A Preponderance of Ponderings on Impermanence - Krishnamurti

 We have to understand another phenomenon in life, which is
 death: death from old age, or disease, and accidental death,
through disease, or naturally.  We grow old inevitably, and
that age is shown in the way we have lived our life, it shows
in our face...

So there is old age.  And there is this extraordinary thing called
death, of which most of us are dreadfully frightened.  If we are
not frightened, we have rationalized this phenomenon intellectually
and have accepted the edicts of the intellect.  But it is still there.
And obviously there is the ending of the organism, the body.
And we accept that naturally, because we see everything dying.

But what we do not accept is the psychological ending of the"me",
with family, with the house, with success, the things I have done,
and the things I have still to do, the fulfillments and the frustrations 
- and there is something more to do before I end!  And the
psychological entity, we're afraid that will come to an end -
the "me", the "I", the "soul", in various forms, words, that we give
to the center of our being.

Does it come to an end?  Does it have continuity?  The East 
has said it has a continuity: there is reincarnation, being born
better in the next life if you have lived rightly.  If you believe in
reincarnation, as the whole of Asia does, then in that idea is
implied, if you observe it very closely, that what you do now,
every day, matters tremendously.  Because in the next life you're
going to pay for it or be rewarded depending on how you have
lived.  So what matters is not what you believe will happen in
the next life, but what you are and how you live.  And that is
implied also when you talk about resurrection. Here (in the West)
you have symbolized it in one person and worship that person,
because you yourself don't know how to be reborn again in your
life now.

So what matters is how you live now - not what your beliefs are...
But we are also afraid that the center, called the "I", may come
to an end.  We ask:  Does it come to an end?

You have lived in thought; that is, you have given tremendous
importance to thinking.  But thinking is old; thinking is never new;
thinking is the continuation of memory.  If you have lived there,
obviously there is some kind of continuity.  And it is a continuity
that is over, finished.  It is something old; only that which ends
can have something new.  So dying is very important to understand;
to die; to die to everything that one knows. [believes]. 

  You know, one has collected so much, not only books, houses,
bank account, but inwardly. the memories of insults, the memories
of flattery, the memories of neurotic achievements, the memory of
holding onto your own particular experience, which gives you a
position.  To die to all that without argument, without discussion,
without any fear, just to give it up.  Do it psychologically - of course
we don't actually give up our wife/husband, our clothes, our children,
or our house, but inwardly, don't be attached to anything.  Love is
not attachment.  Where there is attachment, there is fear.  And fear
inevitably becomes authoritarian, possessive, oppressive, dominating.

But to die to everything within oneself! [attachments, ideas, concepts,
beliefs].  This  means that the mind, which is not of thought - the mind
becomes utterly quiet, silent, naturally, without any force, without
any discipline.  And in light of that silence all actions can take place,
the daily living, from that silence.  And if one were lucky enough to
have gone that far, then in that silence there is quite a different
movement, which is not of time, which is not of words, which is not
measurable by thought, because it is always new. It never dies.

J Krishnamurti
from talks in Europe 1968
Amsterdam
May 19, 1968

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Ethereal Window

The Natural Mind - Robert Wolfe

You want to know what is meant when you see the phrase
"thought-free."

If you [question] whether you are thought-free or
not thought-free, would it be possible to be "thought-free",
in that circumstance?

As the Dzogchen Rinpoche Tulku Orgyen has commented:

When you ask: "Is there a thought; or (am I) free of thought? -
 isn't that just another thought?

The following teachers speak of a "natural" mind.  During your day,
all sorts of thoughts come and go, spontaneously arising and
dissolving, like surf washing upon a beach.  Isn't this what is
natural to all of us?

Tulku Rinpoche has said: "It is not beneficial to continuously
pursue a special, thought-free mental state. Rather, simply
allow yourself to be in naturalness, free of any fabrication";
that is, conceiving of, and attempting to engineer, some
special state of mind or condition of thought.  "Thought-free
means free of conceptual thinking."

Tulku's eldest son, Chokyi Nyima also says:

"When leaving this fresh ordinary mind as it is, without
correcting or modifying it, without altering it in any way,
without accepting and rejecting, there is no fixating on
anything.

