Pointers & Counsel
POINTERS can act like a tack hammer,
tap-tap-tapping away
at the ignorance we shroud ourselves in
so that we can appear as separate beings
in the imaginary field of space and time.
One day, the hammer drops and magically,
and the ignorance falls away
like so much raw marble
covering up a perfect sculpture.
This Is-That-Is is always already It.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
“RECOGNIZE THAT UNLEARNING is the highest form of learning.”
~Rumi
“LOVE GIVES NAUGHT BUT ITSELF, and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love…”
~Khalil Gibran
“THE FINGER that points to the moon is not the moon.
~Lankavatara Sutra
“IF YOU COME ACROSS A SAGE who has realized his true nature, you will not be required to do anything in the way of spiritual disciplines. This is because through his teachings, he will reveal your true nature, as by placing a mirror before you.”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH RIGHT NOW–until you think about it?”
~Sailor Bob Adams
“WE CAN BE FREE, OR WE CAN BE RIGHT, but we can’t be both at the same time.
~Fred Davis
DO YOU THINK I KNOW what I’m doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it’s writing,
or the ball can guess where it’s going next.
~Rumi
“GIVE YOUR ATTENTION to the experience of seeing rather than to the object seen and you will find yourself everywhere.”
~Rupert Spira
“FOR WHOEVER SEEKS GOD IN SOME SPECIAL WAY, will gain the way and lose God who is hidden in the way. But whoever seeks God without any special way, finds Him as He really is… and He is life itself.”
~Meister Eckhart
“SUFFERING THE CONSEQUENCES OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS is the fire that ultimately burns up the false ego, but that’s the long, slow, painful way. The short cut is any spiritual teaching that cuts through the long way, the painful way of waking up.”
~Eckhart Tolle
“WHEREVER YOU ARE, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.”
~ Shunryu Suzuki
“WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFE if you accept the invitation to stillness
cannot be known … what can be known is you will have a larger capacity
to truly meet whatever appears.”
~Gangaji
“DOCTRINES, SCRIPTURES, SUTRAS, ESSAYS, are not to be regarded as systems to be followed. They merely contribute to understanding. They should be for us a source of stimulation, and nothing more… Adopted, rather than used as a stimulus, they area hindrance.”
~ Wei Wu Wei
“DON’T BE SO QUICK TO BELIEVE in the mind’s projections. You are not the mind. Don’t come under its spell. The mind is a great magician. It has hypnotized 7 billion human beings. In the realm of personhood, it is full of tricks and has the power to make a lot of mischief, confusion, distortion and delusion. But yours is a greater power. It is the power of the pure Self. The power to observe with detachment, to recognize that all phenomena are transient appearances and that oneself is the formless witness, timeless and ever-perfect.”
~Mooji
LIKE BEGGARS, we rummage through the trash of our own minds, looking for enlightenment.
~Dairin Ashley
THIS EASE, WHICH IS ALL OF EXISTENCE, isn’t a state You are in. It is what You are. This Ease that You forever are – is so easy, so effortlessly simple, It is not in the realm of words.”
~Peter Dziuban
“WHEN YOU BEGIN TO TOUCH YOUR HEART, or let your heart be touched, you begin to
discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”
~Pema Chodron
“EVEN THE MOST EXALTED STATES and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given with our hearts.”
~Jack Kornfield
“A MAN WHO IS GIVEN A STONE and assured that it is a priceless diamond will be mightily pleased until he realizes his mistake; in the same way, pleasures lose their tang and pains their barb when the self is known. Both are seen as they are–conditional responses, mere reactions, plain attractions and repulsions, based on memories or preconceptions. Usually pleasure and pain are experienced when expected. It is all a matter of acquired habits and convictions.
~Nisargadatta Maharaj,
“THE WEAK CAN NEVER FORGIVE. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
~Mahatma Gandhi
“WHATEVER WE NEED is what is given.
Whatever moment we are in is the moment we need.”
~Adyashanti
“TRUE FORGIVENESS IS NOT AN ACTION AFTER THE FACT, it is an attitude with which you enter each moment.”
~David Ridge
“WHEN YOU HOLD RESENTMENT TOWARD ANOTHER, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”
~Catherine Ponder
“IF YOU WANT TO GET RID OF YOUR ENEMY, the true way is to realize that your enemy is delusion.”
