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Thursday, November 29, 2007

.........

I know that He exists.
Somewhere - in Silence -
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.

'Tis an instant's play.
'Tis a fond Ambush -
Just to make Bliss
Earn her own surprise!

But - should the play
Prove piercing earnest -
Should the glee - glaze -
In Death's - stiff - stare -

Would not the fun
Look too expensive!
Would not the jest -
Have crawled too far!

- Emily Dickinson

Friday, November 23, 2007

Life and I

Life has a lovely way of intruding. Here I am happily cruising along, metaphorically sitting and listening to birdsong and watching the sun go down in the azure sky, when life has to intrude. It knocks on your door and when you refuse to open, it breaks the door down and barges in anyway. It's 'lesson time' it seems to say. Time to pull up your socks and tighten that loose belt of yours, it says with a wry smile on its face. So here I am rudely waken up from my somnolence and wading waist deep in lessons, some of which I hope to imbibe one of these days, once I get a quiet moment from crises that is.

"But what's the point?" I say, "of all these lessons, after all I'm gonna die one day, right? And the lessons to be buried with me, unless I write a ruddy book of lessons (hehehe). "

"But that's the whole point" my soul butts in. "I am here to learn lessons and will not be swayed by a fickle mind."

"Ok, ok, but why get bloodied and bruised in the process? I still carry some old battle wounds and they still hurt in the night sometimes."

"That's because you are so darned stubborn and won't learn from the lessons that life throws at you."

"Well, I guess life should just leave me alone then and let me gaze at the stars like I want to"

"But that is where I want to be too, among the stars, if only you would not get so embroiled in the dramas of life. If you wouldn't take each event in life and turn it into a major production, but instead remain detached and look at it from my point of view, then you could be flying all the time. But you have to get stuck into each event and take it so personally and get a mighty inflated ego if it's a 'success' and a badly bruised one if it's a 'failure' and keep swinging from one to the other in a great attempt to keep yourself in the forefront and keep me seperated from the real business of learning lessons."

"But why can't I learn from other people's dramas? Why does it all have to happen to me?"

"Well, you could and you would if you were quiet enough to observe what's going on beneath the surface. Besides, they are here to learn their own lessons, so they attract into their lives dramas that teach them the lessons they wish to learn. Isn't that amazing?"

"Not really, I don't think my father-in-law would agree, lying in hospital with a IV tube into his arm and a tube into his peeing apparatus, both of which he keeps pulling out"

"I guess that's also the reason why he is living so long and his soul's still with his body. If only people would stop resisting what is and stop insisting that life proceed the way they want it to, and wait quietly for their soul to speak to them, they would know what the real purpose of the experience is and then they would then experience infinite peace."

"So, what the lesson that you have come to learn?"

"Connection with the Divine, connection with the Self, connection with Love, which is all the same thing actually."

"...and what is preventing you from learning that?"

"You! With your incessant chatter, your judgements, your insistence of living in the past or the future. Your 'what-ifs' and 'if-onlys', your insatiable desire to be in control all the time. Your inability to accept things as they are and insistence to change them to fit your limited world-view, all these interfere with my connection with divine wisdom, with stillness and my experience of love which is quite different from worldly love."

"Hmmm… you're right, maybe I should be quiet." (Goes into mute mode, at least for now :)

(plagiarised from various sources, notable among them being 'The Power Of Now' by Eckhart Tolle)

Relationships

Here is a wonderful selection of quotes from the wise on all dimensions of relationships.


"So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it." (J. Krishnamurti)

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." (Carl Jung) "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." (Ralph W. Emerson)

"Let me tell you something: If you ever let yourself feel good when people tell you that you're O.K., you are preparing yourself to feel bad when they tell you you're not good. As long as you live to fulfill other people's expectations, you better watch what you wear, how you comb your hair, whether your shoes are polished -- in short, whether you live up to every expectation of theirs. Do you call that sane?" (Anthony de Mello)

"The person on a quest for wisdom and spirituality always has a choice facing him: Is he to live in the way others live in order to please them or is he to live in the way his own standards call for? If he lets them pull him down he loses what has taken him many, many years to develop. Somewhere at some point he must take his stand, must plant his feet and refuse to budge any farther." (Dr. Paul Brunton)

