Words from the masters . . .

tibetan-child-monks-bubblesLike everything mental, the so-called law of causation contradicts itself. No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is. 

When the source and the ground of everything is the only cause of everything, to speak of causality as a universal law is wrong. The universe is not bound by its content, because its potentialities are infinite; besides it is a manifestation, or expression of a principle fundamentally and totally free.

Nisargadatta Mahraj

~

“This wakefulness that is primordially pure is the empty quality of the nature of our mind. In the moment when we recognize our nature, we do not see any ‘thing’ whatsoever. It is already utterly pure and perfect. That is exactly what we call primordial purity. Inseparable from that is a quality of knowing: we are cognizant, at the same time. This is the spontaneous presence. These two aspects are indivisible.”

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

~

Q: While in theory I am ready to pay any price, in actual life again and again I am being prompted to behave in ways which come in between me and reality. Desire carries me away.

Mooji: Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can fulfill them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the real, the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love. All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well.

Q: If I am free, why am I in a body?

M: You are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you. They happen to you. They are there because you find them interesting. Your very nature has the infinite capacity to enjoy. It is full of zest and affection. It sheds its radiance on all that comes within its focus of awareness and nothing is excluded. It does not know evil nor ugliness, it hopes, it trusts, it loves. You people do not know how much you miss by not knowing your own true Self. You are neither the body nor the mind, neither the fuel nor the fire. They appear and disappear according to their own laws.

Becoming accustomed to identifying strongly with form, and developing a deep sense of stability and security from the belief, ‘I have a body, this is me,’ we rarely question if this is belief or assumption. 

It becomes among the earliest of impressions  to embed itself in consciousness.  Therefore, in the beginning it may feel ungrounding to find that the Ultimate Self is not a thing, not an object.

Because all objects appear through thought, belief, time and space; they have a beginning and an end. But the Source is timeless and formless.

You are the timeless appearing as time, the formless appearing inside form, the unmoving at the core of all movements, the invisible within the visible.

The Self is closer than intimacy.  In fact, close is false, because close means some distance and the Self is distanceless.

In the beginning, we may feel a frustration because we seek Truth with the conditioned mind, and the mind only knows, compares or measure activity.

Mind interprets variety, change and objects. It cannot find or recognise the formless Self, though the Self alone is stable and real.

Give up trying to find it with the mind. Be open and receptive. It is being introduced to you.

Accept this grace.

Mooji

~

There is nothing in this universe that may be treated with disregard or contempt. He acts His Divine Play in infinite ways, through infinite forms, and in an infinite variety of settings.

Without appearing as the many, how can this Play be staged?

Do you not see how light and darkness, joy and sorrow, fire and water, are inextricably linked together in one unbroken chain? Remember that spiritual endeavour must be coupled with purity of heart.

To the extent that we harbour unkind or narrow thoughts, we increase the cause of evil in the world. What necessity is there to pay attention to what others have or have not? Far better be intent on your own improvement.

If you can develop inner beauty, and enshrine Him, the ever Beautiful, in the glorious temple of your heart, you will then be able to perceive beauty in everything.

Sri Ma Anandamayi

~

There is only God and to realize that is the only thing that has to be done.

There are many ways, as many ways as there are people, but the ways in themselves do not lead to God. That lies with Him alone and does not depend on our effort.

All you can do is to remove the curtain, the ‘durbuddhi’ (silly, ignorant), which creates the illusion of separateness from God, whereas actually He is always there. As long as you consider yourself the doer, you cannot go beyond karma.

It is only when you realize the ONE that action and non-action cease. Pain and happiness are in the mind, not in action; the same action can be painful to one and joyful to another, depending on identification.‘’

Anandamayi Ma

~

“You’re thrown periodically into darkness not because I ever stop shining, but because you’ve chosen to turn your face away in cycles, because you’ve wished to understand light through darkness.”

Words at Brihadeshwara temple, Thanjavur

~

Friend: Katie, my understanding of awakening has been that it’s the absence of a personal me. There’s an apparent me and then that’s gone. There’s just what is.

