Jack Kerouac - The Golden Eternity

The Golden Eternity
by Jack Kerouac

 
I have lots of things to share now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect.

The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Rocks don't see it.
Bless and sit down.
Forgive and forget.
Practice kindness all day to everybody
and you will realize you’re already
in heaven now.
That’s the story.
That’s the message.
Nobody understands it,
nobody listens, they’re
all running around like chickens with heads cut
off. I will try to teach it but it will
be in vain, s’why I’ll
end up in a shack
praying and being
cool and singing
by my wood-stove
making pancakes.

 Jack Kerouac was a literary iconoclast in the mid-1950s, and sent the text above in a letter to his first wife, a decade after their marriage had been annulled. Excerpted from The Portable Jack Kerouac -- a short collection of his stories, poems, letters, and essays. 

Bei Kuan-tu - "Freedom"

Do you know what freedom is?
An exiting of the 'nest of knowing',
a burrowing beyond what is,
soaring into life's uncharted mysteries.

Freedom is color transcending its earthy palette,
sun penetrating shadows.

Freedom is where thought gives way,
like dew co-mingling with light.

Freedom is the extinguishing of all concepts,
awakening to vastness
to a windless silent sea.

Freedom is what we have unknowingly
yet always known.

© 2013 Bei Kuan-tu All Rights Reserved

 http://www.yin4men.com/ 

Charmian Clift - I Trust You With My Face

We looked out at the world
So full of color and shapes,
Sensations and sounds,
A symphony of emotions,
Thoughts, ideas.
And then we looked back
To where we looked from
And all was quiet
All was clear
Nothing.
And then I looked into your face
And realized it must be mine,
The one I had looked for
All this time,
And I caressed it with my eyes
And held it in my mind
As a precious gift
Describing my identity.
And as you looked at me
My face was yours
Unconditionally given
From that clear and open place
And in that silent space
You were me
And I was you
With all the universe.

via nonduality america

 

Ashtavakra Gita - The fool

Ashtavakra was a great saint in the era of Ram avatar. The saint's body was crooked from eight points, hence He got the name. (Aṣṭāvakra means "one having eight bends") Ashtavakra was the Guru of famous King Janak.

14    The Fool

                                                     By nature my mind is empty.                                                      

Even in sleep, I am awake.

I think of things without thinking.

All my impressions of the world

Have dissolved.

               

                                                    My desires have melted away.                                                        

So what do I care for money

Or the thieving senses,

For friends or knowledge or holy books?

             Bondage,            

Liberation,

What are they to me?

What do I care for freedom?

For I have known God,

The infinite Self,

The witness of all things.

              Within, free of thought.               

Without, a fool. 

I do as I please,

And only those like me

Understand my ways.

The Heart of Awareness ~
a translation of The Ashtavakra Gita

HERE

 

 

Thomas Merton - No man's land

But oh!
How far I have to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!
For now, oh my God, it is to You alone that I can talk,
because nobody else will understand.
I cannot bring any other on this earth
into the cloud where I dwell in Your light,
that is,
Your Darkness,
where I am lost and abashed.

I cannot explain to any other
the anguish which is Your joy
nor the loss which is the possession of You,
nor the distance from all things
which is the arrival in You.
nor the death which is the birth in You
because I do not know anything about it myself
and all I know
is that I wish it were over
-- I wish it were begun.

You have contradicted everything.
You have left me in no man's land.

~ Thomas Merton
from Dancing in the Water of Life

via the beauty we love