~Kegon Sutra
“THE EMERGENCE AND BLOSSOMING OF UNDERSTANDING, love and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive–it has nothing to do with time. It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure and pain. When self concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open. The mystery, the essence of all life is not separate from the silent openness of simple listening.”
~Toni Packer
“THROUGH FORGIVENESS, which essentially means recognizing the insubstantiality of the past and allowing the present moment to be as it is, the miracle of transformation happens not only within but also without.”
~Eckhart Tolle
“HOLD TO THE NOW, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.”
~James Joyce
“UNENCUMBERED BY OUR DEFINITIONS, we experience ourselves as conscious
intelligence, aware of itself as open, endless space…”
~Gangaji
“IF THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION WERE CLEANSED, everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks in his cavern.”
~William Blake
“QUANTUM PHYSICISTS just reaffirmed what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.” This idea really isn’t new at all. According to the Sufis, “You can’t pick a flower without troubling a star.” Consciousness, it seems, is entangled with ITself.”
~Chuck Hillig
“WHAT IS HAPPINESS? It’s a moment before you need more happiness.”
~Don Draper
“NO ONE IS BORN, AND NO ONE DIES. This dream-world of phenomena is merely something to be witnessed in passing.”
~Ramesh Balsekar
“PAY ATTENTION.
Be Astonished.
Tell About It.”
~Mary Oliver
“TO LOVE is to recognize yourself in another.”
~Eckhart Tolle
“REALITY CAN BE EXPERIENCED only by the eye of understanding, not just by a scholar. What the moon is like must be seen with one’s own eyes. How can others do it for you?”
~Adi Shankara
“SYNCHRONICITY is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see.”
~Carl Jung
“‘MINE’ IS A FABRIC over which “I” is created.”
~Nityananda
“JUST AS A MOTH NEVER TOUCHES THE FLAME it seeks but rather dies in it, so the apparently separate self never finds the peace or happiness for which it longs, but rather dissolves in it.”
~Rupert Spira
“TO DIVIDE AND PARTICULARIZE is in the mind’s very nature. There is no harm in dividing. But separation goes against fact. Things and people are different, but they are not separate. Nature is one, reality is one. There are opposites, but no opposition.”
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“WE LOOSELY TALK OF SELF-REALIZATION, for lack of a better term. But how can one realize or make real that which alone is real? All we need to do is to give up our habit of regarding as real that which is unreal. All religious practices are meant solely to help us do this. When we stop regarding the unreal as real, then reality alone will remain, and we will be that.”
~Ramana Maharshi
“NOT THINKING ABOUT ANYTHING IS ZEN. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”
~Bodhidharma
“THE ONLY ZEN YOU FIND on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.”
~Robert M. Pirsig
“IN THE BEGINNER’S MIND there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few”
~Shunryu Suzuki
“NOTICE THAT YOU ARE ALREADY AWAKE. Right now, this moment, the only reason you can read these words is that you’re awake. You’re already awake. You’re as awake as it gets. You’re already fully awake. Given that you’re already fully awake, how then could you wake up further? Since you’re already awake, does that idea even make sense? You can’t wake up more from where you are right now. And certainly you can’t wake up again.“
~Fred Davis
“ONCE YOU REALIZE THAT THE ROAD IS THE GOAL and that you are always on the road, notto reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task andbecomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.”
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“IN THE SAME WAY, what appears as a world of apparently external phenomena is the energy of the individual him or herself, as perceived by his or her senses. In truth, there is nothing external to, or separate from, the individual, and all that manifests in the individual’s field of experience is a continuum, fundamentally free from duality and multiplicity: this is precisely the `Great Perfection’ that is discovered in Dzogchen.
~Chogyal Namkhai Norbu
“THOSE WHO SEE WORLDLY LIFE AS AN OBSTACLE TO DHARMA see no Dharma in everyday actions. They have not yet discovered that there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma.”
~ Dogen Zenji
“SHAPE CLAY INTO A VESSEL;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore benefit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.”
~Lao Tzu
“I DISCOVERED THAT IT IS NECESSARY, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color–something which exists before all forms and colors appear… No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea.”
~Shunryu Suzuki
“WE RARELY HEAR THE INWARD MUSIC, but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless.”
