Love

“Let us fall in love again
And scatter gold dust all over the world.
Let us become a new spring
And feel the breezes drift in the heaven’s scent.
Let us dress the earth in green.
And like the sap of a young tree,
Let the grace from within sustain us.
Let us carve gems out of our stony hearts
And let them light our path of Love.
The glance of love is crystal clear
And we are blessed by its light.” 

Rumi

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“The subject tonight is Love
And for tomorrow night as well.
As a matter of fact,
I know of no better topic
for us to discuss
Until we all die!"

Hafiz

 

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“In this choiceless, never ending flow of life
There is an infinite array of choices.
One alone brings happiness -
To love what is.” 

Dorothy Hunt

 

 

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“Love is the whole thing.
We are only pieces.” 

 

Rumi

 

 

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"There is silence everywhere,
you just have to listen for it.
I am surrounded by love,
I just have to stop looking for it.
Trust opens both,
If I let it." 

 

Joan Benner

 

 

 

P. Michael Lovas photograph

 

Lost in Translation

     Today is Martin Luther King Jr Day. Dr. King was murdered for the things he said & stood for. He was calling for a qualitatively different way of relating to ourselves, others, & life which a large proportion of Americans found & obviously still finds impossible to understand, disturbing & intolerable.

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Our hope for creative living lies in our ability to reestablish
the spiritual needs of our lives in personal character and social justice.
Without this spiritual and moral reawakening
we shall destroy ourselves
in the misuse of our own instruments."                     Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 

“Our goal is to create a beloved community and
this will require a qualitative change in our souls
as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”            Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

     Why on earth would roughly 40% of Americans - most of whom claim to be Christians - find such words intolerable? Maybe Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopal priest, provides perspective:

     “I became more and more intrigued and disturbed about why it was that Christianity, a religion that clearly has one of the most loving and inclusive gurus that’s ever walked the face of the planet, at its epicenter, should tend to develop itself in formats that were so rigid, exclusive & non-generous. And why didn’t people walk the talk? It became more and more of a heartbreak to me.
     So it was actually through reading Jacob Needleman’s “Lost Christianity” in 1980, that the first pieces began to come together. He said at one point, ‘telling people to wake up and be conscious, is like telling stones to pick themselves up, sprout wings and fly to the sea.’
     There’s a missing piece, and until you can get that missing piece online, you can’t do the teachings of Jesus. ‘If one aspires to live the beatitudes or any Gospel teaching it is necessary to establish the level of consciousness from which they emerge.’ is virtually a direct quote from Symeon the New Theologian in the 11th century, who was the first one to be on to the fact that the Jesus teachings emerged from a very high level of consciousness, and that until you could basically run that program, you are going to be constantly dumbing it down to a place where it’s basically an inversion of itself. So Needleman was onto the fact that something is broken in the way that we pay attention that keeps our consciousness scrambled, low, distracted, and not under our free command, and it's this that is constantly making hash out of the Gospel that Jesus was teaching."
     Cynthia Bourgeault - Oct 23, 2017 interview: https://batgap.com/cynthia-bourgeault/

      There are at least 2 levels of understanding anything: literal & metaphorical. Literal refers to an objective fact that can be observed & agreed on by any number of observers eg she was crying. A metaphor uses a comparison to make a point eg her tears were a river flowing down her cheeks. Our present industrialized consumer society is materialistic & literal, almost exclusively focused on the production & acquisition of material goods: digital devices, clothes, cars, houses, property, alcohol / drugs etc. "The one who dies with the most toys wins" is weirdly funny and the philosophy of a LOT of people. Discussing non-material matters - which requires metaphor - very often creates confusion, smouldering anger, up to & including violence & murder, among those who are simply not capable of understanding at this level.

