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

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

John Daido Loori, Roshi, has left us. He died on Friday morning.

Gratitude for this extraordinary being and all that he gave to us.

“Tears like falling petals …”

Deep within wild flowers,
Partridges cry out.
Tears like falling petals
Blow in the Wind.
Eternally and Everlastingly,
It is Revealing Itself.
Above the Bare Branches,
Whistling at the Moon, Playing in the Clouds,
The Golden Phoenix Soars hand in hand with
Dharma Brother Daido.

~ Bernie Glassman
source – Zen Peacemakers

The earth was the heavens and the heavens the earth.  Everything was alive and bursting with colour and colour was god, not the god of man.  The hills became transparent, every rock and boulder was without weight, floating in colour and the distant hills were blue, the blue of all the seas and the sky of every clime.  The ripening rice fields were intense pink and green, a stretch of immediate attention.  And the road that crossed the valley was purple and white, so alive that it was one of the rays that raced across the sky.  You were of that light, burning, furious, exploding, without shadow, without root and word.  And as the sun went further down, every colour became more violent, more intense and you were completely lost, past all recalling.  It was an evening that had no memory.

~ J Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti’s Notebook

Painting by Fritz Raugh
source – Fritz Raugh’s website

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/

How can we hear with the eye and see with the ear?  We must first set down ‘the pack’ – the ideas, notions and positions that separate us from reality.  We must take off the blinkers that limit our vision, and see for ourselves that originally there are no seams, flaws or gaps between us and the whole phenomenal universe.  The 10,000 things are in reality neither sentient nor insentient; the selfish neither sentient nor insentient.  Because of this, the teachings of the insentient cannot be perceived by the senses.

John Daido Loori, Male Stone
16 x 20cms
Fujix Print

~ rock and water
ceaselessly
practice together ~

Many people think the teachings of the insentient are similar if not equivalent to the teachings we receive from sentient beings.  But hearing the teachings of the insentient is not a matter of ordinary consciousness.  How then can they be heard?  When body and mind have fallen away, in the stillness that follows, the teachings are intimately manifested in great profusion.  Whether we are aware of it or not, they are always taking place.  The teachings of the insentient are about intimacy, not words.

~ John Daido Loori, Sensei.  From his book “Making Love with Light”

Text and image copyright John Daido Loori.

Find more wisdom and photography from John Daido Loori at the awakened eye website.

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

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

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!

The artist has to re-present our world of conceptualised objects, separated and extended in space and time, as it really is. He has to reinterpret our model of reality in line with direct experience and to convey this ‘taste of eternity’. We could call this twofold activity contemplation and creativity. Contemplation is the passive aspect; creativity is the dynamic aspect. These are two inseparable aspects of consciousness.
~ Rupert Spira

ceramic bowl by Rupert Spira

I reasoned that if these two elements – the presence of an object in itself and the consciousness to which it appears – are essential ingredients of every object, there must be a relationship between them. So I began to explore the relationship between consciousness and its object, between that which sees, hears, feels and thinks and that which is seen, heard, felt and thought about. I reasoned that if there is a distinction between the two, there must be some perceivable interface or border between them. I looked for such a border between the subject and its object, but could not find one.
~ Rupert Spira

Source – Rupert Spira’s website
See more of Rupert’s ceramics and read more of his writing at the awakened eye website