Chuck Surface - A Lover Cannot Be “Convinced”

 A Lover cannot be convinced, lawyerly,
That “Consciousness is all there is”,
Or any such thing…

Nor do they care.

A physics “debate” on the nature of “reality”,
However diamond-like the exposition,
However seemingly irrefutable…

Is a spoonful of dirt in a Lover's mouth.

A Lover desires the Wine of Longing,
The Intoxication of Dissolution,
The Rapture of Union…

Not a dissertation that seeks to “prove”.

They do not seek knowledge… “about”,
From the mind of another,
But the Direct Experience “of”…

In the immediacy of Existence, Now.

The knowledge of those who came before,
Debated among 10,000 schools,
Is valued only to the extent that it serves…

The Blossoming of the Heart, Now.

A Lover longs for wordless Benediction,
Not a “convincing” construct of logic and reason,
Leading to a “conclusion” of the mind…

A half-empty glass of tepid water.

The mind-bound declare this a childish emotionalism,
The stance of those unable to comprehend,
Born of a wounded need for psychological healing…

A dualistic View for the simple-minded.

But the Lover, too, uses discernment and discrimination,
Only discarding them when their purpose is served,
Words, concepts, and logical constructs…

Having reached the end of their utility.

There, they revel, instead,
In Wordless Wonder of the Unknowable,
And speak of that which cannot be spoken of…

The Ineffable Sublimity of the Great Mystery.

A Love not by Lover given,
Or from Beloved received,
Rather…

The end of Lover and Beloved.

In which the “meaning” of the word “Love” Vanishes,
And only Experience remains,
An Experience had, but by no one, of… 

www.GardenOfTheBeloved.com
www.facebook.com/InTheGardenOfTheBeloved

William Segal - Nothing lacking

The Middle Ground

There is a middle ground, a basic Reality embracing self
and Self. It may be called my true nature. To discover what
prevents me from the experience of it, I have only to look
at myself, just as I am.

It is so simple.
At this moment, what is my state?

I let my attention embrace the whole of myself, from the
top of the head through the torso, solar plexus, the entire
structure.

I am very still in the body. I follow the breath. I watch
the movements of thoughts and associations. The feelings
become quiet, and the activity in the head diminishes. I
am more. I perceive the whole of my world, just as it is.

I remain very still, refusing the mind’s inclinations to reach
for anything.

Thoughts and feelings come and go like floating clouds.
They are not me.

The experience is at one and the same time, both active
and passive. Through sensation of the body, I perceive that
I am. Yet, I do not know who or what I am. I am witness to
my existence.

I am aware of a feeling which suffuses the interior of myself.
It is a choiceless, an accepting awareness. With it comes a
sensation that extends to and envelopes all the parts of the
body. I am very still, relating to the silence that is both
inside and outside.

Nothing is lacking at this moment.

–William Segal (1904-2000), painter and writer, met P.D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff in the 1940s, and later spent long periods at the main Rinzai and Soto Zen monasteries in Japan. He is the author of numerous works, including Openings: Collected Writings of William Segal (1985-1997). This poem is from The Middle Ground, (Green River Press).

From Parabola Magazine, Winter 2006, the “Home” issue. Purchase it here.

Jack Kerouac - “The stars are words”

Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize

“The stars are words”

and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words,
and so is this world too.

And I realize that no matter where I am,
whether in a little room full of thought,

or in this endless universe of stars and mountains,
it’s all in my mind.

—Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

Silent Lotus -- Divorce

Divorce

As
Our
Hearts
Divorce
From a chaos
Of the wandering
Worries of the mind
We enter into this
Sweet sanctuary
Of freedom
Where
The
Silence
Of love
Is a
Wisdom
Which is so
Divine

 Silent Lotus

Sant Jnaneshwar - Sat Chit Ananda (excerpts)

"There is nothing else here but the Self. Whether appearing as the seen or perceiving as the seer, nothing else exists besides the Self.... Just as water plays with itself by assuming the forms of waves, the Self, the ultimate Reality, plays happily with Itself. Though there are multitudes of visible objects, and wave upon wave of mental images, still they are not different from their witness. You may break a lump of raw sugar into a million pieces, still there is nothing but sugar, Likewise, the unity of the Self is not lost, even though It fills the whole universe. It is seeing only Its own Self -- like one who discovers various countries in his imagination, and goes wandering through them all with great enjoyment."

