Federico Moramarco - One Hundred and Eighty Degrees

Have you considered the possibility
that everything you believe is wrong,
not merely off a bit, but totally wrong,
nothing like things as they really are?

If you’ve done this, you know how durably fragile
those phantoms we hold in our heads are,
those wisps of thought that people die and kill for,
betray lovers for, give up lifelong friendships for.

If you’ve not done this, you probably don’t understand this poem,
or think it’s not even a poem, but a bit of opaque nonsense,
occupying too much of your day’s time,
so you probably should stop reading it here, now.

But if you’ve arrived at this line,
maybe, just maybe, you’re open to that possibility,
the possibility of being absolutely completely wrong,
about everything that matters.

How different the world seems then:
everyone who was your enemy is your friend,
everything you hated, you now love,
and everything you love slips through your fingers like sand.

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti - The Great Silence

photo Fred Mount

 Way down in the valley were the dull lights of a small village; 

it was dark and the path was stony and rough. 

The waving lines of the hills against the starlit sky were deeply embedded in darkness 

and a coyote was howling somewhere nearby. 

The path had lost its familiarity and a small scented breeze was coming up the valley. 

To be alone in that solitude was to hear the voice of intense silence and its great beauty. 

Some animal was making noise among the bushes, frightened of attracting attention. 

It was quite dark by now and the world of that valley became deep in its silence. 

The night air had special smells, a blend of all the bushes that grow on the dry hills, 

that strong smell of bushes that know the hot sun. 

The rains had stopped many months ago; 

it wouldn’t rain again for a very long time and the path was dry, dusty and rough. 

The great silence with its vast space held the night 

and every movement of thought became still. 

The mind itself was the immeasurable space and in that deep quietness 

there was not a thing that thought had built. 

To be absolutely nothing is to be beyond measure. 

The path went down a steep incline and a small stream 

was saying many things, delighted with its own voice. 

It crossed the path several times and the two were playing a game together. 

The stars were very close and some were looking down from the hill tops. 

Still the lights of the village were a long way off 

and the stars were disappearing over the high hills. 

Be alone, without word and thought, but only watching and listening. 

The great silence showed that without it, 

existence loses its profound meaning and its beauty.

 From Krishnamurti’s Journal, page 124

Yu Xuanji - The house of the Immortals

I’ve come to the house of the Immortals:
In every corner, wildflowers bloom.
In the front garden, trees
Offer their branches for drying clothes;
Where I eat, a wine glass can float
In the springwater’s chill.
From the portico, a hidden path
Leads to the bamboo’s darkened groves.
Cool in a summer dress, I choose
From among the heaped piles of books.
Reciting poems in the moonlight, riding a painted boat…
Every place the wind carries me is home.

—Yu Xuanji. Taken from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (New York: Harper Collins, 1994)

Ramana Maharshi - Consciousness is indivisible

From ~~~ Ramana Smrti, P. 58. (Douglas E. Harding)

WHAT I OWE TO RAMANA MAHARSHI:

I thank Ramana Maharshi
for his uncompromising attitude to people’s problems.

For him, all the troubles that afflict humans
reduce to one trouble — mistaken identity.

The answer to the problem is to see Who has it.

At its own level it is insoluble.
And it must be so.

There is no greater absurdity,
no more fundamental or damaging a madness,
than to imagine one is centrally
what one looks like at a distance.

To think one is a human being here
is a sickness so deep-seated
that it underlies and generates all one’s ills.

Only cure that one basic disease
— mistaken identity —
and all is exactly as it should be.

I know no Sage who goes more directly
to the root of the disease,
and refuses more consistently
to treat its symptoms.

WHO AM I? is the only serious question.

And, most fortunately,
it is the only question that can be answered
without hesitation or the shadow of a doubt, absolutely.

I thank Ramana Maharshi above all
for tirelessly posing this question of questions,
and for showing how simple the answer is,
and for his lifelong dedication to that simple answer.

But in the last resort
all this talk of one giving
and another taking is unreal.

The notion that there was a consciousness
associated with that body in Tiruvannamalai,

and there is another consciousness
associated with this body in Nacton, England,

and a lot of other consciousness
associated with the other bodies
comprising the universe —

this is the great error
which Maharshi never tolerated.

Consciousness is indivisible.

 Douglas E. Harding

source text facebook

Jerry Waxman - We are star stuff

There is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky
with wonder and longing—for the same reason that we stand,
hour after hour, gazing at the distant swell of the open ocean.
There is something like an ancient wisdom,
encoded and tucked away in our DNA,
that knows its point of origin as surely as a salmonid knows its creek. 

Intellectually, we may not want to return there,
but the genes know, and long for their origins—
their home in the salty depths.
But if the seas are our immediate source,
the penultimate source is certainly the heavens…
The spectacular truth is—and this is something
that your DNA has known all along—
the very atoms of your body—

the iron, calcium, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and on and on
—were initially forged in long-dead stars.
This is why, when you stand outside under a moonless,
country sky, you feel some ineffable tugging at your innards.
We are star stuff. Keep looking up.

Jerry Waxman, a distinguished and enormously popular professor of astronomy and environmental science. From his book, Astronomical Tidbits. 

The Mind Of Krishnamurti

So, when the mind is still, not made still by self-discipline, control, by greed to experience something which is not of the mind, when the mind is really still, then you will find that there comes a state which brings a revolution in our outlook, in our attitude. This revolution is not brought about by the mind , but by something else. For this revolution to take place, the mind must be quiet; it must be literally as nothing, stripped, empty; and I assure you, it is not an easy job. That emptiness is not a state of daydreaming; you cannot get it by merely sitting still for ten hours or twenty four hours of the day and trying to hold on to something. It can come only when the mind has understood its own processes, the conscious as well as the unconscious- which means one must be everlastingly aware. And the difficulty for most of us is inertia. That is another problem which we will go into now. But the moment we begin to inquire and see the importance of change, we must go into all this. That means we must be willing to strip ourselves of everything to find the other, and once we have even a slight glimmering of the other, which is not of the mind, then that will operate. That is the only revolution, that is the only thing that can give us hope, that can put an end to wars .

- J.Krishnamurti( Collected works, Vol-7, Ojai, 1952)

Francis Lucille - Science and nonduality

 

http://advaitachannel.francislucille.com/en/home/