Katie: As you investigate, it’s not. It’s just one more story of the past. If it’s five seconds ago, it might as well be a million years ago. This moment cannot be spoken of. It’s already gone. There’s no such thing as a moment or now. Now is a concept.

Friend #2: That’s pretty exciting.

Katie: Yes! And I get to hear this word, not awareness but the other one— enlightenment — thrown around so much. But ‘awakening” I understand. Because that’s my story. I was asleep on a floor. I awoke, I was asleep, or not. But the way I like to tell it is—it’s a process all the way through. All the way through. It’s ever-changing. Ever-growing. Ever-expanding. I couldn’t even speak of it at first, it sounded like deranged, insane woman trying to speak the unspeakable. But it’s taken on as a way of… communication. And it continues to mature. And that’s fascinating from here!

Byron Katie

~

The Awareness Self that you are is not affected by activity of mind or body. Eyes open or eyes closed, it does not impact the Awareness. “Spiritual company does not heighten the Awareness in the same way that “worldly” company does not diminish it. Awareness is no feeling and so It is beyond good and bad feelings. Awareness is neither personal nor impersonal, neither extraordinary nor ordinary. Awareness has no location; it makes no difference if you are at Arunachala or anyplace else in the world. Awareness is not at the end of some striving or practice. It cannot be divided by time or space. Your intuitive sense of “I” is not separate from Awareness. You are one with Awareness when your “I” arises without history or psychological force…No religion belongs to you. The roles you play in life are filled spontaneously and naturally, but you are not invested in them anymore as you used to be. You are not someone’s mother. You are not someone’s father. You are not someone’s child or friend. Good and bad are mere words for you. No judgements are of any significance. You understand that everything that comes and goes is part of the package deal. It is nothing more than human expression. Every sensation, every mood, every play of mind, is only a wave on the surface of the ocean.

Mooji

~

It should be clearly understood that anyone who has realized the nature of emptiness experiences the spontaneous arising of bodhicitta. There is no realization of emptiness that doesn’t inherently contain bodhicitta. Just like fire is hot, the nature of emptiness is compassion.

Yangthang Rinpoche

~

Let the mind ask the question, let the heart give the answer.” And the mind and the heart merge as one. You come to know that they were always undivided.  There never WAS a mind. It was always the Heart.  Just a little dance here or there and you know the Heart is everything.   It is Everything.

Byron Katie

~

You need not chase the ‘I am’ to kill it. You cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality. We call it atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or moksha-sankalpa, the determination to be free from the false. Without love, and will inspired by love, nothing can be done.

Merely talking about Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating. There must be love in the relation between the person who says ‘I am’ and the observer of that ‘I am’. As long as the observer, the inner self, the ‘higher’ self, considers himself apart from the observed, the ‘lower’ self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection or manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of ‘I’ and ‘this’ goes and in the identity of the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself.

This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes conscious of himself as the seer, he is not merely interested in the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware. Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus.

Nisargadatta

~

In the early  stages of our investigation, when the veiling or obscuring power of thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions is still very persuasive, this open numinous spacious essence of our real mind is considered in the background of our experience, and it is therefore considered necessary to remove the thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions in order to have access to it.  But as we grow in our understanding it becomes clear that the essential numinous empty open mind is not just present behind the objects of experience, but that it is present within all experience.  And at this point in our understanding our fight with experience comes to an end.

The thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions which once seemed to veil the inherent peace and freedom of our mind are now felt to shine.  The image which once seemed to veil reality, now seems to shine with reality. The veiling power of experience is transformed into a revealing power. 

Shakti is no longer Shiva’s temptress, she is his lover.

Rupert Spira

~

Does the Guru hold you by the hand and whisper in the ear? You may imagine him to be what you are yourself. Because you think you are with a body, you think He also has a body to do something tangible for you. His work lies within, in the spiritual realm.

The Master is within. Meditation is meant to remove the ignorant idea that He is only outside. If He be a stranger whom you await, He is bound to disappear also. Where is the use for a transient being like that?

But as long as you think you are separate or that you are the body, so long is the Master ‘without’ also necessary, and He will appear as if with a body. When the wrong identification of oneself with the body ceases, the Master will be found as none other than the Self.

