Conquer the angry man by love.
Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness.
Conquer the miser with generosity.
Conquer the liar with truth.
The Dhammapada
Category: Spirituality
Pain
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
The Power of Myth
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
Conquer
One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.
The Buddha
Nothing Exists
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?”
Freedom
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~
Opening to Love
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
Kindness
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.
Tantra
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
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
The Centre of Love
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
faith, hope, love
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
Thoughts
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
Salubrion
Charles Saiki, a retired architectural draftsman and lifelong artist, faithfully meditated over the past thirty years in Hawaii. He first developed the idea of a compact meditation chair because he continuously needed to adjust his cushion, never achieving complete comfort or concentration. He spent three years refining its form and function before he shared the product with the world as the Salubrion Meditation Chair, becoming one of the most popular meditation stools in the U.S..
The Alchemist
It was not easy to do; in earlier times, his heart had always been ready to tell its story, but lately that wasn’t true. There had been times when his heart spent hours telling of its sadness, and at other times it became so emotional over the desert sunrise that the boy had to hide his tears. His heart beat fastest when it spoke to the boy of treasure, and more slowly when the boy stared entranced at the endless horizons of the desert. But his heart was never quiet, even when the boy and the alchemist had fallen into silence.
“Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” the boy asked, when they had made camp that day.
“Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.”
“But my heart is agitated,” the boy said. “It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it’s become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when I’m thinking about her.”
“Well that’s good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say.”
“My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “It doesn’t want me to go on.”
“That makes sense,” the alchemist answered. “Naturally it’s afraid that in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.”
“Well then, why should I listen to my heart?”
“Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.”
“You mean I should listen, even if it’s treasonous?”
“Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them.”
“You will never be able to escape from you heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.”
Water
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. Therefore the Master remains serene in the midst of sorrow. Evil cannot enter his heart. Because he has given up helping, he is people’s greatest help. True words seem paradoxical.
Tao te Ching, Chapter 78
A Thousand Serious Moves
What is the difference
Between your Existence
And that of a Saint?
The Saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move
That the Saint is now continually
Tripping over joy
And Bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”
Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.
Hafiz
Happiness
For those I love and those who love me,
may this life be a blessing and a source of happiness to all beings.
Death is no cause for sorrow, but it would be sorrow
if one dies without having done something for oneself and for the world.
Ven. Dr K Sri Dhammananda Maha Nayaka Thera (1919-2006)
Earth
And forget not that the earth delights
to feel your bare feet and the winds long
to play with your hair.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
The one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what do you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Haunting tales
Straits Times, Sep 17, 2006
An ongoing court case has sparked an interest in exorcism, and Catholic theologian William Goh’s talk on this topic last week attracted quite a crowd
By Leong Su-Lin
FATHER William Goh has a suggestion for all Catholic travellers wary of haunted hotel rooms: Never travel without a supply of holy water.
That way, if you encounter strange noises, shifting tables or flickering lights, you can sprinkle the water and say a prayer to appease the spirits, says the theologian, who is a resource speaker for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Singapore.
‘A hotel is probably haunted because a person was murdered there and his spirit cannot rest in peace,’ he says.
When he encounters ‘a strange presence’ in a room, he too will sprinkle holy water and bless the room, he adds. Any water blessed by a Catholic priest is considered holy water.
Continue reading “Haunting tales”
Practice to be like the earth
The Buddha said, “Suppose you have a cup of pure water; if you have a handful of salt, and you pour it into that water and stir it up, you cannot drink it anymore, because it’s too salty. But if you take the same amount of salt, and pour it into the river, then the river is so large that it is not affected, and all of us can continue to drink the water from the river. The river is enormous, that is why it has the capacity to receive, to embrace and to transform. If our hearts are big, we can do very much the same thing. We suffer because our hearts are small; it means that our understanding and compassion are too limited.”
“Rahula, practice to be like the earth. Why? No matter what people pour onto the earth, whether it’s milk, cream, flowers, perfume or urine, excrement, the earth will not discriminate. It will receive them all, and the earth will not suffer. Why? Because the earth is large, and in no time at all the earth can transform all these things into flowers and green leaves. So practice, Rahula, in order to be like the earth. You can accept, receive, and embrace everything, and you don’t have to suffer. Sometime later you can transform all this garbage into flowers again.
Practice like the air; no matter what you throw into it, the air can receive, embrace and transform it, and that is because the air is large.
Practice in order to be like water. Water has the same capacity of receiving, embracing and transforming. And practice to be like fire, because whatever you give to fire, whether it’s beautiful or ugly, clean or dirty, the fire will burn them all, and reduce everything to ash. Because the fire is large, the fire has the capacity to transform.
That is why, Rahula, you should practice like the earth, like the water, like the air, like the fire, so that your heart becomes unlimited. Anything negative, any insult, any action that is unkind to you, you can embrace all, and you don’t have to suffer, because your heart is so large. That is why it is said in the sutra that if you suffer too much, that is because your heart is still not large. In order to make your heart large, the practice of looking deeply will help, because it will bring understanding. When understanding is there, compassion and forgiveness will be possible.”
The World
You are not here to change the world. The world is here to change you.
Shantideva
Love
Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Mountain
The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
Let go
If you let go of a little you have a little peace. If you let go of a lot you have a lot of peace. And if you let go completely, then you have complete peace.
Sri Sathya Sai Baba
“As I ate my hot fudge sundae at the famous Hard Rock Cafe in London I noticed that amongst the rock memorabilia of the Beatles, Hendrix and Rolling Stones stood a life size photograph of a rather odd looking figure. But this fuzzy headed character dressed in bright orange/red is no rock star. He is Sri Sathya Sai Baba the guru of the blue chip multinational restaurant group and responsible for their corporate slogan ‘Love All. Serve All.’ Isaac Tigrett, the restaurant chain’s founder, believes that Sai Baba saved his life when his Porsche careered at 90 mph over a 300 ft drop. “Sai Baba appeared beside me in the car and put his arm around me. The car was totally destroyed but I got out without a bruise.” When Tigrett sold his share of the company for £16 million he gave all his money to Sai Baba’s cause.” – http://www.psychics.co.uk/saibaba/saibaba.html
“Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city.”
Jesus in Matthew 23:34
Contentment
“They say that once you are contented with what you are, you will have no growth, no progress. This is I think a superficial understanding. Real growth, true progress, begins when you get at the truth of what you are; when you can say “it is absolutely alright”, even though it may be very poor and miserable. So please observe your unsatisfactory situation more and more, and take better care of it as it is. Then you may see the door open to the next world. ”
Hogen-San, The Other Shore
An Ode to Slowness
I want to make my life a ceremony around slowness.
Time and space.
Open space.
In the desert there is space.
Space is the twin sister of time.
If we have open space, then we have open time to breathe, to dream, to dare, to play, to move freely, so freely, in a world our minds have forgotten but our bodies remember.
Time and space.
This partnership is holy.
In these redrock canyons, time creates space;
An arch, an eye, this blue eye of sky.
We remember why we love the desrt;
It is our tactile response to light, silence, and stillness.
Hand on stone patience.
Hand on water music.
Hand raised to the wind is this the birthplace of inspiration?
Terry Tempest Williams
Thich Nhat Hanh: When I have a toothache
When I have a toothache, I discover that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. That is peace. I had to have a toothache in order to be enlightened, to know that not having one is wonderful. My non-toothache is peace, is joy. But when I do not have a toothache, I do not seem to be happy. Therefore, I look deeply in the present moment and see that I have a non-toothache, that can make me very happy already.