Thomas Merton - contemplation

When no one listens

To the quiet trees

When no one notices

The sun in the pool.

Where no one feels

The first drop of rain

Or sees the last star

Or hails the first morning

Of a giant world

Where peace begins

And rages end:

One bird sits still

Watching the work of God:

One turning leaf,

Two falling blossoms,

Ten circles upon the pond.

One cloud upon the hillside,

Two shadows in the valley

And the light strikes home.

Now dawn commands the capture

Of the tallest fortune,

The surrender

Of no less marvelous prize!

Closer and clearer

Than any wordy master,

Thou inward Stranger

Whom I have never seen,

Deeper and cleaner

Than the clamorous ocean,

Seize up my silence

Hold me in Thy Hand!

Now act is waste

And suffering undone

Laws become prodigals

Limits are torn down

For envy has no property

And passion is none.

Look, the vast Light stands still

Our cleanest Light is One!

Ella Wheeler Wilcox - Conversation

CONVERSATION

God and I in space alone

and nobody else in view.

"And where are the people, O Lord," I said,

"the earth below and the sky o'er head

and the dead whom once I knew?"

"That was a dream," God smiled and said,

"A dream that seemed to be true.

There were no people, living or dead,

there was no earth, and no sky o'er head;

there was only Myself -- in you."

"Why do I feel no fear," I asked,

"meeting You here this way?

For I have sinned I know full well--

and is there heaven, and is there hell,

and is this the Judgment Day?"

"Nay, those were but dreams,"

the Great God said,

"Dreams that have ceased to be.

There are no such things as fear or sin;

there is no you -- you never have been--

there is nothing at all

but Me."

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Jac O'Keeffe - Ownership

Jac O' keeffe

Rumi - When you are with everyone but me

When you are with everyone but me,

you're with no one.

When you are with no one but me,

you're with everyone.

Instead of being so bound up with everyone,

be everyone.

When you become that many,

you're nothing.

Empty.

Zen Teaching of Hui Hai

Hui-hai as a young man traveled to the monastery of Ch'an master Ma-tsu about 1,200 years ago and recorded the following conversation:

Ma-tsu: What do you hope to gain by coming here?

Hui Hai: I have come seeking the Buddha-Dharma (i.e. the Way).

Ma Tsu: Instead of looking to the treasure house which is your very own, you have left home and gone wandering far away. What for?

Hui Hai: Please tell me to what you alluded when you spoke of a treasure house of my own.

Ma Tsu: That which asked the question is your treasure house. It contains absolutely everything you need and lacks nothing at all. It is there for you to use freely, so why this vain search for something outside yourself?

~ From the Zen Teaching of Hui Hai: On Sudden Illumination, translated by John Blofeld

Jeff Foster - Seeking the Self

No wonder 'you' cannot see this: this is a freedom that a 'person' will never see. How could a 'person' ever accept that everything happens spontaneously, of its own accord, in the absence of the person? The Tao (or Oneness, or God, or Life, or Spirit, or Emptiness...) has no centre, no mind, no personal volition. It appears as everything, but itself is nothing. Nothing manifesting as a world, as everything there is and is not. And there is only the Tao, which is to say there is no Tao at all. And even to speak of it, even to think of it, even to do that is to lose it forever. And yet the thinking and the speaking are fully the Tao; there is nothing that it is not. It is the no-thing by which everything appears. And it's not even that, because it's not an 'it' at all. When speaking of the Tao, silence is the only way. ~ Jeff Foster

Unmani, Die To Love

oneness beyond all appearances

Just a look, just a touch and all worlds fall away.

Melting into one.

Falling into the other.

Never been separate.

Oneness beyond all appearances.

All boundaries are meaningless.

All concepts, ridiculous.

No me, no you.

No inside, no outside.

~ Unmani, Die To Love

All there is, is this perception. Perception is not owned by a someone or by a body/mind. Perception just is. All that is perceived, is just appearing in perception. All appearances are simply perception, including the appearance of this body/mind or that chair. There is no separation.

I am absolutely alone. There are no others. There is not even a character 'me'. The character 'me' is also a perception. Thoughts are perceived. Emotions are perceived. It is all perceived. What perceives is Life itself. Life perceives the whole play. I am life and as this, I am the play of whatever happens.

Closed eyes and there is only nothing. There is only sensation felt in nothing. This nothing is the emptiness in which everything happens. This nothing is alive. Open eyes and there is a rush of perception. Nothing overflows as everything. Eyes closed or open, the fabric of life is alive nothingness.

~ Unmani, I Am Life Itself

Unmani

Franklin Merrell-Wolf - I Am That

Am I this body of thoughts in my mind? no. One 

gets a little closer to his thoughts than to anything 

else, and it's a little harder to untangle this. But if he 

watches and studies closely enough, the thoughts 

come to me. I accept or reject them. 

That which accepts or rejects them is different from the thought. 

And then I finally reach this point where I find that 

I must be this something, in some sense, different 

from other people. I'm not the mind, I'm not the 

feelings, I'm not the body—that I see. But I surely 

am, I surely am an individual, apart from others.

now what you've gotten a hold of is a very 

difficult fellow—it's your ego. He can sneak around 

and confuse you like the dickens. You can spend 

years trying to get behind him. And what you do, 

you can get into an infinite regression. you look at 

your ego. All right, here am I and all of a sudden it 

dawns upon you that that which is looking at the 

ego is really the I. So you stick that one out in front. 

you look at it again, but then you realize it couldn't 

be, because here is a something that is observable. 

At last it finally dawns that I AM THAT which is 

never an object before Consciousness. And mayhap, 

at that moment, in your analysis—the Heavens will  open.

Franklin Merrell-Wolff, from "The Induction"