What's In The Temple?

In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to spring.
It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.
The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.
The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for us to follow.
The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.
The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.
If she stands still it will catch up with her.
Pause with us here a while.
Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.

If I say the word God, people run away.
They've been frightened--sat on 'till the spirit cried "uncle."
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can't name.
They know he's out there looking for them, and they want to be found,
But there is all this stuff in the way.

I can't talk about God and make any sense,
And I can't not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.

I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God.
Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm fur,
And sense the whole tragedy of life and death.
You see there the consequences of carelessness,
And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived.
The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh.

We don't build many temples anymore.
Maybe we learned that the sacred can't be contained.
Or maybe it can't be sustained inside a building.
Buildings crumble.
It's the spirit that lives on.

If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,
What would you worship there?
What would you bring to sacrifice?
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?

Go there now.

~ Tom Barrett ~

"Self-surrender . . .

is the surrender of all self-concern.
It cannot be done, it happens when
you realize your true nature.
Verbal self-surrender, even accompanied
by feeling is of little value and breaks
down under stress."

~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

NEW MATERIAL BELOW THE FOLD

Slouching Towards Arunachala

Change is in the wind.
This humble blog has over the months
morphed into a repository for a classical/neo
advaita wisdom collection. And that's all
well and good.
But.
Increasingly, say over dinner with a friend
last weekend when I launched into yet another
story of family craziness when asked "what's
new with you?", and at the end of yet another
family story, after the friends rictus mouth silently
mouthing a Craig Ferguson Scottish "Whaaa?",
after the "you gotta be kidding" and after the
"Oh my God!", then comes "thats just too good,
you gotta write this down", I came home and
started writing it down, and to my surprise what
developed wasn't a first person monologue at
all, but a dialogue between someone who calls
himself "Uncle Charlie", and someone from
beyond time and space named Toby. A
channeled entity.
So.

AFarDistantHowl will continue as it is, with
this post, "Slouching Towards Arunachala"
remaining on top, and having additions and
and subtractions below the fold, but with the
Charlie/Toby dialogue being the focus at the
new blog.

For ...

Stories are medicine, small doses of what matters,
and it is the telling that releases the medicine, the telling
that soothes our pain and shares our joy. . . . It has
always been clear that the life of our expression and
the life of our stories are connected to our health.
Mark Nepo in The Exquisite Risk


So
Keep coming back for additions and if you find
yourself having an interest in some white
trash channeled explorations, those of my
family those of me, email me for my new
trailer house address at White Trash Lane.
grantbishop1995@gmail.com

On Angels

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seems.

Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.

The voice -- no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightening.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draw near
another one
do what you can.

~Czeslaw Milosz

“May God steal from you all that steals you from Him.”

Spurred with the desire to gain publicity for himself, one day Hasan, seeing Rabia in a general congregation of saints, came to her and said, "Rabia, let us leave this congregation and sitting on the waters of the lake, hold our spiritual discussion there." He said this to display his miraculous power before others, for he had gained mastery over water as Christ had walked over water. Rabia remonstrated, "Hasah, put your vanity aside. If you are so determined to separate yourself from the general assembly of saints, why should we not both fly and hold our meeting there in the air?" Rabia said this as if she had that power. Hasan knew he could not do this and said as much, shamed by her words. Rabia said, "Know that what you can do fishes can also do-- easily. What I suggested was no more than what a fly does. Reality transcends this miracle-mongering. Seek humility."

Fariduddin Attar

Three from Ramesh

True love of God means surrender to Him, wanting nothing - not even salvation.

A mind that can apprehend an object as it truly is will know precisely nothing at all. Such is the whole-mind of the enlightened sage.

Human beings actually have no more independence or autonomy in living their lives than do the characters in a dream. Neither do they have anything to do with the creation of the dream or anything in it. They are simply being lived along with everything else in this living dream of the manifested universe. The entire dream is unreal. Only the dreamer is real, and that is Consciousness itself.

For the upcoming election . . .

