If you understand,

things are just as they are;

If you do not understand,
things are just as they are.
- Zen proverb

Streaming Beggars

Now that you have moved
into my heart, taken
the doors off their hinges and
removed the windows,
glass, sash and
all
beggars are coming from
everywhere for
your sweet embrace.

The beggars stream in from
every direction--walking, running, crawling,
rolling and being carried. The neighbors
have stopped
screaming about it. At first they had
plenty to say but after
weeks and weeks of this they
know there is no
helping it. This is beyond
city ordinances.

Soon they will be coming
themselves, dropping
rakes, dog leashes, clothespins,
leaving cars running
in the street, for a glimpse
of your holy face.

What am I to do but

watch in awe at the blessed
variety of your creation, the myriad wounds,
the incredible stories, the way they gather
around the door quivering
with the certain knowledge that finally
no one
will be turned away.

And stay in the house
making meals, and carrying
sheets up and down the stairs.

- Jeannie Zandi

"Pull the bridle on the Unruly Self,
Ever hard-- Beware of the snares of the world's Faithless flowers;
Believing not in his holy garb,
Or his long string of prayer-beads,
Neither allying oneself with him;
Nor jointly riding hard with him."

--Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
as translated by Idries Shah

Sufi Advaita

Here is an article from Sufi tradition that is about the "worthwhile" because it gives instruction and serves recognition of the Self or Truth, as can be seen in these quotes from the article below: "In all your outer activities remain inwardly free. Learn not to identify with anything whatsoever." ... "Remember that you belong Somewhere and your goal is to attain Reality."

What would the "impossible" nondual view look like from within the Sufi
tradition? The confessions of Ibn 'Arabi show us what the impossible looks
like. "He" stands for Allah, and could also mean Truth, Reality, God:

"He (Allah) is the First without anything before Him.
He is the Last without anything after Him.
He is Visible in all that is seen.
He is Known, clearly, in all that is hidden.
He is in all forms and images without any
relation to any appearance.
He is the secret and the appearance of the
first letter announcing the beginning of existence.
He is the presence of all the letters that belong
to the First and all the letters that belong to the
Last and is the presence in all the letters that
are visible and all the letters that are hidden."

That is pure confession. There is nothing worthwhile, as I've defined it,
since it is not instructing us in any way or trying to get us from one stage
of understanding to another. On its own it says there is only He. There
isn't even the one perceiving He. No one exists.

Jerry Katz
The Nondual Highlights
from Nonduality Salon

SOLSTICE 2006 Dec 21, 5:22 MST

You cannot describe it or draw it,
you cannot praise it enough, or perceive it.
no place can be found in which
to put my original face;
it will not disappear even
when the universe is destroyed.
— Mumon

(Thanks to Doris for the photo from her yard)

If a blow comes to you from Heaven,

be alert to a gift of honor after it; for He is not the King to slap you without giving you a crown and a throne on which to rest. The whole world is worth only a gnat's wing, but a single slap may bring an infinite reward. Slip your neck nimbly out of this golden collar that is the world, and take the slaps that come from God. The prophets suffered those blows on the neck, and from that affliction they lifted their heads high. But always be present, attentive, and ready in yourself, youthful one, in order that He may find you at home. Otherwise He will take back His gift of honor, saying "I found no one there."

-- Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Mathnawi VI: 1638-1643
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996

Alan Watts: Great Teacher Come to the West

[...] you see, we are still talking about the same old problem but we have put it one step up. "How can I improve myself?", was the first problem, and the second problem is, "How can I accept grace?", but they are both the same problem because in each case you have got to make a move that will put yourself out of your own control into the control of a "better." And if you do not believe in the Christian kind of a God you can believe in the Hindu kind of a God who is your inner self. You have a lower self that you call your ego - that is that little scoundrelly fellow that is always out for "me." But behind the ego there is the atman, the inner self, or the inward light, as the Quakers call it; it is the real self, the spirit that is substantially identical with God. So you have to meditate in such a way that you identify with your higher self. But how do you do that? Well, you start by watching all of your thoughts very carefully. You watch your feelings, you watch your emotions, and you begin to build up a sense of separation between the watcher and what is watched. In this way, you are no longer carried away by your own stream of consciousness. You remain the witness, impassively, impartially suspending judgment and watching it all go on. Now, this seems to be something like progress - at least you are taking an objective view of what is happening, and you are beginning to be in a position to control it. But just wait a minute! Who is this self behind the self, the watching self? Can you watch that one? It is interesting if you do because you find out, of course, that the watching self, or the observing self, behind all your thoughts and feelings is itself a thought. That is to say, when the police enter a house in which there are thieves, the thieves go up from the ground floor to the first floor. When the police arrive on the first floor, the thieves have gone up to the second, and so on to the third and finally out onto the roof. Just so, when the ego is about to be unmasked, it immediately identifies with the higher self. It goes up a level, because the religious game version is simply a refined and high-brow version of the ordinary game "How can I outwit me?" So if I find, for example, that in the quest for pleasure, the ordinary pleasures of the world - food, sex, power, possessions - become a drag and I think, "No, it is not that," and then I go in for the arts, literature, poetry, and music, and I absorb myself in those pleasures, then after awhile I find that they are not the answer either. So then I go in for psychoanalysis, and I find out that is not the answer, and then I turn to religion, but I'm still seeking what I was seeking when I wanted candy bars! I want to get that goodie. Only I see now that it is not going to be a material goodie because all material goodies fall apart; but maybe there is a spiritual goodie that will not. Still, the spiritual quest is no different than the quest for the candy bar. Same old story, only you have refined the candy bar and made it abstract and holy and blessed and so on. So it is with the higher self. The higher self is your same old ego, but you sure hope it is eternal, indestructeble, and all-wise.