~ Rumi
“WITHDRAW INTO YOURSELF AND LOOK. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine… Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sunlike, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.”
~Plotinus
“UNLESS WE REACH THE LEVEL OF BEING, we’ll not be able to experience what is really life. By not entering into the space of being, we miss the ecstasy of being.“
~Nityananda
“YOU CAN’T STOP THE WAVES, but you can learn how to surf.”
~Muktananda
“YOU SEE PERSONS AND THINGS not as they are but as you are.”
~Anthony de Mello
THE HARD AND MIGHTY lie beneath the ground While the tender and weak dance on the breeze above.”
~Lao Tzu
“TO BE FULLY ALIVE, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.”
~Pema Chodron
“THE MOMENT I HAVE REALIZED GOD sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him–that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
~Swami Vivekananda
“ONLY TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE CAN ATTAIN SELF-KNOWLEDGE: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing.”
~Sri Ramakrishna
“NOTICE THAT CLARITY AND CLOUDINESS ARE OPPOSITES. They are 180s. When we have opposites, where are we? Duality! So neither clarity nor cloudiness is really the truth. They are aspects of truth. They are, at core, appearances. Truth is always and only the full 360. Truth contains appearances, but it is not composed of appearances.”
~Fred Davis
“HAPPINESS IS OUR NATURAL STATE. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don’t have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don’t you experience it? Because you’ve got to drop something. You’ve got to drop illusions. You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!”
~Anthony de Mello
“THE GAME IS NOT ABOUT BECOMING SOMEBODY, it’s about becoming nobody.
~Ram Dass
“DO NOT SEEK LIBERATION unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.”
~Sri Ramakrishna
“NOTHING STANDS IN THE WAY of your liberation, and it can happen here and now but for your being more interested in other things. And you cannot fight with your interests. You must go with them, see through them and watch them reveal themselves as mere errors of judgments and appreciation.”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
“THE TEACHER does not feel the need to enlighten the student. He sees the student as already being this light about which he speaks. The teacher just sings his song like the bird on the branch–just for the sake of singing.”
~Francis Lucille
“IF YOU WANT to tell people the truth, make them laugh; otherwise they will kill you.”
~Oscar Wilde
“LIBERATION IS ALL ABOUT RIGHT NOW–THIS MOMENT. Are you consciously awake to this current arising? Yesterday’s seeing is yesterday’s dust. Other than being a gnawing reminder, it has no present value whatsoever. Freedom is now or never, here or nowhere.“
~Fred Davis
“A WAVE doesn’t have to stop being a wave in order to be water.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh
“WHATEVER PURIFIES YOU is the correct road, I will try not to define it.
~ Rumi
“THE VOID IS FUNDAMENTALLY without spacial dimensions, passions, activities, delusions or right understanding. You must clearly understand that in it there are no things, no men, and no Buddhas; for this Void contains not the smallest hairsbreadth of anything that can be viewed spacially; it depends on nothing and is attached to nothing. It is all-pervading, spotless beauty; it is the self existent and uncreated Absolute. Then how can it even be a matter for discussion that the real Buddha has no mouth and preaches no dharma, or that real hearing requires no ears, for who could hear it? Ah, it is a jewel beyond all price!”
~Huang Po
“MAN SUFFERSonly because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
~Alan Watts
“NINE OUT OF TEN people who have had a real life-transforming spiritual awakening are still in the process of coming into full alignment with the awakened view.”
~Adyashanti
“DO NOT ASK ME where I am going, as I travel in this limitless world, where every step I take is my home.”
~Dogen Zenji
“BELIEVE ME, there is no goal, nor a way to reach it. You are the way and the goal; there is nothing else to reach except yourself. All you need is to understand and the understanding is the flowering of the mind.”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
“ONE OF THE MOST thrilling things I do in a sort of ’emptiness’ way is to look at every aspect of experience, language, entertainment, symbolism and discourse I can think of. It could be spiritual teachings or anything else — like wristwatch dials, street signs, architecture, advertising, fiction, film, music, culture, gender, movement, aging, health, disease, birth and death. Taking cues from the classic emptiness teachings and looking straight at things, I find it thrilling to uncover the traces of separation that seem to be features of these things. Not only separation, but also “rightness,” “proper”-ness and hierarchy. These traces seem to be there, but can never be found. They’re constructed in so many surprising ways, like piles of matchsticks, or those 3-D chalk drawings on the sidewalk. This joyful non-finding inquiry brings an undercurrent, a feeling tone of open-hearted social liberation that mixes and matches with the liberation from suffering. I find it sweet, loving and exciting.”
