eternal spectators
"On one dark winter day when the wind was blowing violently outside, people were talking in a room. Then, a bird entered the room through one window and flew out of it through another window. Where did the bird come from and where did it go? The people in the room agreed that human life was exactly like that."
- Kitaro Nishida
"A fish goes and it looks like a fish. A bird flies and it is like a bird. Looks like or is like is the only thing we can say about our recognition of the things of this world. There is only appearance, phenomenal appearance. What we are perceiving here and now is all there is in this world. If we see a thing that looks like a fish, we call it a fish. Maybe it is not a fish. But if we think it is a fish, it is a fish. If we see a thing that looks like a bird, we call it a bird. Maybe it is not a bird. But if we think it is a bird, it is a bird."
- Dogen
"The greatest happiness for us human beings is to understand what we can understand and then, having done so, humbly praise what we cannot understand."
- Goethe
"O for a life of sensations rather than thoughts."
- John Keats
Had subtle marvelous mystic penetration
A depth that cannot be known.
It is exactly because that they are unknowable
That we are forced to pay attention to their appearance.
Hesitant, like one crossing an ice-covered river.
Ready, like one afraid of his neighbors on all sides.
Dignified, like a guest.
Loose, like ice about to melt.
Straightforward, like an uncarved block of wood.
Open, like a valley.
Obscure, like muddy water.
Who can be muddled, and use clarity to gradually become lucid?
Who can be calm, and use constant application for eventual success?
The one who holds to this path does not crave fulfillment.
Precisely because he does not crave fulfillment
He can be shattered
And do without quick restitution."
- Tao Te Ching
Each of us limitless
Each of us here as divinely as any is here."
- Walt Whitman
"The major and almost the only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with 'God': the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called 'man' against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him. The stubbornness of the struggle, the tenacity of the little spark in its fight to penetrate the age-old, boundless night and conquer it."
"Some crackpots search for God, thinking perhaps he lurks somewhere amid the branches of the flesh and mind; some squander precious life, chasing the empty air; some, still more pigeon-brained, think they've already found him and work on his compassion with their begging whines till their minds break from too much joy or too much pain. But others, great brain-archers, know the secret well: by God is meant to hunt God through the empty air!"
- Nikos Kazantzakis
You are already that which you are seeking.
All that it requires to know this
is giving up the struggle.
It is so simple.
And when I say giving up the struggle,
it doesn't mean you don't get stressed anymore.
This is so simple,
so undeniable.
Emotions coming and going are not a problem.
Strong emotions come
and disappear again,
strong thoughts come
and disappear again.
There is only one tiny thing
that could possibly create a problem
in any of that,
and it's such a tiny thing,
you can pop it with a tiny pin.
The only tiny thing that could interfere
with everything being natural and relaxed
is the idea that
you shouldn't have this stuff going on.
That tiny idea,
"I shouldn't have this emotion,
I shouldn't have this thought."
creates this wall within yourself
and then the sense of presence is lost.
The thoughts coming and the emotions coming
are not a problem.
What is a thought?
It is an imaginary object.
It is something that does not exist,
It has no power.
Something that is imaginary
has no power over you.
The only power it could possibly have
is that you go into resistance.
If you fantasize that the object is real,
you could suffer.
But the imaginary object itself
will never hurt you.
How can something you have already recognized
to be an illusionary object affect you,
except if you resist it?
A thought cannot hurt you.
A thought cannot touch you,
It has no power over you.
Beyond this
What is left
that is real
to hurt you
in this moment?
- Arjuna
"My brother used to ask the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless but it is right; for all is like the ocean, all things flow and touch each other; a disturbance in one place is felt at the other end of the world. It may be folly to beg forgiveness of the birds, but the birds would be happier at your side - a little happier anyway - and children and all animals, if yourself were nobler than you are now. It's all like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds, too, consumed by an all embracing love in a sort of transport and pray that they will forgive you your sin. Prize this ecstasy, however senseless it may seem to men."
- Dostoyevski
The Brothers Karamazov
looking upon, never from, the place itself.
We are the essence of it. We construct it.
It falls apart. We reconstruct it
and fall apart ourselves.
To quit half learned habits.
To view roses and their kind
no more in human terms.
