Dualities

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute,
so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror, and here are the stones.

— Jalalud’din Rumi – Extract from “Music Master” – The Essential Rumi (transl. Coleman Barks & John Moyne)

None of these is you

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications.

None of these is you.

— Eckhart Tolle – The Power of Now : A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (p. 37)

Sifter of Dust

Suppose you know the definitions
of all substances and their products,
what good is this to you?
Know the true definition of yourself.
That is essential.
Then, when you know your own definition, flee from it,
that you may attain to the One who cannot be defined,
O sifter of the dust.

— Jalalud’din Rumi – Sifter of Dust – The Rumi Collection

The purpose of Life

The great mystics of all religions agree that in the very depths of the unconscious, in every one of us, there is a living presence that is not touched by time, place or circumstance. Life has only one purpose, they add, and that is to discover this presence. The men and women who have done this – Francis of Assisi, for example, Mahatma Gandhi, Teresa of Avila, the Compassionate Buddha – are living proof of the words of Jesus Christ, ‘The kingdom of heaven is within. But they are quick to tell us — everyone of them – that no one can enter that kingdom, and discover the Ruler who lives there, who has not brought the movement of the mind under control. And they do not pretend that our own efforts to tame the mind will suffice in themselves. Grace, they remind us, is all-important. ‘Increase in my my grace,’ Thomas a Kempis prays, ‘that I may be able to fulfill thy words, and to work out mine own salvation. The hallmark of the man or woman of God is gratitude – endless, passionate gratitude for the previous gift of spiritual awareness…. it surrounds us always. Like a wind that is always blowing, said Francis de Sales; like fire, said Catherine of Genoa, that never stops burning..

— Eknath Easwaran – Seeing with the Eyes of Love: Eknath Easwaran on the Imitation of Christ – p. 13

The Mirror of Relationship

Your partner is your mirror. Except for the way you perceive him, he doesn’t even exist for you. He is who you see he is, and ultimately it’s just you again, thinking. It’s just you, over and over and over, and in this way you remain blind to yourself and feel justified and lost. To think that your partner is anything but a mirror of you is painful. So when you see him as flawed in any way, you can be sure that that’s where your own flaw is. The flaw has to be in your thinking, because you’re the one projecting it. You are always what you judge us to be in the moment. There’s no exception. You are your own suffering; you are your own happiness.

— Katie Byron – A Thousand Names for Joy

The God Particle

The electron on which forms and worlds are built,
Leaped into being, a particle of God.
A spark from the eternal Energy split,
It is the Infinite’s blind minute abode.

In that small flaming chariot Shiva rides.
The One devised innumerably to be;
His oneness in invisible forms he rides,
Time’s tiny temples to eternity.

Atom and molecule in their unseen plan
Buttress an edifice of strange oneness,
Crystal and plant, insect and beast and man, –
Man on whom the World-Unity shall seize,

Widening his soul-spark to an epiphany
Of the timeless vastness of Infinity.

— Sri Aurobindo – Collected Poems – Electron (Sonnets – p. 141 – 15/07/1938)

“Science has already changed its conception of matter – to it, Matter and Energy are interconvertible. The Vedic Seers also considered matter to be a conceptual form of substance – so much so that a point can be reached where only an arbitrary distinction in thought divides form of substance from form of energy. In fact, to the spiritual tradition of India, ‘Mind’, ‘Life’ and ‘Matter’ are just different formulations of the same Energy. If so, then this ‘Energy’ is not a brute mechanical force that works through accident or chance but a Cosmic WILL in action – a consciousness applying itself to a work and a result.”

— Institute of Integral Yoga Psychology – www.iiyp.net

Spirituality and worldly life

Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma
see no Dharma in everyday actions.
They have not yet discovered that
there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma.

— Dogen

Metta Sutta

This is the work of those who are skilled and peaceful, who seek the good:

May they be able and upright, straightforward, of gentle speech and not proud.
May they be content and easily supported, unburdened, with their senses calmed.
May they be wise, not arrogant and without desire for the possessions of others.
May they do nothing mean or that the wise would reprove.

May all beings be happy.
May they live in safety and joy.

All living beings, whether weak or strong, tall, stout, average or short, seen or unseen, near or distant, born or to be born, may they all be happy.

Let no one deceive another or deceive any being in any state, let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another.

As a mother watches over her child, willing to risk her own life to protect her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, suffusing the whole world with unobstructed loving kindness.

Standing or walking, sitting or lying down, during all one’s waking hours, may one remain mindful of this heart and this way of living that is the best in the world.

Unattached to speculations, views and sense desires, with clear vision, such a person will never be reborn in the cycles of suffering.

— Siddharta Gautama (The Buddha) – Teachings of the Buddha (Jack Kornfield – translation by Gil Fronsdal)

Suffering

The vast universal suffering feel as thine:
Thou must bear the sorrow that thou claimst to heal;
The day-bringer must walk in darkest night.
He who would save the world must share its pain.
If he knows not grief, how shall he find grief’s cure?

— Sri Aurobindo

In Love no longer “Thou” and “I” exist

The whole world is a market-place for Love,
For naught that is, from Love remains remote.
The Eternal Wisdom made all things in Love:
On Love they all depend, to Love all turn.
The earth, the heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars
The centre of their orbit end in Love.
By love are all bewildered, stupefied,
Intoxicated by the Wine of Love.
From each, a mystic silence Love demands,
What do all seek so earnestly?
“Tis Love. Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts,
In Love no longer “Thou” and “I” exist,
For self has passed away in the Beloved.
Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,
And in the temple of mine inmost soul
Behold the Friend, Incomparable Love,
He who would know the secret of both worlds
Will find the secret of them both, is Love.

— Maulana Farid-uh-din