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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Hafez;
"The curve of your tress is the snare of belief and unbelief. This is only a small part of its gallery of works" Abu’l-Hasan Shushtari; "Layla robbed me of my reason I said, O Layla, have mercy on [those you have] slain Her love is hidden enshrined in my bones O you who are entranced by her Humble yourself in her love I am mad with love for her and for her, I am a slave Hey, you blaming hater Lay off me for a while I camped out on her doorstep and knocked at the door I asked the doorman, “Will I ever see union with her?” He said to me, “My friend, Her dowry is your soul. How many lovers Have come to the point of loving death.” O lover If you are sincere Leave behind all else then you will win union [with her]" Alan Watts - Taoist Way; "The Buddhists say: Suffering exists, but no one who suffers. Deeds exist, but no doers are found. A path there is, but no one who follows it. And nirvāṇa is, but no one who attains it." Evelyn Waugh; "To understand all is too forgive all." Hafez; "No one has seen your face, and yet a thousand rivals hound you You are still a bud, and yet a hundred deer surround you" Ibn ‘Atā ‘Llah - Ḥikam of... - 16; "How can it be conceived that something veils Him, since He is the One who manifests everything? How can it be conceived that something veils Him since He is the one who is manifest through everything? How can it be conceived that something veils Him, since He is the One who is manifest in everything? How can it be conceived that something veils Him, since He is the Manifest to everything? How can it be conceived that something veils Him, since He was the Manifest before the existence of anything? How can it be conceived that something veils Him, since He is more manifest than anything? How can it be conceived that something veils Him, since He is the One alongside of whom there is nothing? How can it be conceived that something veils Him, since He is nearer to you than anything else? How can it be conceived that something veils Him, since, were it not for Him, the existence of everything would not have been manifest? It is a marvel how Being has manifested in nonbeing, and how the contingent has been established alongside of Him who possesses the attribute of Eternity!" Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "Leave all that is other than this love, if you are an orphaned pearl For apart from this love, you have neither family nor father In the religion of lovers, whosoever’s suffering does not make him better He is possessed of the sickness of death" Ibn al-Fāriḍ; "Every part of me kissed her veil With every mouth whose touch held every kiss If she dissolved my body, she would see in every atom each and every heart filled with each and every love" Hafez; "Each person made love to the candle of your face in a different way But it was only the moth that made you shake" Qur’an - 6:75-9; "Thus did we show unto Abraham the dominion of the Heavens and the Earth, that he might be of those possessing certainty. When the night grew dark upon him, he beheld a planet and said: ‘this is my Lord’. Then, when it had set, he said: ‘I love not things which set.’ And when he saw the moon rising, he said: ‘This is my Lord.’ Then when it set, he said: ‘Unless my Lord lead me, I must needs become one of the folk who have gone astray.’ And when he saw the sun rising, he said: ‘This is my Lord. This is the greatest.’ Then when it set, he said; ‘O my people, verily I am innocent of all that ye place beside God. Verily I have turned my face towards Him who created the Heavens and the Earth.”" Shaykh al-‘Alawi’s commentary on these verses - A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century; "He did not say ‘This is my Lord’ by way of making comparisons, but he spake thus in utter affirmation of God’s Transcendence, when there was revealed to him the Truth of all Truths that is indicated in the noble verse: Whereso’er ye turn, there is the face of God. He informed his people of this Truth that they might show piety unto God in respect of each thing. All this was on account of what was revealed unto him of the dominion of the Heavens and the earth, so that he found the Truth of the Creator existent in every created thing." pseudo Rumi; "I profess the religion of love, Love is my religion and my faith. My mother is love, My father is love My prophet is love My God is love I am a child of love I have come only to speak of love" Hafez; "Those who see your face are the seers of truth There is no head that does not have the secret of your tress" Abu al-Ḥasan al-Shushtari; "O you present in my heart Thinking of you, I am glad If she doesn’t visit my eye then my heart replaces it I have not vanished, but my body is wasting away from weakness The blamer did not find me and no watchman sees me If fate had known me the people would have come to me Nothing remains except love ask it, and it will answer for me" Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "Love is a stranger to the two worlds: in it are seventy-two madnesses. It is hidden; only its bewilderment is manifest: The soul of the spiritual sultan longs for it. Love’s religion is other than the seventy-two sects: Beside it the throne of kings is just a floorboard." Hafez; "The radiance of his face is not revealed to mine eyes alone The sun and moon are also taking this mirror around"
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Hafez;
"Except for your eyebrow, Hafez’s heart has no mihrab No one but you can be worshipped in our religion" Abu’l-Hasan Shushtari; "I got what I sought When I see my love I see my Self Why am I tired and abandoned while I am the beloved? My secret is hidden from me, yet it is near By God, Look my friend at this wondrous matter I am hidden from me My sun rises from me While I’m unaware When this beloved is pleased Everything is pleased He who desires union travels swiftly The Self conceals concealment In every direction, always I no longer have an opinion I am whom I love I drink my wine from myself And I quenched myself O seeker of reality Listen to what I say The Way is from you And the arrival is to you So vanish, and you will see yourself After you disappear You end at yourself so there is nothing but you And you subsist by you" Alan Watts - Taoist Way; "So the Taoist trick says: simply live now and there will be no problems. That’s the meaning of the Zen saying: When you are hungry, eat. When you are tired, sleep. When you walk, walk. When you sit, sit." Swami Vivekananda; "If there is a God, we must see Him, if there is a soul we must perceive it; otherwise, it is better not to believe." Hafez; "O Lord, to whom should I explain this fine point That beauty who is everywhere, showed her face to no one" Ibn ‘Atā ‘Llah - Ḥikam of... - 244; "If it were not for the battlefields of the souls, there would be no travel for the travelers on the Path since there is no distance between you and Him that your journey would shorten and there is no separation between you and Him that your reaching Him would eliminate." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "Until night, say that there is no night for our day In religion, there is no Love, and Love has no religion Love is that ocean without boundary or shore Where lovers drown without sigh or cry" Ibn al-Fāriḍ; "As for my way in love, I have no way If I turn from it (Love) for a day, then I have left my religion And if I think of other than you, even momentarily I would consider it as my apostasy" Hafez; "I asked the doctor about the state of the Friend, he said There is pain in distance from him, and health in nearness to him" Al Niffari - The Book of Spiritual Stayings of...; "He stayed me in Nearness, and said to me: 1. Nothing is nearer to Me than any other thing, and nothing is farther from Me than any other thing, except inasfar as I establish it in nearness and farness. 2. Farness is made known by nearness, and nearness is made known by spiritual experience: I am He whom nearness does not seek, and Whom spiritual experience does not attain. 3. The least of the sciences of my nearness is, that thou shouldst see the effects of my regard in everything, and that it should prevail in thee over thy gnosis of it. 4. The nearness which thou knowest is, compared with the nearness I know, like thy gnosis compared with my gnosis. 5. My farness thou knowest not, and my nearness thou knowest not, nor my qualification knowest thou as I know it. 6. I am the Near, but not as one thing is near to another: and I am the Far, but not as one thing is far from another. 7. Thy nearness is not thy farness, and thy farness is not thy nearness: I am the Near and the Far, with a nearness which is farness, and a farness which is nearness. 8. The nearness which thou knowest is distance, and the farness which thou knowest is distance: I am the Near and the Far without distance. 9. I am nearer to the tongue than its speech when it speaks. Whoso contemplates Me does not recollect, and whoso recollects Me does not contemplate. 10. As for the recollecting contemplative, if what he contemplates is not a reality, he is veiled by what he recollects. 11. Not every recollector is a contemplative: but every contemplative is a recollector. 12. I revealed Myself unto thee, and thou knewest Me not: that is farness. Thy heart saw Me, and saw Me not: that is farness. 13. Thou findest Me and findest Me not: that is farness. Thou describest Me, and dost not apprehend Me by My description: that is farness. Thou hearest my address as though it were from thy heart, whereas it is from Me: that is farness. Thou seest thyself, and I am nearer to thee than thy vision of thyself: that is farness." William Shakespeare - Sonnet 29; "When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings." Hafez; "In the Way, whatever befalls the traveler is for his own good No one loses his way on a straight path, my dear" Abu al-Ḥasan al-Shushtari - Sufi Poetry: A Medieval Anthology - p. 88; "The slave to love is well-pleased with his madness. Let him wear out his life even as he will. Reprove him not; your blame will nothing serve: Forsaking love is not his religion. I swear by him for whom ‘Aqīq is mentioned– a lover’s oath by his beloved—none But ye are mine; yet have I to repent me Remissness in loving, waveringness. Why, when I hear the dove coo in the glade, Why yearn I ever at his sorrowing? And though his way is weeping without tears, When the lover weeps, the tears pour from his eyes." Guru Nanak; "Do Nama Smarana. Love God. Be devoted to one God. Serve your fellow beings. God is all-in-all. Pray. Praise Him always. Attain the bliss of union with Him." Hafez; "I have not seen any equal to my friend even though I held the mirrors of sun and moon before his face"
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite - The Mystical Theology - Chapter I;
"THE DIVINE DARK 1 o Trinity beyond being, beyond divinity, beyond goodness, and guide of Christians in divine wisdom, direct us to the mystical summits more than unknown and beyond light, There the simple, absolved, and unchanged mysteries of theology lie hidden in the darkness beyond light of the hidden mystical silence, there, in the greatest darkness, that beyond all that is most evident exceedingly illuminates the sightless intellects. there, in the wholly imperceptible and invisible, that beyond all that is most evident fills to overflowing the sightless intellects with the glories beyond all beauty. This is my prayer. And you, dear Timothy, in the earnest exercise of mystical contemplation, abandon all sensation and all intellectual activities all that is sensed and intelligible, all non-beings and all beings; thus you will unknowingly be elevated, as far as possible, to the unity of that beyond being and knowledge. By the irrepressible and absolving ecstasis of yourself and of all, absolved from all, and going away from all, you will be purely raised up to the rays of the divine darkness beyond being. 2 Disclose this not to the uninitiated: not to those, I say, who are entangled in beings, imagine nothing to be beyond-beingly beyond beings, and claim to know by the knowledge in them "Him who has made the dark his hiding place." If the divine mystical initiations are beyond these, what about those yet more profane, who characterize the cause which lies beyond all by the last among beings, and deny it to be preeminent to their ungodly phantasies and diverse fonnations of it. For while to it, as cause of all one must posit and affirm all the positions of beings, as beyond be-ing beyond all one must more properly deny all of these. Think not that affirmations and denials are opposed but rather that, long before, is that-which is itself beyond all position and denial- beyond privation. 3 Thus the blessed Barthalomew says the theology is great and small, the gospel is broad and long, and yet narrow; he more than naturally conceives this: the good cause of all is at once greatly spoken, briefly spoken, and without logos; for it has neither logos nor intellection. Because it beyond-beingly lies beyond all, it is truly and undisguisedly manifested only to those who step over all that is pure and impure, scale every ascent of the holy summits, relinquish every divine light celestial sounds and logoi, and enter into the divine darkness where really is-as the writings say- that beyond all. It is not to be taken lightly that the divine Moses was ordered first to purify himself, and again to be separated from those who were not pure; after every purification he hears the many sounded trumpets, he sees the many pure lights which flash forth and the greatly flowing rays. Then he is separated from the many and, with those who are sacred and select, he overtakes the summits of the divine ascents. Yet with these he does not come to be with God himself; he does not see God -for God is unseen- but the place where God is. This signifies to me that the most divine and highest of what is seen and intelligible are hypothetical logoi of what is subordinate to that beyond-having all. through these is shown forth the presence of that which walks upon the intelligible summits of its most holy places. And then Moses abandons those who see and what is seen and enters into the really mystical darkness of unknowing; in this he shuts out every knowing apprehension and comes to be in the wholly imperceptible and invisible, be-ing entirely of that beyond all- of nothing, neither himself nor another, united most excellently by the completely unknowing inactivity of every knowledge, and knowing beyond intellect by knowing nothing." Alan Watts - Out Of Your Mind - Program 1: The Nature of Consciousness (Part 1); "There are astronomers that say there was a primordial explosion, an enormous bang millions of years ago—billions of years ago—which flung all the galaxies into space. Well let’s take that just for the sake of argument and say that was the way it happened. It’s like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spreads; zzwshh! And in the middle it’s dense, isn’t it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets are finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlicue, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you’re a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, crrrck!, like this, and don’t feel that we’re still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually—if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning—you’re not something that is a result of the big bang, on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "There is a candle in the heart of man, waiting to be kindled. In separation from the Friend, there is a cut waiting to be stitched. O, you who are ignorant of endurance and the burning fire of love– Love comes of its own free will, it can’t be learned in any school." Ibn al-Fāriḍ; "If not for my sighs, these tears would drown me If not for these tears, my sighs would scorch me" Hafez; "O dawn breeze, where is the friend’s place of rest? Where is the home of that lover-slaying beauty?" Ḥallāj; "O wind of the dawn, I say to the gazelle it only makes me thirstier, the water of this well I have a beloved whose love lives within me And if she likes, she walks on my cheeks as well Her spirit is my spirit and my spirit is her spirit If she wills, I want, and if I want, she wills" Unknown; "We all long for her loveliness on earth, in skies above There is no other beauty and nothing else to love I said, “all my love is yours all loves and for all time.” She said, “it’s only fitting since every beauty is mine.” Love loves Love and Love is One that is all there is below and all there is above" Genesis 1:26; "And God said, Let us make man according to our image and likeness"
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite - The Mystical Theology - Chapter II;
"HOW IT IS NECESSARY TO DEDICATE HYMNS AND BE UNITED TO THE CAUSE OF ALL AND BEYOND ALL Into the dark beyond all light we pray to come, through not seeing and not knowing, to see and to know that beyond sight and knowledge, itself: neither seeing nor knowing. For by the denial of all that is one sees, knows, and beyond-beingly hymns the beyond being. We proceed similarly to those who produce a natural statue by removing every obstacle which hinders or hides the pure spectacle of what is hidden, and by manifesting in a single denial and by itself the beauty itself which had been hidden. I believe that one must celebrate the positions and denials in an opposite way; for we position these by beginning from what is first and descend through those in the middle down to the last; we deny them all having made our search for the highest principles from the last to the very first. We do this to know undisguisedly the unknowing which is covered round about by every knowledge in beings; we do this that we may see the darkness beyond being which is hidden by all the light in beings." Jiddu Krishnamurti - Public Talk 3 - Relationship - New York 1971; "Audience question: How do you quiet the mind? How can one quiet the mind? Or free the mind from interruptions from the past? Krishnamurti: You cannot quieten the mind -- full stop. Those are tricks. You can take a pill and make the mind quiet. You cannot, absolutely, make the mind quiet, because you are the mind! You can't say: 'I will make my mind quiet.' Therefore one has to understand what meditation is, actually, not what other people say what meditation is, that's stupid. But to find out, whether the mind can ever be quiet, not how to make the mind quiet. Therefore one has to go into this whole question of knowlegde, and whether the mind, which includes the brain, whether the brain cells, which are loaded with all the past memories, whether those brain cells can be absolutely quiet, and come into function when necessary, and when not necessary be completely and wholly quiet." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "O light, from seeing your beauty, my soul became candle-like Turn my fortune so I can shed myself candle-like The promise of the morning breeze, of joining Thee day and night Burning, yellow, shaking, crying and humble, candle-like. Thy flowing hair, like scissors sheer my soul at its height In this fire of separation burn me no more, candle-like. Pearls overflowing from the sea of my eye, fill my bosom in delight My burning heart sent its flames blazing upward, candle-like. Solar flares set in the celestial lantern, sooth the sight Every morn dam my tears and shed no more, candle-like. Thy face is spring-like, thy fire sorrows fight How long burn in this solstice of separation, candle-like? From the memory of thy light, every night flames take flight If only my heart’s fire would burn my soul candle-like. How long burn thyself Shams-e Tabrizi, thy love beaming bright? We know of nothing other than this burning, candle-like." Ibn al-Fāriḍ; "By God, how many nights I have spent in the sweetness of life, apart from the watchman Drinking my wine with the beloved as my companion as the glasses of love’s joys go ’round I reached by goal, beyond whatever I had hoped Longing, though it be perfect, for this pleasure to stay with me forever" Hafez; "In faithfulness to your love, I am famous like the candle In the street of the rends, I burn all night like the candle Day and night, sleep slips away, from my grief-stricken eyes Sick from separation, my red eyes weep like the candle The mountain of my patience melted like wax in your grief’s hand Since I began to burn and melt in your love like the candle My string of patience’s cut by the scissors of your hair But still, in your love’s fire, I am smiling like the candle If the horse of my rosy tear had not been so swift How could my secret shine out everywhere just like the candle? As ever, my poor desperate heart is occupied with you Shedding tears of water and of flame just like the candle Without your world-adorning beauty, my day is like the night Within your love’s perfection, I am fading like the candle Honor me with union for one night, o wild one and with your visit, brighten up my house like the candle Like the morning, your coming is just a breath away Show your face, so I can give my soul up like the candle In exile’s night, send me a promise of union, or else With this fire, I’ll burn down the whole world like the candle It’s amazing how your love lit Hafez all on fire How can I quench my heart’s fire with tears, like the candle?" Ibn ‘Arabi - tarjuman al-ashwaq; "O Morning breeze, go tell the gazelles of Najd that, “I’m true to the vow you know of” And if what she says is true and she has for me the desperate longing I have for her, then in the heat of noon we’ll meet in her tent secretly, with the most sincere promise" Amir Khusro - In the Bazaar of Love; "My heart left me, but longing for you won’t leave my heart My heart broke apart, but the pain of you won’t lessen The moon at night rises opposite your face but the day will never come when the moon can oppose it My face is pale gold, and I grind it with the dust of your door but to be united with you is an unattainable alchemy At your hands, my tears are a sash hung over heaven’s shoulders but my hands cannot hang draped around your neck I sit in sorrow: though my soul departs, my heart cannot rise up and leave My heart is a waystation of grief, but no caravan of patience can reach it or escape the brigands of absence Khusrau fell into the whirling abyss of longing the ship of his desire will not make shore" Shakespeare - Sonnet 43; "When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see, For all the day they view things unrespected; But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed. Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright, How would thy shadow’s form form happy show To the clear day with thy much clearer light, When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so! How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made By looking on thee in the living day, When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay! All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī - The Rumi Collection - Mathnawi VI, 617-623; "THE SHIP SUNK IN LOVE Should Love’s heart rejoice unless I burn? For my heart is Love’s dwelling. If You will burn Your house, burn it, Love! Who will say, ‘It’s not allowed’? Burn this house thoroughly! The lover’s house improves with fire. From now on I will make burning my aim, From now on I will make burning my aim, for I am like the candle: burning only makes me brighter. Abandon sleep tonight; traverse for one night the region of the sleepless. Look upon these lovers who have become distraught and like moths have died in union with the One Beloved. Look upon this ship of God’s creatures and see how it is sunk in Love."
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite - The Mystical Theology - Chapter IV;
"IN PREEMINENCE, THE CAUSE OF ALL THAT IS SENSIBLE IS NOT ANYTHING SENSIBLE We say this of the cause of all be-ing beyond all: It is not being-less, not lifeless, not without reason, not without intellect. Not body, not figure, not form, not what has quality, quantity, or mass, not in space, not visible, not what has sensible contact, not what has sensation or what is sensed, not what has disorder and confusion, not what is troubled by material passions, not powerless, not subjected to what happens to sensibles, not light in what lacks, not, and has not, alteration, destruction, privation, diminution, or anything else which pertains to what is sensed." Alan Watts - The Tao of Philosophy, Part 2 - Images of God; "Now I’m sure most of you know the old story about the astronaut who went far out in space and was asked, on his return, whether he’d been to Heaven and seen God. And he said, “Yes.” And so they said to him, “Well, what about God?” And he said, “She is black.” And although this is a very well known and well worn story, it is very profound. Because—I tell you—I knew a monk who started out in life as pretty much of an agnostic or an atheist. And then he began to read Henri Bergson, the French philosopher who proclaimed the vital force—the élan vital, and so on—and the more he read into this kind of philosophy, the more he saw that these people were really talking about God. And I’ve read a great deal of theological reasoning about the existence of God, and they all start out on this line: If you are intelligent and reasonable, you cannot be the product of a mechanical and meaningless universe. Figs do not grow on thistles, grapes do not grow on thorns. And therefore, you—as an expression of the universe, as an aperture through which the universe is observing itself—cannot be a mere fluke. Because if this world peoples, as a tree brings forth fruit, then the universe itself—the energy which underlies it, what it’s all about; the “Ground of Being,” as Paul Tillich called it—must be intelligent. And so we should think, first of all, in contrary imagery, and the contrary imagery is: she’s black. Imagine, instead of “God the Father,” “God the Mother.” And imagine that this is not a luminous being—blazing with light—but an unfathomable darkness, such as is portrayed in Hindu mythology by Kālī—the great mother—who is represented in the most terrible imagery. She’s black. Well “she”—first of all: feminine—represents what is called, philosophically, the negative principle. Now, of course, people who are women in our culture today and believe in women’s lib don’t like to be associated with the negative, because the negative has acquired very bad connotations. We say “accentuate the positive:” that’s a purely male, chauvinistic attitude. How would you know that you were outstanding unless, by contrast, there were something in-standing? You cannot appreciate the convex without the concave, you cannot appreciate the firm without the yielding. And therefore the so-called negativity of the feminine principle is obviously life-giving, and very important. But we live in a culture which doesn’t notice it. You see a painting—a drawing—of a bird, and you don’t notice the white paper underneath it. You see a printed book, and you think that what is important is the printing, and the page doesn’t matter. And yet, if you reconsider the whole thing, how could there be visible printing without the page underlying it? What is called substance, that which stands underneath—“sub:” underneath; “stance:” stands—to be substantial is to be underlying, to be the support, to be the foundation of the world. And of course, this is the great function of the feminine: to be the substance. And therefore, the feminine is represented by space—which is, of course, black at night. But were it not for black and empty space, there would be no possibility whatsoever of seeing the stars. Stars shine out of space, and astronomers—very high-powered astronomers—are beginning to realize that stars are a function of space. Now that’s difficult for our common sense, because we think that space is simply inert nothingness. But we don’t realize that space is completely basic to everything. It’s like your consciousness. Nobody can imagine what consciousness is. It’s the most elusive whatever-it-is that there is at all, because it’s the background of everything else that we know. Therefore, we don’t really pay much attention to it. We pay attention to the things within the field of consciousness: to the outlines, to the objects, to the so-called things that are in the field of vision, the sounds that are in the field of hearing, and so forth. But whatever it is that embraces all that, we don’t pay much attention to it. We can’t even think about it. It’s like trying to look at your head. You know? You try to look at your head and what do you find? You don’t even find a black blob in the middle of things. You just don’t find anything. And yet, that is that out of which you see, just as space is that out of which the stars shine. So there’s something very queer about all this—that that which you can’t put your finger on, that which always escapes you, that which is completely elusive, the blank, seems to be absolutely necessary for there to be anything whatsoever. So this, then, is the value of the symbolism of “She is black.” She—the womb principle, the receptive, the in-standing, the void and the dark. And so that is to come into the presence of the God who has no image. Behind the father-image, behind the mother-image, behind the image of light inaccessible, and behind the image of profound and abysmal darkness there’s something else which we can’t conceive at all. Dyonysius the Areopagite called it the “luminous darkness.” Nagarjuna called it śūnyatā: “the void.” Shankara called it Brahman: “that of which nothing at all can be said.” Neti neti; beyond all conception whatsoever." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "A candle is made to become entirely flame. In that annihilating moment it has no shadow. It is nothing but a tongue of light describing a refuge. Look at this just-finishing candle stub as someone who is finally safe from virtue and vice, the pride and the shame we claim from those." Shustarī; "Her mystery flows through everything so everything inclines towards her Whoever witnesses the secret of her beauty says that it is everywhere, but its fullness is hidden" Sa’adi; "He attained eminence by his perfection The darkness was lifted by his beauty Lovely are all of his qualities Blessings upon him and his family" Ḥallāj; "You disappeared, but not from my heart and you became my happiness and joy in separation, separation was separated from me and became my presence in the unseen For you are the hidden secret of my passion In my heart, hidden deeper than fantasy You are my friend in the light of day and my companion in the darkness" Amīr Khusro; "You took my heart from my body, but you’ve stayed in my soul You given me so much pain, and yet you remain the cure You split my chest wide open, but in it, you’ve stayed hidden With flirtation’s sword, you laid waste the kingdom of the heart And yet, there you remain, a sultan amidst the ruins The two worlds is what you’ve set as your price Raise the price, for this is still too cheap Like salt, I dissolved from shedding many tears While, from your smile, you remain so sugar-sweet My soul was freed from its body’s bonds While my heart remains a prisoner in your curling locks Old age and beauties’ worship seem to go along so well Khusro, how long will you remain troubled by this turmoil?" Shabistari - The Rose Garden of Mystery - verses 122-130; "Reason’s light applied to the Essence of Lights is like the eye of the head looking at the brilliance of the Sun when the object seen is very close to the eye The eye is darkened so that it cannot see it This blackness, if you know it, is the very light of Being in the land of darkness is the fountain of life Since the darkness destroys the light of vision Give up loooking, for this is no place for looking What connection has dust with the pure world? Its perception is the inability to perceive perception … What shall I say? since this saying is fine, “A bright night in the midst of a dark day” In this place of witnessing, which is the light of manifestation I have much to say, but silence is best."
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite - The Mystical Theology - Chapter V;
"IN PREEMINENCE, THE CAUSE OF ALL THAT IS INTELLIGIBLE IS NOT ANYTHING INTELLIGIBLE Ascending higher we say: It is not soul, not intellect, not imagination, opinion, reason and not understanding, not logos, not intellection, not spoken, not thought, not number, not order, not greatness, not smallness not equality, not inequality, not likeness, not unlikeness, not having stood, not moved, not at rest, not powerful, not power, not light, not living, not life, not being, not eternity, not time. not intellectual contact with it, not knowledge, not truth, not king, not wisdom, not one, not unity, not divinity, not goodness, not spirit (as we know spirit), not sonhood, not fatherhood, not something other [than that] which is known by us or some other beings, not something among what is not, not something among what is, not known as it is by beings, not a knower of beings as they are: There is neither logos, name, or knowledge of it. It is not dark nor light, not error, and not truth. There is universally neither position nor denial of it. While there are produced positions and denials of those after it, we neither position nor deny it. Since, beyond all position is the all-complete and single cause of all; beyond all negation: the preeminence of that absolutely absolved from all and beyond the whole." Walter Chalmers Smith - 132. Immortal, invisible, God only wise; "Immortal, invisible, God only wise, In light inaccessible hid from our eyes, Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise. Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light, Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might; Thy justice like mountains high soaring above Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love. To all life Thou givest, to both great and small; In all life Thou livest, the true life of all; We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree, And wither and perish, but nought changeth Thee. Great Father of Glory, pure Father of Light Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight; All laud we would render, O help us to see: ’Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee. Immortal, invisible, God only wise, In light inaccessible hid from our eyes, Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "No one knows what makes the soul wake up so happy! Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil from the face of God. A thousand new moons appear. Roses open laughing. Hearts become perfect rubies like those from Badakshan. The body turns entirely spirit. Leaves become branches in this wind. Why is it now so easy to surrender, even for those already surrendered? There’s no answer to any of this. No one knows the source of joy. A poet breathes into a reed flute, and the tip of every hair makes music. Shams sails down clods of dirt from the roof, and we take jobs as doorkeepers for him." Ibn al-Fāriḍ; "Don’t consider me to be a pretender in love my affection for you is natural, without affectation Even if my spirit were in my hands, I would hand it over to the one who announces your arrival, and it’d still be a bargain You are my duties and my voluntary prayers You are my speech and my works O the direction of my prayers when I pray Your beauty is what my eyes see to it I turn my totality your secret is in the depths of my consciousness my heart is the mountain where God manifested Himself I glimpsed a fire in the neighborhood by night and I told my people I said, “stay here and perhaps I’ll find my guidance there.”" Hafez; "The dawn breeze of your curling tress keeps me drunk constantly the magic of your charming eyes keeps me wasted always After so many night vigils, O Lord, will I ever be able to light the candle of my sight at the mihrab of your eyebrow? The black of the tablet of my vision is precious to me Because, for my soul, it is a copy of your black mole If you want to adorn the whole world forever Tell the morning wind to lift the veil from your face for a while If you want to banish all traces of fidelity from the world Let down your hair, and let thousands of souls fall from every strand The morning wind and I are two poor, hopeless wanderers I from the magic of your intoxicating eyes, and he from the scent of your hair How great is Hafez’s focus! For nothing in this world or the next appeared in his eye save for the dust of your street." Ibn ‘Arabi - Futūḥāt IV 260.12 - The Divine Roots of Human Love; "This is why a human being does not become totally annihilated and enraptured by love except in love for His Lord or for someone who is the locus of disclosure for his Lord [that is, another human being, created in God’s image]. The entities of the cosmos are all lovers because of Him, whatever the beloved may be, since all created things are the pedestals for the Real’s self-disclosure. Their love is fixed, they are loving, and He is the Loving. The whole situation is concealed between the Real and creation through creation and the Real. That is why God brought the name Forgiving along with the name Loving [in the verse He is the Forgiving, the Loving, Lord of the Throne, the Glorious (85:14-15)]. After all, Forgiving means literally ‘curtaining’. Thus it is said that [the famous Arab lover] Qays loved Layla, since Layla derives from the locus of disclosure. In the same way, Bishr loved Hind, Kuthayr loved ‘Azza, Ibn al-Durayj loved Lubna, Tawba loved al-Akhyaliyya, and Jamil loved Buthayna. But all these women were pedestals through which the Real disclosed Himself to them. The beloved is a pedestal even if the lover is ignorant of the names of what he loves. A man can see a woman and love her, without knowing who she is, what her name is, who her relatives are, and where she lives. Love, by its very essence, requires that he seek out her name and her home so that he may attend to her and know her in the state of her absence through the name and the relationship. Thus he will ask about her if he lacks the witnessing of her. So also is our love for God. We love Him in His loci of self-disclosure and within the specific name, which is Layla, Lubna, or whatever, but we do not recognize that the object is identical with the Real. So here we love the name but we do not recognize that it is identical with the Real. Thus we love the name and do not recognize the entity. In the case of the created thing, you know the entity and you love. It may be that the name is not known. However, love refuses anything but making the beloved known. Among us are those who know God in this world, and among us are those who do not know Him until they die while loving some specific thing. Then they will come to understand, when the covering is lifted, that they had loved only God, but they had been veiled by the name of the created thing." Ibn bint Mayliq; "Whoever tastes the flavour of the drink of the people knows it and whoever becomes aware of it tomorrow [the Day of Resurrecton] will give his soul for it Even if he risked his spirits, and sacrificed them with every blink of the eye, it would still not equal it A drop of it suffices all creation, had they but tasted, they would declare themselves above all the worlds in drunken pride The possessor of love, were he given the universe as a cup to drink as many times as the number of souls, he still would not be quenched" Isaiah 45:7; "I am he that prepared light, and formed darkness; who make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord God, that does all these things."
