Question!

     “The contemplative branches of every religion dwell in the questioning mind. They dig deeper than the words and doctrines into some ineffable place. 
     Most people think that place of questioning, that no man’s land, is unsettling and scary. But in reality, it’s wondrous. Even when it’s difficult or painful, there’s a feeling of appreciation and wonder. In this space, which is bigger than anything we can define or reduce to a doctrine, we appreciate the reality of being alive beyond our various reality-reducing notions of what we think or are told being alive is. 
     When life is an open question, life is appreciation. We still have to deal with whatever problems we have on a practical level, but underneath that there’s life as open question, immense in all directions – Wow, we’re alive! We have been given the gift of this magical, this mysterious, this impossible-to-define life!” 

Norman Fischer - Lion’s Roar, May 2017

awakeningartsacademy.com

 

Show me your original face before your parents were born!

     “Just keep exploring what you truly are. Am I a separate limited awareness? Or is the awareness that I know myself to be totally open, unlimited, and ever-present? 
     Because the belief and the feeling that what I am, comes and goes, and is limited, and therefore lacking, that is at the heart – that belief and feeling, that single belief and feeling is at the heart of all your suffering. That’s the only thing in suffering that needs to be explored – not the whole paraphernalia of whatever seems to be causing the suffering, because if you explore each of the causes in turn, it’s just endless. Money, work, relationships, - it goes on forever. But all these different colors, different facets of suffering, it all hinges on one thing – the belief that what I am, the I that is knowing my thoughts and hearing these words right now, the awareness I know myself to be, shares the limits and the destiny of the body-mind. 
     That’s it. That is with that belief we seem to shrink into a separate self. All our suffering is dependent upon that belief and feeling alone. 
     So once that’s clear you become naturally one-pointed. You see that all your suffering is just based on one thing. So all your disparate energies are now gathered together in that one direction. What am I truly? 
     You even forget about suffering because you’re dealing with what’s at the heart of it. You forget about the paraphernalia of suffering. Who is this one, this self that is suffering? Who is this one on whose behalf I spent my life thinking and feeling, acting and relating, I spent my life serving? This self – who is it? I’ve never seen it. Where are you? Come out. I want to make your acquaintance. Show me what you’re made of.”            

Rupert Spira, 4th video, on Suffering                  http://non-duality.rupertspira.com/introduction

Essence Of Pearl by Pennie Gibson   http://goo.gl/LOdrBZ

Listen with your Eyes, Watch with your Ears ...

      “… the shouts of children suddenly fell quiet, it was only now that I noticed. The bell had rung. The sounds here were new and unfamiliar to me, the same was true of the rhythm in which they surfaced, but I would soon get used to them, to such an extent that they would fade into the background again. You know too little and it doesn’t exist. You know too much and it doesn’t exist. Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows. That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the there itself. There, that is writing’s location and aim. But how do we get there?
     This was the question I asked myself, sitting in a district of Stockholm drinking coffee, my muscles contracting with the cold and the cigarette smoke dissolving into the vast mass of air above me.”

       Karl Ove Knausgaard. “A Death in the Family. My Struggle: Book 1.” Vintage Books, London, 2014.

Martha

To Question Old Answers

     "Many people think that it is the function of a spiritual teaching to provide answers to life’s biggest questions, but actually the opposite is true. The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to answer your questions, but to question your answers. For it is your conscious and unconscious assumptions and beliefs that distort your perception and cause you to see separation and division where there is actually only unity and completeness."

        Adyashanti "The Way of Liberation" 2012 ebook,

        which may be downloaded: http://www.adyashanti.org/library/The_Way_of_Liberation_Ebook.pdf

Public Gardens, Halifax, NS

On the Nature of Dialogue

          * Dialogue starts from a willingness to be tentative about what you know.
          * The focus of dialogue is on what is, rather than on ideas and opinions. 
          * You can participate by verbally or silently sharing perceptions.
          * Dialogue is letting the issue unfold in affection and mutual respect.
          * When a reaction arises, neither suppress it nor defend it, but suspend it in the mind and in the group, keeping it constantly available for observation and questioning.
          * Dialogue is being together and seeing together in an unfolding relationship.

