Constant Kindness - Albert Schweitzer & Cheri Huber

[We] must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how
deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo.
When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing
torment and injury into the life of another...

Constant kindness can accomplish much.  As the sun
makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding,
mistrust and hostility to evaporate...

Albert Schweitzer

~

Being kind to yourself lets you be kinder to others -
and that just might be the finest gift we can give
to the world...

Cheri Huber
Zen teacher

~

Photo - mittens left on a bench 2012
One day in the winter of 2012
 when I walked to the park I found
these "mittens" on the bench there.
I arranged them in a certain configuration.
When I went back the next day they had
been rearranged in a different configuration.
I then rearranged them again...
And the following day they had been reconfigured.
This went on for several days.
To this day I still don't know who the stranger was
who engaged in this playful game...  But it lifted my
heart.
Kindness through the invisible hand of a stranger :)

Perspective - Carse, Lin Chi, Kastrup & Bailey

How we perceive things, and therefore what we call
'real,' or 'true,' or 'right,' has to do with our perspective
from where we sit in the overall continuum.

The tendency is to absolutize one's own perspective,
to make everything relative to that, when in fact our
perspective is what is relative...

David Carse
Advaita
Perfect Brilliant Stillness

~

If you want to perceive and understand objectively, just don't
allow yourself to be confused by people.  Detach from whatever
you find inside or outside yourself - detach from religion, tradition,
and society, and only then will you attain liberation. When you're
not entangled in things, you pass through freely...

Lin Chi
Buddhist

~

All explanations are myths whose truth-value we assign
subjectively.  They are true only insofar as we say that they are
true.  They are stories we conjure up and tell ourselves in order
to make sense of the disconnected, context-free phantasmagoria of
present perception.  It makes no sense to proclaim any explanation
for the present to be objectively true...

Bernardo Kastrup
Philosopher
More Than Allegory

~

Stories about existence can't be fact.
What is your actual experience?
What has life been presenting all along?
Don't deny your day-to-day experience.

We are the dance of the universe.
All the story lines are a legitimate
expression of Existence...

The Formless is form...

Darryl Bailey

unaffiliated

~

Photo - shadow of the spindles in the back of a chair
on a wall...

The Sanctuary of Silence - Dada Gavand & Angeles Arrien

You cannot meet God through the mind,
nor experience the timeless through time.

Thought cannot touch the transient.
Only with freedom from thought
and from mental cravings and ambitions
does the energy become
whole, tranquil and pure.

Such inner purity and humility
will invite the hidden divinity.

The pure consolidated energy
with its silence and fullness within,
awaits in readiness to meet the divine,
to experience what which is beyond the mind.

There across the region of time
beyond the frontiers of the mind,
within the sanctuary of silence,
resides the supreme intelligence,
the timeless divine.

Dada Gavand

~

I trust the Mystery.  I trust what comes in silence
and what comes in nature where there's no diversion.
I think the lack of stimulation allows us to hear and
experience a deeper river that's constant, still,vibrant,
and real.

Angeles Arrien

Sama - Rumi

What is deep listening?

Sama is a greeting from the secret ones inside the heart,
a letter.  The branches of your "intelligence" grow
new leaves in the wind of listening.
The body reaches a peace.

Rooster sound comes, reminding you of your love
for dawn.  The reed flute and thin singer's lips:
the knack of how spirit breathes into us
becomes as simple and ordinary as
eating and drinking.

[.....]

Listen, and feel the beauty of the
unsayable...

[.....]

Give more of your life to this listening.
As brightness is to time, so are you to
the one who talks to the deep ear in
your chest.

I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand
ears when that one steps near and begins to speak.

Rumi

Excerpt from - The Glance
Coleman Barks version

via The Beauty We Love

~

Sama is the quality of calmness and tranquility
of the mind...It is deep listening as a way
of connecting with the Divine

The Guest - Kabir

The Guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure [despair] goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no-one has shaken,

inside "love" there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through with in all parts by a
single sort of love.

How hard it is to feel that joy in all our bodies!

Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away.

How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joy
he sings inside his own boat.
His poems amount to one soul meeting another.
These songs [poems] are about forgetting dying and loss.
They rise above both coming in and going out. [birth and death].

Kabir

from: Ecstatic Poems

Thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

The following is part of a commentary on the above poem
that I found this morning on line.  Author Unknown...

~

God is already in you; the True God, not the man made
image of God, not god of the temples, and the churches,
and the synagogues and the mosques and the gurudwaras...