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Din of Doom Registered: 12/21/08 Posts: 6,265 Loc: ADK |
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The Issue of the Vulture, Two-in-One, conveyed; this
is the Chariot of Power. TRINC: the last oracle. Aleister Crowley The Book of Thoth Page 239 Eat before you TRINC Paul f. Tompkins
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Alan Watts - Do You Do It Or Does It Do You?;
"But, you see, because we get thinking backwards and making the metaphysical tail wag the dog, making the law rule things—whereas it doesn’t, it’s merely a way of measuring what happens. And so, you see, when you get into Buddhistic thought you don’t get that confusion the other way around. So you’re looking at a system where—to go back to the Buddha’s words—“this arises, that becomes,” which is a way of saying: you can’t have this without that. You can’t have “here” without “there.” You wouldn’t know where here was unless you knew where there was. And they come into being together. You don’t get first here and then there, or first there and then here. These arise interdependently. That’s the meaning of interdependent origination. And to grasp the idea of interdependent origination is as important as the idea about seeing how things are related by space and intervals, and seeing, therefore, that you tend to look at life from a myopic point of view and see details; see the trees and not the forest, see yourself as something loosely related to everything else that’s going on and not integral to it. You see the the figure but ignore the background. But the figure and the background arise mutually. They are to each other as this is to that. And so we really have to rid our brains of the notion of causality. The notion of causality being that present sets of circumstances are the result of past sets of circumstances and that, therefore, certain events (which are called causes) are responsible for following events (called effects). And all this is an enormous piece of mumbo-jumbo, because what is not seen and what is not clear in thinking that way is that, in physical nature, there are no separate events. This is startling to people. But it’s really quite easy to see that there are no events in nature, because you can ask very simply—let’s take something called an event: how do we demark it from other events? At what point, shall we say, were you born? Were you born at parturition? Or when the doctor slapped you on the bottom? Or cut the umbilical cord? Or when you were conceived? Or when your father and mother were first attracted to each other? When was it? When did you begin? There’s no way of deciding except arbitrarily. And for legal purposes we say you were born at parturition. And that’s when the astrologer casts your horoscope—except that other astrologers disagree and want the conception time, and say that’s the real beginning. There isn’t a real beginning. It goes back and back and back in an inseparable continuity. When are you dead? That’s another big argument. And you can get all kinds of ideas about that. So once you see that an event is a term in an intellectual calculus—calculus being the way of measuring, say, curved formations by reducing them to point-instants and counting it, you see? But actually, the point-instants are imaginary. The curve wiggles along and it doesn’t stutter from point to point. But in calculus you make it do that. So just as there are no point-instants in the curve, so there are no events in nature. Nature is a constantly fluctuating pattern. You can only designate particular wiggles in a pattern arbitrarily. You can count a convex formation as one wiggle or a concave formation as one wiggle. Then you decide if you call it—if you give the convex properties the title of “wiggle,” you have to deny it to the concave properties, and vice versa. So when you see that what we call separate events don’t exist, it becomes nonsense to speak of one event causing another. What you really mean is that the two events which you speak of as being causally related are simply two parts of the same event. They go with each other in the same way as this with that. The relationship is not causal, it is mutual. And it works two ways in time, because so-called future events are not merely passive to past events. But you could easily see when, for example, any biological process goes on, you can reason just as well from the future to the past as from the past to the future. Why do two mammals have sexual intercourse? Well, it isn’t just that they enjoy it, it’s also that they’re a very complex system which does this because it makes babies. And the prospect of baby works in reverse and creates desire. You can reason that way. It’s silly because the whole process is one. And when we speak humanly and purposively, “I am going downtown to buy groceries,” then your future event could be said to be the cause of why you’re now starting out to get into the car: buying groceries. And the difficulty we have in seeing this to be so is that we think in an either/or way—which is what is called dualism in Hindu Buddhist thought and that liberation is being free from dualism. So when you think in an either/or way you see the figures in the background as moving, and therefore being responsible for their action. But if somebody argues the other way around and says the figures are just following lines of force in a field—gravitational principle, say: we’re all human beings, you see; we’re all concentrated on the fact that we’re individually rushing around and doing this and that. But we don’t see that we’re equally sucked, and that we move around in response to all sorts of stimuli. But neither position is adequate. You have to see that our being sucked by all sorts of stimuli is exactly the same thing as our apparently voluntary and deliberate action. Because what we’re looking at is not this Newtonian game of billiards, where balls roll because they are hit by cues. What we’re involved in is a dance where—for example, watch a snake: when a snake swims, there’s nothing more beautiful than watching a snake swim in water. Lovely motion! But, you see, it wiggles along. And its wiggle is conceivable, you see, as convex—or was it concave? This way and that way and this way and that way. Now, which side of the snake moves first hen it wiggles? See, it’s very easy to see there. Now, when we interact with the world, what moves first? Who starts it? The objective world or the subjective world? But they are related as this to that. You can’t have an object without a subject or a subject without an object. Can’t have something known without the knower. And that gives the show away. There isn’t any real distinction between the knower and the known. There’s two ways of looking at something, yes; two poles of a single process. But the knower and the known are subsumed as the knowing. And all life is knowing, being, becoming." Shushtari; "Hey you hiding in my heart I am happy when you’re near You, my life, my joy and art Who’s the image, who’s the mirror?" Ibn al-Farid; "The beauty of every handsome man, and that of each lovely woman is but what they have on loan from Her Beauty" Hafez; "The pupil of my eye sees naught but your face My bewildered heart recalls none but you" Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 3. Gutei's Finger; "Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A boy attendant began to imitate him in this way. When anyone asked the boy what his master had preached about, the boy would raise his finger. Gutei heard about the boy's mischief. He seized him and cut off his finger. The boy cried and ran away. Gutei called and stopped him. When the boy turned his head to Gutei, Gutei raised up his own finger. In that instant the boy was enlightened. When Gutei was about to pass from this world he gathered his monks around him. "I attained my finger-Zen," he said, "from my teacher Tenryu, and in my whole life I could not exhaust it." Then he passed away. Mumon's comment: Enlightenment, which Gutei and the boy attained, has nothing to do with a finger. If anyone clings to a finger, Tenryu will be so disappointed that he will annihilate Gutei, the boy, and the clinger all together. Gutei cheapens the teaching of Tenryu, Emancipating the boy with a knife. Compared to the Chinese god who pushed aside a mountain with one hand Old Gutei is a poor imitator." Longchenpa - A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmissions - A Commentary on the Precious Treasury of the Basic Space of Phenomena - Ch. Timeless Freedom; "In not knowing that the source of strength abides naturally, someone who believes in the effort involved in plans and actions, is similar to an artist falling in love with his or her painting. In not understanding what is naturally occurring and continues, someone who assigns definitive truth to sensory appearances, is similar to one who deprives a tree of its life force." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "You look through my two eyes, you are closer to me than myself Your light shines brighter than the moon Come into the garden so that the glory of the rose garden is humbled that it may be more beautiful and blooming than a hundred gardens and rosebeds so that the cedar will hide its height in shame that the tongue of the lily will declare you more lily than itself When you are kind, you are the candle of the soul, soft and pliable as wax When you are aloof, you are more iron than iron Do not be wild because you will meet her face to face her charm will make you as cool and pliant as the earth Throw away your armor and bare your chest at the moment of battle there is no better protection nor armor than her. That’s why in every Sufi retreat, all the openings are are sealed shut so that from your light the house becomes more illumined" Matthew 18:1-4; "At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child and set him before them, and said, “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, unless you repent [that is, change your inner self--your old way of thinking, live changed lives] and become like children [trusting, humble, and forgiving], you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." Shaykh Manna Abba “Shaykhānī” wuld Muḥammad al-Ṭulbā; "I love the the sun when it appears, since it reminds me of the appearance of matchless love And no star is seen when she comes forth, either from above or from below And so, O Maya, you have appeared in the eye of my heart, and everything other than you has disappeared So I see you in whatever is not you, and I don’t see other than you whenever I see you" Chuang Tzu; "The flowing of the stream does nothing, but follows its nature The perfect man does the same with regard to virtue He does nothing to cultivate it, but all is affected by its presence He is like the height of Heaven: natural or the solidity of the Earth or the brightness of sun and moon—all-natural There is no need to cultivate this." Thomas Cleary - The Flower Ornament Scripture - A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra - pp. 891-92; "If untold Buddha-lands are reduced to atoms, In one atom are untold lands, and as in one, so in each. The atoms to which these Buddha-lands are reduced in an instant are unspeakable, And so are the atoms of continuous reduction moment to moment, going on for untold eons; These atoms contain lands unspeakably many, and the atoms in these lands are even harder to tell of." Lord Byron; "She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!" Will Livingston - No Pun Intended - Volume Too; "I stayed up all night-- wondering where the sun went, and then it dawned on me."
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Alan Watts - Taoist Way;
"Rinzai, the great Tang Dynasty master, said: In the practice of Buddhism there is no place for using effort. Sleep when you’re tired, move your bowels, eat when you’re hungry. That’s all. The ignorant will laugh at me but the wise will understand." Unknown; "O master, say that I am I, I am not I, nay I am I He is my soul inside my body, I am not I, nay I am I light fire of love, let burn reason’s rule the darkness of night has become the light of day I am not I, nay I am I I am the arrow, I’m the bow, I am old and I am young This is me, and that is me I am not I, nay I am I I’m His appearance and his hiddenness I am the diamond of his necklace I am the the storehouse of his treasure I am not I, nay I am I I am His white falcon, I am the shadow of his willow I am His road of hope I am not I, nay I am I I am the soul, I am the breath I am the bird, I am the cage I am the thief, I am also the police I am not I, nay I am I I am his water camel, I am a worshipper of his cup I am the force of his arrow, I am not I, nay I am I My camel got drunk on wine and became frail with a howl it broke free I am not I, nay I am I I am the Sun, I am the moon, I am the sea, I am the pearl I am the nectar, I am also the sugar I am not I, nay I am I I am the earth and heaven, I am the pole and the harbour I am both Ka’aba and the wine in the cup, I am not I, nay I am I I am the instrument, I am the Voice, I am the saint I am the king, I am God I am not I, nay I am I He said, “I am Shams ad-Din, possessor of both infidelity and faith” I am not I, nay I am I…" Ibn al-Farid; "The sun of your beauty rises from all directions, and everyone with a heart longs for you O bestower of wondrous beauty on the deserving In reality, everyone is in love with your beauty" Hafez; "From my heart’s grief I wrote a letter to my beloved. For an age, from your absence, I have witnessed the resurrection I have a hundred signs of separation in my eye Are not the tears of these eyes of mine for us a sign? However much I tried, she did not help me Whoever tries the experienced will regret it I asked a doctor about the state of my beloved. He said: Suffering is in nearness to her, health is in distance from her. I said: Will scandal come if I wander about your alley?. By God! We have never seen a love without scandal. Hafiz has come like one seeking a cup even at the price of his sweet soul, that he might taste from it, a goblet of grace." Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 5. Kyogen Mounts the Tree; "Kyogen said: "Zen is like a man hanging in a tree by his teeth over a precipice. His hands grasp no branch, his feet rest on no limb, and under the tree another person asks him: 'Why did Bodhidharma come to China from India?' "If the man in the tree does not answer, he fails; and if he does answer, he falls and loses his life. Now what shall he do?" Mumon's comment: In such a predicament the most talented eloquence is of no use. If you have memorized all the sutras, you cannot use them. When you can give the right answer, even though your past road was one of death, you open up a new road of life. But if you cannot answer, you should live ages hence and ask the future Buddha, Maitreya. Kyogen is truly a fool Spreading that ego-killing poison That closes his pupils' mouths And lets their tears stream from their dead eyes." Longchenpa - A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmissions - A Commentary on the Precious Treasury of the Basic Space of Phenomena - Ch. Timeless Freedom; "How emotionally biased is a view that holds to intellectual speculation. How disappointing is meditation that relies on it. How exhausting is conduct that engages in it. How utterly confused is the hope of any fruition coming from it." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "I tested you a lot, but it did not help me Whoever tries the experienced will come to regret it" Philippians 2:5-8; "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought not equality with God a thing to be grasped: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Shaykh Manna Abba “Shaykhānī” wuld Muḥammad al-Ṭulbā; "Your beauty’s burned my vision black I’ve stared into the sun too long and when my sight comes blinking back all things your face appears upon" Zheng Ting; "Illusion appears, illusion ceases The biggest illusion among all is our body Once a pacified heart finds its place There’s no such body to look for" Alan Fox - The Practice of Huayan Buddhism - Calming and Contemplation in the Five Teachings of Huayan; "The manner in which all dharmas interpenetrate is like an imperial net of celestial jewels extending in all directions infinitely, without limit. … As for the imperial net of heavenly jewels, it is known as Indra’s Net, a net which is made entirely of jewels. Because of the clarity of the jewels, they are all reflected in and enter into each other, ad infinitum. Within each jewel, simultaneously, is reflected the whole net. Ultimately, nothing comes or goes. If we now turn to the southwest, we can pick one particular jewel and examine it closely. This individual jewel can immediately reflect the image of every other jewel. As is the case with this jewel, this is furthermore the case with all the rest of the jewels–each and every jewel simultaneously and immediately reflects each and every other jewel, ad infinitum. The image of each of these limitless jewels is within one jewel, appearing brilliantly. None of the other jewels interfere with this. When one sits within one jewel, one is simultaneously sitting in all the infinite jewels in all ten directions. How is this so? Because within each jewel are present all jewels. If all jewels are present within each jewel, it is also the case that if you sit in one jewel you sit in all jewels at the same time. The inverse is also understood in the same way. Just as one goes into one jewel and thus enters every other jewel while never leaving this one jewel, so too one enters any jewel while never leaving this particular jewel." Bob Marley - Natural Mystic; "There’s a natural mystic Blowing through the air If you listen carefully now you will hear This could be the first trumpet Might as well be the last Many more will have to suffer Many more will have to die Don’t ask me why Things are not the way they used to be I won’t tell no lie One and all got to face reality now Though I try to find the answer To all the questions they ask Though I know it’s impossible To go living through the past Don’t tell no lie There’s a natural mystic Blowing through the air Can’t keep them down If you listen carefully now you will hear Such a natural mystic Blowing through the air This could be the first trumpet Might as well be the last Many more will have to suffer Many more will have to die Don’t ask me why There’s a natural mystic Blowing through the air I won’t tell no lie If you listen carefully now, you will hear There’s a natural mystic Blowing through the air" John Donne - Death, Be Not Proud; "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die."
