“Ignorance, the shadow, is the only obstacle …”

“Ignorance, the shadow, is the only obstacle that stands in the way of everyone in this room being fully realized right at this moment. Now, the first awareness might come to you in a moment when you are terribly frightened … Did you ever notice how clear everything becomes? You see all the details, just like that, because you have stopped this peripheral thinking and you have referred to the higher mind and consciousness, to that super-subtle state known as Buddhi. Now, that is right next door to Atma. If you have touched the Buddhi, or universal aspect, you are right next to touching Atma.”

– Joe Miller, Great Song, p. 111

Great Song: The Life and Teachings of Joe Miller; Richard Power

 

H.P. Blavatsky, Founder of the Theosophical Society, Author of the Secret Doctrine and Voice of the Silence

Three Fundamental Propositions of the Secret Doctrine (H.P. Blavatsky)

The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions:

• An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought — in the words of Mandukya, “unthinkable and unspeakable.” …
• The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically “the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing,” called “the manifesting stars,” and the “sparks of Eternity.” “The Eternity of the Pilgrim”† is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan.) “The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux.” (See Part II., “Days and Nights of Brahma.”)
• The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul — a spark of the former — through the Cycle of Incarnation (or “Necessity”) in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term.H.P. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, Vol. I

I am the Lord of Lords. I am devoid of even a touch of jealousy or hatred. I am He that fulfills the desired object for those who are bent on realizing the goal …

I alone am the origin of the worlds. I am He that sports in the Upanishads. I am the flame of the submarine fire that will dry up the overflowing ocean of sorrow …

I am the seer. I am the host of seers. I am the act of creation and I myself am the created. I am prosperity, I am progress, I am satisfaction, I am the glow of the lamp of satisfaction …

I am the efficacy of herbs, I am the warp and woof of the world. I am the bee intoxicated with the fragrance of the bliss of Self emanating from the lotus of the sacred syllable Om.
I am Knowledge. I am the Known. I am the Knower. I am all the aids to Knowledge. I am the pure Soul-existence bereft of Knower, Knowledge and Known …

I am the oblation to the Gods and the oblation to the manes. I am devoid of the ideas of rejection or acceptance. I am Vishnu, I am Siva, I am Brahma, and I alone am their cause.– Thus Spake Sri Sankara

Be completely empty.
Be perfectly serene.
The ten thousand things arise together;
in their arising is their return.
Now the flower,
and in their flowering
sink homeward,
returning to root.

The return to root
is peace.
Peace to accept what must be,
to know what endures.
In that knowledge is wisdom.
Without it, ruin, disorder.

To know what endures
is to be open-hearted,
magnanimous,
regal,
blessed,
following the Tao,
the way that endures forever.
The body comes to its ending,
but there is nothing to fear.

Available from Shambhala

Lao Tzu : Tao Te Ching : A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way; Ursula K. Le Guin

 

Alan Watts on  the Wisdom of the Body:

“Because I speak of the wisdom of the body, and of the necessity for recognizing that we are material, this is not to be taken as a philosophy of ‘materialism’ in the accepted sense. I am not asserting that the ultimate reality is matter. Matter is a word, a noise, which refers to the forms and patterns taken by a process. We do not know what this process is, because it is not a “what” — that is, a thing definable by some fixed concept or measure. If we want to keep the old language, still using such terms as “spiritual” and “material,” the spiritual must mean “the indefinable,” that which, because it is living, must ever escape the framework of any fixed form. Matter is spirit named.
After all of this, the brain deserves a word for itself! For the brain, including its reasoning and calculating centers, is a part and product of the body. It is as natural as the heart and stomach, and rightly used, is anything but an enemy of man. But to be used rightly, it must be put in its place, for the brain is made for man, not man for the brain. In other words, the function of the brain is to serve the present and the real, not to send man chasing wildly after the phantom of the future.” — Alan Watts, Excerpted from Wisdom of Insecurity

The Wisdom of Insecurity; Alan Watts

 

Q: Different teachers have set up different schools and proclaimed different truths and so confused people. Why?

Bhagavan: They have all taught the same truth but from different standpoints. Such differences were necessary to meet the needs of different minds differently constituted, but they all reveal the same truth.

Q: Since they recommended different paths, which is the one to follow?

Bhagavan: You speak of paths as if you were somewhere and the Self somewhere else and you had to go and attain it. But in fact the Self is here and now and you are always it. It is like being here and asking people the way to Ramanasramam and then complaining that each one shows a different path and asking which to follow.