To be no more a babe in arms
that ever fear to drop you.
To leave the name you are
known by like a child leaves
a broken toy.
Strange to desire nothing.
Strange to watch the
known world dissolve.
Death is very difficult.
Lost time is painfully
reconstructed until the
struggle yields some
slight glimmer of eternity.
The living are mistaken
in their distinctions-
angels often do not know
whether they walk among
the quick or the dead.
So 'tis said.
The storm of eternity roars;
all voices drown in its thunder.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
world with their whole eyes.
But our eyes, turned back upon
themselves, encircle and
seek to snare the world,
setting traps for freedom.
The faces of the beasts
show what truly IS to us:
we who up-end the infant and
force its sight to fix upon
things and shapes, not the
freedom that they occupy,
that openness which lies so deep
within the faces of the animals,
free from death!
We alone face death.
The beast, death behind and
God before, moves free through
eternity like a river running.
Never for one day do we
turn from forms to face
that place of endless purity
blooming flowers forever know.
Always a world for us, never
the nowhere minus the no:
that innocent, unguarded
space which we could breathe,
know endlessly, and never require.
A child, at times, may lose
himself within the stillness
of it, until rudely ripped away.
Or one dies and IS the place.
As death draws near,
one sees death no more, rather
looks beyond it with, perhaps,
the broader vision of the beasts.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness . . . we all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream."
- William James
"For my part, when I consider that in dreams I do not often nor constantly think of the same persons, places, objects, and actions that I do waking, nor remember so long a train of coherent thoughts dreaming as at other times; and because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that, being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake."
- Thomas Hobbes
"You laugh at your dream's absurdities, and at the same time you feel that in the fabric of those absurdities some thought is hidden, but a thought that is real, something belonging to your actual life, something that exists and has always existed in your heart."
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
"Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the discussion, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way."
- W.H. Murray
The Scottish Himalayan Expedition
- Dogen
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be one with all things.
To be one with all things is to be enlightened by all things,
and this traceless enlightenment continues forever."
- Dogen
"You will scale mountains and sail seas searching for a true teacher and seeking the Way of reality. When you sincerely seek a guide, spiritual benefactors and teachers of the Way descend from heaven and gush out of the earth. At the place where you contact them, they evoke expressions of sentient beings and insentient beings that you hear with the body and hear with the mind. If you listen with your ears, it is the household's everyday tea and meals. But when the eye hears sounds, it is the unconditioned. When you see Buddhas, you see Buddhas in your self and Buddhas in others, large Buddhas and small Buddhas. Don’t be surprised or frightened by large Buddhas, don’t feel put off by small Buddhas."
- Dogen
"This is what you are to hold fast to yourself - the sympathy and companionship of the unseen worlds. No doubt it is best for us now that they should be unseen. It cultivates in us that higher perception that we call faith. But who can say that time will not come when, even to those who live here upon earth, the unseen worlds shall no longer be unseen?"
- Phillips Brooks
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"It is important for you at this time that you grow into yourself. The opportunity only exists for a limited period. Love yourself deeply. In you sits something magnificent. Remember yourself. Do not be afraid. You have no need to be afraid. Stand in your light. Settle down in yourself. Humility only exists when you sit in the right place in yourself. Humility comes with loving yourself, accepting yourself. You all have much to offer from inside yourselves."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Form is emptiness, emptiness form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. They're all empty forms. See the emptiness of perceptions, even what they're showing us. See through them to what is really there. Things aren't what they seem."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"All you can do is this: Whatever you experience, whether tangible or intangible, look underneath the experience, like a child looking for a lizard under a stone. You're not expecting anything to be there, but you're always wondering if there might be."
- Richard Leviton
that always, despite
our aspirations, we wave
as though departing?
Like one lingering to look,
from a high final hill,
out over the valley he
intends to leave forever,
we spend our lives saying
goodbye."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
from The Eighth Duino Elegy
"Our karma impels us to float along the current of time. During this journey we pass countless islands - other individual souls who are also impelled by karma. While we are together we become attached to each other, and due to our attachments we try to linger, but everyone is caught in karmic whirlpools - the cycle of birth, struggling for survival, and, eventually, death - and being born again into the same cycle. It leads us nowhere. We go around in circles. The life we are now living - the circumstances surrounding us - is the direct result of karma.