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Alan Watts - Taoist Way;
"This was perfectly clearly explained by Huineng, the six patriarch of Zen in China, in his sūtra where he says: “The difference between the gradual school and the sudden school is they both arrive at the same point, but the gradual is for slow-witted people and the sudden is for fast-witted people.” Can you, in other words, find a way that sees into your own nature, that sees into the Tao, immediately? And at the end of this morning’s talk I pointed out to you the immediate way; the way through now. When you know that this moment is the Tao, and this moment is—considered by itself, without past and without future—eternal, neither coming into being or going out of being, there is nirvāṇa." Shushtari; "My drink and my ride are sweet and my beloved takes care of me O my friends, forgive me my prostration and approach A fine and fragrant wine all light shines forth from it The pourer pours it May it be my reckoning I am drunk on love and I have no comfort without it Whenever I call out: “O God!” My response is: “at your service…”" Ibn al-Farid; "My love appeared to me from all directions and so I witnessed him in every meaning and each form" Hafez; "Where’s the good news of union that from this life I rise? I am a holy bird, from this world’s net I arise And I swear by your love, that if you call me your slave that up from the world’s sovereignty and rank I will arise O Lord, from the cloud of your guidance, let rain fall Before the time when, from the midst, dust-like I will arise Sit beside my grave with a musician and with wine So that with your scent dancing from the tomb I will arise Rise and show your stature, O idol of sweet moves So that from this life and world, dancing I arise Although I’m old, hold me tight in your arms for one night So that at morning light, young, from your embrace I’ll arise On the day of my death, take a break to visit me So that Hafez, from this life and this world, will arise" Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 6. Buddha Twirls a Flower; "When Buddha was in Grdhrakuta mountain he turned a flower in his fingers and held it before his listeners. Every one was silent. Only Maha-Kashapa smiled at this revelation, although he tried to control the lines of his face. Buddha said: "I have the eye of the true teaching, the heart of Nirvana, the true aspect of non-form, and the ineffable stride of Dharma. It is not expressed by words, but especially transmitted beyond teaching. This teaching I have given to Maha-Kashapa." Mumon's comment: Golden-faced Gautama thought he could cheat anyone. He made the good listeners as bad, and sold dog meat under the sign of mutton. And he himself thought it was wonderful. What if all the audience had laughed together? How could he have transmitted the teaching? And again, if Maha-Kashapa had not smiled, how could he have transmitted the teaching? If he says that realization can be transmitted, he is like the city slicker that cheats the country dub, and if he says it cannot be transmitted, why does he approve of Maha-Kashapa? At the turning of a flower His disguise was exposed. No one in heaven or earth can surpass Maha-Kashapa's wrinkled face." Longchenpa - A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmissions - A Commentary on the Precious Treasury of the Basic Space of Phenomena - Ch. Natural Meditative Stability; "The Perfect Dynamic Energy of the Lion states: The natural abiding of enlightened intent is meditative absorption as a state of resting imperturbably. Awareness's own manifestations have no actual substance but are the foremost of all mandalas. The unchanging, inherently pristine nature of phenomena is the universal environment. Awareness's own manifestations abide, vividly present, in nonconceptual oneness. To be free of the concepts of intellectual speculation is the great, ultimate "logical argument" of the secret mantra approach." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī - Selected Poems form the Divani Shamsi Tabriz - p. 94-96; "When my bier moveth on the day of death Think not my heart is in this world. Do not weep for me and cry “woe, woe!” Thou wilt fall in the devil’s snare: that is woe When thou seest my hearse, cry not, “gone, gone!” Union and meeting are mine in that hour If thou commit me to the grave, say not “Farewell, farewell” For the grave is a curtain hiding the communion of paradise After beholding descent, consider resurrection Why should setting be injurious to the sun and moon? To thee it seems a setting, but ’tis a rising’ Tho’ the vault seems a prison, ’tis the release of a soul What seed went down into the earth but it grew? Why this doubt of thine as regards the seed of man? What bucket was lowered but it came out brimful? Why should the Joseph of the Spirit complain of the well? Shut thy mouth on this side, and open it beyond For in placeless air will by thy triumphal song." Qur’an 2:155; "To god belong the East and West, and wheresoever you turn, there is the face of God." ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī; "Don’t be fooled by the fineness of her cheek For the sword slays by the fineness of its blade Leave the eyelids, for their drowsiness has become a point in the straightened spear of her stature My sleep, like a gazelle, is constantly fleeing from me For he unites his opposite with his exile Frailty flowed into my body from her coldness And I loved it because it is from her The enviers were amazed, having seen my drunkenness without limit while my heart endured the punishment of her limits* Be easy, for doesn’t the flapping of her sash resemble my heart or the flame of her cheek? This is a connection, that were my heart to attain it, ablaze I would forgive her in its burning My thanks to my patience with her, for when she betrayed me I saw betrayal as faithfulness to her promise My weeping from distance and being crushed Is a pearl in my hands, not in her necklace Who can be fair to me in nearness? for my near one has spurned me, so who then can rescue me from her distance? O ban tree of the valley, and O its leaves, weep for your branch since I weep for her loss you are sad and sad am I—both of us Today, one who has been pardoned laments his love My state is like yours, and the neighbor, with his hand on the water knows its heat from its cold." Sayagyi U Ba Khin - What Buddhism Is; "Do not believe in what you have heard; do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations; do not believe in anything because it is rumoured and spoken by many; do not believe merely because a written statement of some old sage is produced; do not believe in conjectures; do not believe in that as truth to which you have become attached from habit; do not believe merely the authority of your teachers and elders. After observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and gain of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." Thomas Cleary - The Flower Ornament Scripture - A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra - pp. 925; "They [Buddhas] know all phenomena come from interdependent origination. They know all world systems exhaustively. They know all the different phenomena in all worlds, interrelated in Indra's net." Sana’ī; "Last night a letter arrived unexpectedly from my beloved. She said: “My heart has seen the pangs of the resurrection in being parted from you.” I said: “Does your loving heart have some sign of suffering?” She said: “Are not the tears in my eye enough of a sign for you?” She said: “What are you planning?” I said: “A journey.” She said: “Go in health, happiness and safety?” I said: “You are not trustworthy.” She said: “Test me!” [I replied:] ” Whoever tests an experienced person will surely regret it.” I said: “Farewell! You shall not come and conquer my breast.” She said: “So you want union with me in secret? No, by grace!” She said: “Take hold of my tresses!” I said: “Scandal will come” She said: “Do you really not know about love and scandal?”" al-Ḥallāj; "Is it you or me? In this there are two gods yet You forbid, You forbid affirming duality Your selfhood is in my negation eternally My all clothes the all in two respects So where is your self [hidden] from me when I see? For my self became clear where there’s no where for me So where is your face, the goal of my gaze? in the the heart’s interior or the glance of the eye Between me and you, my “I-ness” torments me So lift, with your “I-ness,” my “I-ness” from in between"
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Alan Watts - Out Of Your Mind - Program 4: The Web Of Life (Part 2);
"Now, we saw that there is a reciprocity. A total, mutual interdependence between what we call the self and what we call the other. That’s the warp and the woof. And so, if you’re perfectly honest about loving yourself (and you don’t pull any punches, you don’t pretend that you’re anything other than exactly what you are), you suddenly come to discover that the self you love—if you really go into it—is the universe. You don’t like all of it, you’re selective about it—as we saw in the beginning, perception is selection—but on the whole, you love yourself in terms of what is other, because it’s only in terms of what is other that you have a self at all." Shushtari; "If the meaning of your speech is not for me, then I don’t know For my heart will not be cured and my liver’s fire will not be quenched I looked and I didn’t see any one but you whom I love If not for you, love would not be sweet for those who love So when thought unveils you in the retreat of satisfaction and it disappears, the people say my passions have led me astray By your life, the lover has not gone astray nor has he erred But when they generalized, they made the fatwa miss its mark If they had seen the meaning of your beauty just as I saw, with the eye of the heart, they wouldn’t deny the claim I dropped all shame in your love and whoever is shameless in love enjoys the pillow talk I tore the robes of dignity to shreds, exposing myself to you and so distress becomes sweet in your love There is no complaint in love even if one’s insides are torn up and shame on the lovers who complain of your love" Ibn al-Farid; "The lover longs to see me while I long for him more intensely Souls throb with passion, but fate refuses so I suffer the moans as they suffer and groan" Hafez; "One whose heart has been revived by love can never die Our everlastingness is engraved upon the cosmic scroll" Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 9. A Buddha before History; "A monk asked Seijo: "I understand that a Buddha who lived before recorded history sat in meditation for ten cycles of existence and could not realize the highest truth, and so could not become fully emancipated. Why was this so?" Seijo replied: "Your question is self-explanatory." The monk asked: "Since the Buddha was meditating, why could he not fulfill Buddhahood?" Seijo said: "He was not a Buddha." Mumon's comment: I will allow his realization, but I will not admit his understanding. When one ignorant attains realization he is a saint. When a saint begins to understand he is ignorant. It is better to realize mind than body. When mind is realized one need not worry about body. When mind and body become one The man is free. Then he desires no praising." Longchenpa - The Seven Treasuries - Volume 5 - The Precious Treasury of The Way of Abiding; "Enlightenment—the nature of mind, like space—is not defined by any extreme or bias, for it is nondual by nature. So there is no view to be cultivated, no samaya to be upheld, no effort to be made in enlightened activity, nothing to obscure timeless awareness, no levels on which to train, no paths to be traversed, no subtle factors, no duality, no dependent relationship. Since value judgments are transcended, there is nothing spiritual or nonspiritual. This expanse, like the Isle of Gold in that it entails no differentiation or exclusion, is the naturally occurring nature of mind, like space, ineffable by nature and beyond all characterization and expression." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment for cleverness is mere opinion and bewilderment is vision." Jeremiah 17:8; "He shall be as a tree that is planted on the waters, and by a stream it sends its roots, and he shall not fear when the heat will come and its leaves shall be flourishing, and in a year that is lacking rain he shall not fear, and he shall not be deprived of producing fruit" ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī; "I have, in loving you, a golden religion and a quest like it as a goal I became a slave well-pleased with what pleases you, having neither hope nor fear When the cup of your saki appears I am the first to drink it And when your name is sung in poetry I am the first to thrill in ecstasy O moon, in my heart’s blood the breaking of the dawn and falling of the dusk never cease O Gazelle, in my heart, you have a meadow and from my tears, a spring There is no life but your love from which every joy’s derived" Keith Dowman - Flight of the Garuda - Guru Chowong - A Confession from Emptying the Depths of Hell; "HUNG! How futile to project notions of being and nonbeing Upon an unformed and inconceivable reality-continuum! What misery to cling to delusions of a substantial reality! Atone in the spaciousness of formless, concept-free pleasure. How pointless to project notions of purity and impurity Upon Kuntu Zangpo, who transcends all moral qualities! How guilt-ridden are those who cling to moral dualities! Atone in the spaciousness of Kunzang's pure pleasure. How exhausting to cling to notions of self and others In the sameness where superiority and inferiority cannot be! What anxiety to cling to the duality of success and failure! Atone in the spaciousness of the pure pleasure of sameness. How futile to cling to concepts of this life and the next When the Bodhisattva's mind is free of birth and dying! What anxiety lies in obsession with birth and death! Atone in the spaciousness of the deathless swastika. How foolish to project concepts of concrete form and substance Upon the cosmic seed that has no corners or edges! What boredom lies in the limitations of squares and rectangles! Atone in the spaciousness of the all-embracing spherical nucleus. How stupid it is to project notions of beginning and end In the timeless, unchangeable dimension of past, present and future! What misery lies in the duality of transformation and gradual change! Atone in the spaciousness of unchanging past, present and future. How pointless to project causal relationships Upon Awareness, naturally arising without strain or accomplishment! What grief lies in distinguishing effort from attainment! Atone in the spaciousness of effortless spontaneity. How exhausting to cling to concepts of subject and object In Knowledge-Awareness neither eternal nor temporal! What misery to separate time from eternity! Atone in the spaciousness of Knowledge-Awareness." Steve Odin - Process Metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism - A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration Vs. Interpenetration; "In each of the lion's eyes, in its ears, limbs, and so forth, down to each and every single hair, there is a golden lion. All the lions embraced by each and every hair simultaneously and instantaneously enter into one single hair. Thus, in each and every hair there are an infinite number of lions... The progression is infinite, like the jewels of Celestial Lord Indra's Net: a realm-embracing-realm ad infinitum is thus established, and is called the realm of Indra's Net." al-Harraq; "If you appear, then no one else exists and if you are not hidden, then you are unique Whoever wants to see other than you outwardly or inwardly, to me, is distant O spendour of everything! If we were to witness you one day That would be, the most joyous day of all time Each year, for people, there are two ‘Eids But for us, every moment with you is ‘Eid" Clare Harner - Do not stand at my grave, and weep; "Do not stand By my grave, and weep. I am not there, I do not sleep— I am the thousand winds that blow I am the diamond glints in snow I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle, autumn rain. As you awake with morning’s hush, I am the swift, up-flinging rush Of quiet birds in circling flight, I am the day transcending night. Do not stand By my grave, and cry— I am not there, I did not die."
