…from http://www.allspirit.co.uk

If we could read the secret history

of our enemies we should find in each

man’s life sorrow and suffering enough

to disarm all hostility.

~ Longfellow

Love thy neighbor as thyself: Do not do

to others what thou wouldst not wish be

done to thyself: Forgive injuries.

Forgive thy enemy, be reconciled to him,

give him assistance, invoke God in his

behalf.

~Confucius

First there must be order and harmony

within your own mind. Then this order

will spread to your family, then to the

community, and finally to your entire

kingdom. Only then can you have peace

and harmony.

~Confucius

“Do what you feel in your heart to be

right - for you’ll be criticized anyway.

You’ll be damned if you do, and damned

if you don’t.”

~Eleanor Roosevelt

“Everything that irritates us about others

can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

~Carl Jung

The Truth is your birthright:

no one can take it from you.

~Svami Purna

allspirit : Message: Some quotations….

Love Fights the Power

By Barry Boyce

Whole essay at:

http://shambhalasun.com/

For bell hooks, fighting oppression doesn’t

require anger or conflict—just opening our

hearts and speaking the truth fearlessly.

Barry Boyce tells the story of this renowned

feminist and social critic, and how she came

to embrace activism without enemies and a

visionary kind of love.

Bell hooks is a woman of many call numbers.

If you search for her in the library, you’ll

find her lurking all over the place: feminist

studies, African-American studies, education,

health, film, children’s books, and more.

Waiting there to pounce, like a curious cat,

she is likely to jump out at you from any of

these shelves and strike you with a flurry

of provocative ideas—about race, gender,

class, domination, and liberation, to name

a few.

But if you do go searching for her in the

library, try to find her on videotape or DVD,

because while bell hooks articulates beautifully

in print, she really shines when you see her

face and hear her voice embodying what she

thinks and feels and sees. They say she is

an “outspoken social critic, a visionary, a

public intellectual,” but what comes across

most if you spend some time around her is

love. She loves to be herself and be by

herself—without the need to be defined by

others—but she also loves to love others

and to communicate: about herself and to

herself and to others, but above all with

others. She loves dialogue. She’s a great

interviewer. And should you ever have the

pleasure of speaking with her, beware. She

will probably interview you, to find out

what’s going on inside and whether you’re

ready and willing to talk about it. To

bell hooks, an idea is like a basketball.

She doesn’t want to hold it up to be admired.

She says she wants to “throw it to you and

let you experience it for yourself.”

allspirit : Message: Love Fights the Power.

Tormented friend, why do you still enquire

And thirst to know the sum of things entire?

The more you strive, the less you will succeed;

The mind cannot fulfil the spirit’s need.

Striving too hard begets a troubled mind

And those who strive will always stay confined.

For you are not the body, not the mind

But LIGHT IMMORTAL , mortally enshrined.

So live in bliss – enjoy the simple task;

Seek not to know, and do not dare to ask

Why you are here, or what your fate will be.

Be still and listen to the symphony

Which your surroundings play in unity.

The part cannot exist without the whole;

The whole cannot exist without the part;

And reason has no place in cosmic art.

When stillness reigns, you are the sum of things;

The Nothing and the All that Oneness brings.

When stillness reigns, you are Infinity

And sense the nearness of Divinity.

Just as the pigeon navigates in flight

And homeward speeds before a hint of night;

So too, the soul, will homeward soar one day

Without a mind to guide it on its way.

~Robert Goslin

allspiritinspiration : Message: Stillness.

My site was hacked, and lots of hidden links added that caused inappropriate ads to be displayed. Hopefully it is all fixed, and I apologise for the ads…. gill

Update: it has happened again, so I have removed the ads until I can sort it out.

allspiritinspiration : Message: wake up

From ‘The Wisdom of No Escape’
by Pema Chodron

Now. That’s the key. Now, now, now.
Mindfulness trains you to be awake
and alive, fully curious, about what?
Well, about now, right? You sit in
meditation and the out-breath is now
and waking up from your fantasies is
now and even the fantasies are now,
although they seem to take you into
the past and into the future. The
more you can be completely now, the
more you realize that you’re in the
center of the world, standing in the
middle of a sacred circle. It’s no
small affair, whether you’re brushing
your teeth or cooking your food or
wiping your bottom. Whatever you’re
doing, you’re doing it now.

