insights for May 2015

IMG_4422

Awakening:

People wonder "What to do?" "What are my best next steps?" "Where is my passion." And today I read this - great insight - you "do your dharma" - you "do" your life - live your life in meditative, loving presence.

"In your daily life, how do you become an instrument of social change? You become in yourself the statement of love, the statement of choiceless awareness, you become the moment so that everyone that comes near you is liberated by your presence if they are ready. You do nothing to anybody. You live your life. Which life do you live? Whatever your dharma demands. If your work is to protest the injustice of races, you protest. If your work is to raise a family, you raise a family. If your work is to be a good lawyer, you're a good lawyer. If your work is to be a shoemaker, you're a shoemaker. If your work is to meditate in a cave, you meditate in a cave. No blame, no reward. You do your dharma. Each act you do you do as a vehicle for becoming this meditative, loving, present moment. This statement of love, the statement of choiceless awareness. You become the moment." Ram Dass, Love Serve Remember

"There are no 'them' in the universe, there is only 'us'. And we as a collective must purify ourselves. Each individual must hear her or his dharma, that is the way in which their manifestation must come forth in order to relieve suffering in whatever form it takes. Until you are enlightened it must be an exercise in working on your own consciousness." Ram Dass, Love Serve Remember

“When we are willing to step into the unknown and its inherent insecurity, and not run back to anything for cover or for comfort – when we are willing to stand as if facing an oncoming wind and not wince – we can finally face our actual self.” Adyashanti

“So let us understand that reality transcends all of our notions about reality. Reality is neither Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Advaita Vedanta, nor Buddhist. It is neither dualistic not non-dualistic, neither spiritual nor nonspiritual. We should come to know that there is more reality and sacredness in a blade of grass than in all of our thoughts and ideas about reality.” Adyashanti

A great article on letting go - the basis of awakening - at each stage of awakening. Let go. Here is how to understand it. http://www.lionsroar.com/four-points-for-letting-go-bardo/?utm_source=Shambhala+Sun+Community&utm_campaign=ce42fb0661-SF_Weekly_May_12_20155_12_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1988ee44b2-ce42fb0661-21586533

“Wisdom is not merely something to be gained with old age. One can be wise in every stage of ones life. To manifest wisdom means simply to step back and see, to reflect, inquire, be aware, be disciplined, and be focused not once in a while, but all of the time, moment to moment. This life is precious and fleeting. Pay attention.” Seido Ray Ronci, The Examined Life.

Something to remember when you say "No no no.” "Question: I’d like to know about forgiveness as a bridge between the separate self and the awakened soul.

Ram Dass: That’s a nice way of phrasing the question. It’s a step on a ladder that goes from dualism into non-dualism. Because as you forgive or allow or acknowledge or say “Of course you’re human” or “We all do that” or something, you open your heart again which embraces the person or the situation back into you, which allows the play. See, every time you close off something with judgment, it’s as if you take a bit of energy and you lock it away and make it unavailable to you. Until pretty soon you are exhausted. You don’t have any energy, because you are so busy.

I often visualize it as having little doors inside your head. You’re holding a grudge — and so every time you think of that person your heart closes down. It’s as if you’ve got a little room with a guard at it that doesn’t allow you to flow freely. And they’re all the no’s of life — the no, no, no, no, no. It’s an emotional “no” against the world — against the Universe — against the way the Universe is. As opposed to “yes”. We’ve been telling you how to say no without closing your heart, but the no I’m talking about is the heart-closing no. It’s the judging, grudge, non-forgiving no. And it costs more than it’s worth. Even though you are right, righteousness ultimately starves you to death." Ram Dass, Love Serve Remember

“Dismiss all the thoughts which bother your mind. Train yourself during many days, many months, many years, to retain this pure mind. One day, when your empty mind has become crystallized, suddenly it will be illumined by its own intrinsic wisdom. At that instant you will realize the state of pure awakening.” Sokei-an, Returning to Your Original State"

One idea that really hampers us is to believe that people get 'enlightened,' and then they’re that way forever and ever. We may have our moments, and if we get sick and have lots of things happening, we may fall back. But a person who practices consistently over years and years is more that way, more of the time, all the time. And that’s enough. There is no such thing as getting it." Charlotte Joko Beck, "Life's Not A Problem" Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

“You can always count on reality to be there.