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Alan Watts - Mysticism and Morality;
"When the bird sings, or the chicken’s egg breaks, the flower buds, there’s no doubt about it at all. It comes forth. And so, in the same way, when somebody has an experience of this kind (mystical) he just has to tell everybody about it. Because, you see, he sees everybody around him looking dreadfully serious, looking as if they had a problem, looking as if the act of living were extremely difficult. But from his standpoint—the person who’s had this experience—he feels that they look funny, that they don’t understand that there isn’t any problem at all. That he has seen—from where he stands, you see—that the meaning of being alive is just being alive. That is to say, I look at the color of your hair and the shape of your eyebrow, and I understand that that is the point. That’s what we’re all here for. And it’s so plain, and it’s so obvious, and so simple. And yet, here is everybody rushing around in a great panic as if it were necessary for them to achieve something beyond all that. And the funny thing is: they’re not quite sure what it is. But they’re devilishly intent upon it, after that thing." Shushtari; "Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural Natural, Natural, ay By God, Natural A poor man like me, with a begging bag around my neck My heart is free of any care And I like people who are light-hearted Such is the natural, he is liked by every natural Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural First thing in the morning, when I go out to work I open my mouth and stretch out my hand And for me, if I saw my granddad, who is not natural For me, leaving him be, is only natural Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural I cover my body with needle and thread of rough wool, which, for me, is a lot “Who is that guy?” the people ask, bewildered Still I’m just natural, loved by every Natural Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural My head is shaved and I walk around dazed I beg in the market or at the mansions Barefoot, walking the earth, saying: “Give for God’s sake, some natural bread, to a natural man.” Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural I might sit down and not want to talk I might lie on the earth as my bed I graze on the earth’s grass, living well The Natural one is loved by every Natural Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural I have a begging bag and a sea-shell And a pot hung on the end of a stick And my head is polished like a guitar I walk naturally, naturally used to poverty Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural And when I stop at a town or market, I see the people come up to me like brothers, their speech is well-intended You see the Natural welcoming the Natural Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural I don’t fake anything, and I have no rule I don’t crave food or clothes and this position, is what every hypocrite needs A natural poor man, loved by every natural Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural I know no jugde nor ruler that’s more noble and natural for me that’s how the high levels are described A natural heart, in this state it is natural Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural Apart from these deeds, things are incomplete Whoever humbles himself before a vizier or Sultan Is arrogant and confused His garment is natural, and by God, he is natural Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural Tearing the two sleeves, by this I mean, resurrection Casting the two worlds from my heart And I take off my two shoes to arrive at the Presence Abandoning the unnatural is, for me, natural Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural I have a sitting mat that is pure like my heart and a presence of intimacy with which I polish my cup and a bunch of bags, a faqīr murabbī Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural Natural, Natural, ay, by God, Natural" Ibn al-Farid; "Every part of me kissed her veil With every mouth whose touch held every kiss If she dissolved my body, she would see in every atom each and every heart filled with each and every love" Hafez; "When I am dead, open my grave and see The cloud of smoke that rises round thy feet: In my dead heart the fire still burns for thee; Yea, the smoke rises from my winding-sheet!" Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 7. Joshu Washes the Bowl; "A monk told Joshu: "I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me." Joshu asked: "Have you eaten your rice porridge?" The monk replied: "I have eaten." Joshu said: "Then you had better wash your bowl." At that moment the monk was enlightened. Mumon's comment: Joshu is the man who opens his mouth and shows his heart. I doubt if this monk really saw Joshu's heart. I hope he did not mistake the bell for a pitcher. It is too clear and so it is hard to see. A dunce once searched for a fire with a lighted lantern. Had he known what fire was, He could have cooked his rice much sooner." Longchenpa - The Seven Treasuries - Volume 5 - The Precious Treasury of The Way of Abiding; "Moment by moment, there is no wavering from dharmakaya, the natural place of rest. Throughout the vastness of original basic space, there is spontaneous presence in supremely blissful and natural rest. If you do not realize secret awareness—that which is ultimately meaningful in enlightened intent—you will never be freed by that which entails deliberate effort. Don’t you know that anything composite is impermanent and subject to disintegration?" Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī - Selected Poems from the Divani Shamsi Tabriz - p. 94-96; "When my bier moveth on the day of death Think not my heart is in this world. Do not weep for me and cry “woe, woe!” Thou wilt fall in the devil’s snare: that is woe When thou seest my hearse, cry not, “gone, gone!” Union and meeting are mine in that hour If thou commit me to the grave, say not “Farewell, farewell” For the grave is a curtain hiding the communion of paradise After beholding descent, consider resurrection Why should setting be injurious to the sun and moon? To thee it seems a setting, but ’tis a rising’ Tho’ the vault seems a prison, ’tis the release of a soul What seed went down into the earth but it grew? Why this doubt of thine as regards the seed of man? What bucket was lowered but it came out brimful? Why should the Joseph of the Spirit complain of the well? Shut thy mouth on this side, and open it beyond For in placeless air will by thy triumphal song." Proverbs 3:5; "Trust in and rely confidently on the LORD with all your heart And do not rely on your own insight or understanding." ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī; "O you living in my heart when will I win intimacy? You robbed me but I am happy with my theft O nomads of the blazing valley You are the best of nomads Your guest seeks refuge and the contract of his clientage is a captive heart I have not forgotten your love May I never forget my passion, my love! If you are pleased by my removal then that is my heart’s desire My spirit is yours if you accept it and the spirit is the lover’s utmost You are the treasure of my heart on the Day of Return and my sufficiency I love you and by my right I was perplexed by my share of amazement I leaned drunkenly, and why not? For my drink was from you And my beloved poured drinks for me and singled me out without my friends My eyes were not blind, beholding openly, the brilliance of my Lord’s face I long for the sweet myrtle and tamarisk and the remembrance of the laurel and the dune" The Śūraṅgama Sūtra; "How sweetly mysterious is the Transcendental Sound of Avalokiteshvara! It is the pure Brahman Sound. It is the subdued murmur of the seatide setting inward. Its mysterious Sound brings liberation and peace to all sentient beings who in their distress are calling for aid; it brings a sense of permanency to those who are truly seeking the attainment of Nirvana's Peace . . ." Tulsi Ram - Atharva Veda - Authentic English Translation - 8.8.6; "Vast indeed is the tactical net of great Indra, mighty of action and tempestuous of great speed. By that net, O Indra, pounce upon all the enemies so that none of the enemies may escape the arrest and punishment." Mīr Dard; "My friends, we have seen enough of this play We are going home, you can stay" Seyyed Hossein Nasr; "I Am So Drunk From Thy Love That I No Longer Know Myself, I Am In Wonderment In This Drunkenness And Yet Remain Silent. Being Away From Thee Is Not Possible, Nor Is Thy Embrace Full Of Love, Yet Bewildered Am I From The Perfume Of Thy Black Hair. Unveil Thy Face, O Saki, For My Soul Is In Quest. Give A Gulp Of That Wine That Will Remove My Breath And Mind. In This Monastery Full Of Affliction I Have Accepted Much Suffering With This Thought—That One Day I Would Drink The Wine Of Gnosis. In This World I Have Thee, I Have Thee Alone. Union With Thee Is The Goal Of My Life; I Continue To Strive On This Path. The Fervor For Meeting Thee Burns Within Me Like Fire, I Continue To Burn In This Fire Though I Am Annihilated And Silent."
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Alan Watts - Q and A With God;
"How do you—if you are God—how do you find such difficulty in finding peace and tranquility in yourself? That’s because you’re looking for it away from the place in which you are. You are seeking it apart from the experience which you have at this moment, and you are regarding that experience and saying, “That’s pretty lousy, I’d like something better than that.” But the trouble with that is that it splits you in two pieces, and once you’re split in two pieces you’re lost. Because you made a difference between the experience you are now having, on the one hand, and yourself, who is having it, on the other. And you wish you could get away from that experience. Now, the truth of the matter is: you can’t, because you are what you experience. It’s a myth, purely, that there is some sort of experiencer who has the experience. You are what you know because it is not “I know something,” there is simply a process called “the knowing.” You could say that knowing, like the world, has two poles: north and south. And so the knowing-ball has the knower and the known, but only in that sense. Now, knowing changes; it changes itself. But if you try to stand outside it and change it, it’ll be like standing outside your hand and trying to move your hand from outside. And so comes the difficulty. In other words, this would be the difficulty for God in the press-button “Surprise!” situation, where you think you want something different from what you have. But if you do think that, you’ve got to ask yourself the question what it is that you really want. This is the most fundamentally important question. And you will find, if you go into it very, very deeply, that you have it. Now, you may change your mind about it, but you do have what you want." Abu’l-Hasan Shushtari: Songs of Love and Devotion. p. 55; "My neglect of you is reprehensible, while your love is a duty my longing is everlasting, while union is elusive On the tablet of my heart, your love has been marked my tears are the ink, and beauty is the writer The reader of my thoughts constantly recites lessons on the signs of the beautiful one My gaze wanders in the heaven of your beauty its penetrating star pierces my mind Talk about others, listening to that is forbidden for all of me is stolen and your beauty is the thief They said to me: repent of loving your beloved so I replied: I repent of my neglect The torments of love are sweet for every lover even if, for another, they are hard and never-ending" Ibn al-Fāriḍ; "As for my way in love, I have no way If I neglect my love for a day, then I have left my sect And if the thought of other than you occurs to me Inadvertantly, I would consider it as my apostasy You govern my life as you will, so do what you will with me, for I have ever only desired you" Hafez; "Come! For last night, the tavern’s unseen voice told me to be pleased with the divine decree and not to flee from destiny Between Lover and Beloved there is no barrier You yourself are your own veil, Hafez. Remove yourself!" Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 19. Everyday Life Is the Path; "Joshu asked Nansen: "What is the path?" Nansen said: "Everyday life is the path." Joshu asked: "Can it be studied?" Nansen said: "If you try to study, you will be far away from it." Joshu asked: "If I do not study, how can I know it is the path?" Nansen said: "The path does not belong to the perception world, neither does it belong to the nonperception world. Cognition is a delusion and noncognition is senseless. If you want to reach the true path beyond doubt, place yourself in the same freedom as sky. You name it neither good nor not-good." At these words Joshu was enlightened. Mumon's comment: Nansen could melt Joshu's frozen doubts at once when Joshu asked his questions. I doubt though if Joshu reached the point that Nansen did. He needed thirty more years of study. In spring, hundreds of flowers; in autumn, a harvest moon; In summer, a refreshing breeze; in winter, snow will accompany you. If useless things do not hang in your mind, Any season is a good season for you." Longchenpa - The Seven Treasuries - Volume 5 - The Precious Treasury of The Way of Abiding; "Now, those who are immersed in the genuine heart essence of ati—having decided that all teachings on causality, which are designed to guide the immature, are paths for the less fortunate who progress upward in stages—embrace the enlightened intent that is the very essence, the ultimate meaning that transcends phenomena, within the larger scope of space, in which nothing need be done. Deliberate action misleads—look at the confusing appearances of samsara. Effort corrupts—think about the machinations of suffering. With virtue and harm, there is an uninterrupted flow of happiness and suffering." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī - Masanvi 6:1896–1900; "The Kaaba of Gabriel and the celestial spirits is a Lote-tree; the glutton’s qibla [direction of prayer] is a cloth laden with dishes of food. The qibla of the Knower is the light of union with God; the qibla of the philosopher’s mind is fantasy. The qibla of the ascetic is God, the Gracious; the qibla of the flatterer is a purse of gold. The qibla of the spiritual is patience and long-suffering; the qiblah of form-worshippers is an image of stone. The qibla of those who live in the inward is the Bounteous One; the qibla of those who worship the outward is a woman’s face." 2 Corinthians 4:18; "So we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen; for the things which are visible are temporal [just brief and fleeting], but the things which are invisible are everlasting and imperishable." ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī; "I witnessed your self in us, while it is singular, as multiple possessing attributes and names In you we witnessed, after our manyness an essence in which the seen and seer are united" Keith Dowman - Masters of Mahamudra: Songs and Histories of the Eighty-four Buddhist Siddhas - p. 91; "With perseverance and devotion I mastered the vina's errant chords; but then practicing the unborn, unstruck sound I, Vinapa, lost my self." Teun Goudriaan - Maya - Divine And Human - p. 214; "This world was the net of the great Sakra (Indra), of mighty size; by means of this net of Indra I envelop all those people with darkness." al-Shāb al-Ẓarīf; "Don’t hide what love does to you Express your love—for we are all lovers [Your] love would have stayed hidden if not for your tears streaming and your heart pounding Perhaps he to whom you complain of love will help you in bearing it, for lovers are kind companions Don’t fret, for you are not the first to fall in love [many] cheeks and pupils have bravely faced [the tears] So be patient in separation from the beloved for perhaps union will return, and love has its ways How many nights my pupils spent awake in search of union while my thoughts crowded around me O Lord, those whom I love are far from me and separation has become intimate with these dear friends My fortune with them blackened when the burning from the fire of love began The Arabs, I saw that the surest promise with them is that no promise with them is ever sure On their she-camels and in their troops is a display in which there is constant fleeing and hypocrisy Whenever he remains aloof, those riding behind him attack his waist with eyes like belts The eyes gaze at him as he lowers his in silence for if he looks back, then they all drop, blinking in shame." Bhikkhu Sujato - Kaccānagottasutta SN 12.15 (SN ii 16); "Kaccāna, this world mostly relies on the dual notions of existence and non-existence. But when you truly see the origin of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of non-existence regarding the world. And when you truly see the cessation of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of existence regarding the world. The world is for the most part shackled by attraction, grasping, and insisting. But if—when it comes to this attraction, grasping, mental fixation, insistence, and underlying tendency—you don’t get attracted, grasp, and commit to the notion ‘my self’, you’ll have no doubt or uncertainty that what arises is just suffering arising, and what ceases is just suffering ceasing. Your knowledge about this is independent of others. This is how right view is defined. ‘All exists’: this is one extreme. ‘All doesn’t exist’: this is the second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Realized One teaches by the middle way"
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Alan Watts - Q and A With God;