Our life’s work is to use what we have
been given to wake up. If there were
two people who were exactly the same-
same body, same speech, same mind,
same mother, same father, same house,
same food, everything the same-one of
them could use what he has to wake up
and the other could use it to become
more resentful, bitter, and sour. It
doesn’t matter what you’re given,
whether it’s physical deformity or
enormous wealth or poverty, beauty or
ugliness, mental stability or mental
instability, life in the middle of a
madhouse or life in the middle of a
peaceful, silent desert. Whatever you’re
given can wake you up or put you to sleep.
That’s the challenge of now: What are you
going to do with what you have already-
your body, your speech, your mind?

allspirit : Message: The Bodhisattva

From ‘The Wise Heart’
by Jack Kornfield

*The problem with the world is that we
draw our family circle too small.*
-Mother Teresa

*Bodhisattva* is the Sanskrit word for
a being who is devoted to awakening and
to acting for the benefit of all that
lives. The way of the bodhisattva is one
of the most radical and powerful of all
Buddhist forms of practice. It is radical
because it states that the fulfillment of
our happiness comes only from serving the
welfare of others as well as ourself. Our
highest happiness is connected with the
well-being of others.

The bodhisattva’s path is a striking
contrast with the common Western modes
of therapy that so often reflect the
excessive individualism of our culture.
Everything can get focused around me: my
fears, my neurosis, my happiness, my needs,
my boundaries.We can get so caught in our
own drama that we stop our own growth.
Reflective self-absorption can be valuable
for a time, but we don’t want to stop there.
Therapists talk about how clients eventually
become sick of listening to themselves, which
is actually a good sign. It means we are moving
beyond the identification with our personal
suffering. We are ready to care for a world
larger than our own.

Every wisdom tradition tells us that human
meaning and happiness cannot be found in
isolation but comes about through generosity,
love, and understanding. The bodhisattva,
knowing this, appears in a thousand forms,
from a caring grandmother to the global citizen.
Meditators often recite the bodhisattva vows
when they sit, offering any benefit of their
practice for the sake of others: “Sentient
beings are numberless; I vow to bring liberation
to us all.” Like the ancient Hippocratic oath,
the vow to serve the sick taken by every physician,
the bodhisattva vows to serve the welfare of all.
In a more poetic fashion, the Dalai Lama takes
bodhisattva vows based on the words of the beloved
sixth-century sage Shantideva:

*May I be a Guard for those who need protection
A Guide for those on the path
A boat, a raft, a bridge for those who wish
to cross the flood
May I be a lamp in the darkness
A resting place for the weary
A healing medicine for all who are sick
A vase of plenty, a tree of miracles
And for the boundless multitudes of living beings
May I bring sustenance and awakening
Enduring like the earth and sky
Until all beings are freed from sorrow
And all are awakened.*

Psychologically this is an astonishing thing to
say. Does this mean that I am going to run around
and save six billion humans and trillions of other
beings? How can I do so? When we think about it
from our limited sense of self, it is impossible.
But when we make it an intention of the heart, we
understand. To take such a vow is a direction, a
sacred purpose, a statement of wisdom, an offering,
a blessing. When the world is seen with the eyes
of a bodhisattva, there is no I and other, there
is just us.

allspirit : Message: Holiday Without Limits - Rumi

Holiday Without Limits
Rumi

Going into battle, we carry no shield.
Playing in concert, unaware
of the beat or the melody.

We have become grains in the ground underfoot,
fold on fold, layers of love, nothing else.

Obliterated, as when the eye medicine
is no longer even a powder.
Then it cures sight.

An accident gradually gets accepted
as the thing that needed to happen.
Sickness melts into health.

There is nothing worse than staying congealed.
Let your liver dissolve into blood.
Let your heart break into such tiny pieces
it cannot be found.

The moon orb wanes.
Then for three days you could say
that there is no moon.

That is the moon that has drawn
so close to the sun,
it is nowhere, and everywhere.

Send us someone who can sing music
for the soul, though we know
such longing cannot rise from a lute
or a tambourine, not from the sun,
or Venus, or any star.

