Guest guest Posted December 11, 2002 Report Share Posted December 11, 2002 gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi swaha Namaste everyone ! I was wondering if some of the members of this loop would be willing to give their interpretation of the above mantra? lovingly in Oneness, Patt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 11, 2002 Report Share Posted December 11, 2002 Stepping from some anonymous doorway; stepping out of myself, there is just this grey misty mountainside. Taking one step inside both wooden frame and stone cave entrance to Nowhere - formless, falling everywhere at once, everything stops in mysterious fragrance. O Honeysuckle flower! The Golden One shows the way through the Heart Blossoming open - gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi swaha ~Mazie Off with you! Know that the lover's religion is contrary to other ways, for false dealings from the Friend are better than sincerity and kindliness. What is unthinkable for Him is the actual state, His chastisement the reward, all of His tyranny justice, His slander equity. His harshness is soft, His synagogue the Kaaba - the thorn driven home by the Heart-ravisher is sweeter than roses and basil. When He is sour, He is more excellent than a house of sugar; when He comes to you in annoyance, He is all affection and kisses. When He says to you, "By God, I am sick of you!", that is Khidr's elixir from the Fountain of Life. When He says "No!" a thousand yea's are hidden within it; in this religion of the selfless, He becomes family and self by remaining a stranger. His unbelief is faith, His stones all coral, His miser- liness generosity, His offenses all forgiveness. If you taunt me and say, "Your religion is bent out of shape!" - well, I have bought the religion of His bent eyebrow for the price of my spirit. This bent religion has made me drunk! Enough! I will shut my lips - you continue, oh illuminated heart, and recite the rest silently! Oh Lord! Oh Shams of God Tabrizi! What sugar you pour down! You voice a hundred arguments and proofs from my mouth! ~William C. Chittick A Sacred Blasphemy Be off and know That the way of lovers is opposite all other ways. Lies from the Friend Are better than truth and kindness from others. For Him The impossible is commonplace, Punishment is reward, Tyranny is justice, Slander is the highest praise. His harshness is soft, His blasphemy is sacred. The blood that drips from the Beloved's thorn is sweeter than roses and basil. When He's bitter it's better than a candy-shop. When He turns his head away it's all hugs and kisses. When He says, "By God, I've had enough of you!" it li'ske an eternal spring flowing from the fountain of life. A "No" from his lips is a thousand times "Yes." On this selfless path He acts like a stranger yet He's your dearest friend. His infidelity is faith, His stones are jewels, His holding back is giving, His ruthlessness is mercy. You may laugh at me and say, "The path you're on is full of curves!" Yes - for the curve of His eyebrow I have traded in my soul! This curvy path has gotten me drunk, I cannot say another word! Carry on, my glorious heart, finish the poem in silence . . . O Shams, Lord of Tabriz, What sweetness you pour upon me - All I need to is open my mouth and all your songs flow out. ~Jonathan Star Go, know that the code of lovers is opposite to all other ways, for from the Beloved lies are better than truth and beneficence. His impossibility comes to pass, his insalubriousness is a bonus, his injustice is all rectitude. Calumny from him is justice. His hard is soft, his synagogue is the Kaaba, the Beloved's thorn is better than roses and basil. The moment when he is bitter is better than a sweetshop, and the moment when he becomes weary, that is kissing and em- bracing. The moment when he says to you, "By Allah, I am indifferent to you" -- that is the water of Khidr from the fountain of life.* The when he says "No," in his "No" are a thousand "Yeses"; his strangerhood is kinship according to the code of the unselfed. His infidelity becomes all faith, his stone all coral, his miser- liness all benificence, his crime all forgiveness. If you criticize, you say, "You have a crooked way of going on"; I have bought the way of his brow and given my life. I am drunk with this crooked way; I have made enough, and closed my lips -- rise up, bright heart, and recite the rest of it. Shams-al-Haqq Tabrizi! Dear Lord, what sugar you sprinkle! You might say that out of my mouth proceed a hundred proofs and demonstrations. ~A.J. Arberry Vasanas are habits of the mind. Effort must be made to eradicate the mental tendencies. Knowledge can only remain unshaken after all mental tendencies are rooted out. If the mind becomes introverted through enquiry into the source of the "I" - thought, the mental tendencies become extinct. The light of the Self falls on the mental tendencies and produces the phenomenon of reflection we call the mind. Thus, when the mental tendencies become extinct the mind also disappears, being absorbed into the light of one reality, the heart. The divine gives light to the mind and shines in its interior. Except by turning the mind inward and fixing it in the divine how else to know him through the mind? When the mind melts with love and reaches the cave of the heart in which the benign supreme dwells, the eye of consciousness will open and you will know truth, for it will become manifest." ~Sri Ramana Forget the world, and so command the world. Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd. Stay in the spiritual fire. Let it cook you. Be a well-baked loaf and lord of the table. Come and be served to your brothers. You have been a source of pain. Now you'll be the delight. You have been an unsafe house. Now you'll be the One who sees into the Invisible. I said this, and a Voice came to my ear, "If you become this, you will be That! " Then Silence, and now more Silence. A mouth is not for talking. A mouth is for tasting this Sweetness. ~Coleman Barks – Rumi If I was walking in a field at the base of a mountain amongst singing, tall grasses and gossiping trees and happened upon two lovers, loving..... If they suddenly realized my presence, and their two flushed faces turned toward me, waiting Would I avert my eyes? If I was walking in a field at the base of a mountain amongst singing, tall grasses and gossiping trees and happened upon flowers unfurling.... If the flowers paused, recognizing a punctuation in the breeze of my walk Would I hide? If I was walking in a field at the base of a mountain amongst singing, tall grasses and gossiping trees with my dog And if my dog stopped to defecate, looking wall-eyed in my direction.... Would I shame him? If I was walking in a field at the base of a mountain amongst singing, tall grasses and gossiping trees and overheard a child singing a poem to God And when the child upon hearing my approach, turns and smiles and suddenly laughs with joy.... Do I make fun at the clumsiness of the words and waiver of the voice? If I was walking in a field at the base of a mountain amongst singing, tall grasses and gossiping trees and I looked up to see a cloudbank crash into the mountainside, sending shards of whispy white fingers searching the terrain If one of those scurrying mists touched my body intimately with intimations of God ecstasy Would I curse the sky for awakening my own potential for rapture? In the Torah it is said that for every blade of grass there is an angel that leans over it whispering, "Grow. Grow." When I recognize God in any form of Love, God please, let me be their angel, whispering......... ~Linda Stewart The fact that much about life does not make sense to the limited mind has no effect on life happening, just as it does. When we are young, for example, we might wonder why the sky is blue during the day but black at night. Our inability to resolve such questions does not have any bearing on the rising or setting sun. In fact, your questions will never be resolved in the mind, nor in feeling. You may encounter a lot of answers from other people and books, etc., and perhaps you might even settle on one answer that seems to make sense. We have all done that before, only to have that answer supplanted by another question later on down the road. And so the dog will chase its tail, and so the wheel will spin. The mind is just doing its job -- finding out about stuff, and then creating a point of view, and this point of view is always changing, because new information is constantly being processed via perception, and beliefs are established that seem to indicate some stability within reality, but then are eventually undermined by the effects of new conditioning and experience, and this goes on and on, and once in while, a rare person may just stop in the middle of all of this and realize that they are not the mind --that the mind, and feeling, and perception, and experience are all arising in a vast space of awareness, and also dissolving there, as if they never were, like a pond where the ripples have ceased, and the surface has become still. Some call that Aware Space the Truth, or God, or the Self, and some don't need to call it anything, because they no longer identify who they are with the mind of dilemma. in their kindness, some of these people turn around and remind us that all is well, even though temporary circumstances might seem to argue against it. Some, experiencing this glimpse into their own depths, are moved into the kind of ecstasy Mazie spoke of above, and a very rare few experience the implications of the Remembrance of their Unconditional Nature to the point where they drown in it, and never again fall into the belief that they are the limited mind, or that the limited mind has any real purpose beyond being a tool for simple functional existence. Ramana Maharshi is a good example of the latter. Out of compassion for all who are still troubled, he made a simple recommendation, called Atmavichara, or Inquiry.It begins with the fundamental question: "Who am I?", but doesn't stop with the evidence that mind has to offer. It is a living excercise that leads to the witnessing of consciousness itself.The witnessing of consciousness can persist through waking, dreaming and deep sleep. The Witness is fully available in any state, including your own present state of consciousness right now. So I'm going to talk you into this state, or try to, using what are known in Buddhism as "pointing out instructions." I am not going to try to get you into a different state of consciousness, or an altered state of consciousness, or a non-ordinary state. I am going to simply point out something that is already occurring in your own