You Are IT

Bondage arises only when you fragment yourself. You become the part and leave the rest and then try to understand. This is a drop of the ocean thinking, “I am separate from the ocean.”

~ Papaji

There is the body and there is the Self. Between them is the mind in which the Self is reflected as ‘I am’.

Because of the imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, the lack of discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body, not the Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realize its identity with the Self.

When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire within.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Accept yourself completely, just as you are, just for a moment, now. This allows a window for healing, a portal for grace to enter and if nothing else a moment of respite from our afflictions of attachment and judgement.

~ Nithya Shanti

Continue practicing until you see yourself in the cruelest person on Earth, in the child starving, in the political prisoner. Practice until you recognize yourself in everyone in the supermarket, on the street corner, in a concentration camp, on a leaf, in a dewdrop. Meditate until you see yourself in a speck of dust in a distant galaxy. See and listen with the whole of your being.

If you are fully present, the rain of Dharma will water the deepest seeds in your consciousness, and tomorrow, while you are washing the dishes or looking at the blue sky, that seed will spring forth, and love and understanding will appear as a beautiful flower.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

When you aren’t run by reactions, you see things more clearly, and there is usually only one, possibly two courses of action that are actually viable. Freedom from the tyranny of reaction leads to a way of experiencing life that leaves you with little else to do but take the direction that life offers you in each moment.

~ Ken McLeod

No matter what situation we find ourselves in, we can always set our compass to our highest intentions in the present moment. Perhaps it is nothing more than being in a heated conversation with another person and stopping to take a breath and ask yourself, ‘What is my highest intention in this moment?’ If you can have enough awareness to take this small step, your heart will give you an answer that will take the conversation in a different, more positive direction.

~ Jack Kornfield

First, on the phenomenal plane, when one ceases to resist What-Is and comes more in harmony with It, one enters a state of clear seeing.

Having arrived at this point, all action becomes ‘action without action’, or non-forcing and there is a working in harmony with What-Is to accomplish what is required.

Second, as the clear seeing deepens, the understanding arises that there is no one doing anything and that there is only the One doing everything through the many and diverse objective phenomena which serve as Its instruments.

From this flows the third and last: the seemingly separate me is a misapprehension, created by the mind that divides everything into subject (me) and object (the world outside of this me).

This seeming two-ness, this feeling of being separate and apart is the root cause of unhappiness. The return to wholeness is nothing more than the end of this division.

– Wu Hsin, from the book “The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin” translated by Roy Melvyn.

As long as we grasp the Three (Zen) Marks of Existence that everything (including our concepts) are incomplete, imperfect, and impermanent, the only logical response to this is charity, forgiveness, and humility.

If we want to be able to communicate at all, we have to BEGIN with the assumption that we: do NOT have the complete knowledge, do NOT have a flawless understanding of the little we do know, and do NOT have a permanent grasp on things we know.

If this is applied to how we treat others, an authentic ethic can very quickly emerge.

~ Stewart Lundy

What if our religion was each other
If our practice was our life
If our prayer, our words
What if the temple was the Earth
If forests were our church
If holy water – the rivers, lakes and ocean
What if meditation was our relationships
If the teacher was Life
If the wisdom was self knowledge
If love was the centre of our being?

~ Ganga White

Should we retreat or move forward? Should we conserve or progress? Or, merely sit still and be?

The answer, of course is; all of the above.

The pulse of the farthest star we can see is the same as the beat of our heart. In and out. Back and forth. To and fro.

The world arises to us in waves. Sound waves, light waves, heat waves. Crests and troughs, seemingly opposites, joined together all in one big happening. There is no separation other than the delusion in our mind.

This in/out rhythm we witness, sense, experience, is central to everything. It defines us because it emulates our breathing.

This is why all the great sages taught their friends to focus on their breath when they meditate.

Indeed our well being depends on our ability to balance stillness with continual movement and change.

Life is one big happening, moving forward, but always within the still, eternal, present moment.

It’s never either/or, it’s always both.

~ DSK