~Alan Watts
in The Way of Liberation

I drink streamwater and the air
becomes clearer and everything I do.

I become a waterwheel,
turning and tasting you, as long
as water moves.

- Jelaluddin Rum

The Way "It" Is

What you really want is to have a profound experience of your own true nature. At the deepest level, you are compelled to seek out the true Source of "who" you really are. The irony, though, is that when you seemingly arrive at the very core of your Being, there will be nobody there to greet you. Who you think you are can't possibly survive your own awakening. Nobody can survive it.
By CHUCK HILLIG

The Mouse and the Frog

A mouse and a frog meet every morning on the riverbank.

They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.

Each morning, the second they see each other,
they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,
empty of any fear or suspicious holding back.

To watch, and listen to those two is to understand how,
as it’s written, sometimes when two beings come together,
Christ becomes visible.

The mouse starts laughing out a story
he hasn’t thought of in five years,
and the telling might take five years!

There’s no blocking the speech flow
river-running-all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is.
Bitterness doesn’t have a chance with those two.

The God-messenger, Khidr, touches a roasted fish.
It leaps off the grill back into the water.

Friend sits by Friend, and the tablets appear.
They read the mysteries off each others foreheads.

But one day the mouse complains,

“There are times when I want conversation
and you’re out in the water, jumping around
where you can’t hear me.

We meet at this appointed time, but the text says,
Lovers pray constantly. Once a day, once a week,
five times an hour, is not enough.
Fish like we are need the ocean around us!”

Do camel bells say, “Let’s meet back here Thursday night?”

Ridiculous! They jingle together continuously,
talking while the camel walks.

Do you pay regular visits to yourself?
Don’t argue or answer rationally.

Let us die, and dying, reply.

--Rum

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that youve been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows youve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that its now or never
Everybody knows that its me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when youve done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old black joes still pickin cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the plague is coming
Everybody knows that its moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But theres gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that youre in trouble
Everybody knows what youve been through
From the bloody cross on top of calvary
To the beach of malibu
Everybody knows its coming apart
Take one last look at this sacred heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows

Leonard Cohen

2 from Machado

In our soul everything moves guided by a mysterious hand: ununderstandable, not speaking, we know nothing of our own souls. The deepest words of the wise teach us the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows, or the sound of the water when it is flowing.

=======

Corridors of the soul! The soul that is like a young woman! You clear light and the brief history and the joy of a new life... Oh turn and be born again, and walk the road, and find once more the lost path! And turn and feel in our own hand the warmth of the good hand of our mother...And walk through life in dreams out of love of the hand that leads us.

Antonio Machado
translated by Robert Bly

This is a beautiful thing!

No Water, No Moon

The nun Chiyono (Mugai Nyodai, 1223-1298) studied and meditated for years, most notably under the venerated Zen master Wu-hsueh Tsu-yuan (Bukko, 1226-1286, founder of Engakuji temple, on the ultimate question of existence, but was unable to reach the far shore. The more she longed for Enlightenment the further off it seemed. But one moonlit night she was carrying an old bucket filled with water from the well that eventually came to bear her name, and as she walked she noticed the full moon reflected in the pail of water. As she continued along the path the bamboo strip that held the pail staves broke. The pail began to come apart, the bottom broke through, and the water disappeared into the soil beneath her feet, the moon's reflection disappearing along with it. In that moment Chiyono realized that the moon she had been looking at was just a reflection of the real thing ... just as her whole life had been... she turned to look at the moon in all it's silent glory, and ...that was it. Chiyono herself disappeared. She was NOT ... and what IS, was. Afterwards she wrote the following: "This way and that way I tried to keep the pail of water together, hoping the weak bamboos would never break But suddenly the bottom fell out: no more water no more moon in the water and emptiness in my hand!"

