Won't you join me in this vow? I will not blame the violence of the world on others. I will claim it with my own heart. I vow to generate peace every day, beginning now, with every breath I breathe.
The Peace Vow
Won't you join me in this vow? I will not blame the violence of the world on others. I will claim it with my own heart. I vow to generate peace every day, beginning now, with every breath I breathe.
Friends
The heart is not just a pump; it is a neural center as conscious as the brain. Through our hearts, we are one hologram pulsating with love. Some day we will understand that this is not mysticism, but physiology. Don't doubt the Invisible: it is filled with friendships.
My heart has such divine Friends! Maharishi, Shri Shri Ravi Shankar, Thich Nhat Hanh, Amma Shri Karunamayi, Jesus... I no longer call them "masters." Such language implies self-abnegation, and authoritarianism. But the age of servitude is over.
Our relationship to the Guru is much more intimate than master and disciple. Friends of the Heart do not ask for bowed heads or self-denial. They long to glorify us, and welcome us into their communion of joy.
Here is an innocent expression of spiritual friendship, giving a hint of what it was like to be with Maharishi in person. Jai Guru Dev. All gratitude to the divine Friend! LINK
Omega
Photo: Omega Nebula
Dharma
What is the sign that you have found your Dharma, the work the cosmos created you for? Not feeling any gap between being, thinking, and doing. What you do is simply the overflow of who you Are. Your service is to Be. Most gracefully the Buddha's feet brush the ground, moving like a cloud. Most firmly the Buddha's fingers heal little creatures with the earth-touching gesture.
Compass
in the compass of compassion
amidst the storm of polarity,
the swirl of anger
from the Left, from the Right.
Your silent eye is not an escape
from the problem,
it is the solution.
What's Wrong?
But this is false perception. The right perception is, 'My mind is filled with the sense that something is wrong, and I project this doom onto you.'
To 'fix' the world, I must first inquire into my perception. Then I discover that I never know any world except my perception of it.
Therefor, to know the nature of the world, I must know the nature of my mind. What is the nature of this mind? A restless need for the moment to be other than it is.
But it is impossible to 'fix' this moment and make it other than it is. And this impossible demand is the root of my suffering, is it not?
I can never experience the 'fix,' for the fix is always in the future, which leaves me ever exhausted in a problematic present from which I ceaselessly try to separate myself. Yet no matter how I try to improve the world, this present moment always feels wrong, for the simple reason that my mind feels wrong.
The true inquiry is not, 'How can I fix the world?' but 'Why does my mind need this moment to be other than it is?'
I can do so much more for the world by solving the problem of my own mind, than by solving the problem of the world.
When I penetrate to the core of my need for this moment to be other than it is, I come face to face with my own restlessness. I can see my restlessness in the mirror of awareness, and this reflection of the self upon itself dissolves the root of aggression in the ground of love.
The aggression I felt for others, as I blamed them for the world problem, was my own aggression toward my self for not being happy.
Now I can stop projecting my story of pain and injustice onto others. I can stop blaming the world for my problem, because the problem is my blame.
I return to what IS, just as it is: the miracle of presence. No longer separate from the world, I no longer demand the moment to be other than it is. Non-separateness is peace. There is no other peace, and no other cause of peace. Non-violence is the flowering of non-separateness.
Hearing this, some people create an image of passivity, of sitting on a log in the forest, doing nothing. This image is from the truth of non-separateness. Non-separateness is the wondrous spark of dynamic action. A Buddha is not a bump on a log; a Buddha is a unique flowering of action in the present moment.
But it is a completely new kind of action, the action that arises from stillness. This secret of dynamic action is the real meaning of the Taoist term 'wei wu wei, doing through not-doing,' which is the seed of the martial arts. It is likewise the essence of the Bhagavad Gita: 'One who sees stillness in action, and action in stillness, truly sees.'
Creative action flows out of presence, with no other motive than to dance with what IS. Creative action does not model itself on the past, or seek a future ideal. Creative action is a wave in the ocean of being right here.