"So, therefore, if we ask life to have a meaning, we look for something other than life to be that meaning. And therefore, we reduce life to being mere words and mere symbol. Now, of course you may use the word “meaning” in a less precise way, and say, now, although the music of Bach has no meaning in the sense that it is not like the music of Tchaikovsky, designed to imitate natural events and noises, nevertheless it has meaning in the sense that it enchants us, the patterns of it ravish us in the same way as abstract patterns in an arabesque. That’s a little different sense of the word “meaning.” And yes, I would say that life has that kind of meaning. But you don’t seek it. Because if you seek it you lose it. I see the process of life as an essentially musical process which has no meaning except itself. It is going ’round in circles like we love to spin in circles when we’re dancing, like children love to spin around in circles ’till they get dizzy. That’s fun. And so the articulation of wonderful patterns is the meaning of life. If you seek for meaning—now, this applies to all seekers; I’m sorry, growth-seekers. But—seeking’s alright; I mean, it’s a free country—but it invariably takes you away from what you’re looking for because every search supposes I will find it later, not now. In the next moment. That somehow, by some gimmick, by some exercise, by some process of transformation, I will later discover what I want. This is postponement." Shushtari; "O you present in my heart, thinking of you makes me sweet If no one ever visits my eye, then my heart will take its place for me I am not gone, but my body is vanishing from wasting away So no blamer found me, and no chaperone/rival saw me Had the era known about me, people would have come to me Nothing remains but passion, ask it about me, and it will answer for me" Ibn al-Fāriḍ; "Give me an excess of love for you, bewildered And have mercy on a heart scorched by a glance of your love And if I ask to see you truly Then allow me, graciously And let not your answer be, “Thou shalt not see“ O heart, you have promised me to be patient in loving them So be sure to bear it do not dismay Passion is life, so die in it lovingly. Your duty is to die and be absolved My heart, say to those ahead of me, and those behind me, Whoever has seen the sacrifice of my sorrow “Follow my example and listen to me And tell the tale of my love amongst mankind” I was alone with the Beloved and between us there was A secret more subtle than the dawn breeze when it blows And he allowed my eyes a glance So I became famous, having been unknown before I was awestruck between his beauty and majesty And tomorrow, the tongue of my state will explain Turn your gaze to the beauties of his face, Where all beauty has been gathered If all beauty were perfected into one form on seeing him, it would exclaim [in wonder], “There is no god but God, and God is greater.”" Hafez; "When the bubble fills its head with the air of arrogance It blows its head off as it rises to the top of the wine You are the obstacle on the road, Hafez, get out of the way! Blessed is he who walks on this road without obstacle." Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 34. Learning Is Not the Path; "Nansen said: "Mind is not Buddha. Learning is not the path." Mumon's comment: Nansen was getting old and forgot to be ashamed. He spoke out with bad breath and exposed the scandal of his own home. However, there are few who appreciate his kindness. When the sky is clear the sun appears, When the earth is parched rain will fall. He opened his heart fully and spoke out, But it was useless to talk to pigs and fish." Longchenpa - The Seven Treasuries - Volume 5 - The Precious Treasury of The Way of Abiding; "Since effort—which creates causes and effects, whether positive or negative—is unnecessary, immerse yourself in genuine being, resting naturally with nothing needing to be done." Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī; "O Lovers, O lovers, I am an ancient lover O honest ones, O honest one, I am an ancient lover At that time when the light of my love passed through the heavenly world I myself was all there, I am an ancient lover Adam was not, but I was; the world was not, but I was Before all the worlds, I was, I am an ancient lover I was with Noah in the ark, I was with Joseph in the well In the fire with Abraham I was, I am an ancient lover." John 1:1-5; "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made. The Life was produc'd in him, and the Life was the Light of men. And the Light shineth in darkness, but the darkness did not receive it." Rabindranath Tagore - The Religion of Man; "The eternal Dream is borne on the wings of ageless Light that rends the veil of the vague and goes across Time weaving ceaseless patterns of Being. The mystery remains dumb, the meaning of this pilgrimage, the endless adventure of existence whose rush along the sky flames up into innumerable rings of paths, till at last knowledge gleams out from the dusk in the infinity of human spirit, and in that dim-lighted dawn she speechlessly gazes through the break in the mist at the vision of Life and of Love emerging from the tumult of profound pain and joy." Francis H. Cook - Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra; "Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring." Buddhist Text Translation Society - The Śūraṅgama Sūtra - With Excerpts from the Commentary by the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua - A New Translation - pp. 243-249; "Fundamentally, everything that comes and goes, that comes into being and ceases to be, is within the true nature of the Matrix of the Thus-Come One, which is the wondrous, everlasting understanding — the unmoving, all-pervading, wondrous suchness of reality. [The Buddha] shows one by one that each of the elements of the physical world and each of the elements of our sensory apparatus is, fundamentally, an illusion. But at the same time, these illusory entities and experiences arise out of what is real. That matrix from which all is produced is the Matrix of the Thus-Come One. It is identical to our own true mind and identical as well to the fundamental nature of the universe and to the mind of all Buddhas." Kozan Ichikyo; "Empty-handed I entered this world Barefoot I leave it My coming and my going two simple happenings that got entangled" Lao Tzu; "Do you have the patience to wait Till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving Till the right action arises by itself?"
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Alan Watts - The Tao of Philosophy, Part 8 - Limits of Language;
"The only place to begin is now, because here is where we are. So why put it off? A lot of people say, “Well, I’m not ready.” What do you mean, you’re not ready? What’re you—why, where… what do you have to be to be ready? “Well, I—I’m—I’m not good enough because I’m neurotic, I’m (perhaps) not old enough, not mature enough for such knowledge. I still am frightened of pain, and of course I’d have to overcome that. I’m still dependent on material things. I have to, you know, eat a lot, and drink a lot, and sex around, and all that kind of thing. And I think that I’d better get all of that under control first.” Oh? You mean you’ve got a case of spiritual pride? You want to be able to congratulate yourself for having gone through “The Discipline,” which is rewarded with realization? Nu-uh. That is trying to quench fire with fire. In other words, the reason you’re—wouldn’t it be great to be a mystic? Look at it this way. I mean, ca-razy! To have no fear, no attachments, no hang-ups! To be as free as the air! So that, you know, you could just wander out on the streets, and give away all your clothes to the beggars, and let go of the whole thing; let it all hang out. Wouldn’t it be crazy to have that courage? And you look into yourself honestly and you find that, inside, you’re actually a quaking mess of sensitivity. “Ughh!” You know? So that this desire to be the great mystic is nothing more than a symptom of your quaking mess. It’s self-defense. So you think, “Wowee! We’ll do that yoga bit, and we’ll get real tough.” That only means you’re going to be increasingly insensitive. Running away from the quaking mess, escaping. You never can. You’re stuck with it. There is nothing you can actually do to transform your own nature into unattached selflessness, because you have a selfish reason for wanting to do it. Well, that’s pretty depressing, isn’t it? You mean to tell me that the only people who get really enlightened and liberated are those whom the grace of God somehow hits in an arbitrary way? And all you can do is sit around and wait? Well, let’s begin with that supposition. Let’s suppose there’s nothing we can do to change ourselves. You know? Psychotherapy, religion, all this is just absolutely in vain. There’s nothing, nothing, nothing you can do about it. It’s like trying—as I said—to bite your own teeth, or lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. (Incidentally, it struck me as funny: a lot of people using that phrase in the wrong way. They say when something very difficult has to be done, we have to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps—you can’t! It’s impossible.) They say, “That’s terribly depressing! What do you mean, Alan Watts? You’ve come here simply to tell us that there’s nothing we can do?”" Shushtari; "My love served me cups of a wine unpressed the drink of the pure in which all things appear I took a sip and fell for you, o majestic! My bride was unveiled to me and I saw nothing but perfection My intoxication got me drunk as it did other men this wine revives souls whoever drinks it gets drunk unveiled to me like a bride and I saw the sun and moon Pay attention brother, hold your tongue and hold on to this wondrous secret so that the veils will be lifted from you until you see the beloved from yourself and in yourself, she is everyhting if you understand or have insight Go back to your essence and dive in but don’t stop on the slopes the commoners will languish in heedlessness while you see your love openly O you ignorant in these affairs submit to what you see: the wine goes ’round amongst us and every one of us is drunk see the men with us here present with their hearts so full See them all dancing the secret is manifest in them It was for this, they gave their souls and their night has turned to day." Mīr Taqī Mīr; "My life is like a bubble This world is like a mirage" Hafez; "As the sprout of bewilderment, your love came As the perfection of bewilderment, your union came Many a drowned one, in the ecstasy of union to whom in the ecstasy itself, bewilderment came Neither union nor united remain where the specter of bewilderment came Show me one heart on his path in whose face no mole of bewilderment came From every direction that I listened the sound of the question of bewilderment came From head to foot, Hafez’s existence In love, a sprout of bewilderment became" Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 41. Bodhidharma Pacifies the Mind; "Bodhidharma sits facing the wall. His future successor stands in the snow and presents his severed arm to Bodhidharma. He cries: "My mind is not pacified. Master, pacify my mind." Bodhidharma says: "If you bring me that mind, I will pacify it for you." The successor says: "When I search my mind I cannot hold it." Bodhidharma says: "Then your mind is pacified already." Mumon's comment: That broken-toothed old Hindu, Bodhidharma, came thousands of miles over the sea from India to China as if he had something wonderful. He is like raising waves without wind. After he remained years in China he had only one disciple and that one lost his arm and was deformed. Alas, ever since he has had brainless disciples. Why did Bodhidharma come to China? For years monks have discussed this. All the troubles that have followed since Came from that teacher and disciple." Jiddu Krishnamurti - Can I observe without controlling or resisting?; "The description is not the described" al-Ghazali; "Say unto brethren when they see me dead, And weep for me, lamenting me in sadness: “Think ye I am this corpse ye are to bury? I swear by God, this dead one is not I. I in the Spirit am, and this my body My dwelling was, my garment for a time. I am a treasure: hidden I was beneath This talisman of dust, wherein I suffered. I am a pearl; a shell imprisoned me, But leaving it, all trials I have left. I am a bird, and this was once my cage; But I have flown, leaving it as a token. I praise God who hath set me free, and made For me a dwelling in the heavenly heights. Ere now I was a dead man in your midst, But I have come to life, and doffed my shroud.”" Hebrews 1:3; "who being the radiation of his glory, and the imprest image of his substance, and governing all things by his powerful command, after having himself made expiation for our sins, sat down on the right hand of the divine majesty in the highest heavens." Max Planck - The New Science; “As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.” Atisha; "The highest skill lies in the realization of selflessness. The highest nobility lies in taming your own mind. The highest excellence lies in having the attitude that seeks to help others. The highest precept is continual mindfulness. The highest remedy lies in understanding the intrinsic transcendence of everything. The highest activity lies in not conforming with worldly concerns. The highest mystic realization lies in lessening and transmuting the passions. The highest charity lies in nonattachment. The highest morality lies in having a peaceful mind. The highest tolerance lies in humility. The highest effort lies in abandoning attachment to works. The highest meditation lies in the mind without claims. The highest wisdom lies in not grasping anything as being what it appears to be." Tulsi Ram - Atharva Veda - Authentic English Translation - 8.8.8; "This great world is the power net of mighty Indra, greater than the great. By that Indra-net of boundless reach, I hold all those enemies with the dark cover of vision, mind and senses." Mīrzā ‘abd al-Qādir Bīdil; "A mere waking between two slumbers, we are The dust of dreams between mirages we are From the crash of two waves, a bubble emerges That is, a talisman written on water we are"
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Alan Watts - Out Of Your Mind - Program 11: The World as Emptiness (Part 1);
"He walks, and he says to himself, “There is the lifting of the foot. There is the lifting of the foot.” The next thing he says is, “There is a perception of the lifting of the foot.” And the next, he says, “There is a tendency towards the perception of the feeling of the lifting of the foot.” Then, finally, he says, “There is a consciousness of the tendency of the perception of the feeling of the lifting of the foot."" Shushtari; "Your love served me many cups Its glow illumined my senses My night turned to day The sun is mine and the stars My throne contains the depths My heart is the starless sphere Your love served me many cups When I turned from myself I saw myself unveiling what was hidden its meaning beyond the kingdoms of men Your love served me many cups If you like, I’ll tell you true I’m a real faqir and wanton Shushtari is unrepentant I drink with my friend from the cup Your love served me many cups Look for me in the monastery You’ll see me slumped among the casks I love wantonly the one who revives the souls of those who join him Your love served me many cups" Ibn al-Ḥaddād; "People are like bubbles Time, depths beyond sounding One world floats in foam One world’s light is drowning" Ibn al-‘Arabi; “Now guidance is that man should be guided to bewilderment, and know that the affair is bewilderment and that bewilderment is unrest and motion, and that motion is life, without stillness and so without death, and is existence without non-existence.” Max Ehrmann - Desiderata - Original Text; "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy." Jiddu Krishnamurti - Ojai 1975 - Pubic Talk 3 - Time, suffering and death; "Because when there is suffering there is the personal concern about oneself. This tremendous concern about oneself is one of the factors of degeneracy, self improvement as its called, self fulfillment. Am I doing the right thing? Am I following the right system to achieve some kind of enlightenment? Tell me how to be God! This tremendous self concern which brings about callousness. A neurotic sense of progress." al-Ghazali; "Say unto brethren when they see me dead, And weep for me, lamenting me in sadness: “Think ye I am this corpse ye are to bury? I swear by God, this dead one is not I. I in the Spirit am, and this my body My dwelling was, my garment for a time. I am a treasure: hidden I was beneath This talisman of dust, wherein I suffered. I am a pearl; a shell imprisoned me, But leaving it, all trials I have left. I am a bird, and this was once my cage; But I have flown, leaving it as a token. I praise God who hath set me free, and made For me a dwelling in the heavenly heights. Ere now I was a dead man in your midst, But I have come to life, and doffed my shroud.”" The Ishopanishat; “Truth is both finite and infinite at the same time, it moves and yet moves not, it is in the distant, also in the near, it is within all objects and without them.” Papaji; "Be quiet don't think don't make effort. To be bound takes effort, to be free takes no effort. Peace is beyond thought and effort. Do not think and do not make effort because this only obscures That, and will never reveal That. This is why keeping quiet is the key to the storehouse of Love and Peace" Patrul Rinpoche - The Khepa Sri Gyelpo of... - The Extraordinary Teaching of Glorious Sovereign Wisdom; "Homage to the Guru! Vision is Longchen Rabjam, the All-pervasive Vast Expanse; Meditation is Khyentse Wozer, the Radiance of Wisdom and Love; Action is Gyelwai Nyugu, the Bodhisattva. Practicing such vision, meditation and action, Without stress or strain you will attain Buddhahood in this lifetime; And failing that - what peace of mind! Yes, Vision is Longchen Rabjam, All-Pervasive Vast Expanse, and the three precepts strike that essential reality. First, keep the mind relaxed, and neither diffused nor concentrated, remain without thought; in this state of equilibrium and relaxation abruptly utter a mind-shattering PHAT! forcefully, loud and short - and there it is! nothing at all but wonderment and illumination. In illuminated wonderment is all-pervading freedom of mind, and in that inexpressible all-penetrating freedom of mind recognise the dharmakaya’s total presence. A direct introduction into the nature of mind is the first imperative. Then, whether there is quiescence or flow, rage or lust, happiness or sadness, at all times and in every situation, sustain that recognition of the dharmakaya’s total presence. The 'son' clear light uniting with the familiar 'mother' light remain absorbed in ineffable total presence. Again and again disrupt quiescence, elation, clarity and flow, by abruptly uttering the syllable of means and insight, and meditative absorption and subsequent insight are identical and the sessions and intervals of meditation are indistinguishable: always remain in this state of non-differentiation. While stability in this is developing , however, renounce entertainment and treasure meditation; practice formal meditation in set periods and at all times and in every situation watch the free play of the dharmakaya alone convinced that there is nothing other than that. Absolute conviction is the second imperative. In the event of lust or anger, pleasure or pain, or any fortuitous thought, with direct recognition of it no residue remains; by intuiting this liberating aspect of the dharmakaya, analogous to a figure drawn in water, there is uninterrupted spontaneous arising and reflexive release. Whatever arises is the food of naked presence and emptiness; whatever moves is the creativity of the sovereign dharmakaya, spontaneously dissolving, leaving no trace – awesome! The way things arise is the same as before; the crucial difference is in their release. Without this vital function of release, meditation is a delusory path; imbued with it, we abide in dharmakaya non-meditation. Implicit confidence in release is the third imperative. In this vision that possesses these three imperatives, meditation; the interfusion of wisdom and love; and the Bodhisattva’s customary activity, simply act as support. Though the Buddhas of past present and future confer, there are no precepts superior to these. The Dharmakaya Treasure-finder, the creativity of total presence, took this treasure from the matrix of perfect insight. This treasure is not an extraction of ore from rock; it is the final testament of Garab Dorje; it is the spiritual elixir of the three transmissions entrusted with the seal of secrecy to my heart sons. This message from the heart is the profound truth; this vital truth is my heart message. Do not abandon this vital truth; do not let these precepts escape you. The Extraordinary Teaching of the Khepa Srigyelpo, Glorious Sovereign Wisdom, is complete." Teun Goudriaan - Maya - Divine And Human - p. 214; "...was characterized there as the antariksa-, the intermediate space between heaven and earth, while the directions of the sky were the net's sticks (dandah) by means of which it was fastened to the earth. With this net Indra conquered all his enemies." Moriya Sen’an; "Bury me when I die beneath a wine barrel in a tavern. With luck, the cask will leak."
