Friday, December 16, 2022
Monday, December 12, 2022
Nisargadatta Maharaj ~ Nothing but the Consciousness
art Paradox Aaron
Who ? Which one ? What? When?
All these questions are conceptual pictures in Consciousness.
They are as real as a mirage or a dream.
The totality of the manifestation and all that it contains, is Consciousness, Uniqueness.
There is nothing but the Consciousness, not aware of itself in its noumenic subjectivity, and yet everything is perceived by It as a phenomenal manifestation that expresses itself objectively.
If you understand the deep meaning of this concept there is nothing else to understand.
What we think to be a phenomenal reality is nothing but appearance, an inconsistent shadow, while what we really are is Consciousness, formless Brahaman.
Monday, November 28, 2022
Baisao ~ Life as it comes
Making the busy streets my home
right down in the heart of things
only one friend shares my poverty
this single scrawny wooden staff.
Having learned the ways of silence
within the noise of urban life
I take life as it comes to me
and everywhere I am is true.
Saturday, November 26, 2022
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Sattva Lynn ~ Into the Arms of Intimacy
artist unknown
A beautiful status just poured
through my heart -
however, when I used the
spelling mechanism
that appeared on here
to correct a mistake I had made
something happened,
and Facebook said:
'Something went wrong...'
and the whole poem was lost.
And instantly, naturally, all on their own,
tears just started to pour from me.
And as I was crying I said to myself:
'It seems the tears mattered more than the status.'
In other words, the tears,
and what they represented inside
mattered more for my growth;
and even the growth of us all,
than the status I was going to share.
And losing that status was the catalyst
for something very Sacred:
*For, since it is happening,
it must be part of Sacredness.*
We cannot know all the reasons
that everything happens
the way that it does.
For, every drop of what happens
to me and everyone and everything,
is somehow perfectly intertwined
to awaken and thus, bless us all -
even if it does not always feel like a blessing.
And, we are going to
encounter personally,
and bear witness to
innumerable thoughts,
feelings, situations and happenings
that are going to seem painful,
to downright cruel or unbearable,
nonsensical, unjust -
to everything in between
or either extreme.
But, if we can...if we can reach inside
beyond all of that -
with great courage, and deep Care
for our own Well Being
to the deeper meaning and purpose
of why we are here:
to rediscover our true Self,
which is beyond suffering and pain,
since it is causeless and free -
then we are using this moment
for its intended purpose,
no matter what appears to be happening.
And nothing, nothing, but wanting to
approach this moment, our self, our Heart -
asking to use it and be able
to use it in the way,
Life, Wisdom, Totality would like us to...
will bless us all more.
Nothing will bring us more deeply
into the Arms of Intimacy, of Love,
than this. 🌿
(for Christine)
Monday, November 21, 2022
Ed Crowley ~ The Unknown Wanderer
The Unknown Wanderer
abides in Equanimity
Unmoved
by the winds of joy
or sorrow, the Sage
silently follows
the Way in
the calmness
of tranquility
fixing his mind steadfast,
becoming one with change,
he drops ‘self’ for “Self”
The Sage observes seasons
come and go and while others
adjust to the different times,
it’s all the same to the Sage,
who abides as Change Itself
The sutras say,
“To seek is to suffer.
To seek nothing is bliss."
When you seek nothing,
you're on the Path
The Unknown Wanderer
is like Dōgen, who stated,
“Do not ask me
where I am going,
As I travel in
this limitless world,
Where every step
I take is my home.”
Thus every step
is the Path for him,
as he wanders and
exists, to simply roam
Nonetheless,
wherever you choose
to abide and dwell,
will always
and forever be,
considered,
my one true home
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Amoda Maa ~ Invitation to silence
INVITATION TO SILENCE
Silence is ever-present in everything. It exists prior to all form. It is the groundless ground of being. You don’t have to go anywhere or do anything to find it, because it’s actually who you are.
Silence is the nature of your innermost being, and when you wake up out of the dream of mistaken identity, you discover that you, too, are in fact inseparable from this silence.
Silence is what is here when you stop giving your attention to the movement of the mind and stop following the thoughts “I need to find time for silence,” “I have to get away from all this business to get some peace,” or “If only I could stop the thoughts in my head.”
In seeing the illusory nature of this kind of thinking and the futility of all running away or running toward, you come to a full stop, and what is revealed in this stopping is the ever-present silence of pure being.
This full stop is not a head-on collision with something hard and finite.
Instead, it is open-ended: silence has no boundary, no landing place, no center, no location, and no reference point for where it begins or ends.
You find yourself in a new dimension of seeing in which awareness is recognized as the only fact of reality.
When this awareness falls back into itself and becomes rooted in itself, an unlimited unconditional silence is revealed at the core of everything experienced, whether it be the whisper of the wind or the thunder of a mega-ton truck on the highway.
(edited from Amoda's book Embodied Enlightenment)
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
Jiddu Krishnamurti ~ Passive awareness
Q: Why do we insist on separating the perceiver from the perception, the ‘rememberer’ from the memory? Is this not at the root of our trouble?
J.D.Krishnamurti: We separate it because the rememberer, the experiencer, the thinker, becomes permanent by separation. *Memories are obviously fleeting; so the rememberer, the experiencer, the mind, separates itself because it wants permanency.* *The mind that is making an effort, that is striving, that is choosing, that is disciplined, obviously cannot find the real; because, as we said, through that very effort it projects itself and sustains the thinker.*
Now, how to free the thinker from his thoughts? This is what we are discussing. Because, whatever he thinks must be the result of the past, and therefore he creates god, truth, out of memory, which is obviously not real. In other words, the mind is constantly moving from the known to the known. *When memory functions, the mind can move only in the field of the known; and when it moves within the field of the known, it can never know the unknown.* So, our problem is, how to free the mind from the known. To free ourselves from the known, any effort is detrimental, because *effort is still of the known.* *So, all effort must cease.* Have you ever tried to be without effort? If I understand that all effort is futile, that all effort is a further projection of the mind, of the "I", of the thinker, if I realize the truth of that, what happens? If I see very clearly the label "poison" on a bottle, I leave it alone. There is no effort not to be attracted to it. Similarly - and in this lies the greatest difficulty - , if I realize that any effort on my part is detrimental, if I see the truth of that, then I am free of effort. Any effort on our part is detrimental, but we are not sure, because we want a result, we want an achievement - and that is our difficulty. Therefore, we go on striving, striving, striving. But God, truth, is not a result, a reward, an end. Surely, it must come to us, we cannot go to it. If we make an effort to go to it, we are seeking a result, an achievement. *But for truth to come, a man must be passively aware. Passive awareness is a state in which there is no effort; it is to be aware without judgment, without choice, not in some ultimate sense, but in every way; it is to be aware of your actions, of your thoughts, of your relative responses, without choice, without condemnation, without identifying or denying, so that the mind begins to understand every thought and every action without judgment.*
This evokes the question of whether there can be understanding without thought.”







