Face the troubles but keep yourself steady in meditation

Mrs. and Mr. Kelly, an elderly couple from America, and others of their company desired to know what they should do to gain concentration in the face of discomfort of sitting and the sting of mosquitoes, etc.

M.: The discomforts will not worry you if your concentration is right. Do not mind the discomforts. Keep your mind steady in meditation.

If you do not have the strength and endurance to bear mosquito stings, how do you hope to gain realization of the Self? Realization must be amidst all the turmoil of life. If you make yourself comfortable and go to bed, you fall asleep. Face the troubles, but keep yourself steady in meditation.

Think of the Self despite the mosquitoes or toothache. It needs strength, but one must be a hero to gain realization.

Sri Ramana Maharshi

– Talk 150

Bound to change

 

In our delusion, we see things as being permanent and truly self-existing. But in reality phenomena are impermanent, and devoid of any true substantial existence. We want to believe that our friends, partner, wealth and influence will all endure, but by nature they are bound to change. It is therefore senseless to be so preoccupied with them.

– Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book ”The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva”

Rather than being trapped by your perceptions

We are naturally attached to comfort and pleasure and bothered by physical and mental suffering. These innate tendencies lead us to seek out, maintain and try to increase whatever gives us pleasure comfortable clothing, delicious food, agreeable places, sensual pleasure – and to avoid or destroy whatever we find unpleasant or painful. Constantly changing and devoid of any true essence, these sensations rest on the ephemeral association of the mind with the body, and it is useless to be attached to them. Rather than being dragged along and trapped by your perceptions, just let them dissolve as soon as they form, like letters traced on the surface of water with your finger disappearing as you draw them.

– Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book ”The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most”

Self-limitation is the only problem

Q: What makes me limited and superficial?

M: The total is open and available, but you will not take it. You are attached to the little person you think yourself to be. Your desires are narrow, your ambitions — petty. After all, without a center of perception where would be the manifested? Unperceived, the manifested is as good as the unmanifested. And you are the perceiving point, the non-dimensional source of all dimensions. Know yourself as the total.

Q: How can a point contain a universe?

M: There is enough space in a point for an infinity of universes. There is no lack of capacity. Self-limitation is the only problem. But you cannot run away from yourself. However far you go, you come back to yourself and to the need of understanding this point, which is as nothing and yet the source of everything.

– Nisargadatta, I AM THAT ch 70

What is the ego?

What is the ego?
Enquire.
The body is insentient and cannot say ’I’.
The Self is pure consciousness and non-dual. It cannot say ’I’.
No one says ’I’ in sleep.
What is the ego then?
It is something intermediate between the inert body and the Self.
It has no locus standi.
If sought for it vanishes like a ghost.
At night a man may imagine that there is a ghost by his side because of the play of shadows.
If he looks closely he discovers that the ghost is not really there, and what he imagined to be a ghost was merely a tree or a post.
If he does not look closely the ghost may terrify him.
All that is required is to look closely and the ghost vanishes.
The ghost was never there.
So also with the ego.

Bhagavan

This body is not me

This body is not me.
I am not limited by this body.
I am life without boundaries.
I have never been born,
and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,
sacred thresholds on our journey.
Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

So laugh with me,
hold my hand,
let us say good-bye,
say good-bye, to meet again soon.

We meet today.
We will meet again tomorrow.
We will meet at the source every moment.
We meet each other in all forms of life.

~ Thích Nhất Hạnh

The Slip

In April 1950 Bhagavan was very ill; yet even in this state of utter prostration when unable to sit up, he insisted that all who had come for his ”darshan” must be allowed to have their desire fulfilled. So they were allowed to pass in a queue in front of the room where he was lying.

There were always, many people in the queue and it was so long that a person had not more than a second or two for his darshan.

Even these silent marches past were not without some incident or other, to show how compassionate and alert Bhagavan was.

One timid devotee who was never known to have talked to Bhagavan or to sit in the half anywhere except in the back rows, summoned up courage to throw a slip of paper at the feet of Bhagavan, as he passed along. Bhagavan took the slip, read it and asked for the person to be brought. The attendants fetched him before Bhagavan as though he were a culprit to be reprimanded for breaking discipline. Sri Bhagavan looked him full in the face with a broad and benign smile and nodded assent.

The slip contained the words ”Bhagavan! Save me.”

Vi måste alla boxa färdigt med våra skuggor

De flesta inser detta, men vi gör ändå allt för att undvika det.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.

– Carl Jung

Sökandet efter vår inre Pingvin

Vi kan förstå sökandet efter något större än oss själva – vi kan också läsa in något som inte finns. Vi gör alla vårt eget val, i sökandet efter vår andliga pingvin..  🐧

Obs, ironi. Jag myser av att höra Werner Herzog, men internet svämmar över av andliga pingviner.

Only in relationship can you know yourself

Krishnamurti hade ett blixtrande skarpt intellekt. Han menade att för att nå självkännedom så krävs relationer. Detta är spegeln, allt du är framstår i mötet.

Men se också vad det kan mynna ut i. Vi ska inte stanna. Fortsätt till sann självkännedom: ”Negating without resistance this content of consciousness is the beauty and compassion intelligence.

Only in relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation. — Krishnamurti

Context: Only in relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation. Even in a monastery, you are related to the society which has made the monastery as an escape, or closed the doors to freedom. The movement of behaviour is the sure guide to yourself; it is the mirror of your consciousness. This mirror will reveal its content, the images, the attachments, the fears, the loneliness, the joy and the sorrow. Poverty lies in the running away from this, either in its sublimations or in its identities. Negating without resistance this content of consciousness is the beauty and compassion intelligence.

From The Beauty of Life: Krishnamurti’s Journal