Through the unity of this moment, I have infinite freedom to act responsibly. I do not act out of an urgent sense that something needs fixing. For I am part of the seamless continuum of wholeness that was never broken. Right now, I am response-able. I am my own healing, and my action heals the world. I act in freedom, because nothing is wrong.
This self-evident truth is perfectly revealed in the shortest of all Buddhist suttras, which was hidden in obscurity until it was rediscovered by Thich Nhat Hanh. We will remember Thay as the master who transformed Buddhism by refocusing the whole teaching through the prism of this supremely important suttra, 'The Bheta Karatta,' or 'Better Way' suttra.
A disciple asked the Awakened One, 'Which is the better way? To leave the world and live alone as a monk, or stay and try to improve conditions?'
The Buddha replied, 'You can do either, but there is a better way, one better way to do both.'
'Tell me the better way!' the disciple asked. So the Buddha gave him this reply, the 'Better Way' Sutra:
'Give up regretting the past.
Give up worrying about the future.
But deeply observe
the present moment
just as it is,
and you will attain the peace
and unity
of the ancient masters.'
Every Buddha Is A Unique Blossom
To minimize the genius of the unique individual is also a form of oppression. People may be One, but they are not the same.
There is a crudeness about New Age "non-dualism," just as there is a crudeness in the politics of the collective: the intentional ignorance of differences and distinctions. This happens when impatient and immature minds, confusing equality with mediocrity, resent and suppress the flowering of excellence.
Yes, we have learned that every particle is a wave of the unified field, but that is no reason to press the leaven of the particular back into dough. Yes, there is beauty in the sea, but there is equal beauty in the wave. The fulfillment of the sea is to express the wave as individual power, not to level it.
Every Buddha is a unique blossoming of Presence, not a flower that fades back into undifferentiated loam.
There is a crudeness about New Age "non-dualism," just as there is a crudeness in the politics of the collective: the intentional ignorance of differences and distinctions. This happens when impatient and immature minds, confusing equality with mediocrity, resent and suppress the flowering of excellence.
Yes, we have learned that every particle is a wave of the unified field, but that is no reason to press the leaven of the particular back into dough. Yes, there is beauty in the sea, but there is equal beauty in the wave. The fulfillment of the sea is to express the wave as individual power, not to level it.
Every Buddha is a unique blossoming of Presence, not a flower that fades back into undifferentiated loam.
Administration
Sometimes we need an organization, and sometimes we need a
disorganization. Grace is beyond executive management. Shiva administers this vast business the way a crystal manages the sun: thousands of compartments for a single stream of fire, without separation or distinction. Kali Shakti's style is different: when she dances, her naked toes pulverize our bodies into stabbing slivers of subatomic delight.
The current that swirls us into a single massless particle is the entropy that flings us apart. Our minds cannot process such data. This is why confessing our confusion is a potent spiritual path.
Look at it this way, friend. We're dry leaves scuttling on a sidewalk, pretending to move our own feet. Resist the wind, and you become a 'me.' Surrender, and you become the wind.
True, what whirls us can never be known, but its name can be felt as a quiver of seduction in the quim of silence. There are extravagant chocolate truffles like this. They melt
on your tongue. Do you try to understand? No, you simply
let the flavor of love fill your breath with stars.
What Is Truth?
Don't look for the Truth. Just look at the Lie.
Implicit in the search for truth is the lie that you are separate from it. But if you just look into the lie, wherever it arises in the present moment, it will vanish like a mirage in a mirror. The lie cannot endure your gaze.
This is why, when Pilate asked Jesus, 'What is Truth?' Jesus did not answer. He simply gazed back.
(Painting by 19th C. Russian artist Nicolai Ge)
A Warrior for Peace
Just before sunrise this morning, I saw Jesus walking on the fiery waters of my heart, the glorious golden ocean of my outrage. He commanded me, saying, "Don't be a goody-goody! Do some mischief in this world. God loves roughhousing."
