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Humans are born in truth, but we grow up believing in lies.
Devotion is love overflowing. Even when there is nobody, it is overflowing — to things, to tables, to chairs, to walls. It is just overflowing, it is not a question of to whom.
The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe.
The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars.
Fire and lightning and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not.
The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars.
Fire and lightning and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not.
You can’t think about presence, and the mind can’t understand it. Understanding presence is being present.
Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty. You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods at mean spirited roadhouses. Don’t wait any longer.
…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.
Again and again in my therapy groups I come across people who
aren’t there at all. Their daddy is there, their mummy is there, but
they’re not there. They never were there. Well, that’s absolutely, literally true. I could take you apart piece by piece and ask, “Now, this sentence, does it come from Daddy, Mummy, Grandma, Grandpa, whom”? Who’s living in you? It’s pretty horrifying when you come to know that. You think you are free, but there probably isn’t a gesture, a thought, an emotion, an attitude, a belief in you that isn’t coming from someone else. Isn’t that horrible? And you don’t know it. Talk about a mechanical life that was stamped into you. You feel pretty strongly about certain things, and you think it is you who are feeling strongly about them, but are you really? It’s going to take a lot of awareness for you to understand that perhaps this thing you call “I ” is simply a conglomeration of your past experiences, of your conditioning and programming.
aren’t there at all. Their daddy is there, their mummy is there, but
they’re not there. They never were there. Well, that’s absolutely, literally true. I could take you apart piece by piece and ask, “Now, this sentence, does it come from Daddy, Mummy, Grandma, Grandpa, whom”? Who’s living in you? It’s pretty horrifying when you come to know that. You think you are free, but there probably isn’t a gesture, a thought, an emotion, an attitude, a belief in you that isn’t coming from someone else. Isn’t that horrible? And you don’t know it. Talk about a mechanical life that was stamped into you. You feel pretty strongly about certain things, and you think it is you who are feeling strongly about them, but are you really? It’s going to take a lot of awareness for you to understand that perhaps this thing you call “I ” is simply a conglomeration of your past experiences, of your conditioning and programming.
When people are born they are gentle and soft.
At death they are hard and stiff.
When plants are alive they are soft and delicate.
When they die, they wither and dry up.
Therefore, the hard and stiff are followers of death.
The gentle and soft are the followers of life.
At death they are hard and stiff.
When plants are alive they are soft and delicate.
When they die, they wither and dry up.
Therefore, the hard and stiff are followers of death.
The gentle and soft are the followers of life.
Truth does not simply mean abstaining from lying. You have to take truth as your very essence, as the foundation of your life. You should be prepared to renounce everything for the sake of truth. The world conducts itself in the fear of this truth and is always subservient to truth.
He who gives himself up to the Self that is God is the most excellent devotee. Giving one’s self up to God means remaining constantly in the Self without giving room for the rise of any thoughts other than the thought of the Self. Whatever burdens are thrown on God, He bears them. Since the supreme power of God makes all things move, why should we, without submitting ourselves to it, constantly worry ourselves with thoughts as to what should be done and how, and what should not be done and how not? We know that the train carries all loads, so after getting on it why should we carry our small luggage on our head to our discomfort, instead of putting it down in the train and feeling at ease?
Remember that your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness. You are not separate from it, and there is no objective world out there. Every moment, your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit.
Those who are not willing to give up all they have to find Him, will not know Him. Whoever would know God must be able to forsake all else for Him.
The ordinary man lives in the brain unaware of himself in the Heart. The enlightened one lives in the Heart. When he moves about and deals with people and things, he knows that what he sees is not separate from the one Supreme Reality which he realized in the Heart as his own Self.
The purpose of fear is to lead you to question and understand why you have that fear in the first place. As you examine your fears, you will learn that all your fears are somehow false and based on misunderstandings. There is no truth or reality to your fears. Many fears remain buried within you, and you never really examine them, so you remain at their mercy.
How to realise the Heart? There is no one who even for a trice fails to experience the Self. He is the Self. The Self is the Heart. When asked who you are, you place your hand on the right side of the chest and say `I am', thereby you unknowingly point out the Self. The Self is thus known.
The eye through which I see God and the eye through which God sees me is the same eye.
To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.
When you have achieved a state of calmness and readiness, then you are ready to know, ready to understand in a deep way the dance between emptiness and appearance. Once you catch a glimpse of that dance, don’t hang on to it. Just let it go, like your first glimpse of essence love.
A bodhisattva is someone who has taken on the sole task of meeting the needs of others, no matter how difficult that might be. His self-centeredness has been reduced to the point where wisdom, love, and compassion arise naturally, benefiting any situation. Motivated only by concern for others, he would offer his own life without regrets if he saw it would be of help. So the mind of a bodhisattva is heroic, vast, and of limitless benefit.
