As of late, I’ve been enjoying a pair of books, toggling back-and-forth between them in a way that feels quite interesting and enriching. One of them—Insight into Emptiness by Khensur Jampa Tegchok—harkens from the Buddhist Madhamakaya tradition. The other—The Seven Great Untenables by John Grimes—expresses the view of Advaita Vedanta. So, I read a bit from one, then a bit from the other—as …
[Read more...] about Only By Courtesy: Sankara’s Definition of Real
The main way to practice is to see that your disturbing emotions and concepts exist only in relative reality. They do not exist in genuine reality, and ultimately they are self-liberated. See that is is the same for all contradictions and conflicting appearances—they exist only in relative reality. Ultimately, their nature is self-liberated equality. So whatever manifests in your …
From Emily Dickinson, some lines exploring different kinds of solitude ... There is a solitude of space A solitude of sea A solitude of death, but these Society shall be Compared with that profounder site That polar privacy A soul admitted to itself— Finite infinity. ~ Emily Dickinson * …
Poetics I look for the way things will turn out spiraling from a center, the shape things will take to come forth in so that the birch tree white touched black at branches will stand out wind-glittering totally its apparent self: I look for the forms things want to come as from what black wells of possibility, how a thing will unfold: not the shape on paper—though that, …
Three times in as many weeks, I’ve come across articles and/or online discussions on the topic of spiritual intimacy vs. human emotional intimacy. Questions that have been posed and then discussed include: * Which is more important: spiritual intimacy or human intimacy? * Which should take priority: being devoted to the Divine, in love with God—or being in love with and devoted to human …
In the following verses, the fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded (aka Lalla) poses a series of questions, and then answers them ... Who’s asleep and who’s awake? What is that lake in the sky from which a rain of nectar is falling? What is the offering that Shiva loves most? What is that Supreme Word you’re looking for in the hermit’s coded dictionary? The mind’s asleep. When it …
