Archive for non-duality
great work comes from self-forgetting
Mindfulness, or awareness, does not mean that you should think and be conscious “I am doing this” or “I am doing that.” No. Just the contrary.
The moment you think “I am doing this,” you become self-conscious, and then you do not live in the action, but you live in the idea “I am,” and consequently your work too is spoiled.
You should forget yourself completely, and lose yourself in what you do. The moment a speaker becomes self-conscious and thinks “I am addressing an audience,” his speech is distributed and his trend of thought broken. But when he forgets himself in his speech, in his subject, then he is at his best, he speaks well and explains things clearly.
All great work–artistic, poetic, intellectual or spiritual–is produced at those moments when its creators are lost completely in their actions, when they forget themselves altogether, and are free from self-consciousness.
~ Walpola Rahula, in What the Buddha Taught
a celebration of Being
Albert Irvin, Druid 11
Albert Irvin’s encounters with nondual awareness are entirely somatic. His aim is to find a way to make explicit the ineffable human spirit … his subject is the question: how can the INNER experience of being alive be laid on canvas in visual language?
“Can I make a painting about human experience
without having to depict appearances?
Can I paint the human spirit
rather than noses and feet?
Can I reveal the splendours and agonies of life
through space, colour, light, shape, line,
confrontation, rhythm and inflections
in the paint?” asks Irvin.
source – Paul Moorhouse, Albert Irvin: life to painting
Paul Moorhouse, Tate curator and author of the book ‘Albert Irvin: life to painting’, wrote of him: ‘even to those familiar with his work, seeing a new painting by Irvin can be an extraordinary experience akin to discovering a young, energetic artist in the first flush of ambition. Given the force of its restless energy, its freshness and the sense it communicates of an artist in love with his chosen activity, it is even more surprising to realise that this is the work of an artist in his late seventies.’
source – royal academy of art
closer than close
Is there an eternal part of ourselves? What has lasting meaning? Where do we find certainty? Rather than philosophical discussion, this film explores the possibility of living a life devoted to a search for answers, and the radical possibility that answers exist, closer than we can imagine, within our selves.
“Closer Than Close is a deftly crafted and poignant tale that weaves the stories of a handful of seekers bivouacked at various stages along the spiritual path with the straight-talk wisdom of three extraordinary individuals who have seemingly put an end to seeking. This juxtaposition creates a compelling resonance in which we can see (if the angle of light is just so) that the seekers and those that have stopped seeking are closer than we think. These are real stories of struggle and despair, friendship and hope, but above all, insight. Put this video on your list, better yet put it in your player and see what happens.”
~ John Kain
source – poetry in motion films
Film maker Shawn Nevins works full-time as a naturalist with the Louisville Metro Parks system. His creative endeavors include poetry which has appeared in several publications, co-editing a collection of spiritual essays, poems, and photographs, and a growing interest in photography.
Shawn also has a helpful and informative website which offers “Ratings of spiritual teachers, guidelines for choosing a teacher, reviews of spiritual movies and books, discussion boards, and links to other spiritual sites.” http://www.spiritualteachers.org/
awareness cannot be seen or known
That we know this awareness exists means only that we have an idea of awareness.
We do not see that awareness as itself an object, nor can we ever do so.
If we are to know the awareness by itself, first we would have to drop knowing its objects, its reflections in thought, including the ego-thought, and then be it, not see it.
~ Paul Brunton, Notebooks
slipping a gear into oneness
On one unusually radiant day, I took a walk up the burn above the house and into a steep-sided corrie. It was sheltered there and magnificent – mountains on both sides, and below, tiny stands of water which looked like handfuls of shiny coins tossed down. I sat on a rock and ate cheese sandwiches. And there, quite suddenly, I slipped a gear. There was not me and the landscape, but a kind of oneness: as though the molecules and atoms I am made of had reunited themselves with the molecules and atoms that the rest of the world is made of. It was very brief, but I cannot remember feeling that extraordinary sense of connectedness since I was a small child.
~ Sara Maitland © 2008
From ‘A Book Of Silence’
http://www.saramaitland.com/Home.html
Source – http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/08/sara-maitland-silence-addiction
science and nonduality conference
The Science and Nonduality Conference has been created to provide an arena where various aspects of nonduality can be explored, discussed, and experienced.
Part seminar, part festival, part conference, this event explores and shows how science combines with meditation, philosophy, art, music, dance, lovemaking, shamanism, and entheogens to point the way to nondual experience, to aid in integrating nonduality into daily life, and to deepen the understanding of a fundamental nondual reality.
The arts celebrate and cultivate the experience of nonduality. From painting to filmmaking, music to typography, sculpture to found art, horticulture to cooking, poetry to digital media, ballet to tai chi, literature to architecture — nonduality is muse, subject and symbol.
EARLY-BIRD DISCOUNTED TICKETS
now AVAILABLE
You can also register by clicking on the banner
at right.
NB – Rupert Spira will be presenting a workshop at the conference: ‘Contemplating the Nature of Experience.’ More details later!
Cézanne and Nature’s Eternity
The most recent addition to the awakened eye website is Rupert Spira’s excellent essay on Paul Cézanne, Nature’s Eternity. It’s actually one of a collection of essays in Rupert’s book The Transparency of Things – highly recommended reading for anyone interested in nondual awareness and its deepest implications. The following excerpt presents the first few paragraphs from Nature’s Eternity:
Paul Cézanne said, “Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn’t it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.”
That statement must be one of the clearest and most profound expressions of the nature and purpose of art in our era.
What did Cézanne mean, standing in front of a mountain, Mont St. Victoire, one of the most solid and enduring structures in nature, when he said, “Everything vanishes, falls apart…?”
Cézanne was referring to the act of seeing.
We do not perceive a world outside Consciousness. The world is our perception of the world. There is no evidence that there is a world outside the perception of it, outside Consciousness.
The seen cannot be separated from seeing and seeing cannot be separated from Consciousness.
….. continued
~ Rupert Spira, Nature’s Eternity.
From his book, The Transparency of Things.
Read the whole essay at the awakened eye website
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.
moonlight becomes you …
To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true nonduality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true Emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty dream. I say, Wake up! Then, your heart will be flooded with a Love that you cannot contain.
homage to frederick franck
“The meaning of life is to see.”
Rather than artist, sculptor, writer, or philosopher, Frederick Franck liked to call himself an image-maker. He was a true Renaissance Man, writing books and creating images until his death at 94. His first book – The Zen of Seeing
Many years after that first introduction, I was blessed to attend a 4-day Easter Zen of Seeing retreat with Frederick Franck in Cornwall. Perhaps I’ll write about that in another posting. But here I wish to bow deeply in gratitude to a man who knew what it means to be fully human, and who was able to awaken me to authentic seeing and drawing.
It wasn’t just any old seeing that he referred to in his quote above; he knew what it meant to encounter non-dual awareness. For him it was a direct impulse from heart-seeing to hand-scribbling with no loop through the labeling and categorizing part of the brain. It was seeing without the shadows of conditioning, and marvelling at what turned up on the paper.
Dove
City: -5 degrees
Unkillable Human
Find more info about Frederick Franck here.
