Saturday, July 11, 2015

Mystic Meandering - The Silence calls...



 


Silence called me to the window again.
She beckoned me to come and be still,
to listen…

She waited for me to settle,
to be quiet…
Waited as I deepened
into her Stillness…

No agenda, She whispered…

I listened…

Put everything aside and just breathe, She said.
Be aware of My Breath, breathing you…
Experience my Presence,
Feel my Fullness,
Sense the Intimacy
in every cell…

From the depths of Stillness
I heard Her call again,
calling me back to HerSelf.
Like the Great Ocean pulling back
the waves on shore,
back to Itself…
The wave giving in to the pull…

The Great Silence called
again and again;
the silent rhythmic intimacy of wave and Ocean,
one and the same…

The Silence embracing ItSelf,
knowing only
ItSelf…

The Eternal Embrace…

Come – She whispered…
Follow the pull…
Give in…
Come Home…


Mystic Meandering
Aug/Sept. 2010
 

Science & Nonduality - Exploring the Nature of Consciousness




“Your nature is the consciousness, in which the whole world wells up, like waves in the sea.”

~ Ashtavakra Gita

Consciousness is the greatest mystery ever encountered by humanity.

Mystics of all traditions have described consciousness as the ground of being in which the dance of life unfolds. Each tradition has developed different approaches and practices to explore the nature of consciousness, the paths of meditation, inquiry, prayer, art, mantras and movement…

Today the main lens through which our culture understands reality is science. For the past century science has viewed consciousness as something generated by the brain, yet there are major problems with this assumption. A new scientific paradigm is emerging which views consciousness as fundamental. Consciousness cannot be explained in terms of the existing laws of space, time, mass and energy. A new science has to be developed, a science that can accept consciousness as universal while investigating the connections between the existing laws and this new paradigm.

We might not yet have a theory of consciousness, but the process of studying it holds the key to understanding the universe, while possibly bridging the gap between the mystic’s experience and the scientific observations.

Join us to explore this great mystery of existence beyond dogma and doctrine, remembering that life is far more mysterious then we ever imagine!


Wu Hsin - Questions...





"How many of your
questions
Have been answered,
But still
You don’t have the answer?
Is it possible that
The answer isn’t found in more questions?
Is it possible that
The answer isn’t
Found in more concepts,
More thoughts?
Is it possible that
The answer is
Revealed in their very absence?”

– The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin




 "The end of questioning is
The same as
The end of seeking.
Further and further explanations
Do not provide
That which is sought.
Additional information
Does not provide
That which is sought.
Drop these activities and
Rest in what is
Prior to all mental activity:
Awareness.”

Ramana Maharshi - Silence




Silence is the most potent form of work.
The guru is quiet and peace prevails in all.
His silence is more vast and more emphatic than the scriptures put together.
In fact the guru is always within you.
The guru's silence is the loudest teaching.
It is also grace in its highest form.

Silence is the true teaching.
It is the perfect teaching.
It is suited only for the most advanced seeker.
The others are unable to draw full inspiration from it.

Therefore they require words to explain the truth.
But truth is beyond words.
It does not admit of explanations.
All that is possible to do is to indicate it.



 

Friday, July 10, 2015

Bahiya Sutra - the story of...



The Buddha was begging in town. The sangha had set up camp on the outskirts and every day he and the sangha would come into town for their daily bread - quite literally.
It was a hot and dusty day. The market place was crowded at noon. As the tall figure of Buddha made his way through the melee of the bazaar, he was accosted by Bahiya. Now, Bahiya was a seeker. And a persistent one at that. And he wanted his answers - right there. He begged the Buddha to show him the truth, the path to the end of all suffering.
Story goes that Buddha tried to fob him off : later, not now, come to the camp in the evening, may be tomorrow. But Bahiya insisted. Now, he said, I want it now. And so the Buddha stopped and looked deep into his eyes and said:
“In the seen, let there be only the seen.  In the heard, let there be only the heard.  In the sensed, let there be only the sensed.  In the cognized, let there be only the cognized.  That is how you should train yourself.
When for you there is only the seen in the seen, only the heard in the heard, only the sensed in the sensed, only the cognized in the cognized, then you will not be reckoned by it.  When you are not reckoned by it, you will not be in it.  When you are not in it, you will be neither "here” nor “there” nor between the two.
This, just this, is the end of suffering.“
Bahiya stood there, his mind dissolving and his world changed in that second - he realised the Truth. The Buddha ? He carried on, begging for food, slowly wending his way to the camp on the outskirts of town.
This is the story of the origins of the beautiful and powerful Bahiya Sutra.
 
