Rupert Spira - Lockdown Nights in Oxford

 

 

photo Stuart Bebb

 

 Last night I walked the streets of Oxford with Kabir
The night before it was Jesus
And the night before, Rumi visited, uninvited!

Every night a different companion but always the same Friend
Why go anywhere when the Beloved always comes to you?

I pointed out the smiling houses to Kabir
(Have you noticed that houses have a face?)
‘It is I who am smiling’, he said.

‘I am happy to see you’, I said to Atmananda the next night
‘You are happiness itself’, he replied.

I stood outside a chapel
And listened to a choir with Brother Lawrence
‘Our love for God is God’s love for us’, he said.

And the next night, Meister Eckhart,
‘There is a huge silence inside each of us
That beckons us into itself’
‘Know nothing’, Socrates said the following night
‘Be everything’, added Parmenides.

I showed Plotinus the gardens
But he said, ‘I see only one thing’
I talked with the Buddha
But he remained silent
I was silent with Moses
But he started to sing

I uttered the word ‘I’
But Balyani held his hand to my mouth
I asked Huang Po if he could hear the stream
‘There is only the hearing’, he said.

I found William Blake naked in the park
‘Do you see how, through perception, the infinite gives birth to itself?’
he asked

‘He’s right’, Ramana said,
‘The universe is born every moment
Through the portal I Am’
And later, when I suggested we rest,
‘I am always at rest’, he smiled

‘Thine this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair,
Thyself how wondrous then?’
Milton asked ecstatically as we looked at the sky

‘Everything shines with being’, Wordsworth said
I offered Jesus a drink
‘I am the water of life’, he said.

I walked in silence with Francis
‘My silence is my question’, I said
‘My silence is my answer’, he replied
I walked alone one night
With the world for my Friend

The next night I found Hafiz drunk on a bench
‘Come taste this wine!’ he called
Shams came to join us
‘I am looking for the Friend’, he sighed.

‘I love these night-time walks’, I said to Anandamaya Ma
‘Love only love’, she said
I listened to barking dogs with Abinavagupta
‘Know only knowing’, he said
‘I am…’
‘Shhh! Don’t add anything to it’,
Sri Nisargadatta exclaimed.

I danced down the street with Mozart
I prayed in every step with Bach
I leaned with Primo Levi against a wall
Watching friends and lovers and strangers
‘Each of us’, he said ‘bears the imprint
Of a friend met along the way;
In each the trace of each’

Yeats joined us
‘There are no strangers here’, he said
‘Only friends we haven’t yet met’
And Rembrandt agreed
‘If you look at anyone for long enough’, he said
They will eventually become your friend’

I watched the sun set with Shelley one night
‘The One remains, the many change and pass’, he said
And then, as the moon arose,
‘Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!’

And last night Rumi followed me home
‘Kiss the ground with every step’, he said
‘Good night’, I said, without words
‘We part without parting’, he smiled

 

 

 

https://non-duality.rupertspira.com/home 

 

 

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj - Timeless Source

 

    Just live your life as it comes.
        Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself.
        Perception is based on memory and is only imagination.
        The world can be said to appear but not to be.
        Only that which makes perception possible is real.

        You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.
        Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you.
        Know yourself as you are. Distrust your mind and go beyond.
        Do not think of the Real in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness.
        It is utterly beyond both.
        It gives birth to consciousness.
        All else is in consciousness.

        Nothing you can see, feel or think is so.
        Go beyond the personal and see.
        Stop imagining that you were born.
        You are utterly beyond all existence and non-existence,
        utterly beyond all that the mind conceives.
        Question yourself: Who am I?
        What is behind and beyond all this?
        Soon you will see that thinking yourself to be a person is mere habit built on memory.
        Inquire ceaselessly.

        Just be aware of your being here and now.
        There is nothing more to it.
        In reality you are not a thing nor separate.

        You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility.
        Because you are, all can be.
        The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become.
        You are neither consciousness nor its content.
        You are the timeless Source.
        Disassociate yourself from mind and consciousness.
        Find a foothold beyond and all will be clear and easy.

         
        —Nisargadatta Maharaj
        from I am That

 

 

  PDF download

Thomas Merton - The center of nowhere

 

art Mahmoud Farshchian

 

 

 

 There is no where in you a paradise that is no place and there
        You do not enter except without a story.

        To enter there is to become unnameable.

        Whoever is there is homeless for he has no door and
        no identity with which to go out and to come in.

        Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot
        exist except as unborn:
        No disguise will avail him anything

        Such a one is neither lost nor found.

        But he who has an address is lost.

        They fall, they fall into apartments and are securely established!

        They find themselves in streets. They are licensed
        To proceed from place to place
        They now know their own names
        They can name several friends and know
        Their own telephones must some time ring.

        If all telephones ring at once, if all names are shouted
        at once and all cars crash at one crossing:
        If all cities explode and fly away in dust
        Yet identities refuse to be lost. There is a name and
        number for everyone.