The word karma means 'action'. All of our actions are karmas. Present actions turn into completed actions, and then they no longer exist in their gross form, but the result of the action manifests sooner or later. Both the action and the result are stored in their subtle forms in the unconscious mind.
Any action we perform - whether mental, verbal or physical - creates a subtle impression in our unconscious mind. When we continually repeat the same action these impressions are strengthened until they become very powerful, creating strong currents within us, and we are swept into performing actions that match these impressions. This cycle - actions creating impressions, which in turn drive our actions - is the law of karma.
You must understand that every karma, to some degree, contains inherent misery. True knowledge lies not in knowing your karmas but rather in knowing their inherent nature.
Active karmas determine when, where, and how we will be born; how long we live in that body; and what major events we will face in that lifetime. In the journey of many lifetimes we have stored the impressions of all kinds of karmas, and it is possible to awaken any of them and allow them to manifest in the present.
There is nothing in our destiny that we ourselves did not create. The results of actions we performed long ago have manifested as our current destiny, just as the actions we are performing today will manifest as our future destiny."
- Pandit Rajmani Tigunait
get rid of your bad karma afterwards."
- Ummon
"Your experience of physical reality is based on limitation. What seems most solid, most unbudgeable, seems most real. You define and direct your life within the constraints you observe and choose to believe in. Because the range of your experience and action is determined by what you think is possible, impossibility actually shapes your reality. It is impossibility that tells you what the limits to physical life are and where you can expect to find them.
Your personality is the aspect of yourself that has adapted to physical reality. It listens to limitation and sees to it that you live according to the restrictions. Your personality's basic job is to control your unlimitedness and act as your navigator through the limited realm of physical form. Your body's job is to hold your vibration of consciousness within a certain range that reflects the vibrational range of physical reality and the collective physical consciousness. Your physical body quite literally allows you to be here - but it is more than just a physical container - it's vibrations precisely match the vibrations of consciousness prevailing in the physical realm. Your body also matches the vibration, or energy, of the physical earth. All of this serves to hold your focus here.
Your consciousness has also been bombarded with mental, emotional, and experiential conditioning as you grew up in a culture that reflected to you, over and over, instructions about the reality of the collective consciousness of the physical plane. As you were fed this information you were pressured to adopt it as your operative reality so that you would remain fully present in the physical realm. Thus, having forgotten your unity, you see yourself as completely separate from others rather than deeply connected to them; having forgotten that all things are truly possible, you experience life as a struggle against difficult odds.
As children we allow ourselves to be molded to the cultural consciousness to achieve the human bonding that we need. Year by year, the rigidity of the personality is reinforced. Your personality is acclimated to the limited consciousness of physical form and accepts it as reality.
In your personality's experience, there are limits to everything. And since your identity in the physical world is with your personality, your personality's reality is most real to you in your everyday life. Whatever you choose to identify with is what will be most real.
You have unlimited ability to create in physical reality. The fact is that you are involved in the creation of physical reality all the time. At this very moment, just by being who you are, you are creating the next moment and the next and the next. Your experience of self is what creates every aspect of your life.
Everything is energy. Physical matter is energy. Thoughts are energy. Feelings are energy. Every image, thought, feeling, and belief you consciously or unconsciously hold about yourself carries a specific energy pattern to it. These energy patterns are complex and very real. Collectively they make up your experience of self, which is your inner reality. This ongoing inner reality creates the outer reality you live with everyday.
Your specific energy patterns extend outward from your body and link your inner experience of self with the outer world, the physical world, where they take form - or manifest - as your life. These energy patterns create all your outer experiences - situations, relationships, prosperity, and your responses to them. So everything you encounter in life is a reflection of your inner experience of yourself. Your experience of everyone and everything is a mirror for you, and it is also subject to change as your experience of yourself changes. Whatever you emanate you will encounter. You alter your patterns of outer manifestation by altering your inner experience of self. Nothing that you manifest in physical reality is important in and of itself, it is all there purely as your reflection for learning and growth.
Every person, thing, and situation you encounter is symbolic of some aspect of you. The sole purpose of manifesting anything is simply to make your experience of self real in physical reality. At some level you have wanted or needed every experience you have encountered."
