Kindness and Humility

    “At every meeting we are meeting a stranger.” T. S. Eliot, from “The Cocktail Party (I,iii)”

    “Speaking disparagingly about another person can have far-reaching effects. But on an even deeper level, a mind that is seized by a frozen view of another, whether the thoughts are spoken or not, is incapable of being open & awake. So, in a broader sense, this precept invites us to not only speak of but to meet even those we think we know — such as our mother or father — as if for the first time, like Eliot’s stranger. ...
    When we have the courage to squarely meet what we hold on to, to acknowledge & experience it with each new encounter, then over time we find that the bondage of our holdings loosens." Diane Eshin Rizzetto, “Meeting Others as Strangers”

     This is a great teaching - to assume that we know little or nothing about "the other." Wiser people than I suggest that we also know next to nothing about ourselves or "God." What we do know about ourselves is that if we're honest, we deserve to be very humble.

     Many, including myself sense that the Source (Nature, the Divine, non-dual emptiness) takes things far less seriously than we humans do. What if s/he is playing each & every one of our roles in the spirit of pure creativity & fun - like s/he were the creative writer, director, producer, set designer, and ALL OF THE ACTORS in a play.

                "What if God was one of us?
                Just a slob like one of us
                Just a stranger on the bus
                Tryin' to make his way home?"    Eric Bazilian, "One of Us"

    But as soon as s/he ("we") manifests in physical form, in our world of opposites (duality), most of us completely forget who we truly are - otherwise, finding our way home wouldn't be much of an adventure.

     “The human mind (ego) was not designed by evolutionary forces for finding truth. It was designed for finding advantage.” Albert Szent-Györgyi, Nobel laureate

    It takes a cosmic joker to voluntarily manifest as such apparently wildly opposite personalities: the Buddha, Stalin, Mother Teresa, Putin, Jesus, Trump, Pol Pot, Gandhi,  … and yet, in a way, are we not all 'just slobs on a bus, tryin' to make our way home?'

    “Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” Confucius 500 BCE

    “The Golden Rule, ‘Do onto others as you would have them do onto you,’ is a part of every religion we have. Every religion has something about this in their creed. It’s a guideline we have to follow for most of us, but for near-death experiencers, they’ve experienced it as a law of the universe. Let me give you an example of this:

    Tom was in his mid-thirties when a truck he was working under fell and crushed his chest. He had a very elaborate near-death experience (NDE). There were many parts of it, but one part was his life review. He went back over every event in his life in minute detail. He said, ‘I could count the number of mosquitoes that were buzzing around me at this time, which he couldn’t have done during the event, but in the NDE he did. And he said, ‘Not only that, but I experienced everything through my eyes and through the eyes of other people involved in the scene.’ He described one incident in particular, when he was a teenager, driving his truck down the street, when a drunk man wandered out in front of him. He jammed on the brakes, and was furious at the man for almost denting his truck. So he rolled down the window and started yelling at the man. And the man, being quite intoxicated, reached his hand in the window and slapped Tom across the face. You don’t do that to an angry teenager.
    So Tom got out of the truck, and started beating the man up. And he left him a bloody mess on the median strip. Now Tom tells me, when he relived this in his life review, he felt it through his own eyes – the adrenalin rush, the rage. And he also felt at the same time, through the eyes of the drunk man – the humiliation of being beaten up by this kid, the 32 blows of Tom’s fist in his face. Now Tom couldn’t have told you it was 32, but reliving it anew in an NDE, he felt 32 of them. He felt the man’s nose getting bloodied, he felt the man’s lower teeth going through his lower lip. And he came back realizing we’re all the same thing. There’s no difference between me & that man. It’s like if you’re looking at your fingers, they look like they’re separate things, but they’re really connected, and you can’t cut one off without hurting them all. So the Golden Rule for near-death experiencers is not a guideline, it’s the way things are.”
    Dr. Bruce Greyson - "After" - WMRA Books & Brews Feb 2023 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViCWJWHR0a8

    Recently I read that what we all desire above all is to be seen & accepted for who we are. This seems to imply by another person, BUT many feel that we first & foremost need this deep self-acceptance & unconditional love from ourselves.

