Control

Just as I should never seek to control anyone, let me never allow anyone to control me.

Today's entry on the Brahma Kumaris desktop calendar

The true essence of civilisation

The man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilisation. And when native man left off this form of development, his humanization was retarded in growth.

Chief Luther Standing Bear

Silence is the Great Mystery

Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood is ever clam and unshaken by the storms of existence... If you ask him: "What is silence?" he will answer: "It is the great Mystery. The Holy Silence is His Voice." If you ask: "What are the fruits of silence?" he will say: "They are self-control, true courage or endurance, patience, dignity and reverence. Silence is the cornerstone of character."

Ohiyesa

Yoga should not be a training for body control

Yoga should not be a training for body control; on the contrary, it must bring freedom to the body, all the freedom it needs.
Yoga should help us to acquire the order in the body that it is necessary for it to function properly.

Vanda Scaravelli in "Awakening the Spine" page 106

Meditation

Mind is a way to understand the object; meditation is a way to understand the subject.

Osho

Negative Emotions

When you possess recurring negative emotions toward any individual or event, you allow that negative experience to be continually relived in your life. It, therefore, becomes a dominant focal point of your mindset. Thus, you are allowing the negative person or event to maintain an unnecessary presence in your LIFETIME.

Scott Shaw in "Zen O'clock" page 66

Gnosis

Gnosis is experiencing the fire directly, not prattling on about smoke. All this pompous noise about spiritual "authority" is only a way of saying to the world, "I can't see anything. Please excuse me."

Rumi

The spiritual seeker surrenders to wonder

The intellectual quest is exquisite like pearls and coral, but it is not the same as the spiritual quest. The spiritual quest is on another level altogether. Spiritual wine has a subtler taste. The intellect and the senses investigate cause and effect. The spiritual seeker surrenders to wonder.

Rumi

Meditation is not concentration

Meditation is not concentration. It is simple awareness. You simply relax and watch the breathing. In that watching, nothing is excluded. The car is humming - perfectly okay, accept it. The traffic is passing - that's okay, part of life. Your fellow passenger is snoring by your side - just accept it. Nothing is rejected, You are not to narrow down your consciousness.
... A meditation in which you need certain prerequisites, in which certain conditions need to be fulfilled, is not meditation at all - because you will not be able to do it when you are dying. Death will be such a distraction.

Osho in "Body Mind Balancing" page 138

 

Live it

However little you understand, however tiny a part, live it completely - not superficially, but deeply, fully, as vitally, as intrinsically, as enthusiastically as possible. Then, like a flower in a garden, that very living spreads its perfume. You don't have to do propaganda for the jasmine. The jasmine itself does the propaganda; its beauty, its perfume, its loveliness, tells the story. When you have not that loveliness, that beauty, you do propaganda for it, but the moment you have understood a little, you talk about it, preach it, shout it; because of your own understanding, you help another to understand, and therefore understanding spreads more and more, it moves further and further afield.

Krishnamurti, Bombay 10th Public Talk 14th March, 1948

Truth cannot be repeated, truth must be experienced from moment to moment by each one.

Krishnamurti

Wake up

Zuigan would greet himself each morning and request of himself, "Today please try and wake up," to which he would answer, "Yes, indeed I will."

Resentments are burdens we don't need to carry.
 

How can the brain be quiet?

So we are asking how does it happen that the brain, which is so tremendously, eagerly and enthusiastically active, can naturally, easily, without any effort or suppression, be quiet? I'll show it to you. As we said, during the day it is active endlessly, the moment you wake up, you look out of the window and say, 'Oh, awful rain', or, 'It's a marvellous, lovely morning, but too hot'.  You have started.  At that moment when you look out of the window not to say a word, not suppressing words, to realize that by saying, what a lovely morning, what horrible rain, this or that, the brain has started. But if you watch out of the window and not say a word, which doesn't mean you suppress the word, just to observe without all the memory of the past, just to observe.  Right?  So there you have the clue, there you have the key.  To observe without the old brain responding. Therefore when the old brain doesn't respond there is a quality of the new brain coming into being.  Are you getting all this? You can observe the hills, the mountains, the river, the valleys, the shadows, the lovely trees, and the marvellous cloud full of light and glory beyond the mountains, to look at it without a word, without comparing.  But it becomes much more difficult when you look at your neighbour, at your wife, your husband, another person.  There you have already got the images established and it becomes much more difficult to observe your wife, your husband, your neighbour, your politician, your priest, or whatever it is, absolutely without an image.  Just to observe, and you will see when you so observe, so clearly see, the action becomes extraordinary vital, therefore it becomes a complete action which is not carried over the next minute.

