The Buddha

Art : Meditating Maitreya, Japan

"The Buddha was not different from you. No different.
That is why he serves as a good model, because he was as you are now.
So don't worship the Buddha. Don't put him on a pedestal.
Don't even look up to him. Become him. "

Adyashanti

On Intent

Art : Elena Ray

"Impeccability begins with a single act that has to be deliberate, precise and sustained.
If that act is repeated long enough, one acquires a sense of unbending intent, which can be applied to anything else.
If that is accomplished the road is clear. One thing will lead to another until the warrior realizes his full potential.
 

 Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish.
Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.
It operates in spite of the warrior’s indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable.
Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity."

 

 

- Carlos Castaneda

THE SOUL LIVES CONTENTED

"Woman Through A Window"

Topkapi Palace
Istanbul. Turkey. January 6th 2016

The soul lives contented
by listening,
if it wants to change
into the beauty of
terrifying shapes,
it tries to speak.

That’s why
you will not sing,
afraid as you are
of who might join with you.

The voice hesitant,
and her hand trembling
in the dark for yours.

She touches your face
and says your name
in the same instant.

The one you refused to say,
over and over,
the one you refused to say.

The Soul Lives Contented: in
‘River Flow:
New and Selected Poems’
©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

Self

Image: Detail of the female Buddhist deity Simhavaktra Dakini, 1736-1795, China. Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. 

"The Self is not difficult.

It’s not even easy.

It is the only fact there is.

Everything else is fiction including

the one who is searching for the Self."

Mooji

Letting there be room for not knowing

"Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.
When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story.
It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that.
We don’t know anything.
We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know."

Pema Chödron

Embracing the groundlessness of our situation

Art : He Iaying

It’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught.

Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation.

Our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness.

When we resist change, it’s called suffering.

But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality,

that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness.

Another word for that is freedom — freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.

–  Pema Chödron, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change

Opening our hearts to others

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they
trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.
To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves,
we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.

–  Pema Chödron, "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times"

Dying

“Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. 

We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity — but if we dare to examine it, 

we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: 

our name, our "biography," our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards… 

It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. 

So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?


Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, 

an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. 

Isn't that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, 

to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?”

―  Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Self-consciousness

Art : Daria Petrilli

"Self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double,
and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous.
Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering."


Alan W. Watts

Live in joy

Art : Elena Ray

‘Live in joy,
In love,
Even among those who hate.
Live in joy,
In health,
Even among the afflicted.
Live in joy,
In peace,
Even among the troubled.
Look within.
Be still.
Free from fear and attachment.
Know the sweet joy of the way.'



from the Dhammapada

The Song of Creation from the Rigveda

The Song of Creation from the Rigveda (over 3,000 years old)

At first there was neither Being nor Non-being,

No kingdom of air, no sky beyond it.

Who straddled what, and where? Who gave shelter?

Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

There was no death then, nor immortality,

No sign of stirring, no curtain of day or night.

Only one thing, Breath, breathed, breathing without breath

Nothing else, nothing whatsoever.

Also, there was Darkness, darkness within darkness,

The darkness of undiscriminated chaos

Whatever existed then was void and formless,

Then came the stirring of warmth, giving shape…

Then rose Desire, primal Desire,

The primal seed, the germ of Spirit.

The searching Sages looked in their hearts, and knew:

Being was a manner of non-Being.

And a line cut Being from non-Being transversely:

What was above it, and what below it?

Only might makers, mighty forces,

Action flowing freely and a fund of energy

A Happy New Year to everybody!

When I heard the sound of the bell ringing,
there was no bell,
and there was no I -
there was only the ringing.

Once you stop clinging and let things be,
you’ll be free, even of birth and death.

You’ll transform everything…
And you’ll be at peace wherever you are.

Even as fire finds peace
in its resting place without fuel,
when thoughts become silence
the soul finds peace in its own source.

When the mind is silent,
then it can enter into a world
which is far beyond the mind:
the highest End.

The mind should be kept in the heart
as long as it has not reached the highest End.
This is wisdom, and this is liberation.

~ Upanishads