"ANTHEM"

The birds they sang

At the break of day

Start again I heard them say

Dont dwell on what Has passed away

Or what is yet to be

The wars they will

Be fought again

The holy dove

Be caught again

Bought and sold

And bought again

The dove is never free

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
Thats how the light gets in

We asked for signs

The signs were sent

The birth betrayed

The marriage spent

The widowhood

Of every government

Signs for all to see

Cant run no more

With the lawless crowd

While the killers in high places

Say their prayers out loud

But theyve summoned up

A thundercloud

And theyre going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
Thats how the light gets in

You can add up the parts

But you wont have the sum

You can strike up the march

There is no drum Every heart

To love will come

But like a refugee

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
Thats how the light gets in ~Leonard Cohen

http://www.laurieanderson.com/

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

~ e.e. cummings ~

(Complete Poems 1904-1962)

This is not to say "I am" or "I am not", it is to give no
thoughts to self but all to God. Let one say, "What would
God have me say, what would God have me think, what
would God have me do?" But even this is unnecessary for
there is always a feeling of ease if not of joy, when one
practices Darood -- to harmonize all action, speech and
thought with the breath. This is easy, simple and sufficient,
and for it no knowledge of metaphysics is necessary.

Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti

If it is not too dark,

Go for a walk, if it is not too dark.
Get some fresh air, try to smile.
Say something kind
To a safe-looking stranger, if one happens by.

Always exercise your heart's knowing.

You might as well attempt something real
Along this path:

Take your spouse or lover into your arms
The way you did when you first met.
Let tenderness pour from your eyes
The way the Sun gazes warmly on the earth.

Play a game with some children.
Extend yourself to a friend.
Sing a few ribald songs to your pets and plants -
Why not let them get drunk and wild!

Let's toast
Every rung we've climbed on Evolution's ladder.
Whisper, "I love you! I love you!"
To the whole mad world.

Let's stop reading about God -
We will never understand Him.

Jump to your feet, wave your fists,
Threaten and warn the whole Universe

That your heart can no longer live
Without real love!

~ Hafiz ~

(I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

The Heat of Midnight Tears

By Mirabai
(1498 - 1565?)

English version by Robert Bly

Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,
Kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night.

If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water,
I would have asked to be born a fish in this life.
If we could reach Him through nothing but berries and wild nuts,
Then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came from the womb!
If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves,
Then the goats would surely go to the Holy One before us!

If the worship of stone statues could bring us all the way,
I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.

Mirabai says: The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God.

qua

"A prince who believes himself to be a beggar
can be convinced conclusively in one way only:
he must behave as a prince and see what happens.
Behave as if what I say is true and
judge by what actually happens."

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is neither up nor down nor inside nor outside
nor without nor within. All there is is Consciousness.
And this manifestation is an appearance within that
Consciousness. And even that appearance is only an
objective expression of the same Consciousness. All
there is is Consciousness.

We are merely an instrument through which Consciousness is functioning.

~ Ramesh S. Balsekar

You can always cope with the Now, but you can
never cope with the future - nor do you have to.
The answer, the strength, the right action, or the
resource will be there when you need it, not before,
not after.

Eckhart Tolle

It is a naïve man who thinks we are not engaged in a fierce battle.

Hafiz

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

(Words From Under the Words: Selected Poems)

If someone remarks, "What an excellent man you are!"
and this pleases you more than his saying, "What a
bad man you are!" know that you are still a bad man.

Sufyan al-Thawri

"The realized man knows what others merely hear, but do not
experience. Intellectually they may seem convinced,
but in action they betray their bondage."
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

My merciful master teaches me to free-fall.
It smashes my fingers when I try to hold on.
Pete S.

Barn's burnt down

Now

I can see

The moon


~Masahide

Hymn

April 4, 1995 - October 4, 2004

By A. R. Ammons

(1926 - 2001)

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth
and go on out
over the sea marshes and the brant in bays
and over the hills of tall hickory
and over the crater lakes and canyons
and on up through the spheres of diminishing air
past the blackset noctilucent clouds
where one wants to stop and look
way past all the light diffusions and bombardments
up farther than the loss of sight
into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth
inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes
trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest
coelenterates
and praying for a nerve cell
with all the soul of my chemical reactions
and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

You are everywhere partial and entire
You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum
has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut
and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark
chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down
and if I find you I must go out deep into your
far resolutions
and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves

Isan said to Kyozan, "All of your Sutra studies are
useless, who is the one, who studies?"

