Profound and tranquil, free from complexity,
Uncompounded luminous clarity,
Beyond the mind of conceptual ideas;
This is the depth of the mind of the buddhas.
In this, there is not a thing to be removed,
Nor anything that needs to be added.
It is merely the immaculate,
Looking naturally at itself.
~Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche
Being conscious is cutting through your own melodrama and being right
here. Exist in no mind, be empty, here now, and trust that as a situation
arises, out of you will come what is necessary to deal with that situation
including the use of your intellect when appropriate. Your intellect need not
be constantly held on to keep reassuring you that you know where you’re at, out
of fear of loss of control. Ultimately, when you stop identifying so much with
your physical body and with your psychological entity, that anxiety starts to
disintegrate. And your start to define yourself as in flow with the universe;
and whatever comes along ~ death, life joy, sadness ~ is grist for the mill of
awakening. Not this versus that but whatever.
~ Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill
The tart and hearty grapes, destined to ripen,
will at last become one in heart
by the breath of the masters of heart.
They will grow steadily to grapehood,
shedding duality and malice and strife.
till in maturity, they rend their skins,
and become the mellow wine of union.
-Rumi, M, 11, 3723-25
From: ‘The Knowing Heart – A Sufi Path of Transformation’
by Kabir Helminski
Tags: rumi
The sky is filled with stars and the sun…
The sky is filled with stars and the sun,
this earth with life vibrant.
Amongst it all I too have received a home,
and out of this wonder my song is born.
In the rhythm of ebb and tide of eternal time,
the world floats.
Its pull enters my blood stream,
that through my nerve flows.
Out of this wonder my song is born.
I have walked on grass,
passed through the woods.
My mind is infused with surprise,
that the smell of flowers bring.
Spread around me are such wonderful gifts.
I have lent my ears, opened my eyes.
On the bosom of this earth poured forth my life,
looking for the unknown in all that I know.
Out of this wonder my song is born.
~Rabindranath Tagore
Tags: Rabindranath Tagore
The true task of spiritual life
is not found in faraway places
or unusual states of consciousness.
It is here in the present.
It asks of us a welcoming spirit
to greet all that life presents to us
with a wise, respectful, and kindly heart.
We can bow to both beauty and suffering,
to our entanglements and confusion,
to our fears and to the injustices of the world.
Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom.
~ Jack Kornfield
Tags: jack kornfield
How boundless the cleared sky of Samadhi!
How transparent the perfect moonlight of the Fourfold Wisdom!
At this moment what more need we seek?
As the Truth eternally reveals itself,
This very place is the Lotus Land of Purity,
This very body is the Body of the Buddha.
- Song of Meditation, Hakuin Ekaku Zenji
Love Song
Rainer Maria Rilke
How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin’s bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Tags: rainer maria rilke
If you contact God within yourself, you will know that He is in
everyone, that He has become the children of all races. Then
you cannot be an enemy to anyone. If the whole world could
love with that universal love, there would be no need for men
to arm themselves against one another. By our own Christlike
example we must bring unity among all religions, all nations, all
races.
~Paramahansa Yogananda in
‘Man’s Eternal Quest’
Tags: Paramahansa Yogananda
To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance,
and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the
guidance and benefit of others, by expressing in the world
of forms – truth, love, purity and beauty – this is the sole
game that has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other
incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no
lasting importance.
~Meher Baba
Tags: beauty, essence, meher baba, purity
Homage to Manjushri!
I bow down to the all-powerful Buddha
Whose mind is free of attachment,
Who in his compassion and wisdom
Has taught the inexpressible.
In truth there is no birth –
Then surely no cessation or liberation;
The Buddha is like the sky
And all beings have that nature.
Neither samsara nor nirvana exist,
But all is a complex continuum
With an intrinsic face of void,
The object of ultimate awareness.
The nature of all things
Appears like a reflection,
Pure and naturally quiescent,
With a non-dual identity of suchness.
The common mind imagines a self
Where there is nothing at all,
And it conceives of emotional states –
Happiness, suffering and equanimity.
The six states of being in samsara,
The happiness of heaven,
The suffering of hell,
Are all false creations, figments of mind.
Likewise the ideas of bad action causing suffering,
Old age, disease and death,
And the idea that virtue leads to happiness,
Are mere ideas, unreal notions.
Like an artist frightened
By the devil he paints,
The sufferer in samsara
Is terrified by his own imagination.
Like a man caught in quicksands
Thrashing and struggling about,
So beings drown
In the mess of their own thoughts.
Mistaking fantasy for reality
Causes an experience of suffering;
Mind is poisoned by interpretation
Of consciousness of form.
Dissolving figment and fantasy
With a mind of compassionate insight,
Remain in perfect awareness
In order to help all beings.
So acquiring conventional virtue
Freed from the web of interpretive thought,
Insurpassable understanding is gained
As Buddha, friend to the world.
Knowing the relativity of all,
The ultimate truth is always seen;
Dismissing the idea of beginning, middle and end
The flow is seen as emptiness.
So all samsara and nirvana is seen as it is –
Empty and insubstantial,
Naked and changeless,
Eternally quiescent and illumined.
As the figments of a dream
Dissolve upon waking,
So the confusion of samsara
Fades away in enlightenment.
Idealizing things of no substance
As eternal, substantial and satisfying,
Shrouding them in a fog of desire
The round of existence arises.
The nature of beings is unborn
Yet commonly beings are conceived to exist
Both beings and their ideas
Are false beliefs.
It is nothing but an artifice of mind
This birth into an illusory becoming,
Into a world of good and evil action
With good or bad rebirth to follow.
When the wheel of mind ceases to turn
All things come to an end.
So there is nothing inherently substantial
And all things are utterly pure.
This great ocean of samsara,
Full of delusive thought,
Can be crossed in the boat Universal Approach.
Who can reach the other side without it?
