Emptiness

Emptiness is a name for nothingness,

A name for ungraspibility,

A name for mountains, rivers, the whole earth.

It is also called the real form.

In the green of the pines,

The twist of the brambles,

There is no going and coming;

In the red of the flowers

And the white of the snow,

There is no birth and no death.

Is is also called the real formless

Beyond form and formless

Beyond death and birth

Beyond no death and no birth

When you cry for yourself, is it Love ?

When you cry for yourself, is it love - crying because you are lonely, because you have been left, because you are no longer powerful - complaining of your lot, your environment - always you in tears? If you understand this, which means to come in contact with it as directly as you would touch a tree or a pillar or a hand, then you will see that sorrow is self-created, sorrow is created by thought, sorrow is the outcome of time. I had my brother three years ago, now he is dead, now I am lonely, aching, there is no one to whom I can look for comfort or companionship, and it brings tears to my eyes. You can see all this happening inside yourself if you watch it. You can see it fully, completely, in one glance, not take analytical time over it. You can see in a moment the whole structure and nature of this shoddy little thing called `me', my tears, my family, my nation, my belief, my religion - all that ugliness, it is all inside you. When you see it with your heart, not with your mind, when you see it from the very bottom of your heart, then you have the key that will end sorrow. Sorrow and love cannot go together, but in the Christian world they have idealized suffering, put it on a cross and worshipped it, implying that you can never escape from suffering except through that one particular door, and this is the whole structure of an exploiting religious society.

So when you ask what love is, you may be too frightened to see the answer. It may mean complete upheaval; it may break up the family; you may discover that you do not love your wife or husband or children - do you? - you may have to shatter the house you have built, you may never go back to the temple.

- JK

The Unguarded Intellect

" You can know yourself only when you are unaware, when you are not calculating, not protecting, not constantly watching to guide, to transform, to subdue, to control; when you see yourself unexpectedly, that is, when the mind has no preconceptions with regard to itself, when the mind is open, unprepared to meet the unknown.
If your mind is prepared, surely you cannot know the unknown, for you are the unknown. If you say to yourself, "I am God," or "I am nothing but a mass of social influences or a bundle of qualities"—if you have any preconception of yourself, you cannot comprehend the unknown, that which is spontaneous.
So spontaneity can come only when the intellect is unguarded, when it is not protecting itself, when it is no longer afraid for itself; and this can happen only from within. That is, the spontaneous must be the new, the unknown, the incalculable, the creative, that which must be expressed, loved, in which the will as the process of intellect, controlling, directing, has no part. Observe your own emotional states and you will see that the moments of great joy, great ecstasy, are unpremeditated; they happen, mysteriously, darkly, unknowingly."

"The Unguarded Intellect" - Book of Life

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

(Red Suitcase)

For a list of charities and relief organizations:

http://www.katrinahope.org

Mind...

Wonderful it is to train the mind
so swiftly moving, seizing whatever it wants.
Good is it to have a well-trained mind,
for a well-trained mind brings happiness.

Dhammapada 35

Why ?

Why does Sai Baba manifest those cheap watches and not Rolexes?

......and why is he so attracted to little boys?

Why did Ramana say that there was reincarnation..........and then say there wasn't?

Why did he tell us that his pet cow was enlightened?

Why is Ramesh still compelled to touch the femaleness around him?

Why did Nisargadatta piddle all over himself when a relative of Ramana came to his house?

Why did Mother Teresa lie about that orphanage of 5000?


and:



Why do you continue to believe that they all have something.........that you do not?