I said, "What shall I do, Lord, for I am a man of peace."
He answered, "Are you angry?"
I said, "No, Lord."
He answered, "That's funny, because I AM."
Then he breathed a pure smokeless blue flame of fiercest love upon me. And I felt long-lost anger rise up through my backbone, undulating like a graceful maiden with a body of lightning, wearing the thinnest veil of yearning, and brandishing a diamond scimitar.
I knelt down and cried, "Lord help me, I am angry! I am angry at the slaughterers of Palestinian children and the murderers of rabbis. I am angry at those who cry, 'Peace, peace!' when there is no peace. I am angry at the merchants of war and the presidents they buy with 30 pieces of silver. I am angry at the gray-flanneled pharisees of the temple mount on Wall Street, who fill their pockets with the bread of the poor. And most of all I am angry at me, for I know not what to do!"
Then the Lord said, "Stand up!"
I stood as if on solid ground for the first time, I felt so rooted in the divine wrath. The flame of his breath smelted me melted me molded me as I stepped from the Radiance, a warrior for peace.
"What shall I do, Lord?" I asked again, with passion.
And he answered, "Do what I did. Drive the fucking money-changers out of the temple."
Peace Through Ignorance
But we whose creed is, 'I don't know,' live in joyful compassion, armed with the blessed shield of uncertainty. This isn't about right or wrong, friend, it's an invitation to strip off your doctrines and take a bath with me. Dive in the pool of Unknowing, fathomless and dark among wild berries, somewhere in the sweet-scented forest to which there is no Way.
Awake
In Christianity, it is the "Universal Body of Christ," in Jewish
mysticism the "Adam Kadman," and in the Vedic tradition of India, the "Purusha." This cosmic consciousness in the body is the only real
solution to our world's economic and political crisis.
I invite you to awake in seamless waves of stillness where action is play, in symphonic tides of silence where words are just for fun. The earth is one breath of your astonishment, the entire creation a ripple in the ocean of your Presence...
Don't let the mind make you smaller than you Are. Cradled in the hologram of Indra's net, your heart spins out threads of beauty, connecting stars and galaxies in the sparkling tapestry of your flesh. Jesus came here just to show you this: every silken wisp of you an oscillation of God-Consciousness, more stable and solid than a proton, yet resonating at a frequency beyond light.
Your intent is pure compassion, and it makes the most distant quasar, or the most intimate tear, tremble with sincerity. In the starry cosmos of your body, every sensation at its core is the silent pull of the infant's lips on the nipples of the Mother.
Cosmic consciousness is no mere fantasy: it is the one solution to our world's political and economic problems. The economists, the politicians, the technocrats have tried and failed. It is time for the mystics to stand up and transform the earth. Injustice is only conquered through visionary experience.
How? Because, tasting this vision in your heart, you are no longer a limited separate individual. You are centered in this now of time and space, but your aureole is cosmic, all-pervading, and non-localized. The ever-widening energy-field of your body embraces all sentient beings. Therefor, the tension of separation dissolves, as you literally incorporate others, who are no longer rivals or enemies, but your very limbs. This is the real meaning of the "universal body," a Biblical concept that should have been taken quite literally, for it describes our actual Incarnation through each other, as each other, in one organic Purusha, the cosmic Lord.
Only when we see other creatures as our own flesh may we fulfill the Great Commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself." To exploit, impoverish, rape, or kill another human being is to attack one's own body.
Such a vision of harmony will never be imposed by political or religious ideology. It is not an economic system. It percolates out of the heart as joyful, spontaneous, natural behavior, when we live in God-Consciousness.
This is why some of us teach meditation instead of politics. Jai Guru Dev.
I invite you to awake in seamless waves of stillness where action is play, in symphonic tides of silence where words are just for fun. The earth is one breath of your astonishment, the entire creation a ripple in the ocean of your Presence...
