Uradiance

We ask 'what time is it?' like swimmers desperately trying to stay together as they drown in eternity. What if, for a few moments, you let go? You drown in the ocean of not -knowing what time it is. You discover you can breathe in the depths. You become infinite again. You are 'in the beginning,' at the first moment of creation. That is meditation. When you come back to the surface, you ask, 'What time is it?' But now you know it is only a joke.   Hearing these words, a friend replied, 'I count breaths in my meditation practice. I think it keeps me hung up in time. I don't sink into the depths.' Yes, we have been been misled by 'traditional' meditation teachers. Religion instructs us to count our way to enlightenment. That is why we seldom arrive. To speak candidly, nothing could be sillier than counting 'planes' of consciousness, 'degrees' of samadhi. Nothing could be more superficial than counting breaths fro...

"...and setting all the good of the world against the evil, he came to the conclusion that it was a very decent and respectable sort of world after all." (Charles Dickens, 'Pickwick Papers' ) All night and day the media barrage us with images of violence and pain. But for all the world's sorrows, despite the redundant images of suffering for which the press has such an insatiable appetite, the vast majority of humans, animals, trees and countless other creatures carry out their hourly growth and flowering in quiet serenity, with no whisper of terror, no tremor of violence. At this moment, most children are playing in an empty lot, making up games in the street, or clambering up the limbs of a tree. Adults are practicing some daily duty, the anonymous sacrament of the commonplace; or running their fingers through the fur of a cat, or listening to a bird twitter in a branch near the window. And if we do not enjoy the sacred suchness of this m...

Have you ever met a pansexual? Perhaps you have pansexual tendencies and don't even know it. In this age of liberation, we speak of straight, gay, bi-sexual and trans-gendered people. Now it is time to liberate the pansexual . Pansexuals are not attracted to one partner only, nor is their sexual energy confined to one organ of the body. Pansexuals feel an erotic attraction to the whole cosmos, a sexual relationship with every flower and star. Each cell of the pansexual's flesh overflows with iridescent nectar, each atom vibrates between yearning and bliss, each photon of their body is a sperm of God. For pansexuals, the universe is a single organ of joy aroused, fibrillating through all creatures in perpetual love-making. For the pansexual, this love-making is not primarily between creatures, but between creature and Creator. Human history has deeply misunderstood pansexuals, often assuming them to be mere celibates and monks because they are not wedded to a partner. B...

Worry is a lifes tyle choice. The ignorant imagine that worry indicates responsibility. The enlightened know that worry is a waste of time. In the Sermon on the Mount , Jesus said, "Don't worry; who by worrying adds one inch to his stature?" At the climax of the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna: "Don't worry, just surrender to Me." (18:66) Awareness doesn't worry. Only 'I' worry. 

Should I blame our world catastrophe on the Wall Street Bildburger CIA Monsanto Chemtrail Pentagon Conspiracy of the 1%, financed by Israeli Lobbyists at the Federal Reserve? Isn't it more simple and direct to root out the I who blames, rather than the many whom I blame? Ramana Maharshi said,  "Practice self-reform and social reform will happen by itself." We've been struggling against corporate princedoms and powers, but this struggle is not enough. It is a superficial anarchy, a nd it is exhausting. A deeper anarchy is required. Anarchy  comes from the Greek:  an , against,  archon , ruling power or first cause. The true  an-archist  overthrows the ruling power, the primal cause at the beginning of causation's chain. In early Christian thought, the  archons  were not the physical rulers of this world: they were princes of the darkness within, the darkness of ignorance. St. Paul writes: "We struggle not against flesh and blood,...

I poured out the jug of emptiness, but I was still empty. The night in my cup overflowed with an ecstasy of stars. Brother, we got drunk  when we were still each other, long before we became two. We still can't tell the difference between darkness and light. All we do now is sing. E ndangered pods swim through our eyes seeking sanctuary in other gazes. The old earth dissolves into this one every time we blink. There is a sound that roses make when they burst into midnight bloom at the touch of the moon's fingers. We hear Her when we breathe. Remind me, inebriated friend, what the password is for entering  the kingdom of silence.

    "That which is deflated must once have been inflated," says Laot'zu. How different are fullness and emptiness, really? See how gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow, simply cancel each other out, bringing us back to zero. "Zero is where the fun starts," writes Hafiz. "There's too much counting everywhere else." When gain is followed by loss and life brings me back to zero, I rest there. Loss seems negative only in contrast, in comparison. But loss can offer the quality of sunya , blessed emptiness. The New Testament calls it kinosis , self-emptying. My emptying becomes the occasion for God's fullness. Emptiness is the space of presence. This space is true wealth. I see the same lesson on a grander scale in astrophysics. Steven Hawking writes, In the case of the whole universe, one can show that negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy of matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero. Zero is ...

Guilt cannot endure a circle. Shame cannot survive one mindful breath. Hierarchies use guilt as an instrument of control by suppression of breathing. Shame literally suffocates. If you suffer from shame, or feel your breathing stifled in any way, ask yourself: to what hierarchy did you gave away your power? It may be corporate, military, religious, or even a family. Try as you might, you will never receive love from the same authority that gives you shame. Abandon hierarchy. Join a circle. Learn to breathe.