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Alan Watts - Do You Do It Or Does It Do You?;
"So then, you get—in the state of liberated or mystical consciousness—you very often feel that a hill is lifting you up as you walk up it. The ground seems to heave beneath your feet, and up you go! And you get this strange feeling of lightness, of effortlessness. Walking on air, never a care—you know? This wonderful sense that there are no obstructions anywhere. There’s nothing, as it were, banging you and making you do that. It all flows together. And that’s a very common sense. And you are actually—in that state of consciousness—you are perceiving the goings-on, the Tao, the course of nature, in the way it’s happening." Shushtari; "I was poured a cup of timeless love not of this world, nor of heaven In it I became unique in my time bearing my banner amongst men Mine is an amazing path of love unsurpassed How lucky I am! Hey you who love him, [know that] the beautiful one has many followers If you are unkind to them, what misfortune! Far be it from you, dear ones of Najd to cut the ties of hope between you and me" Ibn al-Farid - Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa - p. 106-111; "Pass round the remembrance the one I love, even in reproach for tales about the beloved are my wine Let my hearing witness the one I love, though she be far through specters of reproach, not those of dreams! Her remembrance delights me in every form even when my reproachers mingle it with strife It is as if my reproacher brought me news of union when I had not even hoped for a response to a greeting My soul is hers, for whose Iove I destroyed my soul death came to me before the day of my death For her sake I relish my disgrace and wallow in rejection and shame when once my rank was high After my piety, because of her, dissolution casting off restraint and committing sins are sweet to me I pray, singing when I recite remembrance of her and I am enraptured in the mihrab, for she is my Imam On hajj, when I don the pilgrim’s robes I call her name and when I break my fast, it is from her that I refrain My tear ducts flow due to my state and gush because of what has passed, and my laments convey my inner fire At night my heart is driven mad with longing, at dawn my eyes are pouring in their grief my heart and eyes are stricken, one afflicted by the meaning of her beauty, the other tempted by her tender poise My sleep is lost, my morning too—may you be spared!— ever present is my wakefulness and still my longing grows My bond and my covenant have never been undone or changed my love remains my love and passion is my passion So wasted is my body that its secrets are made plain and meaning is disclosed therein through my withered bones Felled by love’s pain, with wounded heart and wounded eyelids ever bleeding, Yet true to love, I have become ethereal like air with breaths of dawn breeze my only company Sound I am, yet sick; seek me then from the morning breeze for my withering has decreed that it is my home So wasted I am that I have vanished from wasting itself and from cure to my sickness and coolness for my burning thirst Love has left nothing of me save grief sorrow, torment and grave illness No one I know knows my place save love nor the concealment of my secrets nor my bond’s custody And of passion, patience and solace it has left nothing for me but the names Whoever is free of my love, may he be saved with his soul in one piece; O soul of mine, go in peace “Forget her!” my blamer said to me, fanatically blaming me. I said, “forget your blaming of me!” If I sought consolation, who would be there to be my guide when in love, every leader follows my lead? In my every limb is every yearning for her and every longing tugs at my reins As she sways, I imagine every hip she moves to be a branch in a sand dune topped by the full moon Mine is every limb filled with every heart wherein, when she glances, is embedded every arrow And if she dissolved my body she would find every atom every heart inhabited by every human love In union with her, a year to me is but an instant, an hour’s separation like a year. When we met at nightfall, as the twin straight paths between her dwelling and my tents brought us together, We moved away a little from the tribe, avoiding spies and slanderers with their deceitful talk I spread my cheek upon the ground for her to walk upon and she said, “Good news, now you may kiss my veil.” But this my soul did not permit me, jealously shielding her from me, for higher is my purpose We passed the night in hope as my wish decreed and I saw the world my kingdom and time itself my slave." Ibn al-‘Arabi; “And thus there is nothing but bewilderment, shattering one’s vision, although the one who knows what we are saying shall not be bewildered.” Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 38. An Oak Tree in the Garden; "A monk asked Joshu why Bodhidharma came to China. Joshu said: "An oak tree in the garden." Mumon's comment: If one sees Joshu's answer clearly, there is no Shakyamuni Buddha before him and no future Buddha after him. Words cannot describe everything. The heart's message cannot be delivered in words. If one receives words literally, he will be lost, If he tries to explain with words, he will not attain enlightenment in this life." Jiddu Krishnamurti - Ojai 1975 - Pubic Talk 3 - Time, suffering and death; "The experience, which I'm experiencing, is a projection of my own conditioning, which I am experiencing. The experiencer is not different from the experience." Ahmed al-‘Alawi; "Prayers of God upon You, Light Light of all the dwelling places O you, best of all in spaces Messenger of God, You are You are light in form and shape As “light upon light” you came The Qur’an came down by the same As a lamp, oil, and light shining, you came well-arranged The world does not exist until it appears through you beautiful In traditions you have said that this world takes after you You from the Holy Presence came while you’ve never left the same You were before the cosmos was past-time is as before-time was Absolute you were in full, then took on limits beautiful Nothing exists in any way Save the Light, indeed I say From the unseen, suddenly It came down from heights, so lofty God’s Messenger, you have attained More than virtues can contain God’s Messenger you have remained And pliant to you I remain So al-‘Alawi attends by your grace, the desired end." Plotinus - V.9.5; Parmenides - Fragment 3; "to think and to be are one and the same" Gurdjief; "You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can't escape." The Śūraṅgama Sūtra; "All the Brothers in this Great Assembly, and you too, Ananda, should reverse your outward perception of hearing and listen inwardly for the perfectly unified and intrinsic sound of your own Mind-Essence, for as soon as you have attained perfect accommodation, you will have attained to Supreme Enlightenment." Buddhist Text Translation Society - The Śūraṅgama Sūtra - With Excerpts from the Commentary by the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua - A New Translation - pp. 234-235; "I began with a practice based on the enlightened nature of hearing. First I redirected my hearing inward in order to enter the current of the sages. Then external sounds disappeared. With the direction of my hearing reversed and with sounds stilled, both sounds and silence ceased to arise. So it was that, as I gradually progressed, what I heard and my awareness of what I heard came to an end. Even when that state of mind in which everything had come to an end disappeared, I did not rest. My awareness and the objects of my awareness were emptied, and when that process of emptying my awareness was wholly complete, then even that emptying and what had been emptied vanished. Coming into being and ceasing to be themselves ceased to be. Then the ultimate stillness was revealed. All of a sudden I transcended the worlds of ordinary beings, and I also transcended the worlds of beings who have transcended the ordinary worlds. Everything in the ten directions was fully illuminated, and I gained two remarkable powers. First, my mind ascended to unite with the fundamental, wondrous, enlightened mind of all Buddhas in all ten directions, and my power of compassion became the same as theirs. Second, my mind descended to unite with all beings of the six destinies in all ten directions such that I felt their sorrows and their prayerful yearnings as my own. World-Honored One, because I had made offerings to the Thus-Come One Who Hears the Cries of the World, I received from that Thus-Come One a hidden transmission of a vajra-like samādhi such that my power of compassion became the same as the Buddhas’. I was then able to go to all lands and appear in thirty-two forms that respond to what beings require" Emily Dickinson; "Unable are the Loved to die For Love is Immortality Nay, it is Deity— Unable they that love—to die For Love reforms Vitality Into Divinity"
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Alan Watts;
“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.” Shushtari; "I drink wine from the cup and from myself I approach myself In myself it is myself I love For it is my spirit, my reality the fine wine that fills me and quenches my thirst I care not what others may say I seek in myself what I already have Drink up in good health the vintage ancient and pure My allusions are from me and for me, so learn Don’t resist me, understand I am everything, the center of totality—accept this. Forget about him and her, let go of Zayd and Mayya Take pleasure in loving truly What’s passing will pass away—but my life remains My life is not separate from my qualities for my essence is my all and my all is my essence My essence shines like the sun and from myself, I approach myself in myself, it is myself I love" Ibn al-Farid; "1) My heart told me that you are my destroyer my soul is your hostage/ransom whether you know it or not 2) I have not honored the right of your love if I do not die in it out of sorrow, and someone like me is one who honors (his promises) 3) What do I have but my soul? One who gives himself (his soul) for him who he loves in love is not extravagant 4) If you are pleased by it, then you draw near to me o futility of effort, if you didn’t draw near 5) O you my preventer of sweet dreams, giver of the clothes of sickness and with them my debilitating love 6) Have mercy on my last breath and what you have left for me of my perishing body and afflicted heart 7) Love remains and union eludes me (or is my delay) and patience fades and the reunion eludes me (or is my delay) 8) I am not free of other people being jealous of you so don’t waste my sleeplessness because of the fabrications of slanderous imagination 9) Ask the stars of the night, has slumber visited my eyelids? how can you visit someone you don’t know? 10) It is no wonder my eye is stingy with closing its lids while it is generous in the flowing of torrential tears 11) I saw the terror of the day of judgement in what occurred of the pain of separation and the scene of parting 12) If there is no reunion with you then promise it to me, and then you can postpone it 13) Postponement from you, in my eyes, if fulfilling is scarce is as sweet as union with a lover 14) I inclined towards the breaths of the wind biding my time And to the face of the one that transmits his fragrance 15) Perhaps the fire of my wings will go out from its blowing And I wish that it would not go out 16) O friends of mine, you are my hope, and whosoever Calls you “friends of mine” will be sufficed 17) They returned from what you (pl.)* were upon of fulfillment Out of generosity, for indeed I am that faithful friend 18) By your lives, by your lives, I swear and in my life, I have not sworn by other than your lives 19) If my soul were in my possession, if I granted it to the one who brings good tidings of your arrival, I would not be just 20) Don’t consider me in my desire to behave unnaturally my love for you is by nature not by strained effort 21) I have concealed my love for you, it concealed me in grief until it was almost as if I was concealed from myself by my life 22) So I hid it from myself for if I were to disclose it I would have found it more elusive than hidden kindness 23) I say to one who meddles with love you expose yourself to affliction, so be a target 24) You are the victim of whomsoever you love so choose for yourself in love whom you select 25) Say to the critics, you have prolonged my blame out of desiring that blame from love would stop me 26) Stop being harsh with me and taste the flavor of Love and when you have loved, then after that be harsh (with me) 27) The secret has come out with the love of the one, who if in darkness (her) veil was rent, I would say, o moon, hide 28) And if one other than me is content with the specters of his imagination I am the one who is not content (even) with reunion with the beloved 29) My love is endowed to him and I am not cured of my affliction by less than my annihilation 30) By his love, and he is my right hand (i.e. my oath), and he suffices as an oath and I extol him almost as much as the Qur’an* 31) If he said flirtatiously: stand on hot embers I would stand obediently and I would not hesitate 32) If he is one who it pleases to step on my cheek I would put it on the ground and not be proud 33) Don’t deny my passion for what pleases him even if he does not take pity on me with union 34) Love prevailed, so I obeyed the command of my passion and in so doing, regarding him, I disobeyed the prohibition of my blamer 35) From me to him is the humbleness of submission and from him to me is the glory of the preventer and the power of the humbler 36) He made religion familiar and I have a heart that has never ceased being not attached to anything but his kindness (not ceased to encounter anything but his kindness) 37) O how lovely is everything which he is contented with and his saliva, o how sweet it is in my mouth 38) If they let Jacob hear a mention of the fineness of his face he would forget the beauty of Joseph 39) Or if Job saw him in a short visit, in a light sleep long ago he would have been cured of his affliction 40) Every full moon and every lithe physique will fall in love with him when he appears as approaching 41) If I say: Every passion (in the world) I have for you He says: I have the glory and every beauty is in me 42) His virtues are perfected and if he had given radiance to the moon when full it would not wane (be eclipsed) 43) With the arts of the describers of his beauty, time expires and nevertheless there is in him that which has not been described 44) I have spent all of myself for the sake of his love at the hand of his beauty so I praise the goodness of my expense 45) The eye desires the form of the beauty which is used by my spirit to love the hidden meaning (spiritually) 46) Make me happy dear brother and enrich me with reports of him sprinkle upon my hearing his attractions and please it 47) So that I see with the eye of hearing the testimony/sight of his beauty spiritually bestow this upon me and honour me 48) O sister of Sa‘ad from my beloved you came to me with a message and you brought it with loving-kindness 49) I heard what did not hear and I saw what you did not see and I knew what you did not know 50) If he should visit you, o innards, be rent to shreds and if he should leave, o eye, weep 51) There is no harm in distance, for the one whom I love If he is absent form the pupil of my eye, nevertheless he is in me" Ibn al-‘Arabi; “…Drowned in the sea which the knowledge of God is, and which is bewilderment” Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 36. Meeting a Zen Master on the Road; "Goso said: "When you meet a Zen master on the road you cannot talk to him, you cannot face him with silence. What are you going to do?" Mumon's comment: In such a case, if you can answer him intimately, your realization will be beautiful, but if you cannot, you should look about without seeing anything. Meeting a Zen master on the road, Face him neither with words nor silence. Give him an uppercut And you will be called one who understands Zen." Ibn ‘Arabi; "Contemplate the house: for sanctified hearts, its lights shine openly They look at it through God, without a veil, and its august and sublime secret appears to them." Ahmed al-‘Alawi; "All the universe is Light and the only thing that darkens it is the manifestation" Plotinus; "The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky. Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together." Ram Dass; "Most people are so entrapped in their mind, that they don't even know they're entrapped." Jamgon Kongtrul - Sheja Dzö - The Treasury of Knowledge - Book Six - Part Four - Systems of Buddhist Tantra; "The primordial indestructible great vital essence (gdod ma'i mi shigs pa'i thig le chen po), which is the root or ground of all of cyclic life [samsara] and perfect peace [nirvana], is known as primordial (gdod ma) because it has no beginning or end; as indestructible (mi shigs pa) because it is indivisible; as vital essence (thig le) because it pervades the various appearances; and as great (chen po) because there is nothing that it does not encompass. There are countless synonyms for the primordial indestructible great vital essence, such as "great seal" (phyag rgya chen po, mahāmudrā), "great bliss" (bde ba chen po, mahāsukha), "primordial sound" (nāda), "all-pervading vajra of space" (mkha' khyab nam mkha'i rdo rje), "ordinary awareness" (tha mal shes pa), "pristine awareness channel" (ye shes kyi rtsa), "pristine awareness wind" (ye she kyi rlung), "invincible ham" (gzhom med kyi ham), "invincible vital essence" (gzhom med kyi thig le), "essence of enlightenment" (sugatagarbha), and "transcendent wisdom" (she rab phar phyin, prajnā-pāramitā)" Kaccayanagotta Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 12.15); "By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by (takes as its object) a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'non-existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one." Shah Niyaz Barelvi; "A lover without news I am I am not I, yet I am I A Knower with art I am I am not I, nay I am I Burning of the heart and liver I am Restless in seclusion I am knowledgeable of all cures I am I am not I, nay I am I The loveliness and beauty of Truth I am the glory and majesty of Truth I am its dignity and rank and splendour I am I am not I, nay I am I A sufi with purity I am without Him and with God I am the people of the heart and glance I am I am not I, nay I am I Jesus of Mary I am Ahmad the Hashimi I am ‘Ali, the lion of the brave, I am I am not I, nay I am I His secret and need I am His burning and melting I am the one who walks on his head I am I am not I, nay I am I"
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Stranger Registered: 09/15/20 Posts: 586 |
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Alan Watts; - Eastern Wisdom & Modern Life - The Void;
"You cannot fundamentally possess yourself" Shushtari; "You seek Layla, but she reveals herself within you You think she’s other, but she’s not other than you And that’s a madness that is apparent to the cult of lovers So be careful, for otherness is the essence of being cut off Don’t you see how her beauty envelops you? She disappears only when you reject part of yourself “Come close to me,” you say to she who is your All And when she loves you, she leads you to yourself Meeting her is bliss beyond description and none reach her, save those who see meaning without forms I was so in love with her that I would have vanished in her love had she not sworn that I only obey her I concealed her from people with fantasy After having revealed her, truly, inside my cloak. I hid her from myself, with the robe of my worlds, And from my envy, out of the severity of my jealousy O Dazzling beauty! Should the light of your face Touch the eyes of a blind man, he would see every atom She is adorned with each and every charm and grace of beauty And wherever she appears, she is desired by those who love." Ibn al-Farid - Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa; "If I sought consolation, who would be there to be my guide when in love, every leader follows my lead? In my every limb is every yearning for her and every longing tugs at my reins As she bends, I imagine every hip she moves to be a branch in a sand dune topped by the full moon Mine is every limb filled with every inner core wherein, when she glances, is embedded every arrow And if she dissolved my body she would find every atom every heart inhabited by every human love In union with her, a year to me is but an instant, an hour’s separation like a year. When we met at nightfall, as the twin straight paths between her dwelling and my tents brought us together, We moved away a little from the tribe, avoiding spies and slanderers with their deceitful talk I spread my cheek upon the ground for her to walk upon and she said, “Good news, now you may kiss my veil.” But this my soul did not permit me, jealously shielding her from me, for higher is my purpose We passed the night in hope as my wish decreed and I saw the world my kingdom and time itself my slave." Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Ya’qūb al-Kānemī; "He removed his veil, but out of awe, my eyes still saw him through a veil His favour drew me near, but out of awe, found myself distant in this nearness." Ekai - The Gateless Gate - called Mumonkan - 49. Amban's Addition; "Amban, a layman Zen student, said: "Mu-mon has just published forty-eight koans and called the book Gateless Gate. He criticizes the old patriarchs’ words and actions. I think he is very mischievous. He is like an old doughnut seller trying to catch a passerby to force his doughnuts down his mouth. The customer can neither swallow nor spit out the doughnuts, and this causes suffering. Mu-mon has annoyed everyone enough, so I think I shall add one more as a bargain. I wonder if he himself can eat this bargain. If he can, and digest it well, it will be fine, but if not, we will have to put it back into the frying pan with his forty-eight also and cook them again. Mu-mon, you eat first, before someone else does: "Buddha, according to a sutra, once said: 'Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think.'" Amban's comment: Where did that so-called teaching come from? How is it that one could not even think it? Suppose someone spoke about it then what became of it? Buddha himself was a great chatterbox and in this sutra spoke contrarily. Because of this, persons like Mu-mon appear afterwards in China and make useless doughnuts, annoying people. What shall we do after all? I will show you. Then Amban put his palms together, folded his hands, and said: "Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think. And now I will make a little circle on the sutra with my finger and add that five thousand other sutras and Vimalakirti's gateless gate all are here!" If anyone tells you fire is light, Pay no attention. When two thieves meet they need no introduction: They recognize each other without question." Ibn ‘Arabi; "My heart has become receptive to every form A meadow for gazelles, and a cloister for the monks A house for the idols, and the pilgrim’s Ka’aba The tablets of the Torah, pages of the Qur’an My religion is love’s own and wheresoever turn Her caravan, that love is my religion and my faith We have an example in Bishr, lover of Hind and her sister, And Qays and Layla, and Mayya and Ghaylan" Muhammad Ould Shaykh ‘Abd Allah: "I was annihilated in love for him and I subsisted until I was annihilated from that annihilation and from subsistence as well." Plotinus - The Enneads; "When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore our unity; looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is one head. If a man could but be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All." Søren Kierkegaard; "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." Keith Dowman - Masters of Mahamudra: Songs and Histories of the Eighty-four Buddhist Siddhas - p. 93; "...his mastery of the "unborn, unstruck sound" made audible by eradication of concepts, judgements, comparisons and criticism that obscure cognition of the pure sound of the instrument, is accomplishment of the fulfilment process. The unstruck sound is the sound of silence and is the auditory equivalent of phenomenal emptiness. It is absolute sound; it is the potential sound of everything composed and waiting to be composed. Lost in this non-sound, the sense of self becomes infinitely diffused in emptiness." 3rd Karmapa - Wishing Prayer for the Attainment of the Ultimate Mahamudra; "May we receive the flawless teachings, the foundation of which are the two truths Which are free from the extremes of eternalism and nihilism, And through the supreme path of the two accumulations, free from the extremes of negation and affirmation, May we obtain the fruit which is free from the extremes of either, Dwelling in the conditioned state or in the state of only peace." Du’a Nāṣiri; "O You to Whose mercy one flees! You in Whom the one in need and distress seeks refuge! O Master, You Whose pardon is near! O You Who help all who call on Him! There is nothing more majestic than Your immense power and nothing mightier than the might of Your force. Kings are humbled to the might of Your domain and You lower or elevate whomever You wish. The entire affair returns to You, and the release or conclusion of all matters is in Your hand. We have presented our affair before You, and we complain to You of our weakness. Have mercy on us, O You Who know our weakness and continue to be merciful. Look at what we have experienced from people! Our state among them is as You see. Our troops are few and our wealth is little. Our power has declined among groups. They have weakened our solidarity and strength and diminished our numbers and our preparation. O You Whose kingdom cannot be pillaged, give us shelter by Your rank which is never overcome! O Succour of the poor, we trust in You! O Cave of the weak, we rely on You! You are the One on Whom We call to remove our adversities, and You are the One we hope will dispel our sorrows. You have such concern for us that we cannot hope for protection which comes through any other door. We rush to the door of Your bounty and You honour the one You enrich by Your gift. You are the One Who guides when we are misguided. You are the One who pardons when we slip. You have full knowledge of all You have created and encompassing compassion, mercy and forbearance. There is no one in existence more lowly than we are nor poorer and more in need of what You have than us. O you of vast kindness! O You Whose good encompasses all mankind, and no other is called on! O Saviour of the drowning! O Compassionate! O rescuer of the lost! O Gracious Bestower! Words are lacking, O Hearing, O Answerer! The cure is difficult, O Swift! O Near! To you, our Lord, we have stretched out our hands and from You, our Lord, we hope for kindness. Be kind to us in what You decree and let us be pleased with what pleases You. O Allah, change the state of hardship for ease and help us with the wind of victory. Give us victory over the aggressors and contain the evil among those who asked for it. Overpower our enemy, O Mighty, with a force which disorders them and crushes them. Overturn what they desire and make their efforts fail, defeat their armies and unsettle their resolve. O Allah, hasten Your revenge among them They cannot stand before Your power. O Lord, O Lord, Our protection is by Your love, and by the might of Your help. Be for us and do not be against us. Do not leave us to ourselves for a single instant. We have no power of defence nor have we any device to bring about our benefit. We do not aim for other than Your noble door, we do not hope for other than Your encompassing bounty. Thoughts only hope for Your blessing by the simple fact that you say ‘Be” and it is O Lord, O Lord, arrival is by You to what You have and seeking the means is by You! O Lord, You are our high pillar of support! O Lord, You are our impregnable fortress. O Lord, O Lord, give us security when we travel and when we remain. O Lord, preserve our crops and herds, and preserve our trade and make our numbers more! Make our land a land of the religion and a repose for the needy and the poor. Give us force among the lands as well as respect, impregnability and a polity. Appoint it its might from the protected secret, and grant it protection by the beautiful veiling. By sad, qaf and nun, place a thousand veils in front of it. By the rank of the light of Your noble Face and the rank of the secret of Your immense kingdom, And the rank of ‘la ilaha illa’llah’ and the rank of the Best of Creation, O our Lord, And the rank of that by which the Prophets prayed to You and the rank of that by which the Saints pray to you, And the rank of the power of the Qutb and the Awtad and the rank of the Jaras and Afrad, And the rank of the Akhyar and the rank of Nujaba’ and the rank of the Abdal and the rank of the Nuqaba’, And the rank of every one worshipping and doing dhikr and the rank of everyone praising and giving thanks, And the rank of everyone whose worth You elevated both those who are concealed and those whose renown has spread, And the ranks of the established ayats of the Book and the rank of the Greatest Supreme Name, O Lord, O Lord, make us stand as fuqara’ before You, weak and lowly. We call to You with the supplication of the one who calls on a noble Lord who does not turn aside those who call. Accept our supplication with Your pure grace, with the acceptance of someone who sets aside the fair reckoning. Bestow on us the favour of the Generous, and show us the kindness of the Forbearing. O Merciful, extend Your mercy over us and spread Your blessing over us, O Generous. Choose for us in all our words and select for us in all our actions. O Lord, make it our habit to cling and devote ourselves to the resplendent Sunna. Confine our manifold desires to You and grant us full and complete gnosis. Combine both knowledge and action for us, and direct our hopes to the Abiding Abode. O Lord, make us follow the road of the fortunate and make our seal the Seal of the martyrs, O Lord! Make our sons virtuous and righteous, scholars with action and people of good counsel. O God, remedy the situation of the people and, O God, make the reunification easy. O Lord, grant Your clear victory to the one who takes charge and empowers the religion, And help him, O You Who are forbearing, and help his party and fill his heart with what will make him pleasing to you. O Lord, help our Muhammadan religion and make it end mighty as it began. Preserve it, O Lord, through the preservation of the scholars, and raise the minaret of its light to heaven. Pardon, grant well-being, make up for our deficiency and forgive our sins and the sins of every Muslim, O our Lord. O Lord, bless the Chosen one with your perfect prayer of blessing. Your prayer is that which grants success in his affair as befits his lofty worth. Then bless his noble family and glorious Companions and those who have followed them. Praise belongs to Allah by whose praise those with an aim completely fulfil that aim."
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