    “Love thy neighbour as thyself for the love of God” is seen by some as an impractical infringement on one's individual right to find & secure as much personal material wealth & comfort as possible. Fewer & fewer see it in a proprietary, religious exclusivist context.

    Increasingly, people see the Golden Rule from a non-dual perspective ie that my neighbour, myself & God are one & the same - ONE entity manifesting as infinite variety of appearances, including everyone & everything: spiritually independents, scientific materialists, agnostics, atheists, theists, "president-for-life" dictators, drug dealers, petty crooks, mosquitoes, dogs, birds, fish, trees, rocks, mountains, oceans, earth, sun, moon, clouds, sky & cosmos. Divine non-dual infinite potential self-reflecting by manifesting as & exploring duality - the material world of opposites.
    On manifesting as humans, we tend to forget our true nature, AND also forget most of our wisdom. Awakening is remembering who we truly are - and - how to live appropriately as 'dual citizens' of non-duality & duality.

    So, no matter who we think we are, let's be kind, humble & pull together like wise, nurturing grandparents.

  

awakeningartsacademy.com

 

Silence & Stillness

    We identify with our thinking mind / self-talk far more than most of us realize. Our society reinforces this idea that we can solve every challenge with our reductive, linear thinking. This is like confidently attempting to fix computer software problems with a trusty old hammer & screwdriver. The more we foolishly argue with reality & remain alienated from our true self, the more we suffer. This is the BULK of human suffering, and is completely AVOIDABLE.

    “We are here to find that dimension within ourselves that is deeper than thought.” Eckhart Tolle