The god that man has imagined in his own image, the god
that man made according to his own wishes, the god that is
nothing but the projection of man's mind and desires...
  That god never really existed.[because "God" is much
vaster than our personal limited images of who/what
 "God"is.]
The untrue [image] MUST cease for the truth to be.

Those who know the True God, know God as the fragrance
of life, the perfume of existence, the very ground of being.
For them God is not a concept, not a theory, not a hypothesis.
For them God is an existential experience.  For them God
is not separate from man, for them God is man's innermost
core...  God is nothing but your own depth [your Core Being]
trying to manifest itself.  God is not an ideal.
God exists as you - as life.

Life is eternal.
Life is immortal.
It changes forms, just like the waves in the ocean go on changing
but the ocean remains.  Bodies come and go, but your innermost
[Being] remains always there.  And that is God.

God is not to be worshiped, but realized.  There is no need to make
temples for God.  You have to learn to look within.
The temple is already there; It cannot be destroyed.

God is always your interiority...

The Guest is within you, but you have to turn in...
You have to become more conscious of your Consciousness.
You have to become more aware of your Awareness.
A point of stillness comes where you are simply aware of
your [inner] Awareness...

When Awareness [the Core Being] is the only content of your
awareness, that is the moment when The Guest is found...

author unknown

The Inside Door - Jan Richardson

You have looked
at so many doors
with longing,
wondering if your life
lay on the other side.

For today,
choose the door
that opens to the inside.

Travel the most ancient way
of all:
the path that leads you
to the center
of your life.

No map
but the one
you make yourself.

No provision
but what you already carry
and the grace that comes
to those who walk
the pilgrim's way.

Speak this blessing
as you set out
and watch how
your rhythm slows,
the cadence of the road
drawing you into the pace
that is your own.

Eat when hungry.
Rest when tired.
Listen to your dreaming.
Welcome detours
as doors deepen in.

Pray for protection.
Ask for guidance.
Offer gladness
for the gifts that come,
and then
let them go.

Do not expect
to return
by the same road.
Home is always
by another way,
and you will know it
not by the light
that waits for you

but by the star
that blazes inside you,
telling you
where you are
is holy
and you are welcome
here.

Jan Richardson

https://janrichardson.com/

via - No Mind's Land

Who Are You Without Your Spiritual Story? - Jeff Foster

Please don't talk to me of "Pure Awareness" or
"Dwelling in the Absolute."  I want to see how you treat
your partner, your kids, your parents, your body.
Please don't lecture me about "the illusion of the separate
self" or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen, take information that
doesn't fit your personal philosophy [belief].  I want to see
how you deal with people who disagree with you.  Don't tell
me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.  I want
to know you beneath the words.  I want to know what you're like
when troubles befall you. If you can fully allow your pain and
not pretend to be invulnerable.  If you can feel your anger yet not
step into violence.  If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow
yet not be its slave.  If you can feel your shame and not shame others.
If you can f**k up, and admit it. If you can say "sorry", and really
mean it.  If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.  I only want to meet
you.  Know your precious heart.  Know your beautiful human
struggling for the light.  Before all clever words...

Jeff Foster

The Gentle Voice - John O'Donohue

When you take the time to draw on your listening-imagination,
you will begin to hear this gentle voice at the heart of your life.

It is deeper and surer than all the other voices of disappointment,
unease, self-criticism and bleakness.  All holiness is about
learning to hear the voice of your own soul.  It is always there
and the more deeply you learn to listen, the greater surprises
and discoveries that will unfold.

To enter into the gentleness of your own soul changes the tone
and quality of your life.  Your life is no longer consumed by
hunger for the next event, experience or achievement.
You gain a new respect for yourself and others.  You begin to see
through the enchanting veils of illusion that you had taken for
reality.  You no longer squander yourself on things and situations
that deplete your essence.  You know now that your true source
is not outside you.

Your soul is your true source,
 and a new energy and passion
awakens within you.

John O'Donohue
From: Beauty, The Invisible Embrace

via - The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - via - No Mind's Land

Heart-to-Heart Resonance - Eric Baret and Rumi

The heart is yearning to be open.
When a heart meets an open heart,
when a match approaches a lighted match,
it rejoices in unity, in the flame...
This is called transmission.
But nothing is transmitted.
No one transmits, no one receives;
There is [just] heart-to-heart [resonance].
There is only one heart.

Eric Baret

~

Some souls have gotten free of their bodies.
Do you see them?
Open your eyes for those who escape to meet
with other escapees, whose hearts associate in a way
they have of leaving their false selves to live
in a truer Self...

