This is what you should do:

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy,

devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,

have patience and indulgence toward the people …

re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,

dismiss whatever insults your own soul;

and your very flesh shall be a great poem …

— Walt Whitman (from the preface to the 1855 edition of “Leaves of Grass” and as selected by Richard Holloway for the last page of “Doubts and Loves” (via stillcuriosity)

Can we bear to acknowledge the complete interdependence of psyche and culture, while working to differentiate ourselves from identifications with collective norms and ideas?

— Helene Shulman Lorenz & Mary Watkins, “Individuation, Seeing-through, and Liberation: Depth Psychology and Colonialism,” (PDF) courtesy of brannu. (via sharanam)

Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful. It is like a plough that breaks to ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds.

The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper. When your love is truly giving and receiving, those whom you love will not leave your heart even when they depart from you. They will become part of yourself and thus gradually build a community within you.

Those you have deeply loved become part of you. The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community. The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognise your own brothers and sisters in the strangers around you. Those who are alive within you will recognise those who are alive around you. The wider the community of your heart, the wider the community around you. Thus the pain of rejection, absence, and death can become fruitful. Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear.

— 

Henri J. M. Nouwen, “Love Deeply,” The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish To Freedom (via discourseoflove)

(via Godthings)

(Source: discourseoflove)

parabola-magazine:

Vaishnavas, Mahometans, Christians, and Hindus are longing for the same God; but they do not know that He who is Krishna is also Shiva, Divine Mother, Christ and Allah. God is one, but He has many names. The Substance is one, but is worshipped under different names according to the time, place, and nationality of His worshippers. All the different Scriptures of the world speak of the same God. He who is described in the Vedas as Absolute Existence-Intelligence-Bliss or Brahman, is also described in the Tantras as Shiva, in the Puranas as Krishna, in the Koran as Allah, in the Bible as Christ.

Yet the various sects quarrel with one another. The worshippers of Krishna, for instance, say that nothing can be achieved without worshipping Krishna; those who are devoted to the Divine Mother think that the worship of the Divine Mother is the only way to salvation; similarly, the Christians say that no one can reach heaven except through Christ; He is the only way and Christianity is the only religion, all other religions are false. This is narrow-mindedness. “My religion is true while that of others is false” –this kind of belief is not right. It is not our business to correct the errors of other religions. He who has created the world will correct them in time.

Our duty is in some way or other to realize Him. God can be reached through many paths; each of these sectarian religions point out a path that ultimately leads to Divinity. Yes; all religions, are paths, but the paths are not God. I have seen all sects and all paths. I do not care for them anymore. People belonging to these sects quarrel so much! After trying all religions, I have realized that God is the Whole and I am His part; that He is the Lord and I am His servant; again I realize, He is I; I am He.

―Sri Ramakrishna: SRI RAMAKRISHNA AT THE TEMPLE OF DAKSHINESWARA, Edited by Swami Abhedananda, from the latest Spring issue of Parabola: “Spirit in the World.”

Photo: Ceramic Tile Ceiling, Shah Chirag, Tomb of Amir Ahmad Shrine at Shiraz, Fars Province, Iran, 14th c. via: Iran Vernacular Architecture.

To realize that one is really alone, gives new courage to the person. Discovery of truth is a journey, a voyage on which one has to launch alone. You cannot impose the inquiry of truth in the heart of your partner. You cannot compel your partner to have the same intensity or the same depth of inquiry. So irrespective of where you are, the voyage has to be launched upon alone. Taking the inward journey and arriving at silence, is a voyage in solitude.

— Vimala Thakar, Mutation of Mind (via sharanam)

dhammaeverywhere:

Craving (5)

You don’t get something just because you wanted it. Whatever you get is because of conditioning, because of cause and effect. But people think they’ll get what they want. Actually, you can only get suffering if you want something with craving.

—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, Dhamma Everywhere (p. 108)

Craving (3)

dhammaeverywhere:

You can’t get what you want. If you understand the principle that you can’t get something because you want it and that you only get what comes from conditions, cause and effect, then desire gets weaker and weaker. Craving will be less and less. Everything happens because of cause and effect, not because you want it to happen.

—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, Dhamma Everywhere (p. 107)

Empathetic awareness of another’s suffering calls for a response that is driven not by the conceit of knowing what is the right thing to do in general, but by the courageous humility to risk what may be the most wise and loving thing to do in that particular case.

— Stephen Batchelor, “A Secular Buddhism” (PDF)

There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.

— Ajahn Chah (via optiicalviibes)

(Source: paintingsilentpoetry)

The art of living is based on rhythm — on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis. One can dance to sorrow or to joy; one can even dance abstractly. … But the point is that, by the mere act of dancing, the elements which compose it are transformed; the dance is an end in itself, just like life. The acceptance of the situation, any situation, brings about a flow, a rhythmic impulse towards self-expression.

— Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart (via allegorys)

(Source: brainpickings.org)

It's like this?: On meditation and life ~ Vimala Thakar →

dhammanovice:

Instead of trying to discipline the mind, bring it back forcibly and try to focus it on a point, why not be more friendly with the mind, and find out what it wants, why it wants, and where are the roots of the conflicting urges? You know, concentration and discipline have been the age old ways…

(Source: sharanam)

dhammaeverywhere:

The benefits of awareness (1)

When you are aware continuously, how do you feel? In the present moment, now, do you want anything? Do you have expectations? What are you doing? If awareness is present in this moment, how do you feel? If awareness is lost, what is different? Having awareness and not having awareness: How is the mind different?

Do you understand the value of awareness? Stay with the awareness. All objects come to awareness. What is the difference between having awareness and not having awareness? There is a different quality of mind. You need to understand the value of awareness. If you are aware, how do you feel? When you are meditating, is the mind tense or not, relaxed or not? When you are interested, wisdom is working. Because of the object, you can be aware.

—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, Dhamma Everywhere (p. 105)

(photo by Indonesian Yogi, Retreat with SUT, BrahmaViharaArama, Bali July 2011)

The benefits of awareness (2)

dhammaeverywhere:

Continuity is very important, moment-to-moment and moment by moment. And momentum, momentum is nature, nature is dhamma. Continuity of practice becomes a habit; habit becomes nature. Habit becomes nature when the practice gains momentum and the dhamma is working, “nobody” is meditating, and nobody is practicing. Nature is practice. Momentum comes because of the cause and effect process.

—Sayadaw U Tejaniya, Dhamma Everywhere (p. 105)

Dharma has several connotations in South Asian religions, but in Buddhism it has two basic, interrelated meanings: dharma as ‘teaching’ as found in the expression Buddha Dharma, and dharma as ‘reality-as-is’ (abhigama-dharma). The teaching is a verbal expression of reality-as-is that consists of two aspects—the subject that realizes and the object that is realized. Together they constitute ‘reality-as-is;’ if either aspect is lacking, it is not reality-as-is. This sense of dharma or reality-as-is is also called suchness (tathata) or thatness (tattva) in Buddhism.

— 

Taitetsu Unno, River of Fire, River of Water

My once answer to the question: What is dhamma?

parabola-magazine:

You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again… So what’s the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully. There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know…

—René Daumal, “The Art of Climbing Mountains,” Mount Analogue: A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures, Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, pp. 105–108.

Imants Tillers, Mount Analogue, 1985, Oil, oil stick and synthetic polymer paint overall 279.0 h x 571.0 w cm