Janaka Stagnaro - Trust

Trust in your eyes,
And like a fool
You will flee the rope
And pat yourself on the back
For having escaped a snake.

Trust in your eyes
And like a fool
Your mouth will be full of desert sand,
Trying to quench your aching thirst.

Trust in your eyes
And like a fool
You will find yourself waist deep,
And going deeper,
As you try to cross what appears to be solid ground.

Nothing you see is as it is.
It is no more than a mirage,
An image filtered through existing beliefs.

You look upon the world,
And all those images you see,
You believe exist outside yourself.

You are separate.
They are there.
This is the premise by which you see.

You want this.
You shun that.

But what you want you have known.
And what you shun you have known.

Look at a child,
Or the Master,
Each thing they come across is new,
Is born that very moment.

What was once a bowl
Now is a hat,
And then becomes a house for ants.

The eyes of a child,
Or of the Master,
Blesses the world with fresh light,
Chasing away musty shadows
Of yesterday’s perceptions;
Chasing away ancient shadows
Of this and that—
Me and you.

And when the child
Or the master looks upon you,
It is the present that beholds you,
Free of all mistakes
And all accomplishments,
And sees you only as you are.

It is freedom to look upon the world as a child,
With no schemes, no ambitions
, Only the simple act of blessing the world
With the birth of the moment.

You want to do good works?
You want to save the world from its misery?

You need not go out of your way to feed the poor,
Or to go out and tend the sick.
Simply see the world with the eyes of a child.

For what the adult will find disgusting and foul,
Like excreta upon the grass,
The child will see it as a whole world onto itself,
Beckoning to be explored.

Be the child.
Be the Master.
See the world as it is.

And rejoice,
For God looks back at God. 

--poem from Footprints Along the Shore of an Incoming Tide: 

Impressions of a Fellow Traveler

 

http://www.janakastagnaro.blogspot.gr/

http://www.mindfulness-meditation-techniques.com/about-janaka.html 

Rupert Spira - 2nd Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview

Rumi - Something big is coming.

Something big is coming.
It’s still a secret, but arriving everywhere.
The atmosphere is charged with longing and searching.
The pilgrims and the mystery-lovers know.
They are gathering now
The sound of prayer drifts across the dawn.
It’s Muslim, Jew, Christian
All mingled
All religions
All this singing
One Song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.
The sunlight looks a little different on this wall
Than it does on that.
And a lot different on this other one.
But it’s still one light.
We have borrowed these clothes
These time and place personalities
From a Light.
And when we praise,
We’re pouring them back in.

Tung-shan Liang Chieh (Tozan Ryokai) - Song of the Jewel Mirror Awareness

Art H.Kopp Delaney

Song of the Jewel Mirror Awareness

The teaching of Thusness
Has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and
Ancestors;
Now you have it, so keep it well.
A silver bowl heaped with snow,
A heron fading into bright moonlight—
They look alike, but are not the same;
When placed side by side, you can see which is
which.
Meaning is not in words,
Yet it yields to the inquiring spirit.
To discriminate becomes a pitfall;
To fall into hesitation is to let slip.
Turning away and touching are both wrong,
For it is like a mass of fire.
To express it in elegant words
Is to defile it.
It is bright at midnight;
At dawn there appears no light.
It acts as a guide for beings—
Its use removes all sorrow.
Although it is not fabricated,
It is not inexpressible.
It is like facing a jewel mirror;
Form and image behold each other—
You are not it.
It actually is you.

It is like a babe in the world,
In five aspects complete;
It does not go or come,
Nor rise, nor stand.
In saying “baba wawa,”
Using words that are not words,
Ultimately nothing is grasped,
Because speech is not precise.
It is like the six lines of the double split hexagram;
The relative and Absolute integrate—
Piled up, they make three;
The complete transformation makes five.
It is like the taste of the five-flavored herb,
Like the diamond thunderbolt.
Subtly included within the True,
Inquiry and response come together.
Communing with the Source and communing with
the process,
It includes integration and includes the road.
Merging is auspicious; do not violate it.
Naturally Real, yet inconceivable,
It belongs neither to delusion nor enlightenment.
When the time is ripe and conditions are arranged,
In utter silence it shines brightly.
In its fineness it enters spacelessness;
In its greatness it has no location.
A hair’s breadth of deviation
Puts ev’rything out of tune.
Now there are sudden and gradual,
In connection with which are set up basic
`approaches.