"One of the great liabilities of history
is that all too many people fail to remain awake
through great periods of social change.
Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions.
But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake,
to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant
and to face the challenge of change."              Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Three Main Stages of Life

     “Children come into the world with that sense of celebration and delight in the awesomeness of life. Then we eat of that wonderful, terrible fruit depicted in the story of the Garden of Eden, and our lives become divided. In childhood we have innocent wholeness, which then is transformed into informed separateness. If one is lucky, a second transformation occurs later in life, a transformation into informed wholeness. A proverb puts it this way: in life our task is to go from unconscious perfection to conscious imperfection and then to conscious perfection.
      As we grow up, most of us retain an intuition that heavenly wholeness exists somewhere, however harsh our lives may be. The boundary between the two worlds seems to be particularly thin during adolescence, a condition that does not occur again until we reach the age of forty-five or fifty. Then there is a chance to experience the Golden World again. Unfortunately, adults often dismiss such experiences as ‘only a dream’ or ‘childish talk.’ We tell our children to grow up and face the realities of life. As a result, many people give up on ever finding wholeness.
     For me, the essence of life comes from these experiences of the Golden World. Such encounters with the divine have been called visionary, mystical, manifestations of cosmic consciousness, or, in secular language, peak experiences. Such experiences were the goal of life in the Middle Ages, when they were referred to as the Unitive Vision.
     I am fascinated by the word ecstatic, which in its original sense means to stand outside oneself. We work so hard to make a personal self, an ‘I’ or ego, with clarity and continuity. This is extremely valuable, but one pays a price for this ‘I’ – we become small, personal, and limited; we are a highly circumscribed entity in our ‘I-ness.’
     The ecstatic experience involves escaping from the ‘I-ness.’ This requires that we break the boundaries of our separateness to experience a greater realm, a realm that taxes our fines poets and artists to convey. It is the most valuable experience any person can have. The beauty of the Golden World is that one sees a vastness, something so much greater than oneself that one is left speechless with awe, admiration, delight, and rapture.
     After childhood, in our twenties and thirties, we are called upon to fulfill the cultural tasks of the society in which we live. In India this is called the householder stage, the time for building careers, raising families, paying bills, meeting all of our social obligations. But at midlife many people hunger again for some glimpse of the Golden World. By the time most of us become adults, we have lost all contact with this world. I only have to look carefully to see the spiritual hunger in the eyes of most Westerners. Rarely do you see radiance in the faces of middle-aged people. And so instead of reconnecting to the ecstatic realm as adults, we see the infamous midlife crisis in which one tries to fill the emptiness with all the extravagant things we have around us. This is the tragedy of many modern lives.
     Most of our neuroses come from hunger for the divine, a hunger that too often we try to fill in the wrong way. We drink alcohol, take drugs, or see momentary highs through accumulation of material possessions. All the manipulations of the outer world carry with them an unconscious hope of redeeming our lonely, isolated existence.
     The experience of paradise in the wholeness of youth is our birthright. It is a gift. However, seeing the Golden World again as an adult has to be earned. It requires inner work, a commitment not just to material success but to bringing some sense of meaning and purpose to one’s life. There is a paradox involved here. The Golden World cannot be acquired like a possession, and enlightenment cannot be turned into a project. We do not select an ecstatic experience; rather, it is delivered upon us as a state of grace. However, we can do the necessary inner work so that we are open to and prepared for such experiences when they arrive.”

      Robert A. Johnson, Jerry M. Ruhl. “Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir of Visions, Dreams, and Realizations.” HarperCollins, 1998. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Highest Service

      "Reminding others of the enormity of their own Great Nature is the highest service one can offer another." a Zen Master in Kyoto 

     “Hold attention as a resonant field, pay attention to the patterns. The price of admission is your narrative self, which is grounded in time.” Cynthia Bourgeault

     “To go beyond the ordinary mind is to go deeper than thought. In Buddhism ignorance is often defined as the belief that you are the conditioned mind.
     We have a mind, just as we have a body, but each is a manifestation of consciousness. What moves thoughts through the mind is precisely what moves the clouds across the sky. All are a part of the same continuum of creation unfolding. Mind and body float on the surface of the enormity of Being.
     To go beyond the mind is to ever so irrationally and ever so reasonably go beyond our conditioning to the place, the logos, where unconditional love arises spontaneously.  
     You have to be more than rational to accept and dwell in the mystery. You have to love the truth in all its wild and subtle and indescribable forms.
     We need to listen with the heart as we turn gently toward the mystery."
       Stephen Levine. “Turning Toward the Mystery. A Seeker’s Journey.” HarperSanFrancisco, 2002. 