    “Learning to stop thinking sounds a bit paradoxical because usually learning involves thinking. So it’s more like unlearning, because we are conditioned to think continuously. A lot of the time, thinking is not only unnecessary, but also destructive. It cuts you off from the depth of being, of who you are beyond the thinker. The most dreadful limitation for a human being is to know him or herself only as the thinker, with its opinions, beliefs, reactions, and whatever else the mind continuously comes up with. And that cuts you off from that vast dimension of consciousness that is there beyond thinking – not separate from thinking, it makes thinking possible, but it’s deeper than that. And here as we meditate, which is probably not the right word, because it sounds as if we were ‘doing’ something, but we’re not ‘doing’ anything. We’re not ‘doing’ a meditation. But we’re here to realize that, beyond doing, there’s another dimension more vital, that we could call ‘being.’
    And to sense that in yourself, there needs to be at least a gap in the stream of thinking. Even a few seconds is already a slight deepening and a little bit of peace and aliveness, and a little bit of joy, coming through the cracks, so to speak, in what is otherwise a solid wall of thought. But we are here to go beyond that, not just wait for the little cracks to appear occasionally, but to embrace that dimension without which your life is not really that enjoyable. Frustrating in fact, pointless. The continuous worry, upset, anxiety, and complaining – that’s what most peoples’ lives consist of. Maybe yes, the occasional crack is there. Or maybe when they get tired they feel a little bit better because they can’t think anymore, and then they go to sleep. But really, without that deeper dimension, is life worth living? I don’t think so. What for?
    Do you think you’ll ever sort out the problems in your life? Never. You sort out one, and another two appear. So there’s nothing more important than this. And realize, when you stop thinking, or thinking subsides, we could say, you essentially are still there as a conscious presence – a still, conscious, aware space. And that still, conscious, aware space needs to be there in daily life, in the background. It doesn’t mean it can only be there when you don’t think. You access it most deeply when thinking subsides. But as you sense it, you realize, even when you think again, it doesn’t go away completely anymore. That conscious aware space can be there even while thinking happens, or while you’re talking to someone, or dealing with things that need to be done. And then you can enjoy life every moment. But the enjoyment doesn’t come from all the things that happen in your life. It comes from a deeper place. And then what happens, or does not happen, is of secondary importance. You’re not dependent on what happens, or is not happening (when you wanted it to happen).
    And then you move through life embodying two dimensions: the dimension of form, which is thinking and doing; and the dimension of formless presence – the conscious aware space. The two are there simultaneously. The conscious aware space interpenetrates, if that’s the word, the world of form. Then perhaps you realize the truth of the ancient Buddhist scripture, one of the most famous sutras, which says, ‘Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.’ Form and formlessness being there as one. [Zen Buddhism refers to this apparent paradox with, ‘Not one. Not two.’]
    And so, it’s not the absolute truth. It’s a way of talking about it. There are two of you, in any moment, in any situation. There’s the person who thinks, and does things, and deals with life situations and people. There’s you as the person. And then there’s the other you as the conscious presence. So you can still deal with things as a person, but behind that, and even within that, there is the aware space. So you become a spacious person, so to speak.
    Anybody who has not realized this dimension within themselves are not spacious. And of course that still applies to many humans. They are, what’s the opposite of spacious? Let’s say they are dense. The density of the person. You can look at anybody that you know, or even strangers when you observe them, when they go about life, how they deal with things, how they interact with people, how they react or respond to changing circumstances, especially when things go wrong, so to speak, by just observing them you can sense and see how dense or how spacious they are. And it’s not a judgment, you just see it, just the same way as you see whether it’s light or dark. You’re not judging when you say, ‘Oh, it’s getting dark.’ It’s not a judgment. You just see it. So you can see it in others. And sometimes so-called people who are into spiritual awakening, even they can sometimes very quickly, when they are challenged by events, become very dense. The spaciousness is lost.
    So your spiritual practice of course, is everyday life. Can you embody the spaciousness in addition to being a person? So you don’t need to achieve perfection as a person. The person will always have certain limitations and shortcomings. And when Jesus said, ‘Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,’ he doesn’t refer to the world of form, but the deeper perfection – the wholeness that is spacious presence.
    In ancient Greek philosophy, they often use the term ‘the good.’ What is the good? Where is the good? And of course, we know what it is and where it is. The good is not in the world of form. The world of form is good and bad. Nothing stays good for that long. It either disappears, or turns into its opposite. The good is within you, and it is the formless presence – the source of aliveness, joy, identity, the sense of who you are. The source of that is beingness, presence, spacious awareness – I am.”
    above from Eckhart Tolle's EXCELLENT 20min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG1JR_w-YmM

    “There is a light in the core of our being that calls us home – one that can only be seen with closed eyes. We can feel it as a radiance in the center of our chest. This light of loving awareness is always here, regardless of our conditioning. It does not matter how many dark paths we have traveled or how many wounds we have inflicted or sustained as we have unknowingly stumbled toward this inner radiance. It does not matter how long we have sleepwalked, seduced by our desires and fears. This call persists until it is answered, until we surrender to who we really are. When we do, we feel ourselves at home wherever we are. A hidden beauty reveals itself in our ordinary life. As the true nature of our Deep Heart is unveiled, we feel increasingly grateful for no reason – grateful to simply be.”
    John J. Prendergast. “The Deep Heart – Our Portal to Presence.” Sounds True, 2019.

    “My compassion is not me being a nice guy. My compassion is me realizing who I am and knowing that having a heart of love for all creatures, all beings, even a blade of grass, is true to who and what I am.
    Our whole life and all parts of it, every moment of it, and all of existence is nothing but compassion and love. We don’t need to produce compassion. We already are compassion. All we need to do is wake up to who and what we are, and then naturally, we’re going to have a heart of love not only in actions that appear to be compassionate but all the time: picking up an object with compassion, walking from one room to another with compassion, and, of course, caring for one another with love.” Norman Fischer

    "There’s only one happiness and it’s who you are. There’s only one place to find lasting happiness, and that is to know who you are and to be who you are.” Francis Lucille

Helen Hamilton "Before duality, I Am" EXCELLENT first 28min of this video:

 

Who / What Am I Really?