 
 

Adyashanti - Your "me"




Your 'me’ is always experiencing this moment in relation to some other moment.
Is this moment as good as it was two weeks ago?
Will it be the same today as it was yesterday?
The 'me’ worries about what it knows and whether or not
it is good enough to get enlightened.
Your 'me’ might call itself Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Advaitin,
atheist, agnostic, believer, or nonbeliever, but no matter
what your 'me’ is identified with, when you become very open and relaxed,
you can suddenly be aware that something else is occupying your body-mind.
Something else is looking out from your eyes, listening from your ears, and feeling your feelings.
That something has no qualities.
Realizing your true nature is realizing what is present without qualities.
We can call it the emptiness of consciousness, the Self, or the No-Self.
To directly experience this emptiness—the aliveness of it—is spiritual awakening.
It is to realize yourself as beautiful nothingness, or more accurately, no-thing-ness. If we say it’s just “nothing,” we miss the point."

Meher Baba - No greater romance



 “The greatest romance possible in life is to discover this Eternal Reality 
in the midst of Infinite Change. 
Once one has experienced this, one sees oneself in everything that lives,
 one recognises all of life as his life, everybody’s interests as his own. 
One is no longer bound by habits of the past, no longer swayed by the hopes of the future - 
One lives in and enjoys each present moment to the full. 
There is no greater romance in life than this adventure in Realization”. 



 

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Guru Nanak 's song



My eyes are damp with the nectar of the Lord,
and my soul it is filled with his Love.
He tested my heart with his touchstone
and found it to be pure.

Through the Guru I am dyed a deep crimson.

This body and mind are wet with the love of my Lord.
Nanak the slave has been drenched in his fragrance,
and this life of mine has been blessed.

The Lord’s love is like a piercing arrow,
it has struck deep into my heart.
He who has known love’s pain knows how to withstand it.

The one who dies to this “life” I add to Life
has achieved Liberation in his lifetime.

Oh God make this slave to meet with the true Guru
so he can cross the difficult ocean of the World.


Through the Guru I am dyed a deep crimson.


 

Hafiz - Do you know how beautiful You are?



 “Do you know how beautiful You are?
I think not, my dear.
For as you talk of God,
I see great parades with wildly colorful bands
Streaming from your mind and heart,
Carrying wonderful and secret messages
To every corner of this world.
I see saints bowing in the mountains
Hundreds of miles away
To the wonder of sounds
That break into light
From your most common words.” 



Kathleen Raine - Millenial Hymn to Lord Shiva





hymns the Creator,
the seven days of wonder,
the Garden is over —
all the stories are told,
the seven seals broken
all that begins
must have its ending,
our striving, desiring,
our living and dying,
for Time, the bringer
of abundant days
is Time the destroyer —
In the Iron Age
the Kali Yuga
To whom can we pray
at the end of an era
but the Lord Shiva,
the Liberator, the purifier?

Our forests are felled,
our mountains eroded,
the wild places
where the beautiful animals
found food and sanctuary
we have desolated,
a third of our seas,
a third of our rivers
we have polluted
and the sea-creatures dying.
Our civilization’s
blind progress
in wrong courses
through wrong choices
has brought us to nightmare
where what seems,
is, to the dreamer,
the collective mind
of the twentieth century —
this world of wonders
not divine creation
but a big bang
of blind chance,
purposeless accident,
mother earth’s children,
their living and loving,
their delight in being
not joy but chemistry,
stimulus, reflex,
valueless, meaningless,
while to our machines
we impute intelligence,
in computers and robots
we store information
and call it knowledge,
we seek guidance
by dialling numbers,
pressing buttons,
throwing switches,
in place of family
our companions are shadows,
cast on a screen,
bodiless voices, fleshless faces,
where was the Garden
a Disney-land
of virtual reality,
in place of angels
the human imagination
is peopled with foot-ballers
film-stars, media-men,
experts, know-all
television personalities,
animated puppets
with cartoon faces —
To whom can we pray
for release from illusion,
from the world-cave,
but Time the destroyer,
the liberator, the purifier?