Once basic approaches are distinguished,
Then there are guiding rules.
But even though the basic is reached and the
approach comprehended,
Truth eternally flows.
Outwardly still while inwardly restless,
Like a tethered colt, a trapped rat—
The ancient teachers pitied them,
And transmitted the Dharma.
According to their delusions,
They called black as white—
When erroneous imaginations cease,
The acquiescent Mind realizes itself.
If you want to conform to the ancient Way,
Please observe the ancients of former times:
When about to fulfill the Way of Buddhahood,
One gazed at a tree for ten aeons,
Like a tiger leaving part of its prey,
Like a horse with hobbled hind legs.
Because there is the base, there are
Jewel pedestals, fine clothing;
Because there is the startlingly different,
There are house cat and cow.
Yi, with his archer’s skill,
Could hit a target at a hundred paces;
But when arrow points meet head on,
What has this to do with the power of skill?
When the wooden man begins to sing,
The stone woman gets up to dance;
It’s not within reach of feeling or discrimination—

How could it admit of consideration in thought?
Ministers serve their lord,
Children obey their father.
Not obeying is not filial,
And not serving is no help.
Practice secretly, working within,
As though a fool, like an idiot—
If you can achieve continuity,
This is called the host within the host.

 

PDF

Jeff Foster - Thoughts and feelings

Thoughts and feelings
do not have power over you
until you give them power
by forgetting your true nature.
You are the ocean; they are the ever-changing waves.
You are the unfathomable sky; they are the passing clouds.
You are the uncontained container;
they are welcome guests in your infinite embrace.
Thoughts and feelings are not you, friend,
but you are vast enough to hold them,
to allow them to come and go,
arise and fall,
emerge, stay for a while, and subside into deep sleep.
You remain, awake.”

 

http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/ 

The Realization of Zen Master Kyogen

“Realization is Intimacy with all things” ~ Dogen

According to the story of Zen Master Kyogen, a 9th century student of Isan in China, true realization is not about gaining knowledge, but about letting it go.

One day Kyogen asked his teacher Isan about the ultimate truth. In response, his teacher said, “What is your understanding? What is your original face before your parents were born?”

Kyogen thought on these questions, but could find no suitable answer. So he retreated to his room to look through his notes and books. He still couldn’t find an answer that would please his teacher, so he asked Isan to teach him the essential truth. Isan refused, saying that any explanation he gave would be his own, not Kyogen’s.

Despondent, Kyogen burned his notes and books, and left to become a wandering monk, eventually settling down as the caretaker for a shrine in the countryside. One day while he was sweeping the yard, he flicked a pebble against a stalk of bamboo—tak!—and at that moment he was changed.

Although in that instant he became a master, Kyogen never described it as if he had achieved something. Instead he said, “I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew. I now don’t know anything.” And he meant it. Everything was gone—his habits, his sense of body-mind, the world and his view of it. Even the “me” that he thought he knew had slipped away. In this way, Kyogen’s realization was not a sudden inrush of new knowledge, but a dismantling of his current knowing.

But what is the “original face” that Kyogen’s teacher asked him about? This question is meant to drive us toward understanding who and what we are right now—beyond the body-mind inherited from our parents, the habits learned from others, and even the book knowledge picked up in our studies. When we seek our original face before our parents were born, these concepts are all dismantled—this is what is lost to us.

Of course, habits can be good—they help us drive cars and go to work each day. Likewise, intelligence and conceptual understanding can be used skillfully. But when we become stuck in these patterns—if we think they make up our entire truth—then they will obscure our true nature and bind us to our current limitations. Fortunately, in each moment the universe provides us with the opportunity to see who and what we are right now, by giving us a chance to break free of these habits and forget everything. This is the ultimate liberation.

But as Kyogen reminds us, it won’t come from our head: “I’m not going to get this by figuring it out.”