    Most of us are anxious, frightened & confused about life, aging, sickness & death, so much so, that we try (without success) to not think about or discuss these "depressing matters." Yet it is actually our aversion that keeps us trapped in the thoughts & associated emotions we're trying to avoid.
    We hyper-rational, control-obsessed individuals declare that death is "unacceptable!" Our society has conditioned us to consider ourselves bigger, better, smarter, better looking, and certainly independent of everyone else. How dare life slip out of MY CONTROL with all this aging, sickness & death crap! That's for "losers" - NOT "me"!
    BUT most of us have failed to learn that arguing with reality is THE cause of needless suffering. Only by "leaning into" the very things that scare us, and learning as much as possible about these, by truly becoming intimate with & directly experiencing these challenges physically & emotionally, can we come to a radically different perspective.
    This sounds alarmingly ridiculous to most of us, I know, yet it's true. And you'll only know how true it is AFTER you've given up arguing with & denying reality, have completely accepted the harshest of life's challenges, and awakened to lovingly embracing ALL of life's "10,000 joys AND 10,000 sorrows." Then and only then, can you possibly get how everything is perfect as it is.

    “So, what is it that animates this chunk of meat (our body), that makes it vital? The teacher would call it ‘the vital principle’ or life-force. It is in the absence of this that the body is inert.
    If there is such a thing as life-force, does it evaporate when the body dies? No. This ‘vital principle’ is present in the very movement of the cosmos: evidently, it is universal and eternal.
    So, the teacher would ask: what, then, can we consider real; a piece of flesh which decays and returns to the earth, or the force which is eternally present?
    Without the presence of this universal force, the body does not ‘see and hear.’ We cannot rightly say, then, that the body ‘sees and hears.’
    That which is seeing and hearing right now is not the body – it is the vital Principle. ‘You’ are that.

    When it is indubitably recognized that your nature & the nature of the absolute are fundamentally the same, indivisible nature, this is the ‘recognition of one’s true identity’: the realization that any and all identity is eclipsed by an actuality which renders separative distinctions ultimately meaningless.
    Such a realization, or non-dual perspective or awareness, cannot help but have a profound effect on one’s consideration of ‘personal individuality’. One cannot recognize that truth, of all pervasive indivisibility, and continue to maintain the fiction of separate personification – of the ‘me’ that was born and the ‘I’ which dies.
    This fruit of realization – that the absolute essence of all being does not ‘come’ from some place nor ‘go’ anywhere – quenches our deepest, final fear, the fear of extinction. Then the liberated may, indeed, ‘take no thought for the morrow.’”
    Robert Wolfe. “Living Nonduality. Enlightenment Teachings of Self-Realization.” Karina Library, 2014. 

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this 47min Robert Wolfe video: 

 

Barnacles upon Barnacles ...

    No matter how it appears to others, we're all doing the best we can with what we've got. After all, we're all trying to be happy. Now our ideas about what happiness means & what level of happiness we can realistically achieve differ greatly! I once asked a young woman what she hoped for in the future. Her response: 'a Lazy-Boy recliner.'
    Many just want to be as comfortable as possible in what they believe to be a hostile, machine-like, meaningless world. Because they have little or no knowledge or experience in these matters, they're absolutely certain that worldviews & self-concepts centering around loving inter-connection & universal consciousness are simple-minded, deluded & mere wishful thinking.

    “I don’t believe consciousness is generated in the brain any more than television programs are made inside my TV. The box is too small.” Terence McKenna

    More & more people - including the brightest & most highly educated - are continuously experiencing intimate, loving, nurturing connection with everyone & everything, and their peace & joy have become independent of their circumstances, including pain, sickness, aging & death. This highly-desirable & sought-after state - awakening / enlightenment - is considered the pinnacle of human consciousness maturation / evolution, shared by shamans / healers, mystics, saints & "ordinary folks" of all cultures & traditions throughout the ages (see 'perennial philosophy' below).

