*
"Meditation is your true nature now."

Ramana Maharshi
*

*
"The perceptions of samsara and nirvana are simply the play of the mind's natural creativity, the radiance of its emptiness. The essence of this radiance is emptiness, and the expression of emptiness is radiance. They are indivisible."

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
*

*
"...the bodhisattva mahasattvas who are impartial, altruistic, nonaggresive, and free of prejudice, will attain the samadhi that fully reveals the equal nature of all things."

King of Samadhi Sutra
*

*
All things are intrinsically equal
They are identical with nirvana.

Sarvadharmasvabhavasamatavipancitasamadhiraja
*

*
"All realms of existence are there because of the deluded mind; right now, how could they not be there? Once you realize they are not there, they cannot delude your feelings and certainly cannot do anything to you. It is necessary to attain the reality where there is no delusion and no enlightenment before you can become free and unfettered."

Foyan
*

*
"An ancient said, 'Everywhere is you. Go East, and it's you; go west, and it's you. Who are you?' If you say, 'Me,' this is emotional and intellectual consciousness, which you must pass through before you attain realization."

Foyan
*

*
Deriding oneself, thinking
"I am useless," is called
The pride of inferiority.

Nagarjuna
*

The spiritual ego --the final frontier?

*
The Eight Worldly Dharmas:


pleasure and pain
gain and loss
praise and blame
fame and disrepute


Worth striving for or against?
*

*
"It is everyone's experience that the basis of daily living is facing life from moment to moment, necessarily accepting whatever the moment brings -sometimes pain, sometimes pleasure. The interconnected opposites of pain and pleasure, along with the opposites of every conceivable kind, form the very basis of life and living; therefore, it is impossible to separate one from the other. What the human being wants is one and not the other -pleasure and not pain. And this pursuit of one as against the other is the main cause of why religion flourishes, various god-men flourish, promising the impossible and leading to frustration.

Ramesh Balsekar
*

*
"To know what you are you must first investigate and know what you are not. And to know what you are not you must watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not necessarily go with the basic fact: 'I am'."

Nisargadatta Maharaj
*

*
Grasp it; there is nothing to hold onto...

Lao Tzu
*

*
*...at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

T.S.Eliot
*

*
"The transcendence of the Absolute must not be understood to mean that there is an other that lies outside the world of phenomena. There are not two sets of the real. The Absolute is the reality of the apparent; it is their real nature.... The Absolute is the only real; it is identical with phenomena. The difference between the two is epistemic and not real."

T.R.V. Murti
*

*
Let's see... where were we (or where are we)?:
*
"... prapanca might be defined as 'the differentiation of the nondual world of nirvakalpa experience into the discrete-objects-of-the-phenomenal world, which occurs due to savikalpa thought-construction.' This explains the important compound prapanca-namarupa, since namarupa (name and form) here can be understood to refer to the necessary relation between names and forms (the Buddha describes them as inseparable), that we reify forms by naming them."

David Loy
*
Look up the Sanskrit terms; it could prove instructive...
*

*
Dan has been in retreat for a few days, and has nothing to say today. Lucky you!
*

*
Another repeat, this time from Karl Renz:
*

"You cannot not be what you are. So Be That!"

*

*
I've used this one before, in the context of so-called opposites in general, but it bears repeating:
When asked which was true, free-will or destiny, Ramana replied,

"Go to the root of both."
*

*
Samsara=suffering=repetitive history=doing the same thing, expecting different results.
But can we really have any control over any of this?
*

*
"All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and undestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought about in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before you--begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error."

Huang Po
*

*
"It is because there is 'is' that there is 'is not'; it is because there is 'is not' that there is 'is'. This being the situation, the sages do not approach things on this level, but reflect the light of nature."

Chuang Tzu
*

*
Today is the day of your freedom.
*

*
What would happen if you gave up trying to attain peace?
*

*
Oh, by the way, check Kathleen's new blog out... Good name!
*

*
Whether you know it or not, you are prior to all ideas of knowing or not knowing. You do not need an enlightenment experience to be what you are. You are prior to enlightenment and delusion. You are prior to before and after. You are. Be that.
*

*
"This teaching propounds that all sentient beings without exception have the empty, tranquil True Mind. From time without beginning it is the intrinsically pure, effulgent, unobscured, clear and bright ever-present Awareness. It will abide forever and never perish on into the infinite future. It is named Buddha-nature; it is also named Tathagatagarbha and Mind-Ground."

Tsung-mi
*