Rabindranath Tagore - The Journey

The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs;
and the flowers were all merry by the roadside;
and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds
while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.

We sang no glad songs nor played;
we went not to the village for barter;
we spoke not a word nor smiled;
we lingered not on the way.
We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.

The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade.
Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon.
The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree,
and I laid myself down by the water
and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.

My companions laughed at me in scorn;
they held their heads high and hurried on;
they never looked back nor rested;
they vanished in the distant blue haze.

They crossed many meadows and hills,
and passed through strange, far-away countries.
All honor to you, heroic host of the interminable path!
Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise,
but found no response in me.

I gave myself up for lost
in the depth of a glad humiliation
---in the shadow of a dim delight.

The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom
slowly spread over my heart.
I forgot for what I had traveled,
and I surrendered my mind without struggle
to the maze of shadows and songs.

At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes,
I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile.
How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome,
and the struggle to reach thee was hard!

Rabindranath-Tagore-and-Indira-Devi-in-Valmiki-Pratibha-1881

Adyashanti - Where all words fail

 “Oneness is experienced at the level that I call the heart. While the experience of oneness is transformational and profound, it is not itself the experience of no-self, it is the experience of unified, or universal self, self as everything and everyone.

The falling away of self is a falling away of even oneness into what is prior to unity. The trajectory is from self experiencing itself as ego, to self experiencing itself as oneness, to self dropping away altogether.

What is left cannot be described, because all descriptions are only relevant in terms of their opposites. And beyond self there is no opposite, not even unity or oneness, silence or presence. There is nothing that can be said about it, not even that it is freedom.

Where all words fail, that’s where it exists. It is the Pearl beyond price, and it is the only thing that is ever happening or ever could happen. I am not being purposely obscure, I am actually being as direct and concrete as I can."

 https://www.adyashanti.org/

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti - The Real is not a refuge

The desire to be secure in things and in relationship only brings about conflict and sorrow, dependence and fear; the search for happiness in relationship without understanding the cause of conflict leads to misery. When thought lays emphasis on sensate value and is dominated by it there can be only strife and pain. Without self-knowledge relationship becomes a source of struggle and antagonism, a device for covering up inward insufficiency, inward poverty.

Does not craving for security in any form indicate inward insufficiency? Does not this inner poverty make us seek, accept and cling to formulations, hopes, dogmas, beliefs, possessions; is not our action then merely imitative and compulsive? So anchored to ideology, belief, our thinking becomes merely a process of enchainment.

Our thought is conditioned by the past; the I, the me and the mine, is the result of stored up experience, ever incomplete. The memory of the past is always absorbing the present; the self which is memory of pleasure and pain is ever gathering and discarding, ever forging anew the chains of its own conditioning. It is building and destroying but always within its own self-created prison. To the pleasant memory it clings and the unpleasant it discards. Thought must transcend this conditioning for the being of the Real.

Is evaluating right thinking? Choice is conditioned thinking; right thinking comes through understanding the chooser, the censor. As long as thought is anchored in belief, in ideology, it can only function within its own limitation; it can only feel-act within the boundaries of its own prejudices; it can only experience according to its own memories which give continuity to the self and its bondage. Conditioned thought prevents right thinking which is non-evaluation, non-identification.

There must be alert self-observation without choice; choice is evaluation and evaluation strengthens the self-identifying memory. If we wish to understand deeply there must be passive and choiceless awareness which allows experience to unfold itself and reveal its own significance. The mind that seeks security through the Real creates only illusion. The Real is not a refuge; it is not the reward for righteous action; it is not an end to be gained.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
Ojai, California, 1945

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Marianne Broug - The Emptiness of the Interior

 It was many years ago, long before my spiritual journey had become conscious, that someone first suggested that I look within to find out who I truly was.

I took their suggestion and did indeed look within. And I came to the rather panicked conclusion that there was absolutely nothing there. As far as I could see it was just one big fat gaping hole. And so I quickly discarded that line of inquiry and decided that the person who had made the suggestion was probably woefully misguided in some way.

And yet, many years later, I came to the realization that it is this hole, this emptiness within, that is the key to everything …

… for it is this emptiness that we fill when we awaken.

Over the years I have read countless books about adventurers who have trudged across vast unexplored deserts, labored through impenetrable rainforests or set out on a lone journey across ice or sea. And many times I have thought, “Yes, your story is exciting and inspiring and extraordinarily interesting, but here, here, here, closer than here, each of us have within us, a vast realm of unexplored territory that is just ripe for discovery.”

Our inner world really is the empty continent or the vast unexplored ocean that lies behind the all-too-comfortable shores of our civilization, and as we do the shopping or as we sit around flicking through our emails, it is always there, beckoning and begging us to explore.

And when we do have the courage to travel within, set up camp for a while, claim that desert as our own, and then return into our everyday lives, we most probably won’t get a write-up in National Geographic, nor will we get a knighthood to show off to our family and friends . But as we take our place in this world, knowing ourselves as the Emptiness that is never empty, as a body that is not a body, as a Self that is not a self … we will almost certainly have on our faces an uncaused, unabashed and utterly contented grin that not only stretches from ear to ear, but extends back back back into the enormity of All that we are.

It is not possible for it to be otherwise. For we are Home.

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Ha! A rush of bliss

Ha! A rush of bliss
flows suddenly through all my senses!
I feel a glow, a holy joy of life
which sets my veins and flesh afire.
Was it a god that drew these signs
which soothe my inward raging
and fill my wretched heart with joy,
and with mysterious strength
reveal about me Nature’s pulse?
Am I a god? The light pervades me so!
In these pure ciphers I can see
living Nature spread out before my soul.
At last I understand the sage’s words:
“The world of spirits is not closed:
your mind is shut, your heart is dead!
Pupil, stand up and unafraid
bathe your earthly breast in morning light!”

How things are weaving one in one;
each lives and works within the other.
Heaven’s angels dip and soar
and hold their golden pails aloft;
with fragrant blessings on their wings,
they penetrate the earthly realm from Heaven
and all make all resound in harmony.

— from Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe / Translated by Peter Salm

http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Publications/This_Dance_of_Bliss/index.html