Uradiance

One is so attached to the light of joy that joy becomes dry, with a brittle smile. Another prides herself on embracing darkness, and becomes so heavy she drowns in it. Truth is neither light nor darkness, joy nor sorrow, but the sparkling clarity of pure awareness. Truth is Awakened Space, not the content within it. Whether thoughts are light or dark, whether emotions are joyful or sad, these are merely the content of awareness, not awareness itself, which is ever boundless and transparent.  When the space of truth awakens, that space itself becomes as solid as a polished diamond, while the forms that arise and dissolve within it are like a mirage, an evaporating mist. Once truth is realized as the space whose vastness is independent of its content, there is nothing to grasp and nothing to resist. The continuum of pure awareness simply pervades all experiences, whether sorrowful or joyful, light or dark. And since there is nothing to resist, awareness...

Zen Master Jesus gives us this koan: "Watch and pray." (Matthew 26:41) Like all koans, it is a paradox, for one cannot watch and pray at the same time. He seems to ask the impossible, because the silent Witness who rests as pure awareness does not ask God for anything. But Jesus is pointing the way to a deeper kind of prayer, one that does not ask, but watches. This prayer is its own answer, because in awakened silence, no question arises. How could questions arise from hollow naked Being? In the silent inner garden of the Witness, there is no movement of thought. Jesus loves us to rest here with him, beyond asking. But our Sabbath rest in the heart's hollow is neither passive nor devoid of love. It is a dynamic repose. How can I explain this? I can't, but I will try. Awareness free from thought meets no limit, no resistance, no conception or desire, in a stillness that widens without effort to encircle the earth, the sun and stars. What is the flavor o...

There is an inner fire, cool as moonlight yet more powerful than the sun. It burns away sleep, inertia, and unhappiness. This fire is subtle. Just as the husk, the peel, and rind sheathe the sweet juice of the fruit, so the outer layers of body, breath, and mind cover and disguise the divine fire. The kiss of the Guru's presence ignites the fire. Meditation sustains it. Immersed in the separate "I," clinging to notions of "individuality" and "independence," many disdain the Guru. Inflated intellects pass from lifetime to lifetime in slumber, like gnats dreaming they are elephants. But this little "I," with its sense of separateness, grows so dry and thorny that it finally rouses the soul: just as thirstiness, or a bad dream, rouses us from sleep. No longer fearing humility, the famished seeker falls down at the feet of a Master. Then the Master teaches the soul to dive deep into the ocean of meditation. When a true teach...

Humanity has reached a moment of crisis and decision: Whether to become one human family, filled with unique individuals; or revert to tribalism, obsessed with the ethnic and racial separateness of our group identity. When our population was low, and clan loyalty preserved isolated communities, tribalism had survival value. But reverting now would be a disaster for the whole earth. We must spiral into a new stage of evolution, not circle backward. 'Spiral' is the archetype of DNA, the galaxy, and human consciousness. Spiraling means that we do not break from the past, but assimilate the lessons of the last cycle, carrying them into a richer complexity of individuation. I Am not my clan, my nation, or my race. I Am who I Am.

What is the most intimate touch? To touch someone with your body may be intimate, or it may be an act with no intimacy at all. To truly touch someone with the mind may happen at a great distance, yet it may be far more intimate than the touch of the flesh. But to touch someone through deep stillness, to touch someone through pure silence, is the deepest form of intimacy, that can change a person forever. This is how the Master touches the heart. A raindrop falling on a fern blade. The warm sun burning gently, patiently, through a chill morning mist. The cry of the sparrow just before dawn, when the darkness seems abysmal, a cry that touches the heart of meditation at its core, awakening the mystery of love. And that love is intimate, blue as the sky around the green earth, yet inwardly piercing to the core of the soul. When your heart, and the space that contains the stars, become one and the same vastness, intimacy is complete.

If anyone says, "I am awake," they lie. Or perhaps they have become nobody. Because nobody awakens. In the morning, we awaken from night dreams into another kind of dream, the dream of "me" and "the world out there." For a few graceful moments, we may float in the ocean of turiya, pure awareness, beyond waking, dreaming and deep sleep. But almost immediately the "I" rushes back in, with all the obligatory burdens of yesterday, to shut down the vast innocence we really are. When yesterday's mind returns, we see the world through a glass darkly, a window clouded by the illusion that the seer is separate from the seen. Who awakens? If the answer is "me," then there was no awakening, only a transfer from one dream to another. But when the Second Awakening happens - not just waking from sleep, but waking from the dream of "me" - there is no separate mind left to declare, "I am awake." The universe is awa...