Ramana Maharshi

~

The awareness of no other, on which all duality is overlaid: that, I am!
The bliss of being, which underlies all the love that is expressed: that, I am!
The inexpressible, which allows all expression: that, I am!
The inconceivable, in which all conception exists: that, I am!
Nothing that is perceived, is me… but, all that is perceived: I am!

Dileepan Raghunathan

~

Can you just inquire and be happy now? I hear you are unhappy.

Can you inquire and be happy now? But then it moves into I want this to last forever’. Well, you just moved into a future and lost it. And that is specifically how you lost it. We’re either doing it or undoing it. So can you just be happy now? People want enlightenment, yes, so you don’t have to suffer, so just don’t suffer now! Investigate instead. This is it. It’s really hard to hear, and it’s that simple. Because only this exists.

Byron Katie

~

‘These nightly visits were a special time for me. Whenever I visited him Bhagavan would always talk to me with a lot of love and affection. Unfortunately, as I was soon to discover, this period of my life was drawing to a close.

A few days later, when I entered the hall, Bhagavan covered his head and face with a dhoti and refused to look at me. This was very unusual. He normally greeted me with a few friendly words whenever I entered the hall. He behaved in exactly the same way on the two nights that followed.

On the third day I asked him, ‘Why is Bhagavan covering his face like a Muslim woman every time I come into the hall? Does this mean that I should not come anymore?’

Bhagavan replied, rather cynically, ‘I am just behaving like Siva. Why are you talking to me?’

The first sentence of Bhagavan’s answer is a literal translation of a phrase which has the more general meaning, ‘I am sitting here, just minding my own business.’

I took this to be an indication that Bhagavan didn’t want me to come to see him anymore. I walked out of the hall and stood under a tree. After some time Bhagavan called me back into the hall. I noticed that there was no one else there at the time.

‘Are you an atheist who has no belief in God?’ asked Bhagavan.

I was too puzzled to make a reply.

‘If one has no faith in God,’ Bhagavan eventually continued, ‘one will commit a lot of sins and be miserable. But you, you are a mature devotee. When the mind has attained maturity, in that mature state, if one thinks that one is separate from God, one will fall into the same state as an atheist who has no belief in God.

‘You are a mature sadhaka [spiritual seeker]. It is not necessary for you to come here any more. Stay in Palakottu and do your meditation there. Try to efface the notion that you are different from God.’

I left the ashram and never went back again. Although my room is only about 200 yards from the ashram gate, I have not visited the ashram once since that fateful day in the 1940s.

About twenty days later, as Bhagavan was walking in Palakottu, he came up to me, smiled and said,

‘I have come for your darshan’. I was quite shocked to hear Bhagavan speak like this even though I knew he was joking.

When I asked him for an explanation he said, ‘You have obeyed my words. You are living simply and humbly as I have taught. Is this not great?’

Though Bhagavan had asked me not to come to the ashram any more, I still thought that I had the freedom to talk to him when he visited Palakottu. Bhagavan disabused me of this notion shortly afterwards when I went to see him while he was walking on the hill. 

He turned to me and said, ‘You are happier than I. What you had to give you have given. What I had to give I have given. Why are you still coming to see me?’

These were his last words to me. I obeyed his instructions and never approached him again. I still had Bhagavan’s darshan when he came on his daily walk to Palakottu but we never spoke to each other again. If we met accidentally he would walk past me, without acknowledging my presence.

Bhagavan had once told me: ‘Do not cling to the form of the Guru, for this will perish; do not cling to his feet for his attendants will stop you. The true Bhagavan resides in your Heart as your own Self. This is who I truly am.’

By severing the personal link between us, Bhagavan was trying to make me aware of him as he really is. Bhagavan had frequently told me that I should not attach a name and form to the Self or regard it in any way as a personal being.

Bhagavan gave me his grace and then severed the personal relationship between us. The bond of love and devotion was not separated; it was just restricted to the mind and the heart.

