We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet, cold water and the jar that pours.
~ Jelaluddin Rumi

Toys 'n Things

"Mind is interested in what happens, while awareness is interested in the mind itself. The child is after the toy, but the mother watches the child, not the toy."
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford,
New Jersey, in 1883. He was a practicing doctor, and a
principal poet of the Imagist movement, which stressed
precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language.

When I was searching about,

(not too long ago) looking for something, didn't know
what it was at the time, I went down to London on
the train to listen to Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee giving a
talk on Rumi, Llewellyn is the present Shaykh in the
lineage, (inherited from Mrs Irina Tweedie,) of
The Golden Sufi Order, as he was speaking, questions
built up one by one in my mind which I intended to
ask him after the talk. . .

He was sitting on the edge of the stage, I went to
him and sat down beside him and said, "Llewellyn,
I had a hundred things to ask of you, but I can't
now think of one single question. He was eating
dates at the time, he answered, "forget the
questions, Tom, have a date."

Tom McFerran

Wei Wu Wei

A myriad bubbles were floating on the surface of a stream.
'What are you?' I cried to them as they drifted by. 'I am a
bubble, of course' nearly a myriad bubbles answered, and
there was surprise and indignation in their voices as they
passed.

But, here and there, a lonely little bubble answered, 'We are this stream', and there was neither surprise nor indignation in their voices, but just a quiet certitude."

Wei Wu Wei

Ask the Awakened

Infinite Potential

It's very important to understand that everything that exists—the whole universe, including each and every one of us, is a manifest or material expression of that which does not exist. From nothing came something. The unmanifest became the manifest. From emptiness, from the void, this whole material universe, which eventually gave rise to life, emerged. So everything that exists came from nothing. Nothing is the source of everything that is. That which became everything is that nonmaterial spiritual essence. That's what you can experience in a deep state of meditation. The fundamental mystical insight throughout the ages is basically this: that the ultimate essence of everything that exists is this no-thing-ness. But when seen from this evolutionary perspective, what you become aware of is that the nothingness is not nothing. Why? Because in the absolute emptiness prior to the big bang there was still the infinite potential for everything that would be created. Everything was possible but nothing had happened yet. So even in complete emptiness, there is some kind of positive creative tension that is experienced in meditation as a suspended state of absolute awakeness. This quiet tension exists in consciousness because everything is possible but nothing has yet occurred. There is a vibration of empty fullness that is enthralling. And what we're very interested in, in the teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment, is locating that same vibration within our very own self—the same energy, the same intelligence that initiated the entire creative process at the very beginning.

Andrew Cohen

AhhhhAuden

"You,"

Really, must you,
Over-familiar
Dense companion,
Be there always?
The bond between us
Is chimerical surely:
Yet I cannot break it.

Must I, born for
Sacred play,
Turn base mechanic
So you may worship
Your secular bread,
With no thought
Of the value of time?

Thus far I have known your
Character only
From its pleasanter side,
But you know I know
A day will come
When you grow savage
And hurt me badly.

Totally stupid?
Would that you were:
But, no, you plague me
With tastes I was fool enough
Once to believe in.
Bah!, blockhead:
I know where you learned them.

Can I trust you even
On creaturely fact?
I suspect strongly
You hold some dogma
Or positive truth,
And feed me fictions:
I shall never prove it.

Oh, I know how you came by
A sinner's cranium,
How between two glaciers
The master-chronometer
Of an innocent primate
Altered its tempi:
That explains nothing.

Who tinkered and why?
Why am I certain,
Whatever your faults are,
The fault is mine,
Why is loneliness not
A chemical discomfort,
Nor Being a smell?

WH Auden (1960)

Those who wish to embody the Tao

should embrace all things. To embrace
all things means first that one holds
no anger or resistance toward any
idea or thing, living or dead, formed
or formless. Acceptance is the very
essence of the Tao. To embrace all
things means also that one rids oneself
of any concept of separation; male
and female, self and other, life and
death. Division is contrary to the
nature of the Tao. Foregoing
antagonism and separation, one
enters in the harmonious oneness
of all things.

Lao Tzu, from Hua Hu Ching,
translated by Brian Walker

Click to enlarge.





















The important thing is not to think much,
but to love much;
and so, do that which best stirs you to love.

Saint Teresa of Avila

You stop to point to the moon in the sky,

but the finger's blind unless the moon is shining.

One moon, one careless finger pointing --
are these two things or one?

The question is a pointer guiding
a novice from ignorance thick as fog.

Look deeper. The mystery calls and calls:
No moon, no finger -- nothing there at all.

By Ryokan
(1758 - 1831)

The Self

"Being the source of both, the self is beyond both knowledge and power. The observable is in the mind. The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking. Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved. They exist because you believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person."

~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Watching a Documentary

Watching a Documentary about Polar Bears

Trying to Survive on the Melting Ice Floes

That God had a plan, I do not doubt.

But what if His plan was, that we would do better?
~Mary Oliver