        There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon holes for ashes:
        Such security can business buy!

        Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
        Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

        They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn flower of nothing:
        This is the paradise tree. It must remain unseen until words end and
        arguments are silent.

 

http://merton.org/

 

via Love is a place

 

 

 

 

Rumi ♡ Unfolding the Rose

 

 

 It is only a tiny rosebud,
A flower of God's design;
But I cannot unfold the petals
With these clumsy hands of mine.

The secret of unfolding flowers
Is not known to such as I.
GOD opens this flower so sweetly,
When in my hands they fade and die.

If I cannot unfold a rosebud,
This flower of God's design,
Then how can I think I have wisdom
To unfold this life of mine?

So I'll trust in Him for His leading
Each moment of every day.
I will look to Him for His guidance
Each step of the pilgrim way.

The pathway that lies before me,
Only my Heavenly Father knows.
I'll trust Him to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose. 

 

 

Byron Katie - Who is there to be enlightened?

Quote of the Imaginary Moment by Byron Katie

If you understand that the world isn’t separated into self and other, you’ll see very clearly that there is no such thing as enlightenment. There can’t be. After all, who is there to be enlightened? You would have to be someone before you could experience enlightenment. There would have to be an ego to get free. But egos don’t get free.

It’s only when you see the Buddha as a separate self that you can form the concept that he’s enlightened. All these spiritual concepts are just creations of mind. What do “I” know of this imagined form you call “me”? Many of the monks who were listening to the Buddha must have realized who he was: no one. But some of them may have wanted to treat him like a guru, to put him in a different category, to think that he was superior to them, a more evolved or exalted being. They may have looked at him with starry-eyed adoration…How could he play into their projections? He kept saying that he didn’t have anything they didn’t have…The story of having an enlightened master, as sweet as it may feel, is the story of separation.

People think that self-realization is something special. But we’re not at home until we’re at home in the ordinary. That’s where it feels comfortable. Someone will say, “How are you?” and I might say, “Fine.” It has joined; it has penetrated. So I’m unrecognizable. I’m standing with everyone else on the corner of the street, eating the hot dog, watching the band go by. I’m neither more nor less than you. If we’re even one breath more or one breath less than anyone else, we’re not at home.

There’s no answer for anything. We can’t explain anything essential in our lives. But why would you want to explain? Does that make you any happier?...There can’t be any teaching offered by the Buddha, because all teachings are dissolved, just like the construct that is happening in your mind right now as you read. It’s all imagined; there’s nothing to teach. Where does the wind go on a still day? And the breath you just took— doesn’t it exist now only as pure imagination? You noticed the breath flowing into your nostrils, and when you don’t have any thought of a past, this is the first breath that has ever been breathed, and now it’s gone. How can you know that it ever happened at all?

The truth is so simple. Every word said, every teaching given, no matter how valuable, leaves a construct where in reality none exists. It assumes someone listening, someone speaking, something to be known. In trying to tell the truth, it creates something extra. It adds something unnecessary to what is, and thus it becomes a lie.

Byron Katie, excerpt from her book, " Mind at Home with Itself"

 

 

https://thework.com/ 

 

via Miranda

 

 

 

Julia Fehrenbacher - The cure for it all/ Still, She Breathes

 

art Chie Yoshii

 

 

 Go gently today, don’t hurry
or think about the next thing. Walk
with the quiet trees, can you believe
how brave they are—how kind? Model your life
after theirs. Blow kisses
at yourself in the mirror

especially when
you think you’ve messed up. Forgive
yourself for not meeting your unreasonable
expectations. You are human, not
God—don’t be so arrogant.

Praise fresh air
clean water, good dogs. Spin
something from joy. Open
a window, even if
it’s cold outside. Sit. Close
your eyes. Breathe. Allow

the river
of it all to pulse
through eyelashes
fingertips, bare toes. Breathe in
breathe out. Breathe until

you feel
your bigness, until the sun
rises in your veins. Breathe
until you stop needing
anything
to be different.

 

 

She decides to return to the simple,
hummingbird sipping nectar
outside open window, pink petals
lit up and laughing with sun

she rests her hand on her own hurting heart, breathes
the kind of breath that releases
all trying, all wanting, all waiting - all promises
of saviors and some day.

She allows rain to pound hard
on all that no longer shelters.

She remembers there is medicine,
the very best kind of medicine, inside
the tender-sweet song of now.

She remembers it is never not now.

She decides to return to the simple,
rolls out yoga mat, allows each stretch,
each bow, each breath
to teach her all the secrets.

She whispers namaste to her own reflection,
and these words whisper back -

It is enough to be you.

She lets a lifetime of sorrow seep
from her tired, trying bones,
lets it rest on the ground
with every mighty
fallen petal. And she breathes.

Still, she breathes. 

 

listen to the words of your soul

 

http://www.paintedpath.org/