Random Dharma

"Recent research has shown that the “stream” of consciousness is, in fact, an illusion. We actually perceive the world in rhythmic pulses rather than as a continuous flow."

It's Not a Stream of Consciousness

I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I spaced out for a moment.

( )

Dipa Ma's ten instructions :

1. Choose one meditation practice and stick with it. If you want to progress in meditation stay with one technique.
2. Meditate every day. Practice now. Don't think you will do more later.
3. Any situation is workable. Each of us has enormous power. It can be used to help ourselves and help others.
4. Practice patience. Patience is one of the most important virtues for developing mindfulness and concentration.
5. Free your mind. Your mind is all stories.
6. Cool the fire of emotions. Anger is a fire.
7. Have fun along the way. I am quite happy. If you come to meditate you will also be happy.
8. Simplify. Live simply. A very simple life is good for every thing. Too much luxury is a hindrance to practice.
9. Cultivate the spirit of blessing. If you bless those around you this will inspire you to be attentive in every moment.
10. It's a circular journey. Meditation integrates the whole person

On The Cremation of Chogyam Trungpa, Vidyadhara
by Allen Ginsberg

I noticed the grass, I noticed the hills, I noticed the highways,

I noticed the dirt road, I noticed car rows in the parking lot

I noticed ticket takers, I noticed the cash and checks & credit cards,

I noticed buses, noticed mourners, I noticed their children in red dresses,

I noticed the entrance sign, noticed retreat houses, noticed blue & yellow Flags—

noticed the devotees, their trucks & buses, guards in Khaki uniforms

I noticed crowds, noticed misty skies, noticed the all-pervading smiles & empty eyes—

I noticed pillows, colored red & yellow, square pillows and round—

I noticed the Tori Gate, passers-through bowing, a parade of men & women in formal dress—

noticed the procession, noticed the bagpipe, drum, horns, noticed high silk head crowns & saffron robes, noticed the three-piece suits,

I noticed the palanquin, an umbrella, the stupa painted with jewels the colors of the four directions—

amber for generosity, green for karmic works, noticed the white for Buddha, red for the heart—

thirteen worlds on the stupa hat, noticed the bell handle and umbrella, the empty head of the cement bell—

noticed the corpse to be set in the head of the bell—

noticed the monks chanting, horn plaint in our ears, smoke rising from atop the firebrick empty bell—

noticed the crowds quiet, noticed the Chilean poet, noticed a Rainbow,

I noticed the Guru was dead, I noticed his teacher bare breasted watching the corpse burn in the stupa,

noticed mourning students sat crosslegged before their books, chanting devotional mantras,

gesturing mysterious fingers, bells & brass thunderbolts in their hands

I noticed flame rising above flags & wires & umbrellas & painted orange poles

I noticed the sky, noticed the sun, a rainbow round the sun, light misty clouds drifting over the Sun—

I noticed my own heart beating, breath passing thru my nostrils

my feet walking, eyes seeing, noticing smoke above the corpse-fir'd monument

I noticed the path downhill, noticed the crowd moving toward buses

I noticed food, lettuce salad, I noticed the Teacher was absent,

I noticed my friends, noticed our car the blue Volvo, a young boy held my hand

our key in the motel door, noticed a dark room, noticed a dream

and forgot, noticed oranges lemons & caviar at breakfast,

I noticed the highway, sleepiness, homework thoughts, the boy's nippled chest in the breeze

as the car rolled down hillsides past green woods to the water,

I noticed the houses, balconies overlooking a misted horizon, shore & old worn rocks in the sand

I noticed the sea, I noticed the music, I wanted to dance.

Andy wrote: "Recent research has shown that the “stream” of consciousness is, in fact, an illusion. We actually perceive the world in rhythmic pulses rather than as a continuous flow."

It's Not a Stream of Consciousness

I was thinking some more about this... how it actually tends to validate Daniel's approach for encouraging cessations by "synching up" with vibrations, synching up with the mind moments of perception.

A very good teaching on attention and awareness -- the goal is to stablize attention, but still maintain broad awareness.

"Thinks are the way they are."

(a typo, but it works.)

"Why are you so unhappy?
Because ninety-nine percent of what you think,
And everything you do,
Is for your self,
And there isn't one."

---Wei Wu Wei

"Get rid of wrong ideas, that is all. Collecting right ideas will take you nowhere."

-- Nisargadatta, I AM THAT, Dialogue #45.

Jed McKenna on the Dark Night:

"The main feature of both of these processes, spiritual awakening and physical stomach flu, is the violent and indiscriminate evacuation of all contents; physical in one case, mental and emotional in the other. By indiscriminate, I mean no picking and choosing; if it can go, it does go. Upheaval, downheaval, every-which-way-heaval. Emergency purge. Blow all tanks.