Parenting & the Matrix

     “We are all born into a matrix of greed, hatred, and delusion. To what degree we train ourselves to become free from the power of this matrix is a matter of self-correction.” Mu Soeng 
       Mu Soeng, Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia, Andrew Olendzki. “Older and Wiser. Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness and Death.” Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, 2017.
 
     To remain entranced, asleep within this matrix, is to choose to suffer needlessly. We can all awaken from greed, hatred, & delusion and thereby experience peace & joy "that surpasses all understanding." 

     Shefali Tsabary PhD is a psychologist specializing in healthy parenting. She's well worth a listen: "The Path To Awakening Yourself" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P9SauG4f70

"Let Go of Words, Concepts & Internal Dialogue" - Some Reasons Why

     Most of us are unconsciously completely identified with our internal dialogue (self-talk) - our ideas, opinions, preferences, likes, dislikes, must have, must avoids, prejudices, etc. This is very common and problematic from the perspective of both Western psychology ('cognitive fusion') and the world's Wisdom traditions.

     Eckhart Tolle's take on this:
     “In romantic love, you want the other person. In true love, you want the other person’s good’ (you wish the other person well). And so other languages have different words for love to distinguish between the emotional wanting and something deeper: agape, metta, and so on. The Dalai Lama says ‘My religion is kindness.’ So words like agape, metta & kindness point to something, point to something within you – an essence from where you perceive & interact with the outside world in a very different way from the usual mentalized, conceptualized perception of reality around you, including other human beings. 
     The usual way to relate for people who have not awakened to that deeper level that I often call ‘essence,’ or your ‘essence identity,’ the usual way is to relate to other human beings through mental concepts or judgments. They become the veil that comes in between you and your perception of reality. And awakening is to become free of the compulsion to judge continuously, to interpret continuously, to label and name continuously, what’s around you and whoever you are with. 
     And when that compulsion to label everything mentally, the conceptualized reality, when that subsides, and that subsides when presence arises, then you sense something in whatever you perceive, that is a kind of recognition, whether it’s a human being, any other being - a tree or an animal, you recognize something in the other that before, when you were naming & labeling you couldn’t. 
     When we're naming & labeling, the other was always ‘the other,’ and nature was also conceptualized - especially human beings become conceptualized as ‘the other.’ In the egoic state, the ego actually emphasizes the otherness of others, by continuously criticizing, judging, having opinions, and mistaking every viewpoint for the truth. So there can be no love there, although the egoic entity sometimes talks about love. 
     Jesus said ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’, which means recognize your neighbor – the other, as yourself. And that recognition is sensing, when you look at another human being in the spaciousness of just this, sometimes called the formless dimension. What you’re looking at is form. What you’re looking at is the physical body, and also what you are perceiving is the mental form, the psychological form of that person. 
     You go beyond form, what you sense in the other, through your own presence, is the presence of the other – that which cannot be seen. It’s the essence of everything. 
     When your dog dies, all you’re left with is the fur, the bones and internal organs – the essence of that being is no longer there. But when you look at a live dog, you can sense the essence of beingness – the beingness in the other. Sometimes it’s easier with animals than with humans, because with humans you have a lot of mental identifications. So you sense the beingness, because you sense your own beingness. You could call that ‘perceiving from the heart’ – perceiving from beingness. And then you sense the beingness of the other. And that recognition is the recognition of oneness. And that’s love. Love is sensing that you share consciousness. What you love in the other, ultimately, is the consciousness. 
     It’s nice to touch the fur of a dog, or to touch another human being, but ultimately, what you love in the other is something that you cannot perceive, that is beyond the senses, you cannot mentalize. So to perceive through that space of love, is to be free of the compulsion to mentalize, to conceptualize. 
     And in practical terms it looks like this. I’m looking at Ram Das, with conceptualization, I have some image – oh, he is the famous guru, he wrote that book, or whatever concepts I have; without any concepts, there’s just suddenly a meeting, in stillness, because that’s really what it is, when you look at something without naming it, you look through the stillness. 
     And I invite you to look at the totality of your environment, not through any naming, but through the alert space of stillness."