Krishnamurti, Saanen 7th Public Talk 30th July 1970

Maturity

Every child is born innocent, but every child is made knowledgeable by society. Hence schools, colleges, universities exist; their function is to destroy you, to corrupt you.
Maturity means gaining your lost innocence again, reclaiming your paradise, becoming a child again. Of course it has a difference - the ordinary child is bound to be corrupted, but when you reclaim your childhood you become incorruptible. Nobody can corrupt you, you become intelligent enough - now you know what the society has done to you and you are alert and aware, you will not allow it to happen again.

Osho in "Maturity" page 2

 

The Formula

The mystic was back from the desert. "Tell us," they said, "what God is like."
But how could he ever tell them what he had experienced in his heart? Can God be put into words?
He finally gave them a formula - so inaccurate, so inadequate - in the hope that some of them might be tempted to experience it for themselves.
They sized upon the formula. They made it into a sacred text. They imposed it on others as holy belief. They went to great pains to spread it in foreign lands. Some even gave their lives for it.
The mystic was sad. It might have been better if he had said nothing.

Anthony de Mello in "The Song of the Bird" page 30

Content with what comes to him without effort of his own, mounting above the pair of opposites, free from envy, his mind balanced both in success and failure; though he acts, yet the consequences do not bind him.

The Bhagavad Gita

Become quiet

You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait. You need not even wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstacy at your feet.

Franz Kafka

The Eeyore Effect

There is something in each of us that wants us to be Unhappy. It creates in our imaginations problems that don't yet exist - quite often causing them to come true. It exaggerates problems that are already there. It reinforces low self-esteem and lack of respect for others. It destroys pride in workmanship, order, and cleanliness. It turns meetings into Confrontations, expectations into Dread, opportunities into Danger, stepping stones into Stumbling Blocks. It can be seen at work in grimaces and frowns, which pull the muscles of the face forward and down, speeding the aging process. It contaminates the mind behind the face with its negative energy and spreads outward, like a disease. And then it comes back, projected and reflected by other unhappy minds and faces. And on it goes.

Benjamin Hoff in "The Te of Piglet" page 54

The scholar is retricted by his own learning

A well-frog cannot imagine the ocean, nor can a summer insect concieve of ice. How then can a scholar understand the Tao? He is restricted by his own learning.

Chuang-tse as translated by Benjamin Hoff in "The Tao of Pooh"

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditation is the purgation of the known

MEDITATION is a very important action in life; perhaps it is the action that has the greatest and deepest significance. It is a perfume that cannot easily be caught; it is not to be bought through striving and practice. A system can yield only the fruit it offers, and the system, the method, is based on envy and greed. Not to be able to meditate is not to be able to see the sunlight, the dark shadows, the sparkling waters and the tender leaf. But how few see these things! Meditation has nothing to offer; you may not come begging with folded hands. It doesn't save you from any pain. It makes things abundantly clear and simple; but to perceive this simplicity the mind must free itself, without any cause or motive, from all the things it has gathered through cause and motive. This is the whole issue in meditation. Meditation is the purgation of the known. To pursue the known in different forms is a game of self-deception, and then the meditator is the master, there is not the simple act of meditation. The meditator can act only in the field of the known; he must cease to act for the unknown to be. The unknowable doesn't invite you, and you cannot invite it. It comes and goes as the wind, and you cannot capture it and store it away for your benefit, for your use. It has no utilitarian value, but without it life is measurelessly empty.

Krishnamurti "Commentaries On Living" Series II Chapter 52 Evaluation

When you leave Egypt, any Egypt, do not stop to think: "But how will I earn a living out there?" One who stops to make provision for the way will never get out of Egypt.

Nahman of Bratslav

Bondage & Liberation

Absence of attachment to sense-objects is liberation; desire for sense-objects is bondage. Understand this fact, and then do as you please.

Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra

As a river creates the banks which hold it, so the energy which seeks truth creates its own discipline without any form of imposition; and as the river finds the sea, so that energy finds its own freedom.

Krishnamurti

Unless each one of you is so educated that, when you leave school and go out into the world, you are full of vitality and intelligence, full of abounding energy to find out what is true, you will merely be absorbed by society; you will be smothered, destroyed, miserably unhappy for the rest of your life.

Krishnamurti

Dead people have a built-in fear of change

Dead people have a built-in fear of change.
What changes have there been in me over the past six months?
What changes will there be today?

Anthony de Mello

The world is full of God

The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld the plenitude of God, whereby I did comprehend the whole world, both here and beyond the sea, and the abyss and all things else; and therein I beheld naught save the divine Power in a manner assuredly indescribable, so that through excess of marvelling the soul cried with a loud voice, saying: "This world is full of God!"

 Angela of Foligno, 13th Century Franciscan Nun quoted in "Acceptance" by Gillian Stokes