In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.
We have only to follow the hero’s path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.
And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.
Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence.
And where we had thought to be done, we will be with all the world.
Joseph Campbell
The Power of Myth
One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.
The Buddha
Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.
Desiring to show his attainment, he said: “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is Emptiness. There is no realisation, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received”.
Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.
“If nothing exists”, inquired Dokuon, “where did this anger come from?”
When the mind and the heart are stretched together in expanding self awareness, I assure you, there is instantaneous self transcendence and, therefore, limitless freedom.
~Shri Swami Nirmalananda~
Every lesson that comes into your life
asks you to open your heart and mind in a new way.
Old defense mechanisms that are no longer needed for your survival
must be surrendered.
Inch by inch, the territory claimed by fear
must open to love’s embrace.
Paul Ferrini
Photo: auws
Before you know what kindness really is
You must lose things,
Feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
What you counted and carefully saved,
All this must go so you know
How desolate the landscapes can be
Between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
Thinking the bus will stop,
The passengers eating maize and chicken
Will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
You must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
Lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
How he too was someone
Who journeyed through the night with plans
And the simple breath that kept him alive
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak it till your voice
Catches the thread of all sorrows
And you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
Only kindness that ties your shoes
And sends you into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
Only kindness that raises its head
From the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
And then goes with you everywhere
Like a shadow or a friend.
You say yes. You say yes to everything. You need not fight, you need not even swim – you simply float with the current. The river is going by itself, on its own accord, everything reaches to the ultimate ocean. You simply don’t create any disturbance, you don’t push the river, you simply go with it.
That going with it, floating with it, relaxing with it, is tantra.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
When the human race learns to live as a family, then the world will finally attain the next stage of civilization and enlightenment. Families are meant to be centers of love, which radiate their love outward to other families. When people understand this purpose and can share the experience, then they can create joy and peace throughout society. When peace reigns, there will no longer be hatred or disturbances between people, and the human mind will automatically be led upward, toward the highest center of consciousness.
Swami Rama
If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
but have not love,
I have become sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.
And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.
And if I dole out all my goods, and
if I deliver my body that I may boast
but have not love, nothing I am profited.
Love is long suffering,
love is kind,
it is not jealous,
love does not boast,
it is not inflated.
It is not discourteous,
it is not selfish,
it is not irritable,
it does not enumerate the evil.
It does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth
It covers all things,
it has faith for all things,
it hopes in all things,
it endures in all things.
Love never falls in ruins;
but whether prophecies, they will be abolished; or
tongues, they will cease; or
knowledge, it will be superseded.
For we know in part and we prophecy in part.
But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will be superseded.
When I was an infant,
I spoke as an infant,
I reckoned as an infant;
when I became [an adult],
I abolished the things of the infant.
For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know as also I was fully known.
But now remains
faith, hope, love,
these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13