from
NO WATER, NO MOON

True worship is effortless,

supreme meditation in the continuous,
unbroken awareness of the within, the
in dwelling presence. It requires no effort
because there is nothing in it to be
attained which one does not already possess.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Seeker, espying an Enlightened be-robed bearded
Master in full lotus across a huge gulf of water:
“Master! Master! Please help me.
Tell me. How can I get to the other side?
Master suddenly waking up, bellows out:
“You are on the other side!”
-Unknown

DON'T KNOW

When Emperor Wu asked the great monk Bodhidharma "What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?", he answered, "No holiness is clear like space." The dialogue continued with Emperor Wu asking "Who is facing me?" Bodhidarma answered with a resounding "DON'T KNOW." Bodhidharma's don't know has echoed down the ages from generation to generation, teaching us the truth of this very moment. Do you understand Bodhidharma's don't know? This don't know undercuts all our conceptual ideas about life. Everything is turned upside down, and we don't understand anything. This not understanding anything is fundamental to finding our true nature and helping all sentient beings. When we can let go of our habitual world view suddenly the truth of this very moment opens up before us. Our desires, opinions and ideas serve to blind us from seeing the truth of this moment. How often does anger prevent us from seeing a situation clearly? Doesn't desire stop us from honestly dealing with others? We live moment to moment trying to protect this thing we call I and to literally destroy anything that threatens it. Even when I thinks it is being compassionate this is usually just a strategy to get what it wants. Bodhidarma's don't know stops this process in its tracks. Don't know cuts off everything; ideas, opinions, conditions, knowledge and beliefs. Then, we can believe what we see in this moment. Then, our anger doesn't blind us to the needs of others. In this moment there is no I to protect and enhance. There is no I to horde or contract. Without making anything, helping all beings is possible. In this moment how to act and what to do is clear. So Bodhidarma has already mapped the way to liberation. We don't need to understand anything else. We don't need to become anything special or be any particular way. Our practices of bowing, chanting, sitting and kong-ans are designed to point us to this moment. Every day this practice helps us let go of our idea of self and perceive our true nature. Retreats help to intensify this practice and integrate don't know deeply into our life. This great effort is needed because our karma is so strong. For years and years we have built up this I. Great effort is needed to establish this don't know as the foundation of our lives.

Christianity:
For behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:21)

Buddhism:
You are all Buddhas. There is nothing you need to achieve.
Just open your eyes. (Siddhartha Gautama)

Zen:
If you cannot find the truth right where you are where
else do you expect to find it? (Dogen Zenji)

Taoism:
Great knowledge sees all in one. Small knowledge breaks
down into the many. (Chuang Tzu)

Science:
Bell's theorem demonstrates that the universe is fundamentally
interconnected, interdependent, and inseparable.' (Fritjof Capra)

Tibetan Buddhism:
There is not a single state that is not this vast state of presence.

Islam:
'In that glory is no 'I' or 'We' or 'Thou.' 'I,' 'We,'
'Thou,' and 'He' are all one thing.'(Hallaj)

Hinduism:
Tat Tvam Asi - Thou Art That.

Judaism:
I am That I am.

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand,
you will see your parents and all generations
of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this
moment. Each is present in your body. You are
the continuation of each of thesepeople.
To be born means that something which did
not exist comes into existence. But the day
we are born is not our beginning. It is a day
of continuation. But that should not make us
less happy when we celebrate our Happy
Continuation Day. Since we are never born,
how can we cease to be?
This is what the Heart Sutra reveals to us.
When we have tangible experience of
non-birth and non-death, we know ourselves
beyond duality. The meditation on no separate
self is one way to pass through the gate of
birth and death. Your hand proves that you
have never been born and you will never die.
The thread of life has never been interrup-
ted from time without beginning until now.
Previous generations, all the way back to
single cell beings, are present in your hand
at this moment. You can observe and exper-
ience this. Your hand is always available as
a subject for meditation.

--Thich Nhat Hanh, Present Moment, Wonderful
Moment

Love After Love

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other's welcome

And say, sit here. Eat
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you
All your life, whom you have ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life

Derek Walcott

If you hanker for
a zenith of felicity
on the bed of the Divine
begin by dusting off
the wings of wonder
on your local pillow
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane
Aim for airborne
with the eye of the heart
as your sky pilot
and soar to glory

~ James Broughton ~

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/