Source text Science&Nonduality

“Realization is Intimacy with all things” ~ Dogen
According to the story of Zen Master Kyogen, a 9th century student of Isan in China, true realization is not about gaining knowledge, but about letting it go.
One day Kyogen asked his teacher Isan about the ultimate truth. In response, his teacher said, “What is your understanding? What is your original face before your parents were born?”
Kyogen thought on these questions, but could find no suitable answer. So he retreated to his room to look through his notes and books. He still couldn’t find an answer that would please his teacher, so he asked Isan to teach him the essential truth. Isan refused, saying that any explanation he gave would be his own, not Kyogen’s.
Despondent, Kyogen burned his notes and books, and left to become a wandering monk, eventually settling down as the caretaker for a shrine in the countryside. One day while he was sweeping the yard, he flicked a pebble against a stalk of bamboo—tak!—and at that moment he was changed.
Although in that instant he became a master, Kyogen never described it as if he had achieved something. Instead he said, “I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew. I now don’t know anything.” And he meant it. Everything was gone—his habits, his sense of body-mind, the world and his view of it. Even the “me” that he thought he knew had slipped away. In this way, Kyogen’s realization was not a sudden inrush of new knowledge, but a dismantling of his current knowing.
But what is the “original face” that Kyogen’s teacher asked him about? This question is meant to drive us toward understanding who and what we are right now—beyond the body-mind inherited from our parents, the habits learned from others, and even the book knowledge picked up in our studies. When we seek our original face before our parents were born, these concepts are all dismantled—this is what is lost to us.
Of course, habits can be good—they help us drive cars and go to work each day. Likewise, intelligence and conceptual understanding can be used skillfully. But when we become stuck in these patterns—if we think they make up our entire truth—then they will obscure our true nature and bind us to our current limitations. Fortunately, in each moment the universe provides us with the opportunity to see who and what we are right now, by giving us a chance to break free of these habits and forget everything. This is the ultimate liberation.
But as Kyogen reminds us, it won’t come from our head: “I’m not going to get this by figuring it out.”
- See more at: http://www.scienceandnonduality.com/the-realization-of-zen-master-kyogen/#sthash.6Q9LfrKP.dpuf

Francoise Rene Auguste Chateaubriand - Master in the Art of Living

Art  Tomas Sanchez

“A master in the Art of Living 

draws no sharp distinction 

between their work and their play; 

their labor and their leisure; 

their mind and their body; 

their education and their recreation. 

They hardly know which is which. 

They simply pursue their vision of excellence

 through whatever they are doing, 

and leave others to determine 

whether they are working or playing. 

To themselves, 

they always appear to be doing both.”

Anamika Borst - Just This

The obviousness of this perspective is amazing.

It is screaming at us,
as every sound and taste,
and every thought and feeling,
every sight and touch.

Happening through all the senses already.

Nothing you need to do for this,
Nothing you need to achieve.

As it is already the case.

This is all there is.



The preoccupation with the story,
with keeping up the self image is so absorbing
and so much work that we loose sight of
this plain and very simple fact.

The natural state is not something to be achieved,
it is discovering and recognizing
that it is never not here,
and happening as all there is.

Just This..

http://www.anamikaborst.com/

The Buddha - Samadhi Raja Sutra

Know all things to be like this:
A mirage, a cloud castle,
A dream, an apparition,
Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.

Know all things to be like this:
As the moon in a bright sky
In some clear lake reflected,
Though to that lake the moon has never moved.

Know all things to be like this:
As an echo that derives
From music, sounds, and weeping,
Yet in that echo is no melody.

Know all things to be like this:
As a magician makes illusions
Of horses, oxen, carts and other things,
Nothing is as it appears.

Mooji - Be One with God

Relax without laziness
Focus without tension.
Perceive without projecting.
Witness without judging.
Enjoy without craving.
Reflect without imagining.
Love without condition.
Give without demanding.
Receive without possessing.
Serve without self-seeking
Challenge without dominating.
Meditate without identity.
Correct without blaming.
Overcome without pride.
Laugh without cynicism.
Cry without Pity.
Confront without hatred.
Guide without superiority.
Be without self-defining.
Live without arrogance.
Enter without self-importance.
Depart without without regret.
Be one with God.

 http://mooji.org/

Robert Wolfe/Adyashanti

At age 19, Adyashanti (Steve Gray) began a Zen practice, sitting in meditation sometimes three or four hours a day. During the sixth year, he had a deep insight that the seeker (himself) could not be apart from the sought (transcendent Being). As he described what occurred to him:

“I am what I’ve been seeking…[But] what is this that I am?”