In the present moment, do not correct,
Do not modify,
Do not accept or reject.
Don't try to rearrange your present wakefulness.
Instead, leave it as it naturally is
Without any attempt to alter it in any way.
That is called sustaining your natural face."

Another son of Tulku Rinpoche, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche,
speaks in detail about the innate naturalness of the mind free
of such dualistic concepts as thought versus no thought:

"Like many of the people I now meet on teaching tours, I
thought that natural mind had to be something else, 
something different from, or better than, what I was already
experiencing.  Like most people, I brought so much
judgment to my experience.  I believed that thoughts of anger,
fear and so on (that came and went throughout the day) were
bad or counter productive - or at the very least inconsistent
with natural peace!  The teachings of the Buddha is that if
we allow ourselves to relax and take a mental step back, we
can begin to recognize that all these different thoughts are
simply coming and going within the context of an
unlimited mind, which, like space, remains fundamentally
unperturbed by whatever occurs within it.

"All you have to do is rest your mind in its natural openness.
No special focus, no special effort, is required.  And if for
some reason you cannot rest your mind, you can simply
observe whatever thoughts, feelings, or sensations come
up and acknowledge, 'Oh, that's what's going on in my
mind right now.'  Wherever you are, whatever you do,
it's essential to acknowledge your experience as something
ordinary, the natural expression of your true mind.  If you
don't try to stop whatever is going on in your mind, but
merely observe it, eventually you'll begin to feel a 
tremendous sense of relaxation, a vast sense of openness
within you mind - which is in fact your natural mind,
the natural unperturbed background against which 
various thoughts come and go."

Robert Wolfe

With thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - From a CD cover

Fixed Ideas - Zen Master Daehaeng

 Fixed ideas are like a wisp of cloud or smoke,
but nonetheless people find themselves blocked
or captured by these.

You would laugh if you saw someone tripped by
a cloud, or if someone claimed that they were
imprisoned by the air.  But, in fact, people are
endlessly being trapped by things no more
substantial than air or clouds.

They make a wall with their mind, and then it
imprisons them.  Inherently, there is no wall or
anything to trip over.  These things are mirages
they've created from thoughts they gave rise to.
Do not insist upon your own fixed ideas.

Your persistence is your own narrow mind.  If
your mind is broad, it can easily embrace the
entire world.  However, if your mind is narrow, 
even a needle cannot enter.  You have to keep
letting go of your stubbornness, and always
be deeply respectful of all life...

Learn to step out of your fixed ideas.

When we return to our Inherent Nature, which is
our most true and natural state, then the true
reality of everything is automatically revealed.

Letting go and resting - entrusting everything to your
underlying Essence/Natural State means returning
to our Fundamental Nature.

Zen Master Daehaeng
From - No River to Cross

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Melancholy - Fred LaMotte

 Even on the most radiant days, there is a sorrow at the heart
of life.  When we deny it, the day becomes a desperate quest
for happiness, and the night is long.  But when we absorb the
trough into our rhythm, like the shadow of the breath, that
benign negation infuses all things with spaciousness, tinges
creation with golden poignancy, like Autumn itself.
What is heavy is not sadness, but the denial of sadness.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance
original title - "Autumn"

~

For all those tasting the sadness of these
unimaginable strange times that we are living through -
not only the losses from COVID, but
from the devastating fires on the West Coast, and the
hurricanes on the Gulf Coast affecting so many lives,
as well as the racial unrest, and the political upheaval
across this country.
May we all find the deep Quiet within..

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Sunset Heart Leaves

Imperceptible...

 That which infuses Nature
is imperceptible - seemingly hidden.

The Ineffable is subtly imperceptible -
yet present in existence as its
Natural Essence -
in its Beauty -
in its Effulgence -
as if lit from within...

Manifest reality is held in the
imperceptible movement of the gentle Rhythm
of Time and Season;
alive, not on its own - but
through the Pulse of Light that lives it.

All life is being lived
by this subtle Pulse of Light -
our Natural Illumined Essence.

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 2020

~

Photo by Cate Kerr
from Beyond the Fields We Know
used by permission

~

Welcome the Rhythm of Autumn!