It is good to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, heal the sick... but the greatest service you can perform for others is to acquaint them with themsel ves; introduce them to who they really are; awaken the ocean of radiance that lies hidden in their own awareness, just beneath the thin gray clouds of worry and desire. This is the supreme seva, because awakening not only transforms who they are, it transforms their whole world.

The Great Initiation of human birth bestows on us the priestly garment of flesh, anoints us with the oil of pleasure and pain, and opens the temple of holy sensation, where we offer every perception back to its original radiance. How many devas and angels await their moment of initiation, when they will fall from the heavens to take human birth on this planet of roses and thorns, this vale of milk and tears ? F or only here can they awaken pure awareness through the contrast of opposi tes. Here we gain liberation from the flesh by the very flavor of it . "Taste and see that the Lord is good!" s ings the Psalmist. Shakespeare writes , "Eternity was in our lips and eyes." And Zen founder Dogen tells us , "Those who gained enlightenment through seeing blossoms or hearing sounds, attained it through the body." Awareness cannot awaken in paradise, where poppy fields pour forth their bliss in one somnambulant continuum. We birth awaren...

Terrible acts of violence, breaking out in unexpected places, from unlikely people, with no apparent reason. Is the world going mad? No, the world is getting subtler - manifesting a more inward level of our own consciousness. The dense outer shell that we've been calling "the physical plane," or the "earth," is now dissolving into the astral, where our most powerful images and feelings are stored. For some people, this dissolution of matter into a subtler realm of consciousness is so confusing, they cannot tell whether they are in a dream or waking, whether their acts are happening inside them or outside. They are the ones who act out this violence. There has always been violence. The lower astral plane is a realm of passion, full of beauty and terror, romance and cruelty. It is where our most powerful emotions are linked to intense imagery. That realm and this physical world are part of the same spectrum of energy, and the two realms are fusing on the ...

The first discipline of non-violence is to see human beings as absolutely unique individuals. The root of violence is to regard ourselves as groups. It is easier to kill a category than a Person. I am neither white nor black, rich nor poor, capitalist nor socialist, Eastern nor Western, Christian nor Pagan. I am neither good nor evil. I am Me. If you wish to superimpose a general category, a group identity on me, that is your act of violence against my soul. You are free to label me. But I am also free: I don't have to identify with your labels. The greatest step we can take toward world peace is to meet as embodied souls, each absolutely incomparable, freed from every racial, political, economic, or religious abstraction.

"Not every wanderer is lost." ~Tolkien.  "Now if you’re lost enough to find yourself…" ~Robert Frost Today our nation seems plagued with Xenophobia: fear of foreigners.  Xenos is Greek for alien. Yet in ancient times, xenos was not a term of derision, but a sacred word. Indeed, the fundamental law binding civilization together was the law of hospitality, the welcoming of perfect strangers. "Do not oppress the alien, for you have the heart of a stranger, you yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  (Exodus 22:21) In Leviticus 23 we hear this law hospitality made tangible as food:  “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field... Leave some for the poor and for the alien residing among you.” Be a little sloppy in your harvest. Or a little extravagant in paying taxes... The Hebrew word for alien, “gur”, is central to Biblical community. In Jesus’ time too, refugees from surrounding natio...

Spirituality is simply to know the Knower. That is the essence. All other knowledge and experience is just the juice. Self-effulgent, beyond thought, naked, free from every veil of mind or sensation, the Knower is the Self. Shining alone, liberated from the images of the memory and the forms of the senses, the Knower is the Spirit. Many seekers assume that "spirituality" is an experience, whether visionary, ecstatic, or celestial, whether of this world or another. But spirituality is the Experiencer, free from experience. It is awareness of awareness, without content. It is formless and void, the source from which creation springs. The transparency of the Self is bliss. It is bliss precisely because there is neither image nor content nor boundary; hence the Self is ever-expanding, even while at rest in its own voidness, because there is nothing to contain it. Infinite repose in dynamic expansion is the paradox that defines bliss. For the seeker, the bliss of...

I loved Holy Communion. I even studied to be a priest so that I could draw nearer the mystery of the Eucharist, the two-fold offering of divine grace and human response. The Eucharist is the central Christian rite. Christ bestows his Holy Spirit as a gift of grace. He sends his Shakti down upon this human work of bread, this ferment of wine, and transforms them into his flesh and blood. How should we respond? By offering worship. And offering ourselves back to the giver in his service. I used to think I needed a church, an altar, a golden grail, an unleavened host, a priestly ordination. Then I discovered that my flesh already is the Bread of Life. My blood is the Wine of Eden's vineyard. There is no Sin that I have fallen in. And every man, woman, or child was ordained to the priesthood of wonder the moment they were merely born on earth, where pain and beauty meet at the center of eight billion crosses. The church is my body, the alter my breastbone, th...