s nurtured over and over again in our tragically addicted need to remember a past, while projecting a future ― resulting in never really knowing true life or love at all. There is no other time when it will be more right to know the truth of your own Beingness.

John Grenafege's site 

Colin Drake - Self Identity – The Key to Spontaneous Living

Art  Cameron Gray

Discovering one’s actual self-identity, who (or what) we are, is the key to living spontaneously unencumbered by spurious opinions, beliefs, superstitions, prejudices, misconceptions, dislikes, aversions, phobias, neuroses, fears etc… For, until we have investigated reality and discovered our true Self, our view of the world (and all it contains) will tend to be distorted by identifying with ego and self image, and then referring our experiences back to this erroneous identity. This also entails seeing the world through the filter of our likes, dislikes, beliefs, self-interest, self-concern, fears for the future, memories etc…

This means that we do not see the world as it actually is and are thus liable to blunder around in an illusionary mental framework determined by the fictitious story we have fashioned concerning who we are. Not only that but we will also relate to others, about whom we will each have concocted a story, from this mental creation of ourselves. Obviously this will lead to a great deal of misunderstanding and confusion. This also entails regarding oneself as a separate ‘object’, in a universe of such, and thus regarding others in the same way. Which leads to treating them as objects (for that is what we think we are), the outcome of which can be seen in the modern world.

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Hafiz - Chess game

What is the difference
Between your experience
of Existence
And that of a saint?

The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved
Has just made such a
Fantastic move

That the saint is now continually
Tripping over joy
And bursting out in laughter

And saying, “I Surrender!”

Whereas, my dear,
I’m afraid you still think

You have a thousand serious moves.

The poem in English is from the Book titled: I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy - translation Daniel Ladinsky

The Indra's Net - Avatamsaka Sutra

FAR AWAY IN THE HEAVENLY ABODE OF THE GREAT GOD INDRA, THERE IS A WONDERFUL NET WHICH HAS BEEN HUNG BY SOME CUNNING ARTIFICER IN SUCH A MANNER THAT IT STRETCHES OUT INDEFINITELY IN ALL DIRECTIONS. IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EXTRAVAGANT TASTES OF DEITIES, THE ARTIFICER HAS HUNG A SINGLE GLITTERING JEWEL AT THE NET'S EVERY NODE, AND SINCE THE NET ITSELF IS INFINITE IN DIMENSION, THE JEWELS ARE INFINITE IN NUMBER. THERE HANG THE JEWELS, GLITTERING LIKE STARS OF THE FIRST MAGNITUDE, A WONDERFUL SIGHT TO BEHOLD. IF WE NOW ARBITRARILY SELECT ONE OF THESE JEWELS FOR INSPECTION AND LOOK CLOSELY AT IT, WE WILL DISCOVER THAT IN ITS POLISHED SURFACE THERE ARE REFLECTED ALL THE OTHER JEWELS IN THE NET, INFINITE IN NUMBER. NOT ONLY THAT, BUT EACH OF THE JEWELS REFLECTED IN THIS ONE JEWEL IS ALSO REFLECTING ALL THE OTHER JEWELS, SO THAT THE PROCESS OF REFLECTION IS INFINITE 

 THE AVATAMSAKA SUTRA
FRANCIS H. COOK: HUA-YEN BUDDHISM : THE JEWEL NET OF INDRA 1977 

THE AVATAMSAKA SUTRA  PDF

Paul Hedderman - Enslaved to thoughts?

Planet Self

You have lots of thoughts about you all day. The gravitational pull that keeps them close is from the Planet Self.

The mind is obsessed with the idea of being a self. And it doesn’t recognize: That’s the dilemma.

 Your attention orbits around the Planet Self because the self provides the gravitational pull to all the thoughts, making them about YOU.

 If you realized they weren’t about the REAL you, they could simply come and go. Your attention would be freed up from the slavery of selfing and would attend to the conscious contact: A recognition of life in and of itself. You’d be traveling lighter — not by any procedures or practice but simply by recognition of what is so.

 The reason I’m hooked on the narrative in my head is because I think it’s about me. By freeing up some of the attention from the selfing there is awareness of the conscious contact; then the enslavement is over. Once you recognize you’re not the self you will lose interest in all its activities. Simply by entertaining that the selfing is not “you.

 ”You’ll lose interest in obsessing with the thoughts, making up stories about the feelings you’re having or not having. The attention that’s glued to the screen of selfing will be released; it will be available to the conscious contact — each moment’s experience.

 Most of your attention goes to what’s NOT happening (the past and future) instead of what IS happening. When that devotional practice of selfing is dismissed you can attend to what IS happening: The conscious state of what you are — conscious contact. You’ll be aware of existing. The I am.

 When that “I am” is in place you can have an immunity to all the “I am nots.” Simple as that! Just an entertaining of the I am gives you recognition of what “is.

 ”When you are identified as a self, you are living as though you were solid, a thing --- a NOUN. Which gives you the inability to recognize the active experience called living. You accept an interpretation by the head to replace the living-ness of it.

 You think living is about something that has happened, or something that may happen. You think living is about having expectations, withholding yourself from this moment in favor of a mystical moment that will be better than this moment, because it seems like there’s nothing happening in this moment. From what point of view? From the point of view of the self as a noun!

 Life is a verb — appearing every moment new. Always happening. Otherwise, it would be called “was-ing.” or “will-be-ing.” Selfing works wonders with this; you could “was” yourself into a great mythical past or “will-be” yourself into a hopeful (or fearful!) mythical future. But all of nothing’s happening.

 In selfing life is happening TO you. Self has become such a strong reference point that everything that is happening is now happening TO you.

 That’s a huge interpretation, and when you interpret life you miss it. It’s impossible not to. You cannot corral a verb. You just go along with it.

 You don’t have to CHANGE the fact that you’re living totally in interpretation. Attend to the awareness; and that awareness will stop your attention from giving up to selfing. That whole production will move to the background; and the background, which is the awareness, will move to the foreground. The emphasis will shift. And you’ll travel lighter.

 Just entertain the idea you’re not the self you think you are.

 Self-centeredness binds you to things, and a meaning is given to those things so that they can affect you. Circumstances don’t bind you; the self-centeredness binds you to the circumstances.

 A thought is just a thought; but it changes dramatically when it becomes MY thought. The interpretation of the thought as being mine is slapped on it. Now the thought, whose nature it is to come and go, doesn’t go by so quickly anymore.

 A thought comes into awareness. You hear the thought. But how you hear it is, "I’m the thinker of it." The thought becomes observed as being mine. The act of identification. My thought.

 The MY connects it with the file system called Paul. Paul has a lot of files about life related to Paul. As soon as the thought becomes identified as MY thought the file system gets opened, pulling up old ideas and downloading them into the thought. The binding agent isn’t the thought; your claiming it is the binding agent.

 Now you’re bound to that thought; and instead of going on its way it’s orbiting around you. The Planet of You provides the gravitational pull that keeps the thoughts circling.

 If you lose interest in the idea that you are that planet then you will lose interest in the THOUGHTS ABOUT YOU as that planet --- releasing the thoughts from their gravitational orbit so that they can come and go, and they are freed.

 

Paul Hedderman site