Kyozan remained silent, and Isan yelled, "Get out,
and don't come back."

Kyozan gathered his belongings and was leaving
the temple, when Isan yelled, "Kyozan!"

When Kyozan turned his head, Isan said, "Who is this
who heard my call?"

On hearing this, Kyozan dropped his belongings and
walked away.

There is a reality even prior to heaven and earth,
Indeed, it has no form, much less a name;
Eyes fail to see it; it has no voice for ears to detect;
To call it Mind or Buddha violates its nature,
For then it becomes like a visionary flower
in the air;
It is not Mind, nor Buddha;
Absolutely quiet, and yet illuminating
in a mysterious way,
It allows itself to be perceived only by
the clear-eyed.
It is Dharma truly beyond form and sound;
It is Tao having nothing to do with words.
Wishing to entice the blind,
The Buddha has playfully let words
escape his golden mouth;
Heaven and earth are ever since filled
with entangling briars.

O my good worthy friends gathered here,
If you desire to listen
to the thundrous voice of the Dharma,
Exhaust your words, empty your thoughts,
For then you may come to recognize this
One Essence.
-=-Dai O Kokushi

What has to be given up
is not the I, as most mystics suppose:
this I is indispensable for any relationship,
including the highest,
which always presupposes an I and You.

What has to be given up is not the I
but that drive for self-affirmation
which impels man to flee
from the unreliable, unsolid, unlasting,
unpredictable, dangerous world of relation
into the having of things."

Martin Buber

All you need is to keep quietly alert,
enquiring into the real
nature of yourself.
This is the only way to peace.
The real exists and is of the nature
of witness-consciousness.
Of course it is beyond the witness,
but to enter it one must first
realize the state of pure witnessing....
The witness is the
reflection of the real in all its purity....

The state of witnessing is full of power.

There are no conditions to fulfill.
There is nothing to be done,
nothing to be given up.
Just look and remember whatever you
perceive is not you, nor yours.
It is there in the field of consciousness,
but you are not the field and its contents,
nor even the knower of the field. It is your
idea that you have to do things that entangle
you in results of your efforts-the motive,
the desire, the failure to achieve, the sense of
frustration- all this holds you back.
Simply look at whatever happens and know
that you are beyond it.

You need not get at it (Enlightenment),
for you are it. It will getat you, if you give
it a chance. Let go your attachment to the
unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly
slip into its own.
Stop imagining yourself being or doing this
or that and the realization that you are the
source and heart of all will dawn upon
you. With this will come great love which is
not choice or predilection, nor attachment,
but a power which makes all things love - worthy
and lovable.

Discover all you are not. Body, feelings, thoughts,
ideas, time, space, being and not being, this or
that - nothing concrete or abstract you can point
out to is you. You must watch yourself
continuously - particularly your mind - moment
by moment, missing nothing. This witnessing is
essential for the separation of the self from the
not-self ........be aware of that state which is only,
simply being, without being this or that or the other.

Thoughts on Awareness by Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sufis do not, by and large, work through a reincarnation model. But we do know where we go in deep sleep. We know exactly.
~Hafizullah

one's not half two

one’s not half two. It’s two are halves of one:

which halves reintegrating, shall occur

no death and any quantity; but than

all numerable mosts the actual more

minds ignorant of stern miraculous this every truth

beware of heartless them

(given the scalpel, they dissect a kiss;

or, sold the reason, they undream a dream)

one is the song which fiends and angels sing;

all murdering lies by mortals told make two.

Let liars wilt, repaying life they’re loaned;

We (by a gift called dying born) must grow

deep in dark least ourselves remembering

love only rides his year.

All lose, whole find

e. e. cummings