      "A Dialogue with Ram Dass & Eckhart Tolle" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPmgTJGPzlg

Fear of Death - even among Healers

     "Consistent evidence suggests that physicians who treat terminal patients experience many difficulties. The contact with terminal patients reminds them that death is a universal human phenomenon and thereby evokes their own concerns about dying. Because they are unable to keep these patients alive, as is the mission of their profession, they tend to develop feelings of general hopelessness and personal failure. Moreover, it is emotionally wrenching to absorb the loss and separation implicit in the deaths of people one has cared for. These difficulties may lead to psychological exhaustion, impair their professional functioning, and affect the physician’s attitudes toward death in general and their own death in particular.
     Exposure to the death of significant others somehow leads one to a greater acceptance of death, both as a universal phenomenon and as a personal event. This possibility is supported by our finding that increased age was related to less fear of personal death. 
     Fear of death, and not acceptance, is behind the reduced reporting (of death anxiety by some physicians eg surgeons). While such 'repressors' admit to less death anxiety on self-report measures, they produced stronger physiological reactions (assessed by galvanic skin responses) to the threat of shock than 'sensitizers'. Repressors are not 'low anxiety' individuals, but, on the contrary, are highly vulnerable to anxiety-arousing stimuli."
       Hamama-Raz Y, Solomon Z, Ohry A. "Fear of Personal Death among Physicians." Omega 2000; 41(2): 139-149.


     "... death was one of the prominent aspects of dukkha motivating the Buddha-to-be to set out on his own quest for awakening. ... for the Buddha, the decision to 'renounce the world' and undertake the life of a wandering ascetic was, then, an attempt to resolve the existential problem of 'being toward death' ... his goal was to conquer death within life.
     Having reached the deathless through full awakening, one is no longer affected by the mortality of one's own body or that of others'."
       Analayo. "Mindfully Facing Disease & Death: Compassionate Advice from Early Buddhist Texts.” Wisdom, 2016.

 

Visitors by Robert Pope   http://robertpopefoundation.com/

"Pendulation" - the Core of Somatic Practices

     “As you release tension in (successive parts of your body during somatic meditation), you are softening the boundary between the darkness of your body and the brightness of your conscious mind, between the limitless unconscious and the bounded conscious mind; in so doing, in a most gentle and natural way, you are also softening the barrier against feelings and experiences you may have been avoiding, denying, or repressing. 
     So it is that you may find various feelings, images, or memories coming up – if so, just welcome them. If they become a little too much, then relax and let the practice go for a while or for today; there is no rush. Assimilate what you need to and then, when you feel ready, return to the practice. 
     In Ten Points practice it is quite rare to run into anything that feels overwhelming, but it can happen. Accessing our larger, as-yet-undiscovered feeling life through the body is the safest of all ways to do it, but you do have to go gently and follow the guidance of your body; it will let you know how much is enough and how much is too much. 
     In fact, much trauma therapy is based on this very principle (Peter Levine's "pendulation"), of helping folks access difficult feeling through the body but in a gentle, step-by-step, gradual manner, moving a little forward into sensation, stepping a little back as needed, giving their conscious awareness plenty of time to become familiar with, assimilate, and integrate unconscious material.”

       Reginald A. Ray. "The Awakening Body. Somatic Meditation for Discovering Our Deepest Life." Shambhala, 2016.

What was once rigidly frozen can thaw, soften & ...

Unfinished Business

     I suspect most of us spend most of our time & energy avoiding the most important issues in our lives. We live in a strange time where distractions are central, and "priorities" have become optional extras.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

     Like Robert Frost, we keep putting meaning & depth off, rationalizing that we're too busy and pretending we have time before having to deal with all that "heavy stuff." But guess what, life is a bubble, a dream, gone in a flash ...

     “We all have lessons to learn during this time called life; this is especially apparent when working with the dying. The dying learn a great deal at the end of life, usually when it is too late to apply.

     … the lessons of life … the final lessons … are the ultimate truths about our lives; they are the secrets of life itself.
 
     When we talk about learning our lessons, we’re talking about getting rid of unfinished business. Unfinished business isn’t about death. It’s about life. It addresses our most important issues, such as ‘Yes, I made a nice living but did I ever take time our to really live?’ Many people have existed, yet never really lived. And they expended tremendous amounts of energy keeping a lid on their unfinished business.
     Since unfinished business is the biggest problem in life, it’s also the primary issue we address as we face death. Most of us pass on with a great deal of unfinished business; many of us have at least some. There are so many lessons to learn in life, it’s impossible to master them all in one lifetime. But the more lessons we learn the more business we finish, and the more fully we live, really live life. And no matter when we die, we can say, ‘God, I have lived!’ ” 


       Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, David Kessler. “Life Lessons. Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living.” Scribner, NY, 2000.