present, ordinary, natural state. So let's start by just being aware of the world around us. Look out there at the sky, and just relax your mind; let your mind and the sky mingle. Notice the clouds floating by. Notice that this takes no effort on your part. Your present awareness, in which these clouds are floating, is very simple, very easy, effortless, spontaneous. You simply notice that there is an effortless awareness of the clouds. The same is true of those trees, and those birds, and those rocks. You simply and effortlessly witness them. Look now at the sensations in your own body. You can be aware of whatever bodily feelings are present — perhaps pressure where you are sitting, perhaps warmth in your stomach, maybe tightness in your neck. But even if these feelings are tight and tense, you can easily be aware of them. These feelings arise in your present awareness, and that awareness is very simple, easy, effortless, spontaneous. You simply and effortlessly witness them. Look at the thoughts arising in your mind. You might notice various images, symbols, concepts, desires, hopes and fears, all spontaneously arising in your consciousness. They arise, stay a bit, and pass. These thoughts and feelings arise in your present awareness, and that awareness is very simple, effortless, spontaneous. You simply and effortlessly witness them. So notice: you can see the clouds float by because you are not those clouds - you are the witness of those clouds. You can feel bodily feelings because you are not those feelings — you are the witness of those feelings. You can see thoughts float by because you are not those thoughts — you are the witness of those thoughts. Spontaneously and naturally, these things all arise, on their own, in your present, effortless awareness. So who are you? You are not objects out there, you are not feelings, you are not thoughts — you are effortlessly aware of all those, so you are not those. Who or what are you? Say it this way to yourself: I have feelings, but I am not those feelings. Who am I? I have thoughts, but I am not those thoughts. Who am I? I have desires, but I am not those desires. Who am I? So you push back into the source of your own awareness. You push back into the Witness, and you rest in the Witness. I am not objects, not feelings, not desires, not thoughts. But then people usually make a big mistake. They think that if they rest in the Witness, they are going to see something or feel something — something really cool and special. But you won't see anything. If you see something, that is just another object — another feeling, another thought, another sensation, another image. But those are all objects; those are what you are not. No, as you rest in the Witness — realizing, I am not objects, I am not feelings, I am not thoughts — all you will notice is a sense of freedom, a sense of liberation, a sense of release — release from the terrible constriction of identifying with these puny little finite objects, your little body and little mind and little ego, all of which are objects that can be seen, and thus are not the true Seer, the real Self, the pure Witness, which is what you really are. So you won't see anything in particular. Whatever is arising is fine. Clouds float by in the sky, feelings float by in the body, thoughts float by in the mind — and you can effortlessly witness all of them. They all spontaneously arise in your own present, easy, effortless awareness. And this witnessing awareness is not itself anything specific you can see. It is just a vast, background sense of freedom—or pure emptiness — and in that pure emptiness, which you are, the entire manifest world arises. You are that freedom, openness, emptiness — and not any itty bitty thing that arises in it. Resting in that empty, free, easy, effortless witnessing, notice that the clouds are arising in the vast space of your awareness. The clouds are arising within you — so much so, you can taste the clouds, you are one with the clouds. It is as if they are on this side of your skin, they are so close. The sky and your awareness have become one, and all things in the sky are floating effortlessly through your own awareness. You can kiss the sun, swallow the mountain, they are that close. Zen says "Swallow the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp," and that's the easiest thing in the world, when inside and outside are no longer two, when subject and object are nondual, when the looker and looked at are One. You see?~b LoveEternal.MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 11, 2002 Report Share Posted December 11, 2002 Dear Patt , plomba3200@a... wrote: > In a message dated 12/11/2002 9:15:03 AM Pacific Standard Time, > sraddha54@h... writes: > > > > gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi swaha > > Namaste everyone ! > > I was wondering if some of the members of this loop would be > willing to give their interpretation of the above mantra? > > lovingly in Oneness, > Patt If I am not mistaken, the English is "gone, gone, gone beyond, completely gone beyond, enlightenment, hail." It is from the Heart Sutra (Heart of the Prajna-Paramita Sutra). Here is a link that you may find useful: http://www.allspirit.co.uk/heartsutra.html Love, joyce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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