Pointing To The Moon

What is it like to live an awakened life? - Adyashanti

"What is it like to live an awakened life?"

"While the world is trying to solve its problems and everyone around you is engaged in the same, you’re not. While everybody around you is trying to figure it out, trying to arrive, trying to “get there,” trying to be worthy, you’re not. While everyone thinks that awakening is a grand, noble, halo-enshrouded thing, for you it’s not. While everybody is running from this life right now, in this moment, to try to get there, you’re not. Where everybody has an argument with somebody else, mostly everybody else, starting with themselves, you don’t. Where everybody is so sure that happiness will come when something is different than it is now, you know that it won’t. When everybody else is looking to achieve the perfect state and hold on to it, you’re not." - Adyashanti via A Blissful Heart Tumblr blog

the greatest lie - steven norquist

"The greatest lie ever told is that there is a search, a quest. None of this exists. There is only pure consciousness, existing endlessly in perfect peace and perfection." - Steven Norquist, "What is Enlightenment, No, I Mean Really, Like What is It?" essay

who, then, is breathing? life expresses itself through you

"Observe your own body. It breathes. You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer conscious of your own ideas of self-identity. Who, then, is breathing? The collection of information that you mistakenly think is you is not the protagonist in this drama called the breath. In fact, you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening to you. You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot purposely keep your own life going. The expression, 'my life' is actually an oxymoron, a result of ignorance and mistaken assumption. You don't possess life; life expresses itself through you. Your body is a flower that life let bloom, a phenomenon created by life." - Ilchi Lee via crashingly beautiful blog

This is how you shall love - Adyashanti

A little backstory and context for this anecdote from Falling into Grace: Insights in the End of Suffering, by Adyashanti: He was four years into his spiritual quest--one that took him into a monastic meditate all-all-the-time route. He got to a point where he thoroughly frustrated, and was now staying at a mountain hut. "And as I sat there in that moment of utter and absolute defeat--a defeat that was so total that I didn't even feel sorry for myself--right in the middle of that moment, my heart began to flower. It was like a golden love just was being poured right into my being. It was as if I could hear everything, and it was just singing with this love.

I went out of the hut, and everything I looked at was an expression of this love, a manifestation of this love. The whole universe was nothing but this immense, infinite love, which I was being bathed in. It was then that I heard a voice--which was very odd to me, because in my spiritual life, I wasn't prone to visions or hearing voices. I didn't know where it came from, but it just said, "This is how I love you, and this is how you shall love all beings everywhere." When I heard this voice, I knew it was true. This inner voice had told me something that I'd known all along, but I could never make contact with. What I didn't know is that I'd been showered with this love my entire life, but that I was never completely open to it. This love also put down a challenge to me. It said, "This is how you shall love all things and all beings.""

we just are. we just are, and what happens just happens - Chuck Palahniuk

Nonduality isn't about special teachings and teachers. It's accessible to all because we are it. I've chosen a few quotes from fiction author Chuck Palahniuk (precisely because he's not typically called out as a "spiritual" teacher nor mystic) that resonate:

Reality means you live until you die. The real truth is nobody wants reality.

People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messed cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown. 

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.

... you practise to really get rid of the illusion—not to achieve the Reality - Douglas Harding

Short excerpt from an interview with Douglas Harding by Kriben Pillay, editor of The Noumenon Journal. reprinted in Realization.org:

KP: There is a kind of paradox, isn’t there, that one has to practise to be what one is naturally?

DH: Yes—well you practise to really get rid of the illusion—not to achieve the Reality.

KP: Yes, that is a very important point, because in the spiritual supermarket that has mushroomed over the last 20–25 years, there seems to be a constant movement to achieve some extraordinary state, and you’re directly the opposite. Would you not say that we’re really practising only to remove the illusion?

DH: That’s right. All of us are living from this. Ramana [Maharshi] kept saying everyone’s living from this—everyone’s enlightened. Everyone is firmly stationed—where else could they be but in natural nature—and the only difference between himself and others is that he enjoyed it and others ignored it. It’s not any different at all—except in that.

...when you are enlightened the whole notion of enlightenment and someone who is enlightened is a big joke. - Adyashanti

"Do not think that enlightenment is going to make you special, it's not. If you feel special in any way, then enlightenment has not occurred. I meet a lot of people who think they are enlightened and awake simply because they have had a very moving spiritual experience. They wear their enlightenment on their sleeve like a badge of honor. They sit among friends and talk about how awake they are while sipping coffee at a cafe. The funny thing about enlightenment is that when it is authentic, there is no one to claim it. Enlightenment is very ordinary; it is nothing special. Rather than making you more special, it is going to make you less special. It plants you right in the center of a wonderful humility and innocence. Everyone else may or may not call you enlightened, but when you are enlightened the whole notion of enlightenment and someone who is enlightened is a big joke. I use the word enlightenment all the time; not to point you toward it but to point you beyond it. Do not get stuck in enlightenment." -- Adyashanti

Prayer as Part of a Spiritual Practice by Thich Nhat Hanh

An excerpt from the book "The Energy of Prayer: How to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" by Thich Nhat Hanh in the subsection, Prayer as Part of a Spiritual Practice:

"Even if you don’t pray very often, and spiritual practice is not a big part of your life, you may find yourself praying for health, prosperity, and good relationships. But for those who become monks, nuns, and for others with a strong spiritual practice, there is another object of prayer. In the Buddhist chant, “The Disciple Touches the Earth in Respect,” the goal is put like this:

To go beyond the cycle of birth and death, to realize the unborn and the undying.

Of course people who have devoted their life to spiritual practice also pray for health, success, and harmony, but these things alone are not enough. As you deepen your spiritual practice, you begin to question. You may want to know clearly, Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where shall I go? After death, do I continue to exist or not? Is there any relationship between myself and Buddha, between myself and God? What is the original purpose of my being here? These are the questions, the prayers, of a dedicated spiritual practitioner.

If we are practicing, and we only pray for health, success, and good relationships, we are not yet an authentic practitioner. An authentic practitioner has to pray at a deeper level. We have to practice in such a way that in our daily life we are able to have insight into the interdependent nature of all beings. Our greatest desire as spiritual practitioners is to discover the essence of things and to be in touch with this essence. When this satisfaction is there, then whether we have very good health or poor health, we can still be happy. Whether we are successful or not successful in our work, whatever it is, we do not suffer. When our happiness is not dependent on our success or our health, we will be less likely to argue with others or make them suffer. Good relationships will be there quite naturally.

So, how is this kind of prayer different? It is different because of the level of our prayer. When we have been in touch with the ultimate dimension, with nirvana, when we have been in touch with God, then we can accept whatever happens in the here and now. We have already gone to the land of peace and joy and we do not need to suffer. Whether we have another ten years to live or five years to live makes no difference to us. At that point we have changed our way of seeing the world.

If we do not pray and deepen our spiritual practice, we suffer intensely when we don’t have what we want in the world. But when we have been in touch with the essence, the suchness of all things, then it doesn’t matter if we don’t have what we want. Before, if we were not successful in what we wanted, we thought our whole life was a failure. But when we have been in touch with the ultimate dimension, then whether our temple or our practice center burns down, whether people smear our reputation, are jealous of us, or accuse us unjustly, we can still smile and be peaceful and joyful as usual. What we thought to be success, what we thought to be the basis of our happy life, we do not need anymore. Because our happiness is already there in the ultimate dimension, it goes beyond all ideas of success and failure.

When we can see that we and all living beings are of one and the same nature, how can there be division between us? How can there be lack of harmony? We are one with God, with Buddha, so how can there be any division? The deepest desire of a practitioner is to be in touch with the ultimate dimension. Once we have been in touch with the ultimate dimension then quite naturally our health will get better, we shall be successful in our practice and our helping others, and we shall be able to form a peaceful and joyful community that lives together in harmony." - by Thich Nhat Hanh

p.s. I have a private Spiritual Circle on Google+, if you'd like to join. It's private and as interactive (or not) as we'd like it to be. It's more personal than this blog, here's a sample posting. You may join Google+ by accepting this invitation.

The radio sings and speaks, but if you open it you will find no one inside. - Ramana Maharshi

"The radio sings and speaks, but if you open it you will find no one inside. Similarly, my existence is like the space; though this body speaks like the radio, there is no one inside as a doer." -- Ramana Maharshi

(via Michael Jeffrey's compilation of 400 Good Spiritual Quotes)

 

 

We realize that the heaven everyone is seeking is where we have always been. - Adyashanti

"When you have let go of all conditions - when you have let go of how you want your own awakening to be and what you want the journey to be like - you have let go of your illusion of control.  In fact, we have to be willing to lose our whole world.  That may sound romantic when you first hear it - "Oh yes, let me sign up! I'm willing to lose my whole world." But when your whole world starts to crumble, and you start to emerge from unimaginably deep states of denial, it is something altogether different.  It is something altogether more real and gritty.  It's something that some people sign up for and some people don't.  This isn't a journey about becoming something.  This is about unbecoming who we are not, about undeceiving ourselves.  In the end, it's ironic.  We don't end up anywhere other than where we have always been, except that we perceive where we have always been completely differently.  We realize that the heaven everyone is seeking is where we have always been. " -- The End of Your World, by Adyashanti