Rumi
From: Escaping to the Forest

~

What does pre-eternity mean to you?
What is your origin?  The Source?
What is spirit? 

Spend your life finding out your own state.
Those other mysteries will come clear.

God is depth.  And you, you are also deep.
The same depth is in you.

Don't worry about terminology, pre-existence,
the original face, spirit, soul.
Search within yourself.
The great mystery is there.

I want someone with a living pulse,
a living friend...

Excerpts from the Sayings of Shams Tabriz

Soul Fury
Rumi and Shams Tabriz on Friendship

Coleman Barks

Creating Enmity - J. Krishnamurti

Surely that thing which you fight you become.  If I am angry
and you meet me with anger what is the result?  More anger.
You have become that which I am.  If I am evil and you fight
me with evil means then you also become evil, however
righteous you may feel.  If I am brutal and you use brutal
methods to overcome me, then you become brutal like me.
And this we have done for thousands of years.  Surely there
is a different approach than to meet hate by hate.  If I use
violent methods to quell anger in myself then I am using
wrong means for a right end, and thereby the right end
ceases to be.  In this there is no understanding.  Anger is
to be understood; it is not to be overcome through violent
means.  Anger may be the result of many causes and
without comprehending them there is no escape from anger.

We have created the enemy, and becoming ourselves the enemy
in no way brings about an end to enmity.  We have to understand
the cause of our enmity and cease to feed it by our thought,
feeling, and action.  This is an arduous task demanding constant
self-awareness [and Self awareness] and intelligent pliability,
for what we are society is...  The enemy and the friend are
the outcome of our thought and action.  We are responsible for
creating enmity and so it is more important to be aware of our
own thought and action than to be concerned with the foe and
the friend, for right thinking puts an end to division.
Love transcends the friend and the enemy.

J. Krishnamurti
from: The Book of Life

via - The Beauty We Love

Egocentricity & Suffering - Cheri Huber

Egocentricity is the process of wanting something other than
what is.  Egocentricity means there is an "I" who [feels]
separate from everything else and doesn't like it; one thing is
happening, but I want a different thing to be happening
[which causes suffering].  Egocentricity is that constant
concern with how I feel, what I think, what I'm doing, what
I want - looking at what is and seeing it as inadequate.
My identity is maintained by the struggle of wanting
something other than what is [causing suffering].

Instead of spending our time trying to avoid suffering,
we must find the willingness to go directly into it.
Whenever anything causes us to suffer, we can know
two things: suffering is the same as egocentricity, and
when it arises, that is our best opportunity to end suffering.
As we open to suffering, as we embrace it, as we accept it,
our relationship to it changes. It is no longer horrible,
something to escape from.  Suffering becomes just
another opportunity [for awareness], another chance for
freedom [from egocentricity].

Cheri Huber

Zen Teacher

~

"The Heart has no ego"

Gregg Braden

~

The real state of things is suffering, aging illness, death -
life as it is...

We are in a body inside of time...
Suffering is on a primitive level...

author unknown

~

Personal note:  I know from my own experience that there
are many causes of "suffering" and different kinds of "suffering",
like poverty, abuse, terrorism, physical and emotional pain,
but I found this explanation from Cheri Huber interesting with
regard to the personal cause of "suffering."  And as I recently
discovered, the egoic mind (my incessant thoughts) is one of the
 major causes of my emotional suffering...

There is a Deep Kindness - John O'Donohue

There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides
everywhere, often in the places we least expect.  The world can
be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient,
kindness inevitably reveals itself.  Something deep in the human
soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something
instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to
trust and open ourselves.

The word kindness has a gentle sound that seems to echo the
presence of compassionate goodness.  When someone is kind
to you, you feel understood and seen.  There is no judgement or
harsh perception directed toward you.  Kindness has gracious
eyes; it is not small-minded or competitive; it wants nothing
back for itself.  Kindness strikes a resonance with the depths
of your own heart; it also suggests that your vulnerability,
though somehow exposed, is not taken advantage of; rather,
it has become an occasion for dignity and empathy. 

Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct
that at the deepest level of reality intimate kindness holds sway.
This is the heart of blessing.  

John O'Donohue
from - To Bless the Space Between Us

Via - The Beauty We Love

~

Photo

Can you see the big open heart shape in the tree on the right ? :)

~

What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?
I think it is the  hope of loving,
or being loved.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts.
We wither like fields if someone close
does not rain their
kindness
upon
us.

Meister Eckhart