When They Sleep - Rolf Jacobsen

 All people are children when they sleep.
There's no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in the quiet rhythm heaven has given them.
They pucker their lips like small children

and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.
If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.
- God, teach me the language of sleep.

Rolf Jacobsen

from: Night Music: Selected Poems

Translated by Robert Hardin

With thanks to 
Ivan Granger
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Dear Hubby :)

True Silence - Dorothy Hunt

Silence is a deep, interior Presence that actually
has nothing to do with whether there is noise or
quiet in the environment or in the mind.  What is
revealed in Silence is your Being, your Presence,
your awake and intimate Awareness...in its deepest
dimension.  This Silence is what we are, what life is,
what moves the Universe and simultaneously is its
Source.

The deeper the Silence, the greater is the felt sense
of the Mystery that sees beyond all thoughts, images,
and acquired knowledge.  We become aware of a
deeper dimension of our Being that is very quiet,
very still, completely open, very natural...

Psychologically minded folks may wonder if soaking
in Silence is a way of bypassing what needs to be
seen or felt or understood.  In the true Silence of
our awake nature, nothing is avoided, nothing denied,
nothing attached.  Rather than numbing us to experience,
this Silence lovingly invites everything that has been
hidden or denied to come out of the shadows into
the light.  True Silence opens us to the truth of the 
present moment.

One does not have to effort to find this Silence and Stillness.
It is not something we create.  It is felt the moment we
relax and become receptive, the moment we stop trying
to move toward or away from anything.

Dorothy Hunt
Buddhist Teacher
from - Leaves from Moon Mountain

Thank you to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Allow yourself to be used - Thomas Merton

You are fed up with words, I don't blame you.
I am nauseated by them sometimes.  I am also,
to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes.
This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand
what I mean.  It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas
and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding
the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it.  And
then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to
make the meaning be there again by magic.  Going through
this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this.
Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing,
and it is right.

...The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they
suddenly happen, and we can share in them, but there is
no point in building our lives on personal satisfaction,
which may be denied us and which after all is not that
important.

The next step in the process is for you to see that your
even thinking about what you are doing is crucially
important.  You are probably striving to build yourself
an identity in your work, out of your work...  You are
using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against
nothingness, annihilation.  That is not the right use of
your work.  All the good that you will do will come,
not from you but from the fact that you have allowed
yourself to be used by Love [Grace].  Think of this
more and more and gradually you will be free from
the need to prove yourself, and you can be more
open to the power that will work through you
without your knowing it.

Thomas Merton

~

"We are an instrument of Grace...
We are being played...
Keep the instrument tuned so
that Grace can play the music."

Mitch Rosacker
Self Discovery Studio

~

Photo - "The Mystery" playing :)

Silence Creates Space - Rollheiser & Jung

There's a language beyond words.
Silence creates the space for it.
Sometimes when we feel powerless to speak words
that are meaningful, when we have to back off into
unknowing and helplessness, but remain in the
situation, silence creates the space that's needed
for a deeper happening to occur.

Ron Rollheiser
from - The Healing Place of Silence

~

Silence is for me a fount of healing
which makes my life worth living.
Talking is often a torment for me,
and I need many days of silence
to recover from the futility of words.

C.G. Jung

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

What Calls the Eye to See - Adyashanti

What calls the ear to listen or the eye to see
more than the surface facade that shrouds our essential spirit?
Parting the strata and dross, what is essential picks its way
through the manicured narrative of endless lives.  In each
moment of every day, Truth is not lacking or held in
abeyance for some later date; it is given in full measure,
and abundantly so.  Do not be afraid of what appears to be
chaos or dissolution - embrace the full measure of your life
at any cost.  Bare your heart to the Unknown and never
look back.  What you are stands content, invisible,
and everlasting.  All means have been provided for our
endless folly to split open into eternal delight.

Adyashanti
2012

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Storm Cloud at Sunset

Our Fundamental Nature - Zen Master Daehaeng

The invisible energy of the Universe
is our Fundamental Nature, our underlying Essence,
the True Self, the Mind of the mind.  It is the
Essence that moves us; is not separate from the
"false self".  Our "True Self" is the basis of the "false self."
 There is nothing that is not my-self.
If I know something, the Universe knows it; nothing
is secret.  "The work" is to experience this True Nature
for yourself; to completely rely upon our True Nature,
our inherent Nature.