Don't let the mind make you smaller than you Are. Cradled in the hologram of Indra's net, your heart spins out threads of beauty, connecting stars and galaxies in the sparkling tapestry of your flesh. Jesus came here just to show you this: every silken wisp of you an oscillation of God-Consciousness, more stable and solid than a proton, yet resonating at a frequency beyond light.
Your intent is pure compassion, and it makes the most distant quasar, or the most intimate tear, tremble with sincerity. In the starry cosmos of your body, every sensation at its core is the silent pull of the infant's lips on the nipples of the Mother.
Cosmic consciousness is no mere fantasy: it is the one solution to our world's political and economic problems. The economists, the politicians, the technocrats have tried and failed. It is time for the mystics to stand up and transform the earth. Injustice is only conquered through visionary experience.
How? Because, tasting this vision in your heart, you are no longer a limited separate individual. You are centered in this now of time and space, but your aureole is cosmic, all-pervading, and non-localized. The ever-widening energy-field of your body embraces all sentient beings. Therefor, the tension of separation dissolves, as you literally incorporate others, who are no longer rivals or enemies, but your very limbs. This is the real meaning of the "universal body," a Biblical concept that should have been taken quite literally, for it describes our actual Incarnation through each other, as each other, in one organic Purusha, the cosmic Lord.
Only when we see other creatures as our own flesh may we fulfill the Great Commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself." To exploit, impoverish, rape, or kill another human being is to attack one's own body.
Such a vision of harmony will never be imposed by political or religious ideology. It is not an economic system. It percolates out of the heart as joyful, spontaneous, natural behavior, when we live in God-Consciousness.
This is why some of us teach meditation instead of politics. Jai Guru Dev.
No One Remembers The Past
No one actually remembers the past, because it doesn't exist. The brain constructs the past out of the energy field of Presence.
The Now is a sphere whose surface vibrates as time, yet whose core is the stillness of eternity. Between the core and the surface is the field of Akasha, the space of consciousness.
This apparent vacuum actually resonates and sparkles with all the other moments of the infinite past and endless future, as virtual particles of possibility. When our awareness relaxes from the anxious surface of worry and regret, and we stop constructing the artificial time-line, the paltry thread of moments called 'me,' then we settle into Akasha and access all the wisdom that ever was or will be right now, embedded in the silence of the heart.
The Now is a sphere whose surface vibrates as time, yet whose core is the stillness of eternity. Between the core and the surface is the field of Akasha, the space of consciousness.
This apparent vacuum actually resonates and sparkles with all the other moments of the infinite past and endless future, as virtual particles of possibility. When our awareness relaxes from the anxious surface of worry and regret, and we stop constructing the artificial time-line, the paltry thread of moments called 'me,' then we settle into Akasha and access all the wisdom that ever was or will be right now, embedded in the silence of the heart.
Whirled Without End
'Taste and see that the Lord is good.' ~Psalm 34:8
By conceptualizing the whirled, I armor myself from the terrifying and beautiful onslaught of suchness. Generalizations and ideologies protect me from the bright wounded fallenness of what Is.
So I impose a concept of order onto the chaos of quiddity, instead of enduring unimaginable random Self-radiance. By thinking about the world instead of tasting it, I veil myself in the gray mail armor of mind, protecting me from the uniqueness of the raindrop.
The choice is I or eye. But the eye is too fiery to endure. So 'I' hide behind a shadow of thought, a shield of names. My political and religious I-deas act as filters to keep out the vertigo of beauty, the unspeakable green disorder of the world. Note how our psychiatric/pharmaceutical empire labels everything beyond our comfort zone as a 'disorder,' drugging us into orderly ordinary conduct. Castrated sheep are orderly. Mown grass is ordinary.
I am afraid of unfiltered reality. I am afraid that I might live, not a world of sheep, but frolicsome randy goats, impossible to herd. I live in fear of disorder, fear of the uncertainty that lies at the heart of physics, where quarks and nutrinos flash from the void through no known equation but the principle of uncertainty.