~Greg Goode
“EVEN IN THE RUNNING away from hurting, there is hurting. In opening unprotected to the experience that is enslaving you with its torment, there is the willingness to be free. Are you willing? Or do you just want to wait until the world finally gets it and does it your way?”
~Gangaji
“THERE IS NO NEED to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself freedom.”
~Chogyam Trungpa
“NINETY-NINE PERCENT of what people are doing to wake up is actually reinforcing the dream state. It’s shocking! You know that all the things we tell each other to calm ourselves into a totally deluded oblivion like, “All roads lead to God.” No, they don’t. Or “all paths lead to the top of the mountain.” All paths lead nowhere near the top of the mountain. The good ones, even the half-way decent ones, are only circling the bottom of the mountain. All the rest are usually going in the opposite direction as quickly as possible. Actually, all paths lead away from the truth. How’s that? There is no such thing as a path to the truth. The Truth is already here. Where are you going?”
~Adyashanti
“IT IS BEST [when approaching a problem]to take your stand, at least in idea, in the deep sleep state and see if the problem arises there. No, the problem does not appear there. Therefore all problems are the products of body, sense and mind, and disappear with them. They do not concern you at all.”
~Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon
“IF YOU SEE the illusion you are enlightened, but if you think that you are enlightened you are in the illusion!”
~ Papaji
“ONE BELIEVES THAT THERE IS BONDAGE, and therefore seeks liberation. But the fact is that there is no bondage but only liberation… Only remove ignorance. That is all there is to be done.”
~Ramana Maharshi
“TO BE AWAKE is to be unconditionally open to all that is. It is to be completely without prior opinion or assumption about anything. To stay awake is to surrender, totally, to unedited and unrestricted awareness, to abandon the pretense of both past and future.”
~Scott Morrison
“DON’T ASK ME why Grace does what It does. Certainly Grace wouldn’t know.”
~Jerry Katz
“KNOWLEDGE LEADS TO UNITY, but ignorance to diversity. So long as God seems to be outside and far away, there is ignorance. When God is realized within, that is true knowledge.”
~Sri Ramakrishna
“IN THE END, it’s all very simple. Either we give ourselves to Silence, or we don’t.”
~Adyashanti
“ONLY THE HAND THAT ERASES can write the true thing.”
~Meister Eckhart
“FLOW WITH WHATEVER MAY HAPPEN and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.”
~Chuang Tzu
“IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO FIND THE TRUTH right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
~Dogen Zenji
“THE PROBLEM WITH ACCEPTANCE arises when we find out that we have to surrender to this This.”
~Fred Davis
“THERE IS NO ATTAINMENT and no cultivation of original nature. You are Consciousness, not a farmer! Why work for that which you already are? Do not mentate, do not stir a thought. Trying to get out of superimposed bondage, which is the notion that you are separate from Existence, you will land in superimposed freedom.”
~Papaji
“WHAT IS WRONG in letting go the illusion of personal control and personal responsibility? Both are in the mind only. Of course, as long as you imagine yourself to be in control, you should also imagine yourself to be responsible. One implies the other.”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
“THERE ARE BASICALLY two movements of consciousness: love and fear. Love is allowing what is, and fear is resisting it.”
~Nirmala
“LEARN TO LIVE without self concern.For this you must know your own true being as indomitable, fearless, ever victorious. Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fear, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone.”
~Sailor Bob Adamson
THE ANCIENT MASTERS WERE SUBTLE, mysterious, profound, responsive.
The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable.
Because it is unfathomable,
All we can do is describe their appearance.
Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream.
Alert, like men aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests.
Yielding, like ice about to melt.
Simple, like the uncarved blocks of wood.
Hollow, like caves.
Opaque, like muddy pools.
Who can wait quietly while the mud settles?
Who can remain still until the moment of action?
Observers of the Tao do not seek fulfillment.
Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by desire for change.
