Wu Hsin - Why not!

How many have there been
Who have come to Wu Hsin
To ask “Why?”
Why is this? or
Why is that?
“Why?”

As there are many perspectives,
There can be many answers.
Yet, in the end,
The best answer to “Why?” is

Why not?

\

Rumi - “Bittersweet”

In my hallucination
I saw my Beloved’s flower garden
In my vertigo, in my dizziness
In my drunken haze
Whirling and dancing like a spinning wheel

I saw myself as the source of existence
I was there in the beginning
And I was the Spirit of Love
Now I am sober
There is only the hangover
And the memory of Love
And only the sorrow

I yearn for Happiness
I ask for help
I want mercy

And my Love says:

Look at me and hear me
Because I am here
Just for that

I am your Moon and your Moonlight too
I am your flower garden and your water too
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl

I want you to laugh
To kill all your worries
To Love you

To nourish you

Oh sweet bitterness
I will soothe you and Heal you
I will bring you roses
I, too, have been covered with thorns.

Khalil Gibran - Love

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Ramprasad Sen - A Serious Grievance

I have a serious grievance to settle

with the Mother of the Universe.

Even while apparently awake,

with you as my all-protecting Mother,

the house of mind and body

is ransacked by robbers,

my countless egocentric impulses.

Every day I resolve to repeat your name

as the most powerful defense,

but forget my good intention

just as the intruders arrive.

I have caught on to the playfulness,

0 Mother, by which you elude my willful grasp.

You bestow no power of inward prayer upon this child,

so you receive no consistent devotion from me.

I no longer regard this as my fault.

Only what you give me can I return to you

as the sweet offering of divine remembrance.

Fame and infamy, good and bad tastes of life,

all phenomena are your graceful play.

Yet as you dance in ecstasy,

we are thrown into quandary.

0 Goddess, lead us on your wisdom way.

This poet dares to sing her secret:

'Mother Mahamaya places a twist in every mind,

making it perceive the ashes of egocentricity

as an abundance of candy,

which it tastes with constant disappointment

and shocked surprise.

Awaken now and be free.'

[Translated by Lex Hixon from 'Mother of the Universe']

Ramprasad Sen was a Shakta poet of eighteenth century Bengal. His bhakti
poems, known as Ramprasadi, are still popular in Bengal—they are usually
addressed to the Hindu goddess Kali and written in Bengali.

Mooji - When Attention is one with 'is-ness'

Face to face with Sri Ramana Maharshi - C. R. Rajamani

    Below is an extract from the online book version of Laxmi Narain's book linked at the bottom of the page. Refered from Number 179, page 384, titled C.R. Rajamani:

179

C.R. Rajamani, associated with the printing business at Madras, first visited Sri Ramana in early 1940s.


   I was in my early twenties when I first had darshan of the Maharshi. I saw him seated on a couch. A cast-iron charcoal brazier was radiating a comfortable warmth, and a pleasing aroma of the incense thrown into it at regular intervals was pervading the entire hall. About thirty people were seated on the floor facing the Maharshi. None spoke or even whispered. What struck me was that no one seemed to show even an inclination to talk. Some were meditating with closed eyes. Sri Ramana’s body was luminous like burnished gold. He was clad in his usual kaupinam, with a small towel across his chest. He appeared to be occasionally dozing off and had to steady his head often. He frequently stretched his palms over the fire and massaged his long fingers. In spite of his apparent dozing, his eyes did not look drowsy. On the contrary, they were extraordinarily bright and alert. He was not looking at anybody in particular. I felt I was in the presence of an extremely affable person with a lot of natural grace, at perfect ease and without any pretension whatsoever.

   I saw a white-skinned boy of about ten years sitting a couple of feet to my left. Next to him was a white man, presumably his father. Further to my left, was a white woman, whom I thought was the boy’s mother. I then saw Bhagavan’s eyes alight on the boy for a brief minute. I thought it was just a casual look. The boy was all the time looking at Bhagavan with a sort of fixation, as if on the verge of asking a question. But, no! He broke into tears. A cascade of tears came gushing out of his eyes. They were not tears of pain, for his face was radiant with joy. I could see that Sri Bhagavan’s glance, though only resting on him for a brief moment, had opened in the boy’s heart a veritable reservoir of pure joy.