Bessie savoring life

How About Now? Just This!

Questionner : That moment when I get out of bed, something shifts. While walking, I notice I’m not really walking, I’m kind of going somewhere. There’s a pushing in the solar plexus – rib cage.

Rupert Spira : Yes, a straining at the now. Like a horse just pulling. The exploration we did yesterday hearing a sound at a distance and slightly straining to go out towards it, and then taking our stand as awareness and allowing the object to come to us. You can do that while walking. You feel this straining at the now. Even when you’re walking in nature, you feel you’re always becoming. You’re always just outside the now, or just straining at the now to become the next moment.
     You can experiment with this while you’re walking. Just walk and feel this. Feel what it’s like to be totally, 100% in the now, with no sense of grasping for the next moment, of needing the next moment to replace the current one. Feel the quality of walking, how it changes. 
     Sometimes literally you may slow down, but even if there’s no slowing down, there’s a kind of relaxation of a very slight tension in the body. That tension is the separate self - this subtle rejection of the now – straining on the edge of the now, wanting it to become the next now. In other words we live in becoming rather than being. And this becoming can be very subtle. Just this straining at the edge of the now, wanting it to become the next moment.

Questionner : I also notice when I’m cleaning my teeth – I want to be somewhere else.

Rupert Spira : Awareness is never straining at the now. Awareness is just a wide open ‘yes’ to the now. Totally lazy. Not the slightest impulse to avoid the now. It’s only the ‘I-the-thought-&-feeling-made-self’ that is pushing at the now, wanting it to become the next moment. The separate self lives on the edge of the now – in that becoming, right on the edge of the now, wanting the next now to happen. That is the separate self. That’s all it’s made out of. It’s mad. And we spend our lives there – in that becoming, in a state of perpetual becoming. We never become what we want to become. It’s always just more becoming. 
     What we want to become is the being that is already there. Yes, it’s really mad. What we are straining towards is what is already present prior to the straining, in this just being present, which is what awareness is, being present, being present, open, aware.

Above transcribed from Rupert Spira's video below:

 

Suffering Well

     “Suffering confers neither privileges nor rights. It all depends on how you use it. If you use it to increase the anguish of yourself or others, you are degrading, even betraying it. And yet the day will come when we shall understand that suffering can also elevate human beings. God help us to bear our suffering well.”           Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate

        Jack Kornfield. “Awakening is Real. A Guide to the Deeper Dimensions of the Inner Journey.” Sounds True (Podcast #1 The Sacred Journey), 2012.



     “I’ve learned a lot from my teachers and all the study and meditation I have done, but the painful aspects of life, the really hard times, have been my main teachers.”      Pema Chodron

       “Connect with the Best of Yourself – An Evening with Pema Chodron and k.d. lang.” Shambhala Sun, September 2015

Photograph by P. Michael Lovas

Health, Sickness, and Beyond

            Koans are Zen riddles that you do not solve so much as step through, as through Alice’s looking glass, into Mad Hatterish conundrums designed to stun rational sense and in its place induce wordless insight. Perfect, simply perfect, for driving a professor of philosophy insane. The most famous koan is, What is the sound of one hand clapping? (Don’t try hitting one hand in the air. Do, and you’ll hear the sound of one hand clapping – the roshi’s against the side of hour head.) My koan concerned a monk who asked Joshu (a famous master in Tang-dynasty China), ‘Does a dog have Buddha-nature?’ Joshu’s answer seemed to imply no. The conundrum: since the Buddha said that even the grass has Buddha-nature, how can a dog not have it?

