abandoning the self-center

 

 

 

 

 ~ Joseph Goldstein

 

 

when you speak

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Pay attention when you speak the rest of the time, the best you're able, 

and listen to your heart. See if you can begin practicing 

letting your words come from your heart.

 

 A good clue for this is if you're in a conversation that lasts more than five minutes, 

so you've been talking for awhile, pause, or wake up for a second

 in the middle of it, and ask inside, "Now, what does my heart really want to say?" 

You're having this conversation. "What's in there that really wants to be said?

 Maybe I won't see this person ever again. What do I really want to say?" 

That can begin to empower your speech, to transform it 

from automatic pilot to the place where you start to wake up.

 It's fantastic. It's really wonderful to work with.


Most of us value integrity. It really lights up the heart

 to think about living in a way that comes from inside, 

where our actions, our words, and our inner being are connected. 

It's very precious. In the Buddhist tradition they're given as training precepts,

 training precepts which we practice. It's not some God -- given law that we must follow,

 but precepts which we begin to practice -- 

to begin to learn to live our life from our hearts, 

to live our life, as I said, with an uprightness of heart.

 


~ Carlos Castaneda

abandon yourself

People say: "O Lord, how much I wish that I stood as well with God,

 that I had as much devotion and peace in God as others have. 

 I wish that it were so with me!"  Or "I should like to be poor." or else
Things will never go right for me till I am in this place or that,

 or till I act one way or another.  I must go and live in a strange land, 

or in a hermitage, or in a cloister."  

In fact, this is all about yourself, and nothing else at all.  

This is just self-will, only you do not know it, or it does not seem so to you. 

 There is never any trouble that starts in you that does not come from your own will,

 whether people see this or not.  We can think what we like:

 that a man ought to shun one thing or pursue another -

 places and people and ways of life and environments and undertakings. 

 That is not the trouble; such ways of life or such matters are not what impedes you.

  It is what you are in these things that causes the trouble, 

because in them you do not govern yourself as you should.

Therefore, make a start with yourself, and abandon yourself. 

 Truly, if you do not begin by getting away from yourself,

 wherever you run to, you will find obstacles and trouble wherever it may be. 

 People who seek peace in external things - be it in places or ways of life

 or people or activities or solitude or poverty or degradation -

 however great such a thing may be or whatever it may be, 

still it is all nothing and it gives no peace.

 

  People who seek in that way are doing it all wrong;  

the further they wander, the less will they find what they are seeking.  

They go around like someone who has lost his way; 

 the farther he goes, the more lost he is.  

 

Then what ought he to do?  He ought to begin by forsaking himself,

 because then he has forsaken everything.  Truly, if a man renounced 

a kingdom or the whole world but held on to himself,

 he would not have renounced anything.  

What is more, if a man renounces himself, 

 whatever else he retains, riches or honors or whatever it may be,

 he has forsaken everything.  

About what Saint Peter said: "See, Lord, we have forsaken everything" (Matt. 19:27) -

 and all that he had forsaken was just a net and his little boat -

 there is a saint who says: "If anyone willingly gives up something little,

 that is not all which he has given up, but he has forsaken everything 

that worldly men can gain and what they can even long for; 

for whoever has renounced his own will and himself, has renounced everything,

 as truly as if he had possessed it as his own, to dispose of as he would."

 

 For what you choose not to long for, you have wholly forsaken and renounced

 for the love of God.  That is why our Lord said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Matt 5:3)  -

 that is, in the will.  And no one ought to be in doubt about this;

 if there were a better form of living, our Lord would have said so,

 as he also said: "Whoever wishes to come after me, let him deny himself" (Matt 16:24);

 as a beginning; everything depends on that.  

 

Take a look at yourself, 

and whenever you find yourself deny yourself.  

That is the best of all.

 

~ Meister Eckhart

from Selections from His Essential Writings,

Counsels on Discernment

unfulfilled desires

The memory of the pasts unfulfilled desires traps energy,

 which manifests itself as a person. 

When its charge gets exhausted, 

the person dies.

 Unfulfilled desires are carried over into the birth. 

Self-identification with body creates ever-fresh desires 

and there is no end to them unless 

this mechanism of bondage is clearly seen.

 It is clarity that is liberating,

 for you cannot abandon desire unless 

its causes and effects are clearly seen.

I do not say that the same person is reborn.

 It dies, 

and dies for good. 

But its memories remain 

and their desires and fears. 

They supply the energy for a new person.

~  Nisargadatta Maharaj

the winged energy of delight

.

 

As once the winged energy of delight

carried you over childhood's dark abysses,

now beyond your own life build the great

arch of unimagined bridges.

 

Wonders happen if we can succeed

in passing through the harshest danger;

but only in a bright and purely granted

achievement can we realize the wonder.

 

To work with Things in the indescribable

relationship is not too hard for us;

the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,

and being swept along is not enough.

 

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out

until they span the chasm between two

contradictions... For the god

wants to know himself in you.

 

 

 

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from uncollected poems

each is fulfilled in the other

The universe must be experienced as the Great Self. 