   I learned that the boy had come along with his parents, who had come to attend the Theosophical Society’s convention at Adyar, Madras. The boy’s parents arranged a trip to Tiruvannamalai, but he stoutly refused. However, he changed his mind at the last moment and did make the trip. Within an hour of his face-to-face meeting with Sri Bhagavan, his mental barriers were reduced to nothingness. He shed tears for quite sometime and later said to his mother, “I am so happy. I don’t want to leave his presence. I want to be always with him!” His mother was most upset. She pleaded with Bhagavan, “Swami, please release my son! He is our only child. We will be miserable without him.” Bhagavan smiled at her and said, “Release him? I am not keeping him tied up. He is a mature soul. A mere spark has ignited his spiritual fire.” Turning to the boy, the Maharshi said, “Go with your parents. I will always be with you.” He spoke in Tamil throughout, but the boy understood him fully. He bowed to Bhagavan and reluctantly left with his parents.

   Whenever I recall this incident, it creates a feeling of being very near to something truly Divine. Of course, I have had my own share of Sri Bhagavan’s grace in my later years. I have also had some ever-fresh visions which I dare not devalue as creations of a fevered imagination for they have strengthened my faith in Bhagavan. Some of them occurred decades after Sri Bhagavan’s mahanirvana. They have been firm confirmations of his continued Presence and reassurances of his immortal words: “They say I am going! Where can I go? I am always here!"


The author of this article, C. R. Rajamani, presented the original at a talk at
the April 25, 1998 Aradhana program at Arunachala Ashrama, New York,NY.


THE FOLLOWING LINK WILL TAKE YOU TO THE FULL ONLINE VERSION:

https://archive.org/details/FaceToFaceWithSriRamanaMaharishi

download as PDF

https://ia600708.us.archive.org/9/items/FaceToFaceWithSriRamanaMaharishi/Face_to_Face_with_Sri_Ramana_Maharshi.pdf 

 

Nirmala - Knowing and Not Knowing

There are two kinds of knowing. One kind is the knowing from the past, which includes everything we have
read or been told. We have all invested a lot of time and energy into trying to collect enough knowledge so
that we will feel safe. We want such a solid knowing that no matter what life throws at us we will feel like we know what to do. That is the kind of knowing that I’m suggesting is often useless because life is always
throwing something at you that is beyond your knowing.

There is another kind of knowing, which is much simpler and wiser, and that is the knowing of the
moment—the Heart’s knowing. There is a part of you that just knows. This knowing in the moment is
present to what is actually coming at you from life. It’s not a knowing beforehand but a knowing that arises
to meet what is actually happening in the moment. It is just present to whatever is happening without the
rigidity or preconceptions of the other kind of knowing. As soon as something new arises, it is present to
that, and the past knowing becomes irrelevant. Whatever you knew a moment ago is no longer any good in
this new moment. For example, anyone you think you know—you don’t know them now. You might have
many memories and ideas of what they are like, but to know them now you have to be really present to
them now and have noticed that they have changed—because they have.

Being this present, rather than making you foolish, makes you wide awake and intelligent. You are
present enough to know what is happening right now because you aren’t holding on to a preconceived idea
of what is happening. Another way of saying this is that you trust the source of knowing more than what you
know. If you trust what you already know, it will endlessly lead you astray. That’s when you find yourself
walking into furniture because you didn’t notice that someone moved it since you were last there.
The source of knowing is giving you everything you need to know right now. It may or may not be what
you want to know or be similar to what you knew yesterday, but everything you need to know for this
moment is right here. I’m not suggesting that the other kind of knowing is bad and that the best spiritual
practice of all is a frontal lobotomy. I’m only suggesting that you trust this fresh, alive knowing that shows
up in each moment more than what you know from the past. The only thing you can really know is what is
true right now in this moment.