"Both processes come in waves, cycles of agony and relief. You finish one bout of violent retching and for a little while you feel okay, you think maybe it's over, but then it starts again. You feel that first twinge of not-rightness, that first subtle rumbling that tells you all is not well, and you know what you're in for and there's nothing you can do but ride it out. It builds from bad to worse to unbearable and then explodes out in all directions, leaving you weak and trembling, unable to endure any more. Then there's that brief period of respite and the glimmer of hope that it's finally over, then you feel that twinge and the whole cycle starts again. On and on it goes, wave after wave, far past the point where you're sure there's nothing else to come out. But there is.

"Didn't your other spiritual teachers explain about this part? The year or two of gut-wrenching expurgation?"

--Jed McKenna, Spiritual Warfare.

To cultivate these diverse elements of our existence means
to nurture them as we would a garden. Just as a garden needs
to be protected, tended, and cared for, so do ethical integrity,
focused awareness, and understanding. No matter how deep
our insight into the empty and contingent nature of things,
that alone will do little to cultivate these qualities. Each of
these areas in life becomes a challenge, an injunction to act.
There is no room for complacency, for they all bear a tag that
declares:'"Cultivate Me."

-Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs
[emphasis mine]

Noah wrote: . No matter how deep
our insight into the empty and contingent nature of things,
that alone will do little to cultivate these qualities.
[emphasis mine]

Which would explain why some awake people are saints, some are psychopaths.

Culled from my FB feed. From Jean Klein's Book of Listening (Vol. III, pg. 73). <3

ON SILENCE
Silence is our real nature. What we are fundamentally is only silence. Silence is free from beginning and end. It was before the beginning of all things. It is causeless. Its greatness lies in the fact that it simply is.

In silence all objects have their homeground. It is the light that gives objects their shape and form. All movement, all activity is harmonized by silence.

Silence has no opposite in noise. It is beyond positive and negative. Silence dissolves all objects. It is not related to any counterpart which belongs to the mind. Silence has nothing to do with mind. It cannot be defined but it can be felt directly because it is our nearness. Silence is freedom without restriction or centre. It is our wholeness, neither inside or outside the body. Silence is joyful, not pleasurable. It is not psychological. It is feeling without a feeler. Silence needs no intermediary.
Silence is holy. It is healing. There is no fear in silence. Silence is autonomous like love and beauty. It is untouched by time. Silence is meditation, free from any intention, free from anyone who meditates. Silence is the absence of oneself. Or rather, silence is the absence of absence.

Sound which comes from silence is music. All activity is creative when it comes from silence. It is constantly a new beginning. Silence precedes speech and poetry and music and all art. Silence is the home ground of all creative activity. What is truly creative is the word, is Truth. Silence is the word. Silence is Truth.

The one established in silence lives in constant offering, in prayer without asking, in thankfulness, in constant love.

Do not try to become anything.
Do not make yourself into anything.
Do not be a meditator.
Do not become enlightened.
When you sit, let it be.
When you walk, let it be.
Grasp at nothing.
Resist nothing.
~ Ajahn Chah

I stumbled on this, this AM:

"There are three very simple phases to spiritual development.

Slowly realizing that everything is inside your head. Most “objective reality” is mere social convention.
Slowly realizing that other people are real. You can’t change the mind of a four year old, never mind a world.
Slowly realizing that you are just like them. At the seat of being, we’re all just alike!"

vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/other/on-being-a-mad-cultist-2852

Saw this over at DhO, it's quite good

files.howtolivewiki.com/why_not_gurus_alan_chapman.MP4

I read this and thought: and vipassana is like finding out there are no dark rooms.

I have a peculiar fondness for music about how music works; this is one that's up there with L Cohen's "Hallelujah" in my playlist...

" the minor third so bitter, the six chord like a sigh,
suspension, solution, asking must we die, must we die must we die?
And the seventh says well fellas, life might not last, but we can try…"


krisdelmhorst.com/music/strange-conversation/

Gary and Rich posted a new video of a dialogue they held recently with college students. Topics covered include choosing, intuition, free will, and serendipity. Really enjoyed it and thought others might too. __/\__

From Adyashanti's Emptiness Dancing:

If you hold on to any experience, you will experience suffering as soon as it passes. It’s amazing that so often this suffering does not get us to move on, but causes us to turn back 180 degrees to look for the experience we lost. So many times this suffering is a complete waste of time, because we don’t get the lesson that any experience that came and went is not enlightenment, and we try to repeat or sustain it endlessly.

If we are really lucky, rather we know right away that a passing experience isn’t it, or the experience fades and we don’t do the 180-degree turn backward. We realize that whatever the experience was, it wasn’t enlightenment. Because all these experiences are something that are happening to a me, and any experience that happens to a me is bound by time, which simply means it’s going to come and go. For me, this was a grace because I saw whatever experience that came down the pike wasn’t the enlightenment I was seeking. It shortened my journey immeasurably.

That "Was it enlightenment?"?

Paradoxically, thinking you can't find enlightenment is also the major cause of quitting.

Paradoxically, quitting can be the beginning.

So can quilting