When Bhagavan became very sick at the end of the 1940s I was sorely tempted to visit him. I never succumbed because I knew that Bhagavan had instructed to stay away from his outer presence. Some people who were not aware of what Bhagavan had had told me (criticized this)….

‘Annamalai Swami served Bhagavan for a long time’, they said, ‘but he is not coming to see Bhagavan now that Bhagavan is seriously ill.’

Bhagavan remarked, ‘He is the one who is not causing any trouble.’ 

Then he added, ‘You people are here but your minds are elsewhere. He is elsewhere but his mind is here. ‘

In the years that followed I tried to remain in contact with the real Bhagavan, the Bhagavan who exists eternally in the heart.’

Annamalai Swami 

~

All doubt, despair, and fear become insignificant once the intention of life becomes love. 

Rumi

~

Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, “You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself,” I am in your business.

When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business. If I am mentally in your business or in God’s business, the effect is separation. I noticed this early in 1986. When I mentally went into my mother’s business, for example, with a thought like “My mother should understand me,” I immediately experienced a feeling of loneliness. And I realized that every time in my life that I had felt hurt or lonely, I had been in someone else’s business.

If you are living your life and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We’re both over there. Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn’t work.

To think that I know what’s best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what’s right for myself? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve your problems for you.

Byron Katie

~

Mind, like a crystal, is colored by its surroundings. You are bound to reflect the qualities and shortcomings of the good or bad friends whose company you keep. If you associate with the malevolent, the selfish, the rancorous, the intolerant, and the arrogant, their faults will affect you. You would do better to keep your distance.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

~

Spending your time with true spiritual friends will fill you with love for all beings and help you to see how negative attachment and hatred are. Being with such friends, and following their example, will naturally imbue you with their good qualities, just as all the birds flying around a golden mountain are bathed in its golden radiance.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

~

Let activities go on. They do not affect the pure Self.   The difficulty is that people think they are the doer.

This is a mistake. It is the Higher Power which does everything and people are only tools. If they accept that position they will be free from troubles, otherwise they court them.

The sculptured figure on the temple tower shows great strain, but really, the tower rests on the ground, and that supports the figure. The figure is a part of the tower, but is made to look as if it is bearing the weight of the tower. Is it not funny?

It is the same with the person who takes on himself the sense of doing.

Ramana

~

All happens by itself. You are asking the question and you are supplying the answer. And you know the answer when you ask the question. All is a play in consciousness. All divisions are illusory. You can know the false only. The true you must yourself be.

Nisargadatta

~

When one destroys even the most subtle concepts and notions of subject and object, one arrives at the way things truly.

But this state of emptiness is not empty like an empty pot or void space. It is filled with the clarity of awareness. By attaining sound realization of this concentration of clear wisdom, one is able to destroy an entire mountain of negative actions and obscurations.”

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

~

Hence I say know that you are really the infinite pure being, the Self. You are always that Self and nothing but that Self. Therefore, you can never be really ignorant of the Self. Your ignorance is merely an imaginary ignorance, like the ignorance of the ten fools about the lost tenth man. It is this ignorance that caused them grief.

Know then that true knowledge does not create a new being for you, it only removes your ignorant ignorance. Bliss is not added to your nature, it is merely revealed as your true natural state, eternal and imperishable. The only way to be rid of your grief is to know and be the Self. How can this be unattainable ?

Ramana

~

Sooner or later, you will have to part from even your dearest friends. But one friend will never leave you, even though you may never be aware of its existence. It is the Buddha-nature, pure awareness.

You begin to discover it by listening to the teachings of a spiritual master. The ties will deepen as you cultivate sustained mental calm and profound insight into reality.

In the end, you will discover that it has always been near you and will always be with you. This is the truest friendship you can ever cultivate.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

~

Silence reveals itself only to itself. Only when we enter as nothing and stay as nothing, will silence open its secret. Its secret is itself.

That’s why I say all the words, all the books, all the teachings, and all the teachers can only get you to the door, and perhaps entice you to enter. Once there, you start to feel the presence of silence very powerfully.

When this happens, something spontaneously arises that’s willing to enter it without being somebody. That is the sacred invitation. Inside you find that silence is the final and ultimate teacher and the final and ultimate teaching. It’s the only teacher that won’t speak to you.