Most moments are pretty ordinary; so this wonderful, alive knowing is often very ordinary and not
always profound. Sometimes it is profound, but that doesn’t do you any good when, in the next moment,
you have to balance your checkbook. Then, you have to surrender again to what is true in this moment,
which may be that three plus four equals seven. If you’re busy thinking “it’s all One anyway, so I’ll just put
down one,” you’ll get in trouble with the bank.

The truth is that 99% of the time, you act out of this innate knowing: your body breathes out of this
innate knowing. This innate wisdom doesn’t ignore your memories and other knowledge; it just doesn’t give
them validity when the truth of the moment is in contradiction to them. When they are applicable, like the
memory of how to get home when you are driving home, this innate wisdom draws on them.
One reason we turn away from this deeper knowing is that it feels like not knowing. When you are just
here without any preconceptions or pre-conclusions, the experience feels like not knowing. In every
moment, you step back into now, which is a place of not knowing, and then the knowing rises up to meet it.
Right now, this innate wisdom is keeping you breathing, it is keeping the blood circulating throughout your
whole body, it is keeping every cell in your body doing what it needs to do. These are simple knowings, but
they are actually very profound. How does our body know how to do all of this?
So, which will you trust? Will you put your trust in all of your ideas and what you think you know or in
that which has been running your life all along, which has always been enlightened—so enlightened that it
blinks your eyes when they need to blink? Your wisest moments have been when you have been present to
what was happening. When you are present to what is true, what to do becomes obvious. However, this
requires trust because knowing doesn’t show up until the moment, itself, shows up—they arrive together.
You trust by just giving your attention to what is rather than to your ideas about what should be or what you
would like to have happen or to trying to figure out what you will say and do ahead of time, which we do in
hopes that there won’t be any surprises.

The good news is that even before you trust this deeper knowing, it has been working perfectly all
along. The difference is that when you trust it, when you surrender to it, you don’t suffer anymore. When,
instead, you pay attention to your ideas about how things should be or how you want things to happen, this
innate wisdom still gets you where you need to be, but because you are so busy with your ideas about it, you
suffer. The good news is that this innate wisdom is not something you add or something you do or
something you need to master, it is who you are.

from "Nothing Personal"

free PDF  Here http://endless-satsang.com/

Wei Wu Wei - Positive Way/Negative Way

Art Peter Patrick Barreda

The Positive Way

VEDANTA

Being-Aware may be said to be what noumenally I am.
All aspects of being aware are what phenomenally I am,
But these are devoid of being in themselves,
For they are manifestations of being-aware.

If awareness can be said to be cognisable at all,
Such cognising is ultimate inseeing,
And might be called 'radiant voidness', manifesting as 'Grace'.
If I am aware of radiance - that may be awareness of what I am,
For, being Awareness, I am Radiance also.

What awareness is - I am,
What awareness seems to be - I am not,
Yet I am what every object is,
For every object is I.

The Negative Way
CH'AN

What I am must necessarily seem to be Unawareness,
Unaware of being aware.
It has been objectivised as 'Voidness'.

That is why I perceive awareness as my object,
Which I do not recognise as being what I am.
It has been objectivised as 'Cognition'.

This functioning, which is known as 'cognising',
Inevitably manifests in a conceptual extension,
Which is termed 'space-time',
And this is experienced by me as 'living'.

Since I can never become aware of my unawareness,
I can never be an object,
And I alone, of which I cannot be aware, cannot be known.

But everything of which I am aware,
Must necessarily be my object,
And therefore must be what I am,
For my object and I are not two.
 

 http://www.weiwuwei.8k.com/

Miriam Louisa - This Sacred Intimacy

I am

nothing I can

conceive

nothing I can

imagine

nothing I can

remember

nothing I can

know

nothing I can

feel

nothing I can

perceive

.

yet my Presence

makes every

perception

and every movement of

thought and feeling

p o s s i b l e

.

I am

the Beloved I sought;

there was no

attainment to be had, no

condition to be met, no

return to be made

.

nothing, nothing

could be more sweetly simple

than this sacred intimacy

http://thisunlitlight.com/