Everything is just perspective and there are endless perspectives.

We run from parts of ourselves until it doesn’t work anymore and you can stop your running when you realize you are living in vast immenseness.

Life has a desire to become more self aware, and self-awareness is infinite.” Adyashanti Portland Satsang, March 20, 2015

“One idea that really hampers us is to believe that people get ‘enlightened,’ and then they’re that way forever and ever. WE may have our moments, and if we get sick and have lots of things happening, we may fall back. But a person who practices consistently over years and years is more that way, more of the time, all the time. And that’s enough. There is not such thing as getting it.” Charlotte Joko Beck, "Life's Not A Problem" via Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

"Your spirit is not afraid.

His life never quite matched his spirit, and so his purpose got diluted (in reference to his alcoholic grandfather.)

Your spirit is waiting for you to take advantage of the possibilities.

Embrace your spirit.” Speech, TEDxPortland 2015

“Live in the gap between the mind’s stories, and the mind will come to see that being in harmony with life is far easier and more benevolent than living in opposition to it.” ~ Adyashanti

Meditation:

"The fact that breath has no form is one of the reasons why breath awareness is an extremely effective way of bringing space into your life, of generating consciousness. It is an excellent meditation object precisely because it is not an object, has no shape or form." Eckhart Tolle

"There are many ways to create a gap in the incessant stream of thought. This is what meditation is all about." Eckhart Tolle

Grief:

"In bereavement, we come to appreciate at the deepest, most felt level exactly what it means to die while we are still alive. The Tibetan term bardo, or “intermediate state,” is not just a reference to the afterlife. It also refers more generally to these moments when gaps appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives. In American culture, we sometimes refer to this as having the rug pulled out from under us, or feeling ungrounded. These interruptions in our normal sense of certainty are what is being referred to by the term bardo. But to be precise, bardo refers to that state in which we have lost our old reality and it is no longer available to us.

Anyone who has experienced this kind of loss knows what it means to be disrupted, to be entombed between death and rebirth. We often label that a state of shock. In those moments, we lose our grip on the old reality and yet have no sense what a new one might be like. There is no ground, no certainty, and no reference point—there is, in a sense, no rest. This has always been the entry point in our lives for religion, because in that radical state of unreality we need profound reasoning—not just logic, but something beyond logic, something that speaks to us in a timeless, nonconceptual way. Milarepa referred to this disruption as a great marvel, singing from his cave, “The precious pot containing my riches becomes my teacher in the very moment it breaks.”

This is the Vajrayana idea behind successive deaths and rebirths, and it is the first essential point to understand: rupture. The more we learn to recognize this sense of disruption, the more willing and able we will be to let go of this notion of an inherent reality and allow that precious pot to slip out of our hands. Rupture is taking place all the time, day to day and moment to moment; in fact, as soon as we see our life in terms of these successive deaths and rebirths, we dissolve the very idea of a solid self grasping onto an inherently real life. We start to see how conditional who-I-am-ness really is, how even that does not provide reliable ground upon which to stand.

At times like this, if we can gain freedom from the eternal grasping onto who I am and how things are—our default mode—then we can get to the business of being. Until now, we have been holding on to the idea of an inherent continuity in our lives, creating a false sense of comfort for ourselves on artificial ground. By doing so, we have been missing the very flavor of what we are." http://www.lionsroar.com/four-points-for-letting-go-bardo/?utm_source=Shambhala+Sun+Community&utm_campaign=ce42fb0661-SF_Weekly_May_12_20155_12_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1988ee44b2-ce42fb0661-21586533

About trauma: “Trauma – take baby steps to step out of it.” Adyashanti Portland Satsang March 20, 2015