            Every day I came up with another ingenious answer; every day the roshi frowned and shook his head no; every day the bell would ring and I would be told to come back tomorrow. I turned the koan upside down; I pulled it inside out; I unpacked each word and repacked its meaning. Finally I thought, I’ve got it. The key word was have. A dog does not have Buddha-nature, not the way I have a shirt or an ice-cream cone. Rather Buddha-nature has, or is momentarily taking the shape of, that dog. But the roshi did not even hear out my ingenious solution. Halfway through my explanation he roared at me, ‘You have the philosopher’s disease!’ Then he softened a bit: ‘There’s nothing wrong with philosophy. I myself have a master’s degree in it from one of our better universities. Philosophy works only with reason, though, and there’s nothing wrong with reason, either. Your reasoning is fine, but your experience is limited. Enlarge your experience, and your philosophy will be different.’ Ding-a-ling-a-ling sounded the little bell – signal that the interview was over. I had my impossible assignment: to think of how to think the way I do not think.

            If a koan is mentally exhausting, try it on sleep deprivation. It all but pushed me over the edge. At the end of my stay at Myoshinji there was something like a final-exam period, when the monks meditated virtually around the clock. Since I was a novice, I was permitted the sybaritic luxury of three and a half hours’ sleep a night, which was grossly insufficient. That prolonged sleep deprivation was the hardest ordeal I’ve ever endured. After the first night I was simply sleepy. By the third night I was a zombie. From then on it got worse. The koans force the rational mind to the end of its tether, and then sleep deprivation kicks in. Since you are not sleeping and hence not dreaming, you in effect dream or lapse into quasi hallucinations while you are awake, a kind of a temporary psychosis. I was in that altered state during my last days at Myoshinji.

            And in that state I stormed into the roshi’s room. Self-pity had become boring; fury was the order of the day. What a way to treat human beings, I raged to myself. I wouldn’t just throw in the towel, I’d smack it across the roshi’s face. However, a certain decorum prevailed as I entered his audience room. I clasped palms together and bowed reverentially; as I approached him I touched my head to the tatami floor mat and flexed my outstretched fingers upward to symbolize lifting the dust off the Buddha’s feet. Then our eyes met in a mutual glare. For a few moments he said nothing, and then he growled, ‘How’s it going?’ It sounded like a taunt.

            ‘Terrible!’ I shouted.

            ‘You think you are going to get sick, don’t you?’ More taunting sarcasm, so I let him have it.

            ‘Yes, I think I’m going to get sick! Sick because of you!’ For several days my throat had begun to contract and I was having to labor to breathe.

            And then, curiously, his face relaxed. His smirking expression disappeared, and with total matter-of-factness he said, ‘What is sickness? What is health? Put aside both and go forward.’

            I despair of ever conveying the uncanny impact those twelve words had on me. I thought, He’s right. He is right. Sickness and health suddenly seemed beside the point of what it means to be human; compared to that more abiding reality, health and sickness were two sides of the same coin. Buddhism speaks of the ‘Great No’s,’ such as ‘no birth, no death’ and ‘no coming, no going.’ There is something within us that is not born and does not die and that comes from nowhere and goes no place. Somehow after the roshi’s few words I found myself unexpectedly in a state of total peace. I did my prescribed bow to the floor and exited the room, not only determined to complete the two remaining days but confident that I could do so. Since then I have often been sick, but off it goes to the side, and I go forward.

            Quoted from the superb book: Dana Sawyer “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper. Living the World’s Religions. The Authorized Biography of a 21st Century Spiritual Giant.” Fons Vitae, Louisville, KY, 2014.

Huxley's "Minimum Working Hypothesis", Personal & World Peace

     The core of perennialism can "be found in all mystical traditions … 
     Augustine himself had written: ‘That which is called the Christian Religion existed among the Ancients, and never did not exist …’ 
     In Vedanta for the Western World (1945), Huxley had outlined his core idea in terms of what he called ‘the minimum working hypothesis’:

          THAT there is a Godhead or Ground, which is the unmanifest principle of all manifestation.
          THAT the Ground is transcendent and immanent.
          THAT it is possible for human beings to love, know and, virtually, to become actually identified with the Ground.
          THAT to achieve this unitive knowledge, to realize this supreme identity, is the final end and purpose of human existence.

     … mystical experience is real and valuable, 
     … specific privileging of mysticism as the root of all religion, (is) supported by the testimonies of such adepts as Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, Rumi, St. Teresa of Avila, the Buddha, Kabir and Shankara … 

     If the world was ever to live in peace, it would have to learn to distinguish this deepest core of Truth from the various ways it is packaged in the traditional religions.”