          Krishnamurti Foundation of America                               www.kfa.org

Monet's Flowers

Open Mindedness vs Certainty

     "Uncertainty is a profoundly important practice. ... I trained in a South Korean monastery ... where the practice was to learn how to rest in a state of perplexity - a state that is focused, in that tradition, around the idea of great doubt, of 'What is this?' was the question we asked. That was the only meditation we did for 3 months in the summer, 3 months in the winter, we sit on a cushion, stare at a wall, and ask 'What is this?' 
     That was the most powerful practice I think I ever did as a monk. It's not that you then become some kind of thorough-going skeptic. But it's the fact that you acknowledge that fundamentally, you do not know what is going on. That the world is fundamentally mysterious. I think it's very difficult for Westerners to valorize uncertainty. We always want to know the answer. We always want to be right. And this kind of practice, which has been enormously influential in my life, is about learning to not only live with uncertainty, but actually to cultivate uncertainty. To cultivate an ongoing sense of questioning, of curiosity, of astonishment, of perplexity. This is both an act of humility, it's also for me an act of devotion, which might sound a bit strange, and it really throws into question every kind of certitude or conviction or belief that you might have. And it touches something very deep.
     What brings us to Buddhism in the first place, is that kind of existential uncertainty. And yet so often, as in all religions, we prefer to substitute belief for actually the very living pulse that brought us to that place in the first instance. There's a wonderful aphorism that our teacher Kusan Sunim used to recite all the time: 
          'Great doubt, great awakening;
          Little doubt, little awakening;
          No doubt, no awakening.' "                    Stephen Batchelor

     Above transcribed from the YouTube video: "Stephen Batchelor and Ven Brahmali debate in Melbourne 2014" found on: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/

QTrung   www.dpreview.com

The Work of This Moment - Clear & Simple

     "Toni Packer ... had a passionate intensity about what she called 'the work of this moment,' which she described as 'a profound kind of listening and openness that revealed the intense power and momentum of our human conditioning,' along with the discovery of 'an inner / outer silence - stillness - spaciousness in which there is no sense of separation or limitation, outside or inside.'
     Toni's insight and expression cut through all forms of self-deception with remarkable clarity and simplicity. She was interested in listening and looking without answers or formulas, without relying on the authority of the past. Everything she said was fresh because she always spoke and wrote out of a listening presence that was vibrantly alive."

       Tollifson J. A Questioning Life. Buddhadharma: A Practitioner's Quarterly. Winter 2013. http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/

Steve McCurry   http://stevemccurry.com/

Undefinable

     “In silently wondering deeply without knowing, the conceptual world is left behind. Are we going into the question in this way?
      All too often our yearning for something to alleviate the inner suffering gets in the way of deep inquiry. Rather than asking, ‘What is enlightenment?’ can we question our inner feeling of insufficiency? We have tried to fill it with fantasies of all descriptions, with entertainment, acquisitions, achievements, relationships, spiritual searching, and solemn vows – anything to fill the aching void. But have we ever really explored it directly, unconditionally?
      Becoming conscious of it … can we be with the ache of emptiness, not calling it by any name? Let all labels fly into thin air and stay with what is here, discomfort without calling it discomfort. Staying here with what’s indefinable. Not resisting, not fighting, not looking for anything else. Just letting what is here be here in its entirely, physically, mentally, totally. Letting it be without knowing. Not becoming the doer for or against it. Just this quiet presence in the midst of the silence of chaos. In this there is an unfolding transparency. It happens when one sits patiently, silently, unconditionally. By ‘sitting’ I simply mean being totally with what is here. Not moving away or toward something else, just remaining with the whole thing – an intense presence that includes all the bodily sensations, breathing, wind-storming, raining, sunning, birding, coughing, fans humming – everything right here, all at once, without a seam. Observing thoughts coming up, emotions, feelings, sensations arising and more thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations unfolding and abating – being with it all. There isn’t any place to escape to. Everything is here without separation.”

       Packer T. “The Wonder of Presence and the Way of Meditative Inquiry.” Shambhala, Boston, 2002. 

TimR32225   www.dpreview.com