Month: June 2014

Not postponing life any more

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The finality of death is meant to challenge us to decision, the decision to be fully present here now, and so begin eternal life. For eternity rightly understood is not the perpetuation of time, on and on, but rather the overcoming of time by the now that does not pass away. But we are always looking for opportunities to postpone the decision. So if you say: “Oh, after this I will have another life and another life,” you might never live, but keep dragging along half dead because you never face death.

Don Juan says to Carlos Castaneda, “That is why you are so moody and not fully alive, because you forget you are to die; you live as if you were going to live forever.” What remembrance of death is meant to do, as I understand it, is to help us make that decision.

David Steindl-Rast, Learning to Die

 

Entering with gentleness

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healing stones

If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy an awareness of those pains, mental and physical,

from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay. 


Stephen Levine

 

Not this nor that

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Vallee de Valserine 2

Some teachers say that God is pure being.  
But he is as high above being as the highest angel is above a gnat.  
I would be speaking as incorrectly in calling God a being as if I called the sun pale or black.

God is neither this or that.

Meister Eckhart, 1260 – 1328, Dominican Theologian and Preacher,

With enlightenment there is no liking and disliking: Such dualities come from ignorant inference. They are like dreams or flowers in the air. Gain and loss, right and wrong: such thoughts must finally be abolished at once. If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence. To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from everything that holds you back. When all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached.…To come directly into harmony with this reality,  just simply say when any doubts arise, “There are not two.” In this “not two” nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth.

Seng T’san,  6th Century, Third Chinese Zen patriarch.

Once again, thanks to Ellen van Kalmthout for the beautiful photo

I don’t mind

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peach blossom river
J. Krishnamurti, the great Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher, spoke and travelled almost continually all over the world for more than fifty years attempting to convey through words…that which is beyond words. At one of his talks in the later part of his life, he surprised his audience by asking, “Do you want to know my secret?”

Everyone became very alert. Many people in the audience had been coming to listen to him for twenty or thirty years and still failed to grasp the essence of his teaching. Finally, after all these years, the master would give them the key to understanding.

“This is my secret,” he said.   “I don’t mind what happens.”

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth – Awakening to your Life’s Purpose’

Listening

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carrying load

My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.  

When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,  

when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,  

He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name.

“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—

otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,  

difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.“

Naomi Shihab Nye, The Words Under the Words

Using few words

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Nature uses few words:
when the gale blows, it will not last long;
when it rains hard, it lasts but a little while;
What causes these to happen? Heaven and Earth.

Why do we humans go on endlessly about little
when nature does much in a little time?
Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching, 23