unask

 

moved by compassion

 

Thus have I heard:

The Blessed One, knowing of the mental agitations going on in the minds of those assembled (like the surface of the ocean stirred into waves by the passing winds), and his great heart moved by compassion, smiled, and said:

All that is seen in the world is devoid of effort and action, because all things in the world are like a dream, or like an image magically projected. This is not understood by philosophers, or by those who do not know, but those who see things thus see them truthfully.

Those who see things otherwise walk in in a world made up of differences, and, as they depend upon difference, they cling to dualism. The world as seen by the differentiating mind is like your image reflected in a mirror, or your shadow, or the moon reflected in water, or an echo heard in the valley.

People grasping their own shadows become attached to this thing and that thing and, failing to abandon dualism, go on forever from one discrimination to another, and thus never attain tranquillity. By tranquillity is meant oneness, and oneness gives birth to the highest realm of Noble Wisdom, that is realisable only within one’s inmost consciousness.

 

The Lankavatara Sutra

 

 

the silver sea

One morning, very early, I think I remember?

Yes. I left that grey, beautiful city, full of madness and actors.

And there I was, in the bright morning, rain in the air as always, but the beginning of sunshine, dazzling on the water, a huge empty beach, and I walked beside the inexplicable silver sea.

 

From the play Flying Home, by Deirdre Burton and Tom Davis

 

 

red

i like
red
it dances
for me

Alexandre Arnau

 

 

belief

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

 

the Buddha

 

 

the ladder

In every meeting, in any chance encounter,
on the street, say,
there is a shining,
an elegance, an arising:

a jewel. Today, I thought it through: that beauty
is the presence, right here
in all our muddled love
of a light in which its clay
is brighter than fire:

the Friend.
I asked: "Is there a way to you,
a ladder?"
"Your head is the ladder.
Bring it down under your feet."

The mind, this spin
of things, becomes
a universe of stars, but only when
you step up on it, to rise.

 

Rumi, transl. Tom Davis

 

 

no more to hide

Fashion My Spirit quaint -- white --
Quick -- like a Liquor --
Gay -- like Light --
Bring Me my best Pride --
No more ashamed --
No more to hide.

 

Emily Dickinson