Silence is the only teacher and teaching that keeps our humanness on its knees all the time. With any other teaching or teacher, we find we can get up. We can think, “Oh, I heard Adya said dah-dah-dah, and it sounds good,” and we find ourselves lifting up off the floor of surrender. We turn away from our most sacred and beautiful humility.

Silence is the ultimate and best teacher because in silence is the never-ending welcoming to do that which our human heart truly desires, which is to always be with our knees on the floor, always be in that sort of devotion to Truth. Silence is the only teaching and the only teacher that is there all the time. Every minute that you are awake, every minute that you are alive, every minute that you breathe, it’s right there.

Adyashanti 

~

The centre of consciousness is that which cannot be given name and form, for it is without quality and beyond consciousness.

You may say it is a point in consciousness, which is beyond consciousness. Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of paper, so is the supreme state in the very centre of consciousness, and yet beyond consciousness.

It is as if an opening in the mind through which the mind is flooded with light. The opening is not even the light. It is just an opening. void, absence.

From the mind’s point of view, it is but an opening for the light of awareness to enter the mental space. By itself the light can only be compared to a solid, dense, rocklike, homogeneous and changeless mass of pure awareness, free from the mental patterns of name and shape.

The supreme gives existence to the mind. The mind gives existence to the body.

Nisargadatta

~

The wonderful thing about knowing who you are is that you are always in a state of grace, a state of gratitude for the abundance of the apparent world. I overflow with the splendor, the generosity of it all. And I did not do anything but notice.

The litmus test for self-realization is a constant state of gratitude . This gratitude is not something you can look for and find. It comes from another direction and it takes you over completely. It’s so vast that it can’t be dimmed or overlaid.

Byron Katie

~

You need not hold on to the person who is searching. If you see that the one who is searching is the same as the one whose mind is wandering; if you see that both are false, you are already awakened. When you light a lamp, darkness ceases to exist. When you become aware of yourself as the Self, the darkness of ‘other than Self’ disappears.

Annamalai Swami

Calling even the attainments [of dharma, artha and kama], which suffer from the defect of appearing and disappearing in an illusory way, ‘everlasting’, is a polite attribution, a superimposition. The hard-to-attain liberation [the fourth purushartha, moksha], whose nature is the excellent and true Atma-jnana, which is the goal that should be attained by everyone, is alone the everlasting attainment.

Even dharma, and not just artha and kama, is exhausted through experiencing it. In complete contrast, the experience of Atma-jnana waxes more and more, without any boundary. Since liberation, whose form is Atma-jnana, is alone permanent, it is termed as ‘true’ [Atma-jnana].

Ramana

~

When we abandon our efforts to go somewhere else we find that our circumstances within this tangible world fit together with harmony.

We may come to see that even the painful experiences are clasped perfectly in place. The pain has its place on the board, revealing a greater depth of trust in this puzzle’s bigger picture.

Sruti

~

“When the eagle takes flight into the vast sky, it never thinks, ‘My wings won’t be able to carry me; I won’t be able to fly that far.’

Likewise, when dying, remember your guru and his instructions, and adhere to them with complete confidence.”

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

~

Life on the other side of inquiry is so simple and obvious that it can’t be imagined beforehand. Everything is seen to be perfect just the way it is. Hope and faith are not needed in this place. Earth turned out to be the heaven I was longing for. There is such abundance here. Now, always. There is a table, there is a floor. There is a rug on the floor. There is a window. There is a sky.  A sky!

I could go on and on celebrating the world I live in. It would take a lifetime to describe this moment, this now, which doesn’t even exist except as my story. And isn’t it fine?

Byron Katie

~

At first a yogi feels his mind
Is tumbling like a waterfall;
In mid-course, like the Ganges
It flows on slow and gentle;
In the end, it is a great
Vast ocean, where the Lights
Of Son and Mother merge in one.

Tilopa

~

The mind that has died in one’s Heart, the ocean of jnana-swarupa, is eternal silence [mauna]. The transcendental expanse, the true Heart, the rapturous sea of bliss supreme, is one’s true ‘I’ [aham], which is replete with love. 