Each is fulfilled in the other:

 the Great Self is fulfilled in the individual self,

 the individual self is fulfilled in the Great Self.

 

 Alienation is overcome as soon as we experience this surge of energy 

from the source that has brought the universe through the centuries.

New fields of energy become available to support the human venture.

 These new energies find expression and support in celebration. 

For in the end the universe can only be explained in terms of celebration.

It is all an exuberant expression of existence itself.

~ Thomas Berry

Dalai Lama - 86th Birthday Message

 

 

 

 

 

 

compassion - radical kinship

 

 

 

 
"It is not enough to believe that compassion is important and to think about how nice it is!"

Self-centeredness inhibits our love for others,

 and we are all afflicted by it to one degree or another.

 

 For true happiness to come about, we need a calm mind,

 and such peace of mind is brought about only by a compassionate attitude. 

How can we develop this attitude? 

 

 We need to make a concerted effort to develop it; 

we must use all the events of our daily life to transform our thoughts and behavior.

Many forms of compassionate feeling are mixed with desire and attachment.

 For instance, the love parents feel for their child is often strongly associated 

with their own emotional needs, so it is not fully compassionate. 

 

Usually when we are concerned about a close friend, we call this compassion, 

but it too is usually attachment. Even in marriage, the love between husband and wife—

particularly at the beginning, when each partner still may not know the other’s 

deeper character very well—depends more on attachment than genuine love.

 

 Marriages that last only a short time do so because they lack compassion; 

they are produced by emotional attachment based on projection and expectation,

 and as soon as the projections change, the attachment disappears. 

 

Our desire can be so strong that the person to whom we are attached appears flawless,

 when in fact he or she has many faults. In addition, attachment makes us exaggerate

 small, positive qualities. When this happens, it indicates that our love is motivated

 more by personal need than by genuine care for another.

Compassion without attachment is possible. 

Therefore, we need to clarify the distinctions between compassion and attachment. 

 

True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason.

 Because of this firm foundation, a truly compassionate attitude toward others

 does not change even if they behave negatively.

 

 Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, 

but rather on the needs of the other: irrespective of whether another person 

is a close friend or an enemy.

 

 This is genuine compassion. 

For a practitioner, the goal is to develop this genuine compassion, 

this genuine wish for the well-being of another, 

in fact for every living being throughout the universe. 

 

 

~ Dalai Lama

adapted from The Compassionate Life

 art of Father Gregory Boyle from

Saint Ignatius College Prep Library

 

 

 

life's splendor

Life's splendor forever lies in wait 

about each one of us in all its fullness, 

but veiled from view, deep down,

 invisible, far off. It is there, though, 

not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. 

If you summon it by the right word, 

by its right name, it will come.

 

 

  ~ Franz Kafka

from Diaries, 1910 1923

 

 

 

I was a tiny insect

I was a tiny insect. Now a mountain.
I was left behind. Now honoured at the head.

You healed my wounded hunger and anger,

and made me a poet who sings about joy.

 

 
~ Rumi

master of dance

.

When a kid with Down’s Syndrome lumbers along

in a coat of clumsy, squinting to find

a level parade, treading mostly alone;

what do you make of this jack-of-no-trade?

 

Revulsion, compassion, empathy, fear,

anger or sadness because strangeness is near

- what do you reckon, or, what do you feel?

 

‘owbout respect for a teacher over there,

a mirror of openness, simpleness, now

enjoying a journey with others and me

as a master of dancing, exuberance,

 

and with a strange little question ‘What’s the real deal?’

like, your last day on earth, well, what will you choose

- one million dollars, a hug, celebration,

or smile?

~ John Lavan

more at real poems

.

the tongue says loneliness

The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief,

but does not feel them.

As Monday cannot feel Tuesday,

nor Thursday

reach back to Wednesday

as a mother reaches out for her found child.

As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.

Not a bell, 

but the sound of the bell in the bell-shape,

lashing full strength with the first blow from inside the iron.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

a zero between plus and minus

 

 

 

 

 

Discursive knowledge, knowledge by

Indirection passes away

And love, knowledge by direction,

Directly of another, grows

In its place. There exists a point

At which the known passes through

A sort of occulation,

A zero between plus and

Minus in which knower and known

And their knowledge cease to exist. 

Perfect love casts out knowledge.

...

 

"And what is love? said Pilate,

And washed his hands.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Kenneth Rexroth

from The Dragon and the Unicorn

 

 

 

 

vanished

.

The birds have vanished down the sky. 

Now the last cloud drains away. 

We sit together, the mountain and me, 

until only the mountain remains. 

~ Li Po (China, 701-762)

translated by Sam Hamill

from Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese

knocking

 

 

 

 

 

If there are a "chosen few"

then I am not one of them,

if an "elect," well then

I have not been elected.

I am one who is knocking

at the door.  I am one whose foot

is on the bottom rung.

But I know that Heaven's

bottom rung is Heaven

though the ladder is standing

on earth where I work

by day and at night sleep

with my head upon a stone.

 

 

 

 

~ Wendell Berry

from Leavings

 art by Wade M Flickr