Archive for June, 2009
in total attention there is no center
I do not know if you have ever noticed that when you give total attention there is complete silence.
And in that attention there is no frontier, there is no center, as the “me” who is aware or attentive.
That attention, that silence, is a state of meditation.
~ J Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti had quite a lot to say about nondual perception. You can find some excerpts at the awakened eye website, along with links to sites connected with his work and places to purchase his books.
seeing without words
When you take photographs, just before you click the shutter, your mind is empty and open, just seeing without words. When you stand in front of a blank sheet of paper, about to make a painting or a calligraphy, you have no idea what you will do. Maybe you have some plan for a painting, or you know what symbol you want to calligraph, but you don’t actually know what will appear when you put brush to paper. What you do out of trust in open mind will be fresh and spontaneous. Opening to first thought is the way to begin any action properly.
~ Jeremy Hayward
Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. IV, #3
“I” is just a swinging door
breathscribe contributed a little prayer for Miriam (scribbler’s mum)
and some words from Shunryu Suzuki on breathing in and breathing out
gratitude!
acrylic light-reflective pigments, gold leaf,
silk paper, textured ground, dragonfly wing
When we practice zazen our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say “inner world” or “outer world,” but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, “I breathe,” the “I” is extra. There is no you to say “I.” What we call “I” is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no “I,” no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.
~ Shunryu Suzuki
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
perceiving without naming
We have forgotten what rocks, plants, and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be – to be still, to be ourselves, to be where life is: Here and Now.
Whenever you bring your attention to anything natural, anything that has come into existence without human intervention, you step out of the prison of conceptualized thinking and, to some extent, participate in the state of connectedness with Being in which everything natural still exists.
To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness.
Something of its essence then transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is, and in doing so the same stillness arises within you. You sense how deeply it rests in Being – completely at one with what it is and where it is. In realizing this, you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.
~ Eckhart Tolle
Stillness Speaks