~Lao-tzu
“LOVE IS WHAT YOU ARE, eternally. It is your timeless being. Be aware of this love. Rest in this love. Act from this love–or let it act through you. Depend on this love. It will not let you down.”
~Richard Lang
“EVERY TEACHER, book, writer, practitioner, sage, guru or peanut vendor, by whatever name, title or label they go by, is an aspect of the Awareness (Identity) “we” are. We take the book from the shelf most likely to render a specificservice at a given moment. Exactly so, we have appeared to go to the philosophy, teacher, church, friend, stranger or peanut vendor that has unfolded as sufficient for the moment–but that philosophy, teacher, church, friend or stranger is WITHIN the awareness WE are. So is the peanut vendor. We are forever looking at our Self.”
~William Samuel
“THERE ARE TWO possible experiences of every moment: the moment as experienced by Essence and the moment as experienced by the ego. The ego’s experience of the moment is struggle, conflict, effort, dissatisfaction, restlessness, and unease. Essence’s experience of it is freedom, happiness, peace, acceptance, contentment. and joy. Either experience is possible in any moment, depending on whether we are identified with the ego, or with Essence.”
~Gina Lake
“IN REALITY ONLY THE ULTIMATE IS. The rest is a matter of name and form. And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of light and light of consciousness, you will be at peace–immersed in the deep silence of reality.”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
“AT ANY MOMENT we are either giving humanity the gift of our clarity or our confusion. And that clarity or confusion is affecting the humanity around us, the world around us. It is manifesting. It is taking form.”
~Adyashanti
“ADVAITA IS an extremely simple philosophy.It’s complete essence is summed up in its Sanskrit name:a – (not), dvaita – (two). In a very real sense, there is no need for a book to explain it. It can be summed up in a single sentence: There are not two things.”
~Dennis Waite
“IT’S AS IF the ‘personal me’ is a state of baggage and heaviness…drunkenness, grogginess, depression, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, etc…and when that begins to dissolve with Awakeness, the Awakeness (absence of baggage) feels like a ‘high’ in contrast…but it only seems ‘high’ due to the seeming prior baggage (of which Awakeness really had none!). The freedom is actually ‘normal’ or ‘the natural state’, as Sailor Bob and others say…”
~Peter Dziuban
“WE DON’T NEED TO ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING MORE in order to wake up; we don’t need further doing.What’s necessary is that we see through what we’ve already done.With the aid and support of a world that is chock full of well meaning, but deluded accomplices, we have piled layer after layer of beliefs, opinions and positions–what I refer to as BOPs–on top of the beautiful, living, pulsing ground of reality.This leaves us with a set of presumptions that are paralyzing to authentic spiritual growth.It’s like we have gathered all of our stuff from scores of lifetimes, and dumped it onto the Garden of Eden.We have flattened it.Like Joni Mitchell said, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”In this case, however, the they is us.It’s now time for us to undo that paving.How do we know?Because that’s what’s happening.”
~Fred Davis
“A SUDDEN AWAKENING doesn’t mean a sudden understanding.”
~Eckhart Tolle
“THOUGHT LIKES TO CONCLUDE that its particular experience is “it”. It looks for agreement in the world with those who mirror back its conclusion, and disagreement with those who don’t. The dualistic mind knows only for or against. Its subtle goal is to reinforce a “me” that is right in relation to the others that are wrong. This is how non-duality turns into fundamentalism.”
~Scott Kiloby
“IT MAY BE TRUE that there is nothing to do, but, if you believe yourself to be a human being on a journey through time and space, there is, in fact, something to do. It is to examine carefully whether this is true.”
~Rupert Spira
“MY TEACHER told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, and his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am — unbound.”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
“HAPPINESS IS YOUR NATURE. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.”
~Ramana Maharshi
“THE IGNORANT REJECT what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see.”
~Huang Po
“STOP AVOIDING THINGS. If there is anything that is unresolved in yourself, turn toward it. Face it. Look at it. Stop avoiding it. Stop moving the other way. Stop using a moment of awakening as a means to not deal with something that may be less than awake within you. The fact is, we can have a very deep seeing of the true nature of things while remaining, on the human level, very conflicted and deluded in certain area of our lives. We need the sincerity to stop shying away from that, to turn, look, and face any place where we perceive something less than awakenedness, something less than unity. When we perceive divisiveness in ourselves, we must face it.”
