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"Do good things, not for your own sake
But for all the beings in the universe;
Save and make free everyone you encounter,
Help them attain the wisdom of the way."

Prajnaparamita
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"People lose their wisdom eye through ignorance, doubt, and false ideas. But when they realize the nature of reality, the wisdom eye shines clearly once again. Ordinary people see only through bodily senses. Thus they see things as though each object had its own nature and were different from the rest, and it is to this belief they cling. But when they find the wisdom eye of clarity, they realize that all entities are not ultimately real but that nirvana is the true reality."

Surangama Sutra
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"The nature of the Absolute is that it is total enlightenment. It is beyond name and form and beyond the world and all its living beings. Ignorance creates an illusion of birth and death, but when ignorance is dispelled, the supreme and shining Absolute is there. Then, suffering is changed into insight, and death is transmuted into nirvana."

Surangama Sutra
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"And why is perfect wisdom beyond thinking? It is because all its points of reference cannot be thought about but can be apprehended. One is the disappearance of the self-conscious person into pure presence. Another is the simple awakening to reality. Another is the knowing of the essenceless essence of all things in the world. And another is the luminous knowledge that knows without a knower. None of these points can sustain ordinary thought because they are not subjects or objects. They can't be imagined or touched or approached in any way by any ordinary mode of consciousness, therefore they are beyond thinking."

The Buddha, in the Prajnaparamita

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I doesn't know.
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The root cause of all human suffering, misery, aggression, hatred and self-betrayal everywhere is a false belief about what I am.

The only solution for this problem is the truth.

— John Sherman

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"As one will see, it is not through logical reasoning, through a series of properly interrelated ideas that the truth may be known. All reasoning leads to the adoption of a position, which opens but one perspective to us. And it would be equally vain to multiply these points of view, for the comprehension of the reality is not the sum total of all perspectives--it is not the act of totalizing. It is through intuition that goes beyond logic, outside the play of opposites, that we will be able to understand the nature of the real."

Swami Siddheswarananda
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"When I let go of the thing that disturbed me, a regenerative silence was waiting."

"...with each relinquishment of a disturbing thought a tightness somewhere lessened."

"The silence revealed when tensions diminish contains a self-existent pleasure. The emptiness in which every impulse rises is itself regeneration."

Michael Murphy
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"...when I returned to the practice of relinquishing thoughts after my attention wandered, I felt a tiny wave of pleasure. Gradually these redemptive surges increased, growing closer to that condition Eastern philoshophers have called 'nonreferential joy' or 'self-existent delight.' It became increasingly evident that this simple restorative attention develops with practice, growing stronger with repetition.
"...when we practice such awareness..., we store something away for times when our thoughts and feelings wander. This centered exercise, which aligns body and mind with the restorative silence from which they come, makes that silence more accessible, more available when we fall from its grace. But these recognitions were not always pleasurable. My day of practice brought unexpected difficulties as well as illumination..."

Michael Murphy
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Regarding yesterday's post, there's another version of the Asanga 'finally' meets Maitreya story:

Asanga doesn't feed the dog with the piece of flesh he cuts from his arm. He places the maggots from the dog's wounds, with his tongue so as not to harm them, on his flesh so that they will have something to eat...

In response to a posting on Rama's blog, I sent him this story, which he's posted.

And then, there's this:

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"...no matter how strange yer mind is actin', ye can find a home in this empty space, this silence behind yer thoughts. It's always there. It's who ye are. Waitin' to be rediscovered."

Shivas Irons
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Rest...

Rest...

Rest...

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Appearances are one's own mind.
From the beginning, mind's nature is free from the extremes of elaboration.
Knowing this, not to engage in subject-object duality is the bodhisattva's practice.

The 37 Bodhisattva Practices
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WOOF!

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"The moment between before and after is called Truth."

Karl Renz
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"Do not seek the truth;
Only cease to cherish opinions."

Seng Ts'an
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The ego is not the enemy.
Why?
Because the ego is not real.
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"You see, the psychologist starts from the wrong basis. His methodology is founded upon the assumption that there really is a 'person,' an ego, that can be free, whereas what we are trying to point out is that the ego itself, which comprises both the conscious and the unconscious, is totally a composite of falseness and the source of all trouble; it alone destroys freedom and nothing else does.... You see that you are not within the world but the opposite is the case.... The whole world of phenomena, entities, creatures, is within my consciousness. And that consciousness has no boundaries, no divisions; it is infinity itself."

Robert Powell
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If you think you are free,
You are free.

If you think you are bound,
You are bound.

For the saying is true:
You are what you think.

Ashtavakra Gita
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Sri Don Iannone in a previous incarnation

Ramana

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"This full awareness in yourself of a mind dwelling upon nothing is known as having a clear perception of your own nature. A mind which dwells upon nothing is the Buddha-Mind, the mind of one already delivered, ...by which we mean a mind free from delusion and reality alike."

Hui Hai
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"You cannot dissolve something that is not there. This is a false problem that has become a problem itself. What has to be dissolved are our wrong views concerning the self."

Thich Nhat Hanh
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