Excerpt from Teachings of Ramana Maharshi In His Own Words, Edited by Arthur Osborne, Rider and Company, 1962

The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words; Arthur Osborne

 

The opening lines of H.P. Blavatsky’s Voice of The Silence:

“He who would hear the voice of Nada, ‘the Soundless Sound,’ and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dharana.

Having become indifferent to objects
of perception, the pupil must seek out the rajah of the senses, the Thought-Producer, he who awakes illusion.

The Mind is the great Slayer of the Real.

Let the Disciple slay the Slayer.

For –

When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams;

When he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE — the inner sound which kills the outer.

Then only, not till then, shall he forsake the region of Asat, the false, to come unto the realm of Sat, the true.

Before the soul can see, the Harmony within must be attained, and fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion.

Before the Soul can hear, the image (man) has to become as deaf to roarings as to whispers, to cries of bellowing elephants as to the silvery buzzing of the golden fire-fly.

Before the soul can comprehend and may remember, she must unto the Silent Speaker be united just as the form to which the clay is modelled, is first united with the potter’s mind.

For then the soul will hear, and will remember.

And then to the inner ear will speak –

THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE …”

Voice of Silence by H.P. Blavatsky, available from Quest Books

The Voice of the Silence (Verbatim Edition); H. P. Blavatsky

 

Taungpulu Sayadaw on “What Makes Meditation?”
(Translated by Rina Sircar)

“When you know that you are having greed, you are no longer in ignorance, but possess knowledge.
If you know that you are angry, and have hatred, you are no longer in ignorance but possess knowledge.
When you know that you are having ignorance, that knowing becomes knowledge and it is meditation.
Even if you become aware of the feeling, ‘I don’t want to meditate,’ that means that you have the insight that you don’t want to meditate. Since you know that you do not want to meditate, that knowing becomes the meditation — the mindfulness and awareness that you know what you don’t want to do.”

(Excerpted from Blooming in the Desert, Favorite Teachings of the Wildflower Monk Taungpulu Sayadaw, Edited by Anne Teich, North Atlantic Books, 1996)

Blooming in the Desert: favorite teachings of the wildflower monk; Nandiya Mather? ?A rhan??.

 

Nyogen Senzaki’s Prayer

(Excerpted from Like A Dream, Like A Fantasy, Japan Publication, Inc., 1978)

Dharmakaya is the Buddha’s holy body.  It is the everlasting sea of noumena. It is the eternal reality of the universe.  From this transcendent point of view,  there is no coming of the Buddha, and so there is no going of the Buddha. Yet in the endless sea of phenomena arise the waves of charity and loving-kindness, to enlighten the ignorance of all fellow beings.  The eternal reality reveals its loving-kindness in the manifestation of the waves of phenomena. Thus, there is coming of Buddha, and so there is going of Buddha, from the phenomenal viewpoint of life.

My first prayer is to make myself a mirror of Dharmakaya, and reflect the whole world and the beings therein …

My last prayer is that the everlasting waves will carry us all to emancipation, so that we may enter the flowery door of Buddhahood. My adoration is for the knowledge of all Buddhas, and I will devote my life to enlighten myself and have others enlightened.

NOTE: Sensaki was a dear friend and mentor to two members of the SFTS Lodge, Samuel Lewis and Agnes Kast. His teacher Soyen Shaku was one of the first Zen teachers to come to the United States. Senzsaki’s dharma brother was the renown D.T. Suzuki. Soyen Shaku said that Suzuki’s mission was to become famous and influence the course of Western culture, and that Senzaki’s mission was to live the simple life of a monk, and be like a seed planted in the earth.

Like a Dream, Like a Fantasy: The Zen Teachings and Translations of Nyogen; Nyogen Senzaki

 

Meister Eckhart via Matthew Fox
“God is creating the entire universe, fully and totally, in the present now.”
(Wrestling with the Prophets)

“God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.”
(Wrestling with the Prophets)

“The outward work can never be small if the inward one is great, and the outward work can never be great or good if the inward is small or of little worth.”
(The Reinvention of Work)

“Every creature is full of God and a book about God.”
(The Reinvention of Work)

“A person works in a stable.
That person has a breakthrough.
What does he do?
He returns to work in the stable.”
(Meditations with Meister Eckhart)

Wrestling with the prophets: essays on creation, spirituality, and everyday life; Fox, Matthew

 

The Reinvention of Work: New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time, A; Matthew Fox

 

Meditations with Meister Eckhart; Meister Eckhart