~Adyashanti
“LIKE THE EMPTY SKY, It has no boundaries, yet It is right in this place, ever profound and clear.”
~Yung-chia Hsuan-cheh
“THERE IS ONLY WHAT IS. Co-arising with the imagined sense of a human-exclusive identity comes an imagined sense ofwhat isn’t. This what isn’t doesn’t actually exist, but it feels like it does. Common names for what isn’t would be my name, Fred, and your name. I experience Fredness, and since I am Nonduality itself, I am Fredness, but I don’t believe I am exclusively Fredness. I am not confused about that.
When I’m not confused about where I’m looking from, I’m not confused about what I’m looking at. When I’m not confused about where I’m looking from, I cannot find anything wrong with What Is, with this current come-and-go arising. I cannot find anything missing. I cannot find anything out of order. I cannot find anything that is appearing either early or late. I cannot find an other. I cannot find alternative universes or dimensions where what I think about What Is actually matters. I’m hung with This, just as it is.
In the absence of imaginary comparisons, i.e., my beliefs, opinions, and positions–in the absence of my being BOPped, I notice that THIS This that I’m hung with is just fine. I don’t even know what it is, but I notice that it’s fine. It is as it is. Period. Common words that arise within what isn’t are: should, could, would; I, you, us, them; then, now; wish, dream, think. Think of some more of your own.
Look closely at your language. Are describing What Is, or what isn’t? Are you telling the truth about what’s going on, or are you first lying to yourself, pretending that there’s a what isn’t you can live in, and then suffering over your own lies?”
~Fred Davis
“AM I THE BODY, senses or mind? No. If I claim to be anything, that must be with me wherever I go. Doing, perceiving, thinking and feeling do not go with me wherever I go. ‘Knowing’ alone is always with me. So I am knowingness of Consciousness alone. I am that always, and I am free. I can only be that which remains over when the object or active part is separated from the perceiver, perception or percept.”
~Atmananda Krishna Menon
“YOU DIDN’T COME into this world, you came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”
~Alan Watts
THE WORLD IS MADE OF RINGS. The hooks are all yours. Make straight your hooks and nothing can hold you. Give up your addictions. There is nothing else to give up. Stop your routine of acquisitiveness, your habit of looking for results and the freedom of the universe is yours. Be effortless.
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
“GRATITUDE is what we are without a story.”
~Byron Katie
“BY LETTING IT GO, it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.”
~Lao Tzu
“THERE ARE BILLIONS of people who do nothing about enlightenment, who do not desire enlightenment, in fact, do not even think about it. [This] does not mean they will become enlightened.”
~Petrica Verdes
“IT IS ONLY A THOUGHT rising in and made out of Awareness that imagines that I, Awareness, share the limits and destiny of the body and mind. With this thought the knowing of our own Being as it is, is veiled, and, as a result, the search for happiness begins.”
~Rupert Spira
“PUT A CHAIR in the middle of a room. Sit in the chair. See who comes to visit.”
~Ajahn Chah
“I AGREE that we have to say it wrong. Because there is never a ‘right’ way if what we want to be is ‘accurate’. The notion of accuracy makes no sense. So I like to use the less unhelpful metaphors, and discard the more unhelpful ones.”
~Greg Goode
[ENLIGHTENMENT] appears to come in stages, but in truth it happens all at once when it happens. Awakening happens suddenly, like when you turn on a light bulb in the darkness. The darkness immediately disappears. When you turn on your own light, maya, ignorance, disappears. You are home. It happens when you don’t want it to happen. As long as you want it to happen there is somebody who wants it to happen. That somebody has to disappear. The person that wants it to happen is keeping you back. That is the personal I. Silence is the best way to wake up.
~Robert Adams
“YOU ARE ALWAYS ALREADY AWAKE, but you are not always consciously awake. In fact, you are rarely consciously awake. And because you’ve been unconsciously awake for thousands of years in that package–meaning the DNA and softer conditioning associated with the body you thought you were when you first started reading this–you’ll fall right back into unconsciousness if you don’t consistently and actively nourish it with conscious light.”
~Fred Davis
“NONDUALITY IS A TRICKY BUSINESS and only those who have no other choice will engage in it.”
~Jerry Katz