The Heart alone, true bliss, which exists and shines without thinking any thought, is ‘Annamalai, my Self’. It is impossible for you to measure with your mind that which abides as the unbroken absolute fullness, which has nothing else existing apart from it.

Ramana

~

Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground. Be crumbled,
so wildflowers will come up where you are.
You’ve been stony for too many years.
Try something different.
Surrender.

Rumi

~

There is nothing to practise. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don’t disturb your mind with seeking.

There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot.

To expound and propogate concepts is simple, to drop all concepts is difficult and rare. A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet.

As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does Self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady Self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part.

Nisargadatta

~

Q: However deeply I look, I find only the mind. Your words ‘beyond the mind’ give me no clue.

M: While looking with the mind, you cannot go beyond it. To go beyond, you must look away from the mind and its contents.

Q: In what direction am I to look?

M: All directions are within the mind! I am not asking you to look in any particular direction. Just look away from all that happens in your mind and bring it to the feeling ‘I am’. The ‘I am’ is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction. Ultimately even the ‘I am’ will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling ‘I am’ merely helps in turning the mind away from everything else.

Q: Where does it all lead me?

M: When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognize it at once as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present.

Q: What difference does it make? 

M: The mind is no more. There is only love in action.

Nisargadatta

~

When we engage in the practice of discovering space, we should develop the feeling of opening ourselves out completely to the entire universe. We should open ourselves with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind. This is the powerful and ordinary practice of dropping the mask of self-protection.

Being present in the moment may initially trigger fear. But by welcoming the sensation of fear with complete openness, we cut through the barriers created by habitual emotional patterns.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

~

The infinite and inexpressible qualities of primordial wisdom “the true nirvana” are inherent in our mind. It is not necessary to create them, to fabricate something new. Spiritual realization only serves to reveal them through purification, which is the path.

Finally, if one considers them from an ultimate point of view, these qualities are themselves only emptiness.Thus samsara is emptiness, nirvana is emptiness – and so consequently, one is not “bad” nor the other “good.”

The person who has realized the nature of mind is freed from the impulsion to reject samsara and obtain nirvana. He is like a young child, who contemplates the world with an innocent simplicity, without concepts of beauty or ugliness, good or evil. He is no longer the prey of conflicting tendencies, the source of desires or aversions.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

~

Thoughts manifest themselves within emptiness and are reabsorbed into it like a face appears and disappears in a mirror; the face has never been in the mirror, and when it ceases to be reflected in it, it has not really ceased to exist. The mirror itself has never changed.

So, before departing on the spiritual path, we remain in the so-called “impure” state of samsara, which is, in appearance, governed by ignorance. When we commit ourselves to that path, we cross a state where ignorance and wisdom are mixed. At the end, at the moment of Enlightenment, only pure wisdom exists.

But all the way along this spiritual journey, although there is an appearance of transformation, the nature of the mind has never changed: it was not corrupted on entry onto the path, and it was not improved at the time of realization.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

~

There was a young man who experienced various supernormal states and had many kinds of visions. He would, for example, prostrate before the deity and remain in that posture for hours without raising his head, tears streaming down his cheeks.

He said he saw and heard Sri Krishna teaching Arjuna, as described in the Gita, and that he had many other visions and auditory experiences of the kind.

This body told him that if a seeker could not maintain firm control over his mind, he would be liable to see and hear many things, both illusory and genuine, all mixed up. He might even fall a victim to the influence of some ‘spirit” or power. Such occurrences, far from intensifying pure divine aspiration, would hinder rather than help.

Moreover, to see someone in a vision or to hear him address you, may well become a source of self-satisfaction or egotistic enjoyment. To lose control over oneself is not desirable. In the search after Truth, one must not allow oneself to be overpowered by anything, but must watch carefully whatever phenomena may supervene, keeping fully conscious, wide awake, in fact retaining complete mastery over oneself. Loss of consciousness is never right. 