Another six years later, that question was put fully to rest: he had penetrated to the emptiness of all things. Why had it taken twelve years, he pondered, to discover the actuality which he had never been apart from. Would he recommend a zazen meditation practice to others, as the most direct means to enlightened realization? 

In an interview, with Stephen Bodian, he said:

“When I looked around at the Buddhist tradition, I realized that the success rate was terrible. People were in it for enlightenment, but very few were actually getting enlightened. ‘If this were a business,’ I thought, ‘we’d be bankrupt.’”

He began to look at his own transformation:

“Enlightenment is awakening from the dream of being a separate ‘me’, to being the universal reality. It’s not an experience or a perception that occurs to a separate person as the result of spiritual practice or cultivated awareness. It doesn’t come and go: and you don’t need to do anything to maintain it. It’s not about being centered, or blissful, or peaceful or any other experience…. The separate person is seen through, and you realize that only the supreme, universal reality exists; and that you are that.”

He emphasizes:

“This knowing has never changed or faded in any way…. It’s not that I, as a separate self, merged with everything. It was just a pure seeing that everything is one, and that I am that.”

Adya began to question the value of a spiritual practice that is contrived to unite an “individual” with an eventual experience. So he now dismantles various myths concerning enlightenment.

“For one thing, we need to let go of all the ideas and beliefs we’ve accumulated over the years about what enlightenment is supposed to look like…Some people who come to see me are already quite awake, but the mind causes confusion because the awakeness doesn’t fit their picture of it…In the spiritual culture that has evolved here in the West, we tend to confuse enlightenment with mystical experiences…mystical experiences are happening to the dream character you take to be ‘me’—and this ‘me’ is the one you wake up from…The realization is completely nondual….We do not need to go looking for ‘altered states of consciousness’: humanity is already in an altered state of consciousness. It’s called separation.”

Further, Adya says:

“The idea that enlightenment means sitting around with a beatific smile on our faces is just an illusion. At a human level, enlightenment means that you are no longer divided within yourself, and that you no longer experience a division between ‘yourself’ and ‘others’…When personal motivation no longer drives us, then what’s left is our true nature; which naturally expresses itself on the human dimension as love or compassion. Not a compassion that we cultivate or practice because we’re supposed to, but a compassion that arises spontaneously from our undivided state.”

And, he speaks of what he calls the biggest barrier to realizing this undivided state:

“I think it’s unfortunate that a person can spend hour after hour, day after day, year after year, dedicating his life to enlightenment, and yet the very notion that anybody attains enlightenment is a taboo. We’re all going after this; but God forbid somebody says they’ve realized it. We don’t believe them, we’re cynical, we have doubt; we go immediately into a semi- (or overt) attack mode. To me, it highlights the fact that people are chasing an awakening they don’t believe could happen to them. That’s a barrier, and the biggest one…And when people have breakthroughs and talk about them in public, awakening loses its mystique. Everyone else can see that it’s not just special people who have deep awakenings, it’s their neighbor or their best friend.”

 Adyashanti/facebook

 Robert Wolfe/facebook

Lao Tzu - The way to do is to BE.

Art http://www.awakenvisions.com/

Always we hope

someone else has the answer,

some other place will be better,

some other time it will all turn out.

This is it.

No one else has the answer,

no other place will be better 

and it has already turned out.

At the center of your being

you have the answer;

you know who you are

and you know what you want.

There is no need 

to run outside for

better seeing.

Nor to peer from a window.

Rather, abide at the center of your being;

for the more you leave it

the less you learn.

Search your heart

and see

the way to do

is to BE.

 

 

 

Hakim Sanai - Love

Love's conqueror is he
whom love conquers.
Apply yourself, hand and foot,
to the search;
but when you reach the sea,
stop talking of the stream.