       Dana Sawyer “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper. Living the World’s Religions. The Authorized Biography of a 21st Century Spiritual Giant.” Fons Vitae, Louisville, KY, 2014.

Public Gardens, Halifax, NS

On Being Conscious & Aware Enough to Choose

     "... I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about 'teaching you how to think' is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: 'Learning how to think' really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about 'the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.' This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no-bull-value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out."

       David Foster Wallace "This is Water"                  http://www.metastatic.org/text/This%20is%20Water.pdf

Buddhist Science of the Mind

     “When we speak of meditation, in the West people have quite exotic ideas of sitting under a mango tree, blissing out, having a good time for the rest of the day, like a relaxation thing. Or they often say when you meditate, you have to blank-out your mind from all thought. So there’s a real misunderstanding about what meditation means.
     Usually, when we start meditating, calming down the mind, we become aware of what’s going on in the mind, we say ‘Wow, there are so many thoughts! There are more than ever!’ Actually they’re not more than ever, you’re starting to be aware of what’s going on in your mind, from morning till evening – it’s full of thoughts. Because your mind is like a spoiled brat, constantly moving here and there, ruminating in the past, imagining the future, never in the present moment. So try to focus the mind. We say it’s like the butterfly. The butterfly stays on a flower, then it goes off for no reason, then it comes back. So it’s OK, you’ll be distracted, but bring back your mind. So meditation will help you become the master of your mind. 
     And becoming master of the mind is not the absence of freedom. Sometimes people think that oh, I’m going to control my mind, I’m sort of reducing my freedom. Take the example of the sailor at sea. What is freedom - to let the boat drift wherever the currents and the winds blow? That’s not freedom, that’s drifting. Real freedom is to take the helm, and navigate where you have chosen to go. That’s freedom. So if you’re in charge of your own mind, that’s freedom.”            

       Matthieu Ricard, from the National Geographic movie below "The Buddhist Science of the Mind", with Wade Davis

From Distraction to Opening to the Reality of Suffering

     “I think I’ve learned so many things from this experience (husband Bruce Kramer's ALS). I don’t think in 54 years I truly understood suffering, and once this happened to us, I was amazed at how I just didn’t pay attention to all the suffering going around. Before ALS, I had my perfect little life, I was really enjoying it – we were both enjoying it, very busy, and I just didn’t see that. And I would never want to go back to that blindness. And I hope that at some point in the future I’ll be able to give back in some small way the amazing love and devotion that we’ve been showered with throughout this experience. So I wouldn’t trade that in. … 
      I think maybe we see (suffering), but don’t feel it. I could see it and think ‘Oh, that’s so terrible,’ but I never felt it. 
      It’s terrifying to feel it. But once you’ve experienced it, it opens you up to so much other suffering, and to knowing that you do have the opportunity to help. … It’s really a different way to live.”          Ev Emerson

Bruce Kramer's EXCEPTIONAL interview by Krista Tippett      http://onbeing.org/program/feature/in-the-room-with-bruce-kramer/7424  

 

Pipla   www.dpreview.com

One Way of Facing Death

     "When Master Tozan was dying a monk said to him, 'Master, your four elements are out of harmony, but is there anyone who is never ill?'
     'There is,' said Tozan.
     'Does this one look at you?' asked the monk.
     'It is my function to look at him,' answered Tozan.
     'How about when you yourself look at him?' asked the monk.
     'At that moment I see no illness,' replied Tozan."

       Sushila Blackman ed. "Graceful Exits. How Great Beings Die. Death Stories of Tibetan, Hindu & Zen Masters." Weatherhill, NY, 1997.

       Awareness Shines: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2015/02/632-awareness-shines.html

Mark Littlejohn   www.dpreview.com

Happy New Year

     May I abandon every variety of time wasting, and open-heartedly ride the razor's edge of now.

Thriving at the Growing Edge

     "It is so easy to banish areas of pain from the warmth and love of my heart. Aversion to discomfort is a rejection of the pain. It also marginalizes a central part of the truth of what is happening. Opening to pain is a persistent practice, and at this edge I learn much. 
     I have found that it is vital to touch discomfort with an awareness that is forgiving, accepting, and loving.”

       Harrison G. “In the lap of the Buddha.” Shambhala, Boston, 1994.

emilyaharrington, National Geographic   http://photography.nationalgeographic.com