detachment

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It is a process of detachment. I am detaching from all of the activities that give my life ‘purpose’. Many small projects here in the community I am living in call to me. I know they are the type of thinks I can do and do well. The dynamic is that I step into a project, for example repairing the dishwasher door latch. Doing so I feel how that part of me that is programmed to be helpful (a very prominent part) is fed and grows. What is wrong with that, you will ask. Nothing, except…

live your lives in a very natural way – zen

 

From The Record of Master Linji

Dear Friends,

The first part of this article consists of some short passages from a text by the Zen master Linji with my comments. The second part is Linji’s complete text of #11 in The Records of Master Linji. The passages that I comment on are the ones that caught my attention most strongly. Of course, as with any text from the sages, there are many pearls to be found throughout the text. My intention is to make this text more accessible for those readers who may not know of Linji.

freedom and concentration – zen

breathing and freedom

“If you are concentrated on your breathing you will forget yourself, and if you forget yourself you will be concentrated on your breathing. I do not know which is first.”

::

Shunryu Suzuki

 

Our respiratory system is part of the involuntary nervous system and also of the voluntary nervous system. Therefore by breathing consciously with awareness we also affect our complete nervous system in a beneficial way. If our awareness is on our breathing there is no place for anything else and thus we experience relief from the hamster cage of our monkey mind.

awareness

“Awareness is primordial; it is the original state,

beginning-less, endless, un-caused, un-supported,

without parts, without change.

Consciousness is on contact,

a reflection against a surface,

a state of duality.

There can be no consciousness without awareness,

but there can be awareness

without consciousness, as in deep sleep.

Awareness is absolute,

consciousness is relative to its content;

consciousness is always of something.”

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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Into Thin Air

thin air davegoldman.net

Artwork Images Copyright Dave Goldman

We interface into this world out of nothing

Like a hand into the glove

We fit inside it like we were made for it

Made of it and we are but

We come from somewhere else

That is not this world

the diamond

Obviously all that I perceive is seamless and free of any divisions. One form flows into the next and all are interwoven in the exchange of the elements and energies. What I see is a diamond-like solid space that allows for movement within the ocean of its expanse. I can focus on the limpid openness of this living space that holds itself absolutely immobile and stable. In this way it provides the ‘platform’ for all movements.

When I focus on the movements in the space, I perceive how all things are held by the invisible Self which is Love. It allows for all dynamics to play themselves out and experience their fullness before returning to the substratum from which they came. They (and I) are like waves calming on a still day and the surface once again becomes like a mirror, reflecting only Itself in the myriad facets.

Attuning the Body-Mind

Attuning the Body-Mind Instrument

I experience a deep satisfaction in being present with the forms that surround me. This morning there was a kind of story-line in my mind from the last dream sequence before I awoke that is a kind of mental space. In that state it is a welcome relief to bring my focus of attention to my body, which is the form that my awareness is closest to. My body is an instrument for experience, and thus, my experience can be fuzzy and disjointed or focused and coherent.

Intelligent Infinity – Intrinsic Order

Journal Entry – October 30, 2014

In the purity of the early morning air the white Egret-like birds fly from tree to tree. The neighborhood rooster crows a perfect song as the late October sun peeks through the top branches of the cedars into our garden. The young man in the house just beyond the garden wall is speaking with his grandmotherly mother and then begins to sing a sweet song. It sounds like one of the modern Arab pop songs one hears on the radio and it is a pleasant song that reminds me of folk songs of the 60’s. It is touching that he sings so unselfconsciously in his beautiful melodic voice, full of affection, almost like he is singing to his mother. It is all the more poignant for me to hear this sweetness, as oftentimes one hears the sounds of emotionally agitated (and even angry voices) from this family, especially when the father enters the scene. Today, however, it seems to be peaceful and gentle over there and this tenderness is part of the tenderness of the land itself at this early hour, before the North African sun reaches its full strength.

On the background of this setting, the following thoughts arose in my mind.

Godhead and I

Go With The Flow
Sunita Anand

“The invitation is always to stop – to stop the projections, internally and externally, to stop what you imagine other people are projecting. You stop it all. It’s a hall of mirrors and it gets scary when it’s believed in. But when you stop, and you’re very still, there’s nothing happening.” Gangaji

Godhead: from Middle English godhede, “godhood”, and unrelated to the modern word “head” source

This term “godhood” points to what I often call the creative Force or First Principle energy, capitalized to signify the highest conceivable force or principle.

real awareness: true observation – Krishnamurti

This post is a continuation of yesterday’s post and is a further excerpt from Krishnamurti’s answers at a talk in Amsterdam on May 11, 1969. Here he pinpoints the key to true observation.