I want to dwell in safety, and never get dizzy. My mind doesn't want the awful sparkle of an actual world; it wants to tell a story of perfect justice and equality, of God's certain commandments, of idyllic Vedic culture and Ayurvedic nutrition, a smoothie that will cleanse me of my sins!
But Kali abhors the pure. She loves the ruthless beauty of chaos. Spurning straight lines, parallels, and right angles, Earth ever undulates in curves, never asymptotes. She is not edgy, but edgeless. Definition dissolves into sacred ambiguity, subject into object. The fierce truth of Psalm 38: 'Taste and see that the Lord is good.'
The Hebrew 'ta'am' means 'taste and perceive directly.' 'The Lord' means the ineluctable hence unpronounceable divine Being, known by un-knowing, beyond the mediation of thought. No I-dea.
I don't think, therefor I Am.
When I taste the world directly, I see that the Lord is 'good,' 'tova.' 'Tova' in Hebrew is no mere moral concept, but the absolute ecstasy of which each particle of the cosmos is a vibration. The 'good' is not some perfect order beyond this whirling mess: it is the wilderness of bliss at the heart of every atom. This dangerous poem in Psalm 34, 'Taste and see that the Lord is good,' really means: Refuse to name the creatures and just taste them. Taste the whirled. Taste the wine of original chaos in every perception, even if it gives you vertigo.
If I am an honest man, I no longer live in the parallel creation of my thoughts, my description of things. I live in things themselves. Thought perishes like a candle in the dawn of wild awareness. No need to plunge into a jungle or agonize to the mountain top. Just opening my eye is the adventure.
Shimmering in the space outside all concepts, the terrible holy earth invites me, through the fragrance of her petaled bee-humming touch, to step beyond this veil of mind, into the nakedness of God. Selah.
By conceptualizing the whirled, I armor myself from the terrifying and beautiful onslaught of suchness. Generalizations and ideologies protect me from the bright wounded fallenness of what Is.
So I impose a concept of order onto the chaos of quiddity, instead of enduring unimaginable random Self-radiance. By thinking about the world instead of tasting it, I veil myself in the gray mail armor of mind, protecting me from the uniqueness of the raindrop.
The choice is I or eye. But the eye is too fiery to endure. So 'I' hide behind a shadow of thought, a shield of names. My political and religious I-deas act as filters to keep out the vertigo of beauty, the unspeakable green disorder of the world. Note how our psychiatric/pharmaceutical empire labels everything beyond our comfort zone as a 'disorder,' drugging us into orderly ordinary conduct. Castrated sheep are orderly. Mown grass is ordinary.
I am afraid of unfiltered reality. I am afraid that I might live, not a world of sheep, but frolicsome randy goats, impossible to herd. I live in fear of disorder, fear of the uncertainty that lies at the heart of physics, where quarks and nutrinos flash from the void through no known equation but the principle of uncertainty.
I want to dwell in safety, and never get dizzy. My mind doesn't want the awful sparkle of an actual world; it wants to tell a story of perfect justice and equality, of God's certain commandments, of idyllic Vedic culture and Ayurvedic nutrition, a smoothie that will cleanse me of my sins!
But Kali abhors the pure. She loves the ruthless beauty of chaos. Spurning straight lines, parallels, and right angles, Earth ever undulates in curves, never asymptotes. She is not edgy, but edgeless. Definition dissolves into sacred ambiguity, subject into object. The fierce truth of Psalm 38: 'Taste and see that the Lord is good.'
The Hebrew 'ta'am' means 'taste and perceive directly.' 'The Lord' means the ineluctable hence unpronounceable divine Being, known by un-knowing, beyond the mediation of thought. No I-dea.
I don't think, therefor I Am.