    Despite such vast differences in worldviews & self-concepts people hold, each individual tends to be absolutely certain that they are right, regardless of evidence to the contrary. Our minds seem far more interested in consistency than truth, so we often 'fail to see' or devalue data that contradicts, but gravitate towards & magnify data that confirms our stance.

    “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin

    “Whatever I believe to be true is immediately true for me. Whatever I know and am certain is real will be experienced as real to me.”
    Helen Hamilton. “Reality Check. A Simple Guide to Final Enlightenment.” Balboa Press, 2021.

    We all inevitably experience hardships severe enough to cause our immature worldviews & self-concepts to shatter, forcing us to rebuild more mature, more realistic, more trauma-proof ones. It is often a very slow road to discovering our true self & real happiness, which are independent of conditions.

    If we're fortunate enough to live past middle age, then nagging aches, pains, stiffness, & progressive physical & mental deterioration will test us increasingly. Under 60 years of age & used to good health, you may think, 'No problem, I'll be able to handle it.' But in fact it gets tiresomely unpleasant as a wide assortment of barnacles relentlessly stick, progressively weighing down one's only leaky old rowboat! There are many valid reasons for old folks to feel grumpy - temporarily.

    “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Joe Klaas

    Seniors' conversations often revolve around symptoms, disabilities, illnesses, surgeries, prescriptions, medical appointments, death & dying. And it's unbelievably easy 'to contract around' - to obsessively focus exclusively on one's own & loved ones' problems, desperately wanting to get rid of them ASAP, while feeling frustrated, angry, tired, hopeless & sad. This is especially so as pains & disabilities no longer quickly heal & resolve as they did in youth, but instead relentlessly eat away at one's body, mind & patience. Our usual egoic mind (small self) is specialized to survive & mate. In old age, we're no longer giving birth, and the fact & proximity of death is absolutely obvious. This profoundly unsettles one's ordinary egoic mind. And sadly, this limited, isolated sense of self is ALL many people are aware of! 

    BUT a solid spiritual practice, ideally established before stuff hits the fan, can make the "difference between heaven & hell" during trying times. Despite the current dogma of materialism, one's quality of life CAN be independent of circumstances.

    “The term 'perennial philosophy' (Agostino Steuco 1497-1548), refers to these four realizations:
      (1) there is only one Reality (God, Mother, Awareness, Self, Tao, Dharmakaya, Brahman, Great Spirit, Allah ...) that is the source & substance of all creation;
      (2) that while each of us is a manifestation of this Reality, most of us identify with something much smaller, that is, our culturally conditioned individual ego (the 'small self');
      (3) that this identification with the smaller self gives rise to needless anxiety, unnecessary suffering, and cross-cultural competition and violence; and
      (4) that peace, compassion, & justice naturally replace anxiety, needless suffering, competition, & violence when we realize our true nature as a manifestation of this singular Reality.
    The great sages & mystics of every civilization throughout human history have taught these truths in the language of their time & culture. It is the universality & timelessness of this wisdom that makes it the perfect focus for the spiritually independent seeker."
      Rami Shapiro. “Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent.” SkyLight Paths, 2013.

    "Our true nature is far more ancient & encompassing than the separate self defined by habit & society. We are as intrinsic to our living world as the rivers and trees, woven of the same intricate flows of matter/energy and mind. Having evolved us into self-reflective consciousness, the world can now know itself through us, behold its own majesty, tell its own stories, and also respond to its own suffering." Joanna Macy

    “... grief, if you are afraid of it and pave it over, clamp down, you shut down. And the kind of apathy and closed down denial or difficulty in looking at what we’re doing to our world stems not from callous indifference or ignorance so much as it stems from fear of pain. ….
    That became perhaps the most pivotal point in the landscape of my life: that dance with despair. To see how we are called to not run from the discomfort, and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage or even fear. If we can be fearless to be with our pain, it turns. It doesn’t stay. It only doesn’t change if we refuse to look at it. When we look at it, when we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it, when we keep breathing, then it turns. It turns to reveal its other face. And the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world. Our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life.” Joanna Macy, interviewed by Krista Tippett on the On Being podcast https://onbeing.org/programs/joanna-macy-a-wild-love-for-the-world