Anandamayi Ma

~

There is One Thing –  It existed before the earth and skies came into being, and it will exist long after they all have disappeared. The heavens and earth could appear a thousand times and be destroyed ten thousand times, but this One Thing would not change at all.

This One Thing is incomprehensibly huge. The entire universe is just a spray of water in comparison to this ocean.

This One Thing is incomparably brighter than a trillion billion suns and moons, and it constantly lights up everything. This absolute Great Light is beyond light and dark, and yet it lights everything that exists.

This One Thing is beyond description, beyond discrimination, and it is absolute. But even the term “absolute” is entirely inadequate to describe it. To call it “One Thing” is to lie, because “One Thing” is only a name, and a terribly inadequate name.

All Buddhas of the universe could spend eternity describing it, but such an effort would be insignificant. If you were to become enlightened, then you yourself would know; but you would never be able to explain it to anyone.

This One Thing is called “Buddha” by those who have become enlightened. It is beyond the agony of life and death, and those who know it become free-flowing for the rest of eternity. But those who have not become enlightened to this One Thing continue to struggle and suffer in the sea of life and death, in the everlasting cycle of the four forms of birth and the six realms of sentient existence.

Even the tiniest form of life includes this One Thing. Both an enlightened Buddha and an unenlightened ant possess it. The only difference between them is that one knows it and the other doesn’t.

It is so brilliant and astounding that even the Buddha and Bodhidharma cannot look at it when they raise their eyes. They can open their mouths, but cannot describe it. They and all our other Zen patriarchs become merely blind and mute in the face of it.

All one can do is to become enlightened to it, and then become totally free-flowing in it.

Ven.Tong Songchol

~

Primordial awareness is in essence perfect and pervades everywhere. How could it be dependent upon what anyone does to practice or realize it? The movement of reality does not need us to give it a push. Do I need to say that it is free from delusion? The vast expanse of reality can never be darkened by the dust of presumptions. Who then could believe that it needs to cleaned of such dust to be what it is? It is never separate from where you are, so why scramble around in search of it?

Dogen Zenji

~

Once you understand non-self, then the burden of life is gone. You’ll be at peace with the world. When we see beyond self, we no longer cling to happiness and we can truly be happy. Learn to let go without struggle, simply let go, to be just as you are – no holding on, no attachment, free.

Ajahn Chah

~

“I could walk on the clouds!” says a child. But if he reached the clouds, he would find nowhere to place his foot.

Likewise, if one does not examine thoughts, they present a solid appearance; but if one examines them, there is nothing there. That is what is called being at the same time empty and apparent.

Emptiness of mind is not a nothingness, nor a state of torpor, for it possesses by its very nature a luminous faculty of knowledge which is called Awareness. These two aspects, emptiness and Awareness, cannot be separated. They are essentially one, like the surface of the mirror and the image which is reflected in it.

Dilgo Khyenste Rinpoche

~

Don’t lose yourself in thoughts and feelings; let them lose themselves in you.

Rupert

~

The wound is the place where Light enters you…

Rumi

~

Total openness, pure sensitivity, unconditional allowing: this is not something you, as a person, can do; it is what you, as pure Awareness, are.

Rupert

~

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere, they’re in each other all along. 

Rumi

~

Stay in the consciousness as a portal to the Absolute.

Nisargadatta

~

Forget your past experiences and achievements, stand naked, exposed to the winds and rains of life and you will have a chance.

Nisargadatta

~

Inner happiness is overwhelmingly real.  Like the sun in the sky, its expressions may be clouded, but it is never absent.

Nisargadatta

~

There is no second, or higher self to search for.  You are the highest Self, only give up the false ideas you have about yourself.

Nisargadatta

~

Only if one knows the truth of love, which is the real nature of Self, will the strong entangled knot of life be untied. 

Only if one attains the height of love will liberation be attained. 

Such is the heart of all religions. 

The experience of Self is only love, which is seeing only love, hearing only love, feeling only love, tasting only love and smelling only love, which is bliss.

Ramana

~

To invest one’s identity and security in something that appears, moves, changes and disappears is the cause of unhappiness.

Rupert

~

No personal, individual effort can possibly lead to enlightenment. 