"A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"If a foolish man is associated with a wise man, even all his life, the foolish man will understand truth as little as a spoon understands the taste of soup." (Buddha)

"There is one thing that, more than any other, throws people absolutely off their balance - the thought that you are dependent upon them. This is sure to produce an insolent and domineering manner towards you . . .they soon fancy that they can take liberties with you, and so try to transgress the laws of politeness. This is why there are so few people with whom you care to become more intimate, and why you should avoid familiarity with shallow people." (Schopenhauer)

"A singular strength of mind is therefore required to enable a man to live among others consistently with his own ideas and convictions, to be master of himself, and not fall into the habits or exhibit the same passions as those with whom he associates." (Spinoza)

A disciple confessed his bad habit of repeating gossip. Said the Master, "Repeating it wouldn't be so bad if you did not improve on it." (Anthony de Mello)

"It was once the authority of the priest that held us, and now it is the authority of the expert, the specialist. Have you not noticed how you treat a man with a title, a man of position, the powerful executive?" (J. Krishnamurti)

A Man interrupted one of the Buddha's lectures with a flood of abuse. Buddha waited until he had finished and then asked him, "If a man offered a gift to another but the gift was declined, to whom would the gift belong?"
"To the one who offered it," said the man. "Then," said the Buddha, "I decline to accept your abuse and request you to keep it for yourself." (Buddhism)


"Everything great and intelligent is in the minority." (Johann von Goethe)

"If everyone were nice and pleasant, I would have no opportunity for practical training; so I should be glad to have people to practice on." (G.I. Gurdjieff)

"As you acquire more and more spiritual light, a wonderful thing will happen by a definite spiritual law. What happens is people in love with darkness will move away from you. They want absolutely nothing to do with you. The torment of being unable to pull you back into the mud is too great for them." (Vernon Howard)

"So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's." (Friedrich Nietzsche)

"Take another example - a roomful of guests in full dress, being received with great ceremony. You could almost believe that this is a noble and distinguished company; but, as a matter of fact, it is compulsion, pain and boredom who are the real guests. For where many are invited, it is a rabble - even if they all wear stars. Really good society is everywhere of necessity very small. In brilliant festivals and noisy entertainments, there is always, at bottom a sense of emptiness prevalent. A false tone is there." (Schopenhauer)

"If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm." (Marcus Aurelius)

"Spirituality is awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness. When your mother got angry with you, she didn't say there was something wrong with her, she said there was something wrong with you; otherwise she wouldn't have been angry. Well, I made the great discovery that if you are angry, Mother, there's something wrong with you. So you'd better cope with your anger. Stay with it and cope with it. It's not mine. Whether there's something wrong with me or not, I'll examine that independently of your anger. I'm not going to be influenced by your anger. "
"Only a very aware person can refuse to pick up the guilt and anger, can say, 'You're having a tantrum. Too bad. I don't feel the slightest desire to rescue you anymore, and I refuse to feel guilty.'" (Anthony de Mello)

"Make not a close friend of a melancholy, sad person. He will be sure to increase your adversity and decrease your good fortune. He goes always heavily loaded, and you must bear half." (Francoise Fenelon)

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured and far away." (Henry David Thoreau)

"Condemning others makes a man oblivious to his own faults, which therefore flourish unrebuked. Many individuals hide their own serious flaws behind a critical spirit. . . They cannot stand the painful operation of being themselves corrected. Such persons expend their energy and intelligence on superficial activities and so have neither time nor vitality left to concentrate on essentials." (Paramahansa Yogananda)

"To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive." (Robert Louis Stevenson)

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." (Buddha)

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Requiem

My mind
splits open,
into the chasm
that opens,
I plunge
headlong
in free fall
into darkness,
total.
Groping,
clutching
at a hand-hold.
In the silence,
absolute,
thoughts depart,
feelings fall away,
but my soul -
it finds itself.

Dusk Chorus

Singing,
scolding,
twittering,
clucking,
screeching,
fluttering
birds,
producing
a bouquet of sounds.
I, on the park bench,
drinking it all in.
Soul,
dancing
to the medley.
Rising,
to be one with them.