    "To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe -- to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it - is a wonder beyond words. Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. Furthermore, it is a privilege to be alive in this time when we can choose to take part in the self-healing of our world." Joanna Macy

 Helen Hamilton - The Way Of The Self

The Birth of Dualism in the West

     “For the West, however, the possibility of such an egoless return to a state of soul antecedent to the birth of individuality has long since passed away; and the first important stage in the branching off can be seen to have occurred in that very part of the nuclear Near East where the earliest god-kings and their courts had been for centuries ritually entombed: mainly Sumer, where a new sense of the separation of the spheres of god and man began to be represented in myth and ritual about 2350 B.C. The king, then, was no longer a god, but a servant of the god, his Tenant Farmer, supervisor of the race of human slaves created to serve the gods with unremitting toil. And no longer identity, but relationship, was the paramount concern. Man had been made not to be God but to know, honor, and serve him; so that even the king, who, according to the earlier mythological view, had been the chief embodiment of divinity on earth, was now but a priest offering sacrifice in tendance to One above – not a god returning himself in sacrifice to Himself.
     In the course of the following centuries, the new sense of separation led to a counter-yearning for return – not to identity, for such was no longer possible of conception (creator and creature were not the same), but to the presence and vision of the forfeited god. Hence the new mythology brought forth, in due time, a development away from the earlier static view of returning cycles. A progressive, temporally oriented mythology arose, of a creation, once and for all, at the beginning of time, a subsequent fall, and a work of restoration, still in progress. The world no longer was to be known as a mere showing in time of the paradigms of eternity, but as a field of unprecedented cosmic conflict between two powers, one light and one dark.”

       Joseph Campbell. “The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology.” Viking Compass Edition, NY, 1962.

Evolution of Human Consciousness

     “There are four main views of the evolution of consciousness (both human consciousness in general & religious consciousness in particular). Historically, these have usually been considered together, so we can start there.
     The first view sees history as a cyclical affair of recurrent ups and downs. The second is a downhill view that sees things as getting worse and consciousness as devolving. The third sees no change in consciousness, or at least religious consciousness, since prehistoric times. The fourth is an upward view of progressivism that sees culture and consciousness as evolving. 

     The fourth view sees human consciousness as a work in progress. For luminaries such as Hegel, Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin, Jean Gebser, and Ken Wilber, human consciousness and religious consciousness have evolved. Fortunately we can focus on the narrower yet still extremely complex area of religious consciousness, and since Ken Wilber has synthesized the ideas of so many thinkers, we can draw especially on his ideas.
     Wilber draws a crucial distinction between the ‘average mode’ of religious consciousness and the ‘leading edge.’ Leading-edge pioneers break through into new states of consciousness and then leave descriptions and instructions whereby others can follow them.
     Wilber’s division of spiritual states into four broad classes of gross, subtle, causal, and nondual is helpful. He suggests that just as these tend to emerge sequentially in today’s contemplatives, so too did they emerge in history, and a survey of historical religious texts supports him. 
     Humankind’s first gross and subtle spiritual experiences are long lost in the dawn of prehistory.
     Reliable signs of the causal appeared in the first few centuries before the Common Era and are associated with, for example, the Upanishads, the Buddha, early Taoists, and later with Jesus. Such was the extraordinary impact of this breakthrough and the sages who made it that this era is known as the Axial age. 
     Signs of the nondual appear a few centuries into the Common Era and are associated with, for example, the appearance of tantra and with names such as Plotinus in Rome, Bodhidharma in China, and Padmasambhava in Tibet.”

       Roger Walsh. “The World of Shamanism. New Views of an Ancient Tradition.” Llewellyn Publications, Woodbury, Minnesota, 2007.