Nondualists tell us there is no seeker, no path, and nothing to seek. But they often make us feel worse because we didn't get liberated from seeking during their afternoon workshop. Such teachers are not helping anyone. After taking their workshop, we are not only left with our seeking, but we feel guilty about it! Why resist seeking? Resistance feeds duality. Just be compassionate toward yourself. Hug your seeking as a mother watches her child. The compulsion to seek has been arising in us for thousands of lifetimes. The fact that seeking doesn't disappear in a flash is no sign of weakness. Life lives in waves. We can authentically be both jnani and bhakti , non-dual and dual. We are Oneness playfully seeking itself. Where is the conflict? I am a seeker. I have an authentic moment of non-duality: "There is no path and nothing to seek: I dissolve in boundless contentment!" But in a little while, the path reappears. I am a seeker again.  Now...

I. Humans love hierarchy. It absolves us from the responsibility of being equal. When we are absolutely equal, no one else can be blamed. No one else can free us from our dependency. No one can be supplicated to carry our sins. The anxiety of freedom is on our shoulders. That is why we love to burrow down into a hierarchy: the church, the government, the corporation, the army, the guru's ashram, the boy scouts. Nowhere is hierarchy more deadly than in spiritual institutions, for those who look to an authority cannot be free. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Faith based on authority is not faith." True faith is beyond obedience. Don't obey, surrender. Surrender doesn't happen when I obey an other, but when I rest completely in Am . The followers of Jesus could not bear true faith, true equality. He wanted them to form a circle, but they insisted on hierarchy, so that their egos could maintain a sense of separate identity. In one Gospel passage, we actu...

Every infinitesimal particle of your body dissolves into immortality now. The vastness where galaxies dance is your soul just as surely as the space between the atoms of your flesh. Stars swirl through you. Immortality enfolds your birth and your death. Immortality is your element. In the ocean of immortality, you swim and bask. How silly to worry about whether you will attain eternal life: you are eternal life. Gifted with a human form for this precious moment, you have an opportunity to do a brief dance of gratitude. Then, mirage-like, your form evaporates. This momentary association with a body is a sacrament, a chance to worship. Yet your actual identity cannot be located anywhere, in any form. Come, be a trickster, a magician. Play in the appearance of your body, even as you pervade each dust mote, every flower and star.

When I was a baby, I knew how to hide in the space between electrons. People saw me bouncing and laughing, but they had no idea where I was hiding. Even today when I go there, I can't find any me . But it's not an escape, because that infinite space is everywhere.   Didn't we all dwell in boundless Satsang once, before the technicians of the finite whom we call adults drove us out of God's garden? Now we measure eternity in hours and micro-seconds. We divide our vastness into inches. We have become measurers , which we call being educated . The truly important questions, the vastly simple questions, have been educated out of us: "What are we measuring? Hours of what? Inches of what?" We have no idea what the world is actually made of. All day, we stumble through our duties without knowing what anything really is . Sir Arthur Eddington, one of the founders of quantum physics, wrote: "All through the physical world runs that unknown content whi...

A day will come when we replace money with awareness, in a world governed by infinite debt-forgiveness. We will treasure each others' happiness as currency, and share the unfathomable abundance of mutual trust. Until that day, let us practice the economics of the Buddha. Every dollar in my pocket is part of every dollar on earth, pulsating with the labor and service of men and women everywhere. The dollar I call "mine" is in fact a sangha, a community. Painting by Marinasoria

Delight is deeper than discipline. Trust in the guidance of your delight. Is discipline required for my eye to follow a flower to its center, its stillness? Is the eye not focused, is the mind not quieted, by sheer delight? Discipline too often means doing what we "should" because we lack the courage to do what we love. But delight deepens delight, until we touch the bliss of silence. At the peak of every delight is pure meditation. When we hear the most beautiful music, make the most beautiful love, taste the most beautiful ice cream, we close our eyes and sink inward. Deepen your delight, by means of delight, until your heart discovers God, who is the source of every pleasure.

"Loneliness" is only a thought. You are never alone. Rest in your breath. Feel the radiant cloud of witnesses within you - angels, Buddhas, all your ancestors, all your friends - waves of consciousness.

"When you wake up," said the Fool, "sing before thinking." "That's impossible!" I answered, "I'd need a thought to remind me." "Not if you fall asleep," said the Fool, "with the name of the Beloved under your pillow." So night after night I lay my head on the holy name of Krishna, Jesus, Ha'Shem, Mother Divine; Ninety nine names of Allah, a thousand names of Vishnu; but when I awoke, I forgot to sing. Then one evening when the moon was full, I pillowed the universe on my heart and breathed, "I am, I am." Only the name, "I am." Now I awake, a golden fountain sighing all the words for Light. At dawn, I am the dawn.

Wholeness never seeks to harm itself, and therefor needs no moral restraints, no commandments. Thou shalt not requires two, where "I" feel threatened or rivaled by "you." But in wholeness there is only One: the need for morality never arises. Jesus declares all moral commandments fulfilled by a single law, "Love thy neighbor as thy Self," because my neighbor is my Self. There are not two beings governed by right and wrong: there is only Being, wholly in love. When we are fragmented, center-less and un-whole, we waste our time imposing moral constraints on ourselves and each other. Instead, let us learn to rest in wholeness. The unrestrained ecstatic wholeness of love is our natural prior condition, always already happening for good, never for evil. "Somewhere, out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there's a field: will you meet me there?" ~Rumi