- Pandit Rajmani Tigunait
that we are all more than we appear to be."
- Martha Nelson
"You need a certain deconditioning of attitude - of rigidity and unyieldingness - so that you can get to the heart of your own thought. It's the Buddhist idea of renunciation of hand-me-down conditioned conceptions of mind. You're not responsible any more than you're responsible for the weather, because you can't tell in advance what you're going to think next.
How do you interpret a thing? Don't treat it indirectly or symbolically - look directly at it and choose spontaneously that aspect of it which is most immediately striking - the striking flash in consciousness or awareness, the most vivid, what sticks out in your mind.
You can't go back and change the sequence of the thoughts you had; you can't revise the process of thinking or deny what was thought, but thought obliterates itself anyway. You don't have to worry about that, you can go on to the next thought.
If you can truly be aware of where you are at this moment and experience everything there is to experience within this moment of space and time called now, then you are seeing into your natural self. And in Zen lingo, to see into our natural self means to use it - to put it into action.
Natural self is what remains when you still your mind and ignore all the images of personality. Natural self relies only on experience and awareness in its interaction with the world. Through experience and awareness you gain access to your natural ability, and through further experience and awareness you gain confidence in your natural ability, until, finally, you are that ability. Experience and awareness may, in fact, be all that natural self is. No one is quite sure what natural self happens to be. Like a virtual particle in physics, it cannot be seen, only inferred.
Everything you see is imbued with endless memories and associations, things that originate solely inside your head and color your perceptions. These images dilute your awareness, take you out of the immediate experience of your surroundings. We live inside a sphere or bubble, and its inside surface is as smooth and polished as a mirror, and what we witness on its round walls is our own reflection. The reflection is our view of the world. The view is first a description, which is given to us from the moment of our birth until all our attention is caught by it and the description becomes the view, and you forget that, in truth, you are living in a multidimensional reality where things are happening on every conceivable level.
Because the mind's capacity to think is so brilliant, we tend to be dazzled by it and fail to notice other attributes and functions. There is more to the mind than reason alone. There is awareness itself, and intuitive awareness which links us most intimately to the universe. Albert Einstein said, "My understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe did not come out of my rational mind."
We find ourselves primarily in our own thoughts and the concepts our mind comes up with start to act as a screen that preselects information. One thought rules out another. One of the results of all this mental activity is that there's less room. The mind tries to do too many things at once. It's difficult to know which mental vectors are useful and which are distractions. There is a continuous stream of thoughts going on all the time. They just keep on coming. They arise in the form of sensations, feelings, memories, anticipations, and speculations."
- John Welwood
Ordinary Magic - Everyday Life as Spiritual Path
In the moment that we become aware that our thoughts
are just thoughts, rather than reality itself,
we wake up from their spell.
We are not enslaved by our thoughts -
by how our mind interprets reality."
- John Welwood
"A hologram is a three-dimensional image. When an object is illuminated, the light is scattered off in random directions, like ripples spreading out on water. These ripples interfere with each other depending on the shape of the object and the wavelengths of the light. Holograms became possible with the invention of the laser, because lasers emit light that is coherent - it is all vibrating in the same direction at once. An object is illuminated with a laser beam that is split in two - one half is bounced off the object and the other half is reflected back to meet it. The two beams make interference patterns that can be stored on a photographic plate. When light illuminates the plate, the three-dimensional image is reconstituted and seems to appear again in space.
Holograms have the interesting property of remaining whole - even if part of the hologram is cut away. It becomes fuzzy because information has been lost, but the image is degraded all over rather than in just the missing part. It's a blurred image but it is still a whole image.
Human memory works like a hologram. Memories are not stored in specific locations, they are distributed all over the brain. Removing or damaging part of the brain only weakens learned associations, it doesn't remove some and leave others intact. In other words, the images remain whole, they just get fuzzy or blurry.
Mystical experience works like a hologram, revealing that we live in a constructed world, that all the objects of our familiar experience are constructed holographically by our brains. The ordinary world of appearances is not self-existing fact. We illuminate our own existence with the light of our awareness, and reflected back are the three-dimensional images that we perceive as physical reality."
- Susan Blackmore
Dying to Live
we should never understand one another."
- Rudolf Steiner
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