Entrust everything that confronts you, both good
and bad, to that Fundamental Inherent Nature.

~

Truth does not depend upon the existence of the
teachings of an "enlightened" person.

~

Inside death, life already exists.  And inside life,
death already exists.
Death is just putting on a new set of clothes.

Zen Master Daehaeng

Korean Buddhist

Excerpts from - No River To Cross

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

Let everything touch your Heart
and see how your view of the world changes.

MM

The World in Different Light - Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent.  The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Lisel Mueller
1924-2020

Original title - "Monet Refuses Operation"

"Her poems are 'a testament to the miraculous power
of language to interpret and transform our world'
and 'a testament that invites readers to share her vision
of experiences we all have in common: sorrow,
tenderness, desire, the revelations of art, and
mortality - 'the hard dry smack of death against the glass'"
(Washington Post)

Lisel Mueller was a German born American Poet.
Her family fled the Nazi regime in 1939 when she was 15.
She worked as a translator and academic teacher.  She
began writing poetry in the 1950's, publishing her first
collection in 1965.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
street light through ice on window...

Grief as passageway of the Soul - Matt Licata

Grief is not something we "get over" by following pre-prescribed
stages, but a partner that we dance, play, honor, argue and weep
with as the cycles unfold.  It's appearance and the ways it longs
to be tended are unique for each psyche, heart, and nervous
system.

The timeline for this voyage is not knowable by the psychiatric
community, nor by insurance panels, or teachers of spirituality,
but is birthed in the heavens.  To rush, force, or pathologize
the experience of grief is to work against nature.

The grieving process [for all forms of loss] may not have an
endpoint or state of completion in which we come to some final
resolution, where we "finish" and land in some untouchable [more
spiritual] place, free from our embodied vulnerability, somatic
aliveness, and from falling apart and breaking open yet again.

While some may hold this fantasied end state as a goal which
comes about as we "master" [or "spiritualize"] life, the heart is
not interested in mastery.  But in entering the mystery in more
subtle and sensitive ways.

The heart itself is endless, and the visitors of grief may companion
us in their various forms for a lifetime.  Not come to harm, but
to reveal a portal into depth.  Shifting shapes, circulating, and
rotating, as they open and close passageways in the landscape of
the soul.

Grief is not so much a process that we "make it through", but a non-
linear unfolding, shepherd and emissary of the unknown.  It moves
not by way of straight line, but by that of circle and spiral.

Matt Licata

~

It is not an error
that you have been born
 a sensitive human being,
with a tender nervous system
and a heart that is sometimes
broken.

The tenderness there,
the shakiness, the grief...

not an error
to be remedied

or cured...

[or spiritually bypassed]

But a doorway to Essence,
a portal to Life.

Matt Licata

Why We Fear Death - J. Krishnamurti

Questioner: The fact that death stares everybody in the face,
yet its mystery is never solved.  Must it always be so?

Krishnamurti:  Why is there fear of death?
When we cling to continuity, there is the fear of death.

There is fear of death as long there is the desire for
continuity [of the] character, in action, in capacity, in the
name, and so on.  As long as there is action seeking a result,
there must be the thinker who is seeking continuity.  Fear comes
into being when this continuity is threatened through death.

So, there is fear of death as long as there is the desire for
continuity.

Death, the state of non-continuity, the state of rebirth, is the
unknown.  Death is the unknown.  The mind, which is the
result of continuity, cannot know the unknown.  It can only know
the known.  It can only act and have its being in the known,
which is continuous.  So the known is in fear of the unknown. 
The known can never know the unknown, and so death
remains the mystery.

Immortality is not the continuation of "me."  The me is of time,
the result of action towards an end.  So there is no relationship
between the me and that which is immortal, timeless.  We would
like to think there is a relationship, but this is an illusion.  That
which is immeasurable cannot be caught in the net of time. 

J. Krishnamurti
excerpt from a talk in Bombay in March 1948

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering