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The state of no-mind

”In the state of no-mind, all boundaries dissolve. Suddenly, you are everywhere; suddenly, you are everyone. Suddenly, you are in the tree and in the stone and in the sky and in the friend and in the enemy—suddenly, you are simply everywhere. The whole of existence has become a mere mirror, and everywhere you find yourself reflected.

This state is the state of bliss. Nothing can disturb your peace anymore, because there is nothing except you. Nothing can destroy you now; there is nothing except you. There is no death anymore, because you continue to exist even in death itself. Nothing stands opposed to you any longer. You alone exist.

This is what Mahavira called kaivalya—perfect aloneness. Why aloneness? Because everything has been included, absorbed, and has become you.

This state can be expressed in two ways. One can say: “Only I exist. Aham Brahmasmi—I am God, the Divine, the Whole. Everything has entered into me; all rivers have flowed into my ocean. I alone exist. Nothing else exists.” This is how the Sufi mystics express it, and orthodox Muslims could never understand how the Sufis could say such things. A Sufi says: “There is no God. I alone exist.” Or: “God? That is me!”
This is a positive way of expressing that there is no longer any division.

Buddha expresses it negatively. He says: “I am no more. Nothing exists.” Both speak the truth. If everything is contained within me, it no longer makes sense to call myself “I.” The ’I’ always stands in opposition to a ’you’; ’I’ exists only in relation to something other than itself. If there is no such separation, if there is only the One, if you are everything, then the “I” becomes meaningless.

Therefore, Buddha says: ”There is no self; nothing exists.”

Both are true.

~ Osho

(The Book of Secrets)

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Enlightenment

I have seen many spiritual people become obsessed with how unspiritual others are and assume an arrogant and superior attitude while completely missing the fact that they themselves are not nearly as spiritually enlightened as they would like to think they are.

Enlightenment can be measured by how compassionately and wisely you interact with others—with all others, not just those who support you in the way that you want. How you interact with those who do not support you shows how enlightened you really are.

-Adyashanti

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We have forgotten how to be

We depend on nature

not only for our physical survival.

We also need nature

to show us the way home,

the way out of the prison of our own minds.

We got lost

in doing,

thinking,

remembering,

anticipating —

lost in a maze of complexity

and a world of problems.

We have forgotten

what rocks,

plants,

and animals

still know.

We have forgotten how to be —

to be still,

to be ourselves,

to be where life is:

Here and Now.

– Eckhart Tolle

(Stillness Speaks pg77)

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Spiritual teachings

Maharajji: Does your teacher have desires?

Ram Dass: Yes, but he told me NOT to have desires.

Maharajji: Do you have desires?

R.D.: Yes.

Maharajji: Then he didn’t teach you. How can he teach what he isn’t?

– Neem Karoli Baba

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Face the troubles but keep yourself steady in meditation

Mrs. and Mr. Kelly, an elderly couple from America, and others of their company desired to know what they should do to gain concentration in the face of discomfort of sitting and the sting of mosquitoes, etc.

M.: The discomforts will not worry you if your concentration is right. Do not mind the discomforts. Keep your mind steady in meditation.

If you do not have the strength and endurance to bear mosquito stings, how do you hope to gain realization of the Self? Realization must be amidst all the turmoil of life. If you make yourself comfortable and go to bed, you fall asleep. Face the troubles, but keep yourself steady in meditation.

Think of the Self despite the mosquitoes or toothache. It needs strength, but one must be a hero to gain realization.

Sri Ramana Maharshi

– Talk 150

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Bound to change

 

In our delusion, we see things as being permanent and truly self-existing. But in reality phenomena are impermanent, and devoid of any true substantial existence. We want to believe that our friends, partner, wealth and influence will all endure, but by nature they are bound to change. It is therefore senseless to be so preoccupied with them.

– Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book ”The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva”

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Rather than being trapped by your perceptions

We are naturally attached to comfort and pleasure and bothered by physical and mental suffering. These innate tendencies lead us to seek out, maintain and try to increase whatever gives us pleasure comfortable clothing, delicious food, agreeable places, sensual pleasure – and to avoid or destroy whatever we find unpleasant or painful. Constantly changing and devoid of any true essence, these sensations rest on the ephemeral association of the mind with the body, and it is useless to be attached to them. Rather than being dragged along and trapped by your perceptions, just let them dissolve as soon as they form, like letters traced on the surface of water with your finger disappearing as you draw them.

– Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book ”The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most”

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Self-limitation is the only problem

Q: What makes me limited and superficial?

M: The total is open and available, but you will not take it. You are attached to the little person you think yourself to be. Your desires are narrow, your ambitions — petty. After all, without a center of perception where would be the manifested? Unperceived, the manifested is as good as the unmanifested. And you are the perceiving point, the non-dimensional source of all dimensions. Know yourself as the total.

Q: How can a point contain a universe?

M: There is enough space in a point for an infinity of universes. There is no lack of capacity. Self-limitation is the only problem. But you cannot run away from yourself. However far you go, you come back to yourself and to the need of understanding this point, which is as nothing and yet the source of everything.

– Nisargadatta, I AM THAT ch 70

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What is the ego?

What is the ego?
Enquire.
The body is insentient and cannot say ’I’.
The Self is pure consciousness and non-dual. It cannot say ’I’.
No one says ’I’ in sleep.
What is the ego then?
It is something intermediate between the inert body and the Self.
It has no locus standi.
If sought for it vanishes like a ghost.
At night a man may imagine that there is a ghost by his side because of the play of shadows.
If he looks closely he discovers that the ghost is not really there, and what he imagined to be a ghost was merely a tree or a post.
If he does not look closely the ghost may terrify him.
All that is required is to look closely and the ghost vanishes.
The ghost was never there.
So also with the ego.

Bhagavan

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This body is not me

This body is not me.
I am not limited by this body.
I am life without boundaries.
I have never been born,
and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,
sacred thresholds on our journey.
Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

So laugh with me,
hold my hand,
let us say good-bye,
say good-bye, to meet again soon.

We meet today.
We will meet again tomorrow.
We will meet at the source every moment.
We meet each other in all forms of life.

~ Thích Nhất Hạnh