In Zen we often compare the thoughts in our heads
to clouds in the vast openness of the sky. Clouds
come and go, often in fascinating ways. Sometimes
black clouds run wild in the sky and heavy storms
even tornados, appear. Other times the clouds rise
to lofty heights and shine in dazzling brightness.
Occasionally our thoughts are so wonderful that
they put all the buddhas and bodhisattvas to shame.
The sky embraces any kind of cloud and is never
carried away by the clouds. So put yourself in the
vast openness of the sky. Don’t be tossed away by
thoughts of enlightenment or delusion. To live our
lives fully from moment to moment, we must learn
to settle into the vast openness of the sky. This is Zazen.
to clouds in the vast openness of the sky. Clouds
come and go, often in fascinating ways. Sometimes
black clouds run wild in the sky and heavy storms
even tornados, appear. Other times the clouds rise
to lofty heights and shine in dazzling brightness.
Occasionally our thoughts are so wonderful that
they put all the buddhas and bodhisattvas to shame.
The sky embraces any kind of cloud and is never
carried away by the clouds. So put yourself in the
vast openness of the sky. Don’t be tossed away by
thoughts of enlightenment or delusion. To live our
lives fully from moment to moment, we must learn
to settle into the vast openness of the sky. This is Zazen.
The mind desires this,
And grieves for that.
It embraces one thing,
And spurns another.
Now it feels anger,
Now happiness.
In this way you are bound.
But when the mind desires nothing
And grieves for nothing,
When it is without joy or anger
And, grasping nothing,
Turns nothing away. . .
Then you are free.
When the mind is attracted
To anything it senses,
You are bound.
When there is no attraction,
You are free.
Where there is no I,
You are free.
Where there is I,
You are bound.
Consider this.
It is easy.
Embrace nothing,
Turn nothing away.
And grieves for that.
It embraces one thing,
And spurns another.
Now it feels anger,
Now happiness.
In this way you are bound.
But when the mind desires nothing
And grieves for nothing,
When it is without joy or anger
And, grasping nothing,
Turns nothing away. . .
Then you are free.
When the mind is attracted
To anything it senses,
You are bound.
When there is no attraction,
You are free.
Where there is no I,
You are free.
Where there is I,
You are bound.
Consider this.
It is easy.
Embrace nothing,
Turn nothing away.
You must always remember that silence is the greatest teacher.
Quietness, silence, total stillness, it is the greatest teacher.
Reality shines through where there is silence.
If you want to experience reality just keep quiet.
That is all you have to do.
Shut up.
Stop talking.
Stop thinking.
Stop imagining.
Leave it all alone.
Quietness, silence, total stillness, it is the greatest teacher.
Reality shines through where there is silence.
If you want to experience reality just keep quiet.
That is all you have to do.
Shut up.
Stop talking.
Stop thinking.
Stop imagining.
Leave it all alone.
No matter how many times I tell you this, you're still thinking, thinking, judging, judging, coming to conclusions, trying to work out your life.
You have to let go, totally, absolutely, completely.
You have to let go so completely, that you will feel no body, no mind, no pain, nothing.
That is the only time you will make progress.
Do not think about this.
The thoughts cannot help you.
There are no thoughts that can help you realize the self.
It is only a total completely letting go, giving up.
You have to let go, totally, absolutely, completely.
You have to let go so completely, that you will feel no body, no mind, no pain, nothing.
That is the only time you will make progress.
Do not think about this.
The thoughts cannot help you.
There are no thoughts that can help you realize the self.
It is only a total completely letting go, giving up.
The worst thing you can do is to put yourself down.
That's blasphemy because you're putting God down.
Think of yourself as a higher person, love yourself, worship yourself, bow to yourself.
You are greater than you think.
That's blasphemy because you're putting God down.
Think of yourself as a higher person, love yourself, worship yourself, bow to yourself.
You are greater than you think.
If you stop in this place of not knowing who you are, if you resist the temptation to conceptualize an identity, you’ll begin to touch a lived sense of an inner presence. You’ll open to what I call an “alive, pregnant nothingness.” This is not a “nothingness” that is blank or absent of any qualities, but rather one that is extraordinarily vital and rich with potential. Here we can enter a mysterious dimension that is not accessible through our normal routes of thinking and understanding; we can see clearly that what we are isn’t something we can think about. We can only think about what we’re not. What we are in reality is alive, awake, and conscious, existing as pure potential.
Just as the difference between the space in a pot and the space outside it disappears when the pot is demolished, so also does duality disappear when it is realized that the difference between the individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness does not in fact exist.
Beings
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