The curse of Midas
has changed at a touch,
a golden handshake
earthly paradise
to lifeless matter,
where once was seed-time,
summer and winter,
food-chain, factory farming,
monocrops for supermarkets,
pesticides, weed-killers
birdless springs,
endangered species,
battery-hens, hormone injections,
artificial insemination,
implants, transplants, sterilization,
surrogate births, contraception,
cloning, genetic engineering, abortion,
and our days shall be short
in the land we have sown
with the Dragon’s teeth
where our armies arise
fully armed on our killing-fields
with land-mines and missiles,
tanks and artillery,
gas-masks and body-bags,
our air-craft rain down
fire and destruction,
our space-craft broadcast
lies and corruption,
our elected parliaments
parrot their rhetoric
of peace and democracy
while the truth we deny
returns in our dreams
of Armageddon,
the death-wish, the arms-trade,
hatred and slaughter
profitable employment
of our thriving cities,
the arms-race
to the end of the world
of our postmodern,
post-Christian,
post-human nations,
progress to the nihil
of our spent civilization.
But cause and effect,
just and inexorable
law of the universe
no fix of science,
nor amenable god
can save from ourselves
the selves we have become —
At the end of history
to whom can we pray
but to the destroyer,
the liberator, the purifier?

the stars sang together
the cosmic harmony,
but Time, imperceptible
taker-away
of all that has been,
all that will be,
our heart-beat your drum,
our dance of life
your dance of death
in the crematorium,
our high-rise dreams,
Valhalla, Utopia,
Xanadu, Shangri-la, world revolution
Time has taken, and soon will be gone
Cambridge, Princeton and M.I.T.,
Nalanda, Athens and Alexandria
all for the holocaust
of civilization —
To whom shall we pray
when our vision has faded
but the world-destroyer,
the liberator, the purifier?

of the world-creator,
the world-sustainer
from whom we come,
in whom we move
and have our being,
about us, within us
the wonders of wisdom,
the trees and the fountains,
the stars and the mountains,
all the children of joy,
the loved and the known,
the unknowable mystery
to whom we return
through the world-destroyer, —
Holy, holy
at the end of the world
the purging fire
of the purifier, the liberator!



Sunday, July 5, 2015

Macrina Wiederkehr - Stars




Creator of the Stars~~God of Epiphanies

You are the Great Star

You have marked my path with light

You have filled my sky with stars

naming each star and guiding it

until it shines into my heart

awakening me to deeper seeing

new revelations 

and brighter epiphanies.



O Infinite Star Giver

I now ask for wisdom and courage

to follow these stars

for their names are many

and my heart is fearful.



They shine on me wherever I go:

The Star of Hope

The Star of Mercy and Compassion

The Star of Justice and Peace

The Star of Tenderness and Love

The Star of Suffering

The Star of Joy

And every time I feel the shine

I am called

to follow it

to sing it

to live it

all the way to cross

and beyond



O Creator of the Stars

You have become within me

an unending Epiphany.


Macrina Wiederkehr
taken from SEASONS OF YOUR HEART

"Silence is like a river of grace inviting us to leap unafraid into its beckoning depths. It is dark and mysterious in the waters of grace. Yet in the silent darkness we are given new eyes.
In the heart of the divine we can see more clearly who we are. We are renewed and cleansed in this river of silence. There are those among you who fear the Great Silence. It is a foreign land to you. Sometimes it is good to leap into the unknown. Practice leaping."

Quote from: Macrina Wiederkehr, "Seven Sacred Pauses": http://goo.gl/K4ZJzU