We Are What We Are

1. Verse 16 of Tao Te Ching is discussed at The Rambling Taoist:

...Not knowing constancy, one recklessly causes trouble

Knowing constancy is acceptance

Acceptance is impartiality

Impartiality is sovereign

Sovereign is Heaven

Heaven is Tao

Tao is eternal

The self is no more, without danger.

The essence of it, seems to me, is that contemplative tranquility through self-acceptance liberates us from the chaotic consequence of our actions and places us firmly in our self-nature. I might be wrong, of course, it is worth reading the entire post, because the author quotes relevant passages from a wide variety of texts.

2. The Practice of Tonglen is about compassion, through sharing the suffering of others.

...The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering —ours and that which is all around us— everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we might seem to be.

We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness.

Again, this is a text that is well worth reading and thinking about, because compassion is the bridge between hearts, as they say.

3. On a lighter vein, this is a Duhism useful to keep in mind:

Trying to improve yourself wastes the time you could use to steal the identity of someone who is already much better.

As we say, we are what we are, and there is no point in trying to improve what we are- it is not going to work.

4. Why should we know what we are? This is a classic passage that I love:

As all living beings desire to be happy always, without misery, as in the case of everyone there is observed supreme love for one's self, and as happiness alone is the cause for love, in order to gain that happiness which is one's nature and which is experienced in the state of deep sleep where there is no mind, one should know one's self. For that, the path of knowledge, the inquiry of the form "Who am I?", is the principal means.

- The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

via memoriesofvinay.blogspot.com

5. And here is a video to go with the passage quoted above:



via sitayoga.wordpress.com

6. Sorry, there is lots of stuff of Ramana Maharshi in this post- I try to keep it as diverse as I can, but today I got some really good posts:

Mr. C. R. Wright, his secretary asked: How shall I realise God?

M.: God is an unknown entity. Moreover He is external. Whereas, the Self is always with you and it is you. Why do you leave out what is intimate and go in for what is external?

D.: What is this Self again?

M.: The Self is known to everyone but not clearly. You always exist. The Be-ing is the Self. ‘I am’ is the name of God. Of all the definitions of God, none is indeed so well put as the Biblical statement “I AM THAT IAM” in EXODUS (Chap. 3). There are other statements, such as Brahmaivaham, Aham Brahmasmi and Soham. But none is so direct as the name JEHOVAH = I AM. The Absolute Being is what is - it is the Self. It is God. Knowing the Self, God is known. In fact God is none other than the Self.

via pgoodnight.wordpress.com

7. This is seriously sane stuff:

Having stopped believing in a God who does not exist, I may be able to trust in a God whose "existence" is not so much an issue (as hinted at by Williams in Tokens of Trust).

- myopicbookworm.blogspot.com

8. And how about this?- Hafiz:

Now is the time to know

That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider

A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand

That all your ideas of right and wrong

Were just a child's training wheels

To be laid aside

When you finally live

With veracity

And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy

Whom the Beloved

Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,

Why do you still

Throw sticks at your heart

And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside

That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know

That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time

For you to compute the impossibility

That there is anything

But Grace.

Now is the season to know

That everything you do

Is sacred.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift - versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

via The words of a Mystic

9. On our Mythologies:

People lose their heads quite often in Hindu mythology. On a father’s whim, a son cuts off his mother’s head; demons are decapitated to expel the chaos-threatening poison lurking in their throats; the fidelity of wives and the faith of devotees are tested by beheading; and, in the rituals myth sustains, animals lose their heads to satisfy sacrificial imperatives. But, as Wendy Doniger reassures us in her courageous and scholarly book, in Hindu myth “beheading is seldom fatal”. Nor is it without meaning and purpose, for decapitation proves a means of achieving a creative fusion between apparently incongruous parts. Heads are restored, but they are also misplaced...

-Timesonline

10. And finally, finally at the end of what has turned out to be quite a long post,

"Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand." — George Eliot

via Futility Closet


Be happy.