As day comes, give back
the night-fantasy things you stole.
Admit your arrogance as the stars do at dawn.

When the sun goes down, Venus begins bragging,
claiming light, arguing her loveliness
over the moon’s. Jupiter lifts a gold coin
from his bag. Mars shows his blade
to Saturn. Mercury sits on a high throne
and gives himself successive titles.

That is how it goes in the middle
of the night. Then dawn. Jupiter
is suddenly poor. Mars and Saturn
have no plans. Venus and the moon
run away, broken and terrified.

Then the sun within the sun enters,
and this night-and-day talk
seems a meaningless convention,
the lighting business.

A true holy day for a man or a woman
is the one when they bring themselves
as the sacrifice.

When Shams shone his light from nowhere,
I felt a holiday without limits begin
where once was just a person.

From ‘Rumi - Bridge to the Soul’
Coleman Barks

allspirit : Message: Love is an endless mystery

From ‘Perfect Brilliant Stillness’
by David Carse

“Love is an endless mystery
for it has nothing else to explain. it.”
- Tagore

“whisper words of wisdom: Let it be,”
- Lennon/McCartney

IN THE BEGINNING OF HIS BOOK, The Final
Truth, Ramesh writes,

“The final truth cannot be accepted unless
the mind is empty of the ‘me’ and the heart
is full of love.”

And a few days ago, in our conversation, he
told me, “david - do you want to know how to
live life? Let it be! Let it happen. Everything
that everyone is ‘doing’ - let it happen!
“Be still, ‘do’ whatever ‘you’ want, and don’t
bother about the world!

[...]

“You stand inside me naked infinite Love …
we’re lost where the mind can’t find us,
utterly lost” (Ikkyu)

—

allspirit : Message: Dissipation

From ‘The Spirit Of Tao’
Translated and edited by Thomas Cleary

Sayings Of Ancestor Lu

Dissipation

The human body is only vitality,
energy, and spirit. If you do not
care about your vitality and waste
it arbitrarily, that is like putting
water into a leaking cup; it will not
fill the cup, but will gradually leak
away. Finally it will be all gone, not
a drop left. If you do not care about
your energy but let it go whichever way
it will, that is like placing incense
on a red-hot brazier, letting it burn
away; add more fuel and fire, and the
incense will become ash. If you do not
care about your spirit and dissipate it
arbitrarily, that is like placing a lone
lamp in the wind, letting it be blown by
the wind, uncovered, so that it goes out.

allspirit : Message: Tao Te Ching, Chapter 32

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 32

Ursula Le Guin:

The way goes on forever nameless.
Uncut wood, nothing important,
yet nobody under heaven
dare try to carve it.
If rulers and leaders could use it,
the ten thousand things
would gather in homage,
heaven and earth would drop sweet dew,
and people, without being ordered,
would be fair to one another.
To order, to govern,
is to begin naming; when names proliferate
it’s time to stop.
If you know when to stop you’re in no danger.
The Way in the world
is as a stream to a valley, a river to the sea.

The second verse connects the uncut, the
uncarved, the unusable, to the idea of the
unnamed presented in the first chapter:
“name’s the mother of the ten thousand things.”
You have to make order, you have to make
distinctions, but you also have to know when
to stop before you’ve lost the whole in the
multiplicity of parts. The simplicity or
singleness of the Way is that of water,
which always rejoins itself.

Feng/English:

The Tao is forever undefined.
Small though it is in the unformed state,
it cannot be grasped.
If kings and lords could harness it,
The ten thousand things would come together
And gentle rain fall.
Men would need no more instruction and
all things would take their course.
Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.
Knowing when to stop averts trouble.
Tao in the world is like a river flowing home
to the sea.

–

Stephen Mitchell:

The Tao can’t be perceived.
Smaller than an electron,
it contains uncountable galaxies.

If powerful men and women
could remain centered in the Tao,
all things would be in harmony.
The world would become a paradise.
All people would be at peace,
and the law would be written in their hearts.

When you have names and forms,
know that they are provisional.
When you have institutions,
know where their functions should end.
Knowing when to stop,
you can avoid any danger.

All things end in the Tao
as rivers flow into the sea.