Letting Everything Go

Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

Johnny Cash "Hurt"

     As Alzheimer's progresses, Hob gradually loses all connection to the life he had known. As a senior meditation teacher (in Thich Nhat Hanh's Zen order), Hob knew very well that we are to let go of absolutely everything - even Buddhist teachings! But unless our practice is very advanced, actually letting everything go is far from an easy - we suffer because of, and in proportion to, our futile clinging.

     “… the story was like a golden thread for him, a connection to a teaching that he needed when everything else was dissolving.” 

       Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle. “Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows. A Couple’s Journey through Alzheimer’s.” Penguin, NY, 2008.



                              There is no place to seek the mind:
                              it is like the footprints of the birds in the sky                         Zenrin Kushu

                              Nothing lasts forever

                              Even cold November rains                                                              Guns & Roses "November Rain"

 

See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/01/studying-way.html

Great Clear Sky with Clouds Passing By

How can the divine Oneness be seen?
In beautiful forms, breathtaking wonders,
awe-inspiring miracles?
The Tao is not obliged
to present itself in this way.

If you are willing to be lived by it,
you will see it everywhere,
even in the most ordinary things. 

Lao Tzu

There is only love.

All else, repeating stories exhausting themselves.

Rashani Rea

rashani.com

Public Gardens, Halifax, NS

Inside Out

     Many people come to realize that all conditioned phenomena are marked by anicca, anatta & dukkha. For some it's a total "shipwreck" - a total collapse of their world. Many become cynical, bitter, hedonistic, or catatonic, frozen in their tracks, or suicidal.
 
     Completely giving up on the reliability of all external sources of happiness - AND, at the same time - opening up, loving unconditionally, being wholeheartedly engaged with whatever phenomena always awaits ...

           There is a crack in everything
           That's how the light gets in.             Leonard Cohen "Anthem"

The Essence of Zazen - and Life

     "Zazen is the practice and realization of manifesting our body as Bodhi, as enlightenment. It is both the practice and the realization, for when we truly do zazen, there is no distinction between practice and realization. It is wisdom as is, as things are. This zazen, the practice of the Buddha Way, is none other than the practice of one's life.
     The best way to practice is to forget the self. By forgetting the self, we can appreciate our life not in the narrow, restricted, isolated way that we usually live but rather as a life of unity, a life that is unsurpassable. Another way to explain what we mean by forgetting the self is that we are transcending the subject-object relationship or the I-Other relationship. We are transcending duality."

       Adapted from "Appreciate Your Life: The Essence of Zen Practice" by Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Shambhala, 2002.
       Shambhala Sun, May 2015                      www.lionsroar.com/category/shambhala-sun/

Yeow Kwang Yeo FRPS   www.dpreview.com

with Penetrating Awareness ...

     "As concentration and attention increase, the mind becomes clear and balanced. More and more sharply we see how things are changing in each instant, how these are ultimately not a source of lasting happiness, and how the whole mind-body process flows according to certain laws empty of any permanent self. . . . 
     These profound insights become clear simply from increasing mindfulness, penetrating awareness of our own process. With these insights wisdom arises, bringing equanimity, loving-kindness, and compassion, for in experiencing the emptiness of self we see the unity of all things."                             Jack Kornfield

WisdomAtWork.com

Universal Consciousness - Namaste!

     "In the field of consciousness research - and also in physics and astronomy - we are breaking past the cause-and-effect, mechanistic way of interpreting things. In the biological sciences, there is a vitalism coming in that goes much further toward positing a common universal consciousness of which our brain is simply an organ. Consciousness does not come from the brain. The brain is an organ of consciousness. It focuses consciousness and pulls it in and directs it through a time and space field. But the antecedent of that is the universal consciousness of which we are all just a part."
 
       Joseph Campbell. "Mythic Worlds, Modern Words." New World Library, 2004, p 286

One Light

     "... one light 
               though the lamps are many."


       Preece R. "The Wisdom of Imperfection. The Challenge of Individuation in Buddhist Life." Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca NY, 2006.