thich nhat hanh - Now and forever

Looking For Each other

I have been looking for you, World Honored One,
since I was a little child.
.

With my first breath, I heard your call,
and began to look for you, Blessed One.
.

I've walked so many perilous paths,
confronted so many dangers,
endured despair, fear, hopes, and memories.
.

I've trekked to the farthest regions, immense and wild,
sailed the vast oceans, traversed the highest summits,
lost among the clouds.

.

I've lain dead, utterly alone,
on the sands of ancient deserts.
I've held in my heart so many tears of stone.
.

Blessed One, I've dreamed of drinking dewdrops
that sparkle with the light of far-off galaxies.
.

I've left footprints on celestial mountains
and screamed from the depths of Avici Hell,
exhausted, crazed with despair
because I was so hungry, so thirsty.
.

For millions of lifetimes,
I've longed to see you,
but didn't know where to look.
.

Yet, I've always felt your presence with a mysterious certainty.

.

I know that for thousands of lifetimes,
you and I have been one,
and the distance between us is only a flash of thought.
.

Just yesterday while walking alone,
I saw the old path strewn with Autumn leaves,
and the brilliant moon, hanging over the gate,
suddenly appeared like the image of an old friend.
.

And all the stars confirmed that you were there!
.

All night, the rain of compassion continued to fall,
while lightning flashed through my window
and a great storm arose,
as if Earth and Sky were in battle.
.

Finally in me the rain stopped, the clouds parted.
The moon returned, shining peacefully, calming Earth and Sky.
.

Looking into the mirror of the moon, suddenly I saw myself,
and I saw you smiling, Blessed One.
.

How strange!
The moon of freedom has returned to me,
everything I thought I had lost.
.

From that moment on,
and in each moment that followed,
I saw that nothing had gone.
There is nothing that should be restored.
.

Every flower, every stone, and every leaf recognize me.
.

Wherever I turn, I see you smiling
the smile of no-birth and no-death.
.

The smile I received while looking at the mirror of the moon.
.

I see you sitting there, solid as Mount Meru,
calm as my own breath, sitting as though
no raging fire storm ever occurred,
sitting in complete peace and freedom.

.

At last I have found you, Blessed One,
and I have found myself.
There I sit.
.

The deep blue sky,
the snow-capped mountains painted against the horizon,
and the shining red sun sing with joy.
.

You, Blessed One, are my first love.
.

The love that is always present,
always pure, and freshly new.
.

And I shall never need a love that will be called “last.”
.

You are the source of well-being, flowing through numberless troubled lives, the water from your spiritual stream always pure, as it was in the beginning.
.

You are the source of peace,
solidity, and inner freedom.
You are the Buddha, the Tathagata.
.

With my one-pointed mind
I vow to nourish your solidity and freedom in myself
so I can offer solidity and freedom to countless others,
now and forever.

http://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/

.

Wu Hsin - The expression of the ineffable

With No Other to Each Other, Wu Hsin raises the bar. No longer content to speak about the transcendent, he now addresses the immanent, clarifying that it is included in the transcendent.

    Very early into Scroll One: Being Needs No Proof, Wu Hsin explains:

The sage is mysterious.
For such a one, identification has ended.
He has found everything
Where there is nothing.
He sees the essential fullness
Without using his eyes and
Distinguishes between Being and beings
While realizing that there is no need to
Deny the many in order to affirm the One.
His is an unbroken awareness of ‘I’.
He lives in a paradoxical locale,
In the absence of anything present and
In the absence of anything absent.
Beyond yet infinitely near,
Where each is both,
Wholly in the one and wholly in the other,
At the same time;
Where there is no other to each other,
Where the center is everywhere,
Where one plus one equals one
Where emptiness and fullness have no difference and
Where inside and outside,
Where immanence and transcendence are reconciled.
He declares:
I am phenomenal absence,
But the phenomenal manifestation appears as my Self and
I experience the world through Me.