On the contrary, what is necessary is to rest helpless in beingness, 

knowing that we are nothing.

Ramesh Balsekar

~

In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, I am nothing; in love, I am everything.

Rupert

~

Essence is emptiness.
Everything else, accidental.
Emptiness brings peace to loving.
Everything else, disease.
In this world of trickery
Emptiness is what your soul wants.

Rumi

~

All depends on you. It is by your consent that the world exists. Withdraw your belief in its reality and it will dissolve like a dream. Time can bring down mountains, much more you, who are the timeless source of time. For without memory and expectation there can be no time.

Nisargadatta

~

Life cannot be against you, for you are Life Itself. Life can only seem to go against the ego’s projections, which are rarely in harmony with the Truth.

Mooji

~

When inward tenderness finds the secret hurt,
pain itself will crack the rock and,
Ah! Let the Soul emerge.

Rumi

~

In realization there is nothing to hold on to and nothing to forget.   Everything is known, nothing is remembered.

Nisargadatta

~

Do not delude yourself by imagining such source to be some God outside you. One’s source is within yourself.  Give yourself up to it.

Ramana

~

You are what all happenings happen in.
What happens must happen so remain unaffected as peace.
Be peaceful and this peace will spread.
What rises from peace is Peace and what rises from confusion is confusion.
So be peace and give this to the universe, it is all you should do.
Even thinking “I am Peace” disturbs this peace, so just be quiet, be as you are.

Papaji

~

The Soul Has Been Given Its Own Ears To Hear Things
Mind Doesn’t Understand.

Rumi

~

Now be Silent.
Let the One who creates words speak.
He made the door,
He made the lock, and
He also made the key.

Rumi

~

The appearance of water in a mirage persists after the fact that it is a mirage has dawned on us.
So it is with the world. Though knowing it to be unreal, it continues to manifest – but we do not try to satisfy our thirst with the water of the mirage. As soon as one knows that it is a mirage, one gives it up as useless and does not run after it to get water.

Ramana

~

The world is illusory, Only Brahman is real, Brahman is the world.

Ramana

~

“I am not concerned with taking care of anything. The world has been in existence for millions of years. There have been thousands of avatars and great men, and important personalities. Has a single one of them been able to do anything to change the natural course of events in the world?”

Nisargadatta

~

So often nonduality can seem so heady, so conceptual, so intellectual.  All those concepts of nothingness and absence and presence!  Actually this is all about love. Love is the union of heart and mind. Nonduality isn’t being detached from the world, being the witness of everything and taking part in nothing. It’s not about sitting on your mountaintop and looking down at the world, pitying those poor mortals who aren’t awakened as you are, those poor souls who still have egos! No, love cannot stand back from the world, because it IS the world. The heart of presence radiates love.

Jeff Foster

~

Abandon the drama [of the world] and seek the Self within. Remaining within, I will protect you, [ensuring] that no harm befalls you. If you inquire and know me, the indweller, in that state there will be no reason for you to worry about the world. For the cruel disease of burning samsara to end, the correct regimen is to entrust all your burdens on me.

In order that your needless anxieties cease, make sure that all your burdens are placed on me through the brave act of depending totally on grace. If you completely surrender all your responsibilities to me, I will accept them as mine and manage them.

When bearing the entire burden remains my responsibility, why do you have any worries?

Long ago you offered your body, possessions and soul to me, making them mine, so why do you still regard these things as ‘I’ and ‘mine’ and associate yourself with them?

Seek my grace within the Heart. I will drive away your darkness and show you the light. This is my responsibility.

Ramana

~

Stay without ambition, without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual.

Nisargadatta

~

 Between the remembered and the actual there is a basic difference which can be observed from moment to moment. At no point of time is the actual the remembered. Between the two there is a difference in kind, not merely in intensity. The actual is unmistakably so. By no effort of will or imagination can you interchange the two. Now, what is it that gives this unique quality to the actual? A moment back, the remembered was actual, in a moment the actual will be the remembered. What makes the actual unique?

Nisargadatta

~

In peace and silence, the skin of the “I” dissolves and the inner and the outer become one.

Nisargadatta

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