When I taste the world directly, I see that the Lord is 'good,' 'tova.' 'Tova' in Hebrew is no mere moral concept, but the absolute ecstasy of which each particle of the cosmos is a vibration. The 'good' is not some perfect order beyond this whirling mess: it is the wilderness of bliss at the heart of every atom. This dangerous poem in Psalm 34, 'Taste and see that the Lord is good,' really means: Refuse to name the creatures and just taste them. Taste the whirled. Taste the wine of original chaos in every perception, even if it gives you vertigo.
If I am an honest man, I no longer live in the parallel creation of my thoughts, my description of things. I live in things themselves. Thought perishes like a candle in the dawn of wild awareness. No need to plunge into a jungle or agonize to the mountain top. Just opening my eye is the adventure.
Shimmering in the space outside all concepts, the terrible holy earth invites me, through the fragrance of her petaled bee-humming touch, to step beyond this veil of mind, into the nakedness of God. Selah.
Day and Night
All day making plans for the evening, all evening planning what to do tomorrow. Don't hang out with such ambitious folks! Be a
tipsy lout like me. As soon as you wake up, guzzle sunbeams and get drunk on
dawn. After sunset, embrace the night like a lover whose name you never
ask. Here's the secret of God's success: during the day, be light. At night, become darkness. If you don't understand this, how can I
entrust you with the sky?
Wake Up Singing
"When you wake up," said the Fool, "sing before thinking."
"That's impossible!" I answered, "I 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 remembered all the tasks of daylight and forgot to sing. Then one night when the moon was full, I pillowed the universe on my heart and breathed this name: "I am, I am, I am."
Now I awake, a fountain of gold, singing all the names of Light.
"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 remembered all the tasks of daylight and forgot to sing. Then one night when the moon was full, I pillowed the universe on my heart and breathed this name: "I am, I am, I am."
Now I awake, a fountain of gold, singing all the names of Light.
Pervade the Problem
When I think that I have a problem, my problem is that I think it. When I think it, I separate it from myself, give it weight and mass. In fact, my problem is me, but when I separate my problem from me, through thinking, I give it an existence of its own.
Dissolve the distance between my problem and myself, and it ceases to be a dense object. It becomes subject. I pervade my problem, and let it dissolve into pure consciousness. Consciousness is the universal solvent that solves all problems.
The solution is to pervade the problem.
Dissolve the distance between my problem and myself, and it ceases to be a dense object. It becomes subject. I pervade my problem, and let it dissolve into pure consciousness. Consciousness is the universal solvent that solves all problems.
The solution is to pervade the problem.
No More
We forfeit our inner birthright when our mind moves toward
any referent as Truth: a belief, a book, a person, a god, a
guru, a Christ, or a Buddha. Any image, word or
thought whatsoever is a veil that shrouds the
immediate perfection of Awareness.
There is a serenely glowing emptiness in the core of your heart; it is not any-thing at all. This hollow seed in you glows with all-sufficient peace, and effuses peace into the environment. For lifetimes you sought to fill this emptiness with something or someone else. Now is the end of that journey. Now you repose within, and you are only drawn outward by the effulgence of grace, not by seeking.
There is a serenely glowing emptiness in the core of your heart; it is not any-thing at all. This hollow seed in you glows with all-sufficient peace, and effuses peace into the environment. For lifetimes you sought to fill this emptiness with something or someone else. Now is the end of that journey. Now you repose within, and you are only drawn outward by the effulgence of grace, not by seeking.
The deepest
meditation is simply to allow the hollow space within you to Be. To Be a
silent explosion into boundlessness, into causeless joy, into self-radiant
freedom, is to taste the Truth that needs no external referent. Existence in itself is the supreme bliss, before it exists as any-thing.
We are never diminished by our emptiness. It is not lack. We are only diminished by our attempt to impose something "more" upon it. Again and again return to the prayer, "There is nothing more."
We are never diminished by our emptiness. It is not lack. We are only diminished by our attempt to impose something "more" upon it. Again and again return to the prayer, "There is nothing more."
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