Such a view provides a resolution of the seeming incompatibility between the One and the many that has plagued philosophers since the beginnings of philosophy. It reminds one of the analogy of the fire and its sparks: the sparks that come off of a fire are both the same as that fire and different from it. They are the same insofar as they came from the fire, and are constituted by the same substance as fire. But they are also distinguishable from the original fire, as occupying a separate point in space.

That-Which-Is contains both distinction and unity, substance and attribute, universal and particular, whole and parts, all the while maintaining the integrity of Identity immanent within differences.

Scroll Two: The Declaration of Numinous Primacy is essentially an Upanishad. In it, Wu Hsin tackles the impossible, the expression of the ineffable.

He concludes with:

That about which nothing can be said,
Wu Hsin has now spoken.
The Final Understanding is
An intuitive apperception that
In every moment of every day,
All that is happening is that
You are looking into a mirror.
There is a singular totality of which
Subjectivity and Objectivity are its twin aspects.
The Subjective aspect looks out
Onto the Objective aspect.
The Transcendent is experiencing
The Immanent via embodiment,
Experiencing the coincidence of
Difference and sameness,
Fitting together as seamlessly as
The well-made lid fits into its matching box.
Even the sense of being is a
Mere season in the Timeless.
However, at the base,
There always already is a Numinous Individuum.

Thus, on the basis of his meditative direct insight, Wu Hsin celebrates the Absolute or the True Infinite that is the informing principle in all things.

http://www.roymelvyn.com/

http://www.wu-hsin.com/ 

 

 

Adyashanti - Complete failure

Teodor Axentowicz

 The Anchorite

  Q: I want what you wanted.

Adya: What did I want?

Q: You wanted to become enlightened.

Adya: I wanted to become enlightened. Ok. It didn’t work out.
Q: Did you at least become awake?

Adya: No. Awakeness became awake. Enlightenment becomes enlightened. The me, the little guy, little Steven Larry Gray, that meditated in his parent’s backyard for hours and hours a day, every single day, in the morning and the evening, and did nothing but do the good Buddhist thing, diligently, terribly, terribly disciplined, he didn’t get enlightened. He never made it. He never crossed the river of nirvana, it never happened to him.

What he did was, for whatever reason, maybe the seeking was necessary, is he got exhausted. It just completely exhausted itself. The little one that was trying to get awake and enlightened got so exhausted, so stricken by I can’t do this, I can’t, and I could no longer tell myself I can. That means the complete and utter destruction of denial. Because the denial is “I can”. And your experience keeps showing you “you can’t.”

And so I got so exhausted psychically, internally, emotionally, spiritually that I couldn’t keep it up anymore. And i had to see the truth. I was willing to see the truth only because I was exhausted. I can’t do it. And in that “I can’t do it,” and not as a spiritual strategy, emptiness woke up out of the seeker. The seeker didn’t wake up. Consciousness woke up from the seeker, from the personality, from the “me” that was trying so hard.

https://www.adyashanti.org/ 

Chuck Surface - A simple man

“You must always remain a simple man,
A simple man, leading a simple life.” my Baba said.

“You will not push yourself out.
Writing a book, printing flyers, renting a hall,

And throwing the doors open,
For all who pass by.

Those who Love will be… pulled,
And will come to take tea and chat.

You will not sit ‘in front’ of a group,
But only, always, ‘across’ from a Friend,

Fellow Lovers on the Way of the Heart…
Bathed in the Perfume of The Beloved.

You will not express, assertively,
The Grace you have received…

They will tell you,
When they feel its Radiance.

Only then… you may speak.

But you needn't speak,
To inform or instruct.

You needn't speak at all.

Only The Beloved's Presence is required…
To Invoke what words can never convey.

And in time, through Grace,
As you have received…

They will become… like you!

And in all of this, all of this
You will remain, always…

Always…

A simple man.”

And so should we all remain.

 

 

 

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