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Get your Tao / Advaita Vedanta / Ikkyu-esque Zen quotes on.

Zopiclone bandit

Zopiclone bandit

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This part of BL has a thread just for Bible quotes, as I am not part of any Duality based, Abrahamic religions that thread has nothing for me to add to & I know I'm not alone on this part of BL in my love of "None Dual" systems & some of the quotes from people like Nisargadatta Maharaj, Anandamayi Ma & Lao Tzu etc.
To me None Duality is so easy to grasp & the Man known as Nisargadatta Maharaj blew my mind, I have never been able to change the way I see things after I read his work, I was told to read "I am that" which is talks from Nisargadatta by another English man who spent years in India with his Aghori Guru & then I read The Avadhuta Gita & The Ashtavakra Gita which are so simple yet move you on such a deep level it changed my whole view on Life.

Anyway let us get going folks..........

Ashtavakra Gita

“You do not consist of the elements - earth, water, fire, air or even ether. To be liberated, know yourself as consisting of consciousness, the witness of these.”

"My child, Because you think you are the body, For a long time you have been bound.
Know you are pure awareness.
With this knowledge as your sword cut through your chains and be happy!
For you are already free, Without action or flaw, Luminous and bright.”

"My son, you consist of pure consciousness, and the world is not separate from you."

Avadhuta Gita

"How can I say it is one? How can I say it is more than one?... It is neither appearing nor disappearing. It is without beginning, middle, or end".

"That one God who shines within everything, Who is formless like the cloudless sky, Is the pure, stainless, Self of all. Without any doubt, that is who I am".

" Oh my mind, why do you range in delusion like a ghost? Know the Self to be above duality and be happy."

" Free from subject and object am I. How can I be Self-realisable? Endless is my nature, nothing else exists. Absolute Truth is my nature, nothing else exists."

Part 33 - 35 of The Avadhuta Gita were a part my Aghori "Guru" drilled into me, to me the whole text is amazing & each person will find a part that really talks to them & makes it so clear, for me these few lines hit my mind like a baseball bat, I have never been able to see the World around me the same way after reading these few lines.

33. There are no worlds, no scriptures, no deities, no sacrifices, no castes, no family tribes, no nationalities, no smoke-path, no shining-path.

34. Some there are that prize non-dualism, others hold to dualism. They know not the Truth, which is above both.

35. How can the ultimate Reality be described, since It is neither white nor any other colour, has no qualities such as sound, and is beyond voice and mind?
 
The 21 principles of Dokkōdō

  1. Accept everything just the way it is.
  2. Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
  3. Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.
  4. Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
  5. Be detached from desire your whole life long.
  6. Do not regret what you have done.
  7. Never be jealous.
  8. Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.
  9. Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.
  10. Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.
  11. In all things have no preferences.
  12. Be indifferent to where you live.
  13. Do not pursue the taste of good food.
  14. Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.
  15. Do not act following customary beliefs.
  16. Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
  17. Do not fear death.
  18. Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
  19. Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.
  20. You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honor.
  21. Never stray from the Way.
 
Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one’s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one’s master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead.
― Yamamoto Tsunetomo
 
Ikkyu Poem 1

I won’t die
I won’t go anywhere
I’ll be here but don’t ask me anything
I won’t answer.
Ikkyu Poem 2

No one really knows
The nature of birth
Nor the true dwelling place.
We return to the source
And turn to dust.

Many paths lead from the foot of the mountain,
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.

If at the end of our journey
There is no final
Resting place,
Then we need not fear
Losing our Way.

No beginning,
No end.
Our mind
is born and dies:
The emptiness of emptiness!

Ikkyu Poem 3

Rain, hail, snow and ice:
All are different,
But when they fall
They become the same water
As the valley stream.

The ways of proclaiming
The Mind vary,
But the same heavenly truth
Can be seen
In each and every one.

Cover your path
With the fallen pine needles
So no one will be able
To locate your
True dwelling place.
 

Non-Duality 101​

non-duality asks:

  • If I am my body, what is the boundary between my body and everything else? Is it my nerve endings? My skin? What is the boundary of my skin? My brain? My heart? My hair? What about the hair that falls out of my head? What about the air I breathe in and out? What about my cells that are constantly regenerating?
  • If I am my thoughts, how come I witness my thoughts coming and going, yet I remain steady? What about the moments when I don’t have thoughts--do I cease to exist?
  • If I am inherently separate from other people and the world, how come I am in constant interaction with everything around me? How come I can’t separate myself from my environment and exist in a vacuum?
  • If I am inherently separate from the creative force that made me, where does that creative force exist? Wouldn’t that creative force and myself need to coexist in a larger space that contains both of us in it, thereby inseparably connecting us together?
By contemplating these questions, I arrive at a more functional answer to the question, Who am I?

Non-duality helps me see that I am part of an undistinguishable whole, and that I cannot separate myself out from the world, other people or my creator. I am not, at my essence, my mind or body; I am the witnessing presence that experiences my mind and body, and that experiences everything else in existence.

This new answer is much more satisfactory. It means that I don’t need to worry that I will someday completely disappear. It means I don’t have to feel left out or ignored or not considered. It means I’m never truly alone, even when it feels like it. It means that I don’t necessarily share the limits or the destiny of my body. It means that everything is ultimately as it should be, because my story is not the story of an individual person living in this space and time; my story is the story of the universe, of existence itself, of which my body is just one small part.

When this answer has been experienced with clarity, life becomes more peaceful.

www.yogainyourlivingroom.com

Non-Duality for Dummies: Intro to the Teachings of Non-Duality.

Non-duality, or not two, teaches that there is an essential oneness that all minds and matter are made of and appear within.
www.yogainyourlivingroom.com www.yogainyourlivingroom.com
 
“Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your Self Realization. You are not to expect an explosion, for the explosion has already happened - at the moment when you were born, when you realized yourself as Being-Knowing-Feeling. There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside, you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right! You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
 
Zopiclone bandit said:
Ashtavakra Gita

“You do not consist of the elements - earth, water, fire, air or even ether. To be liberated, know yourself as consisting of consciousness, the witness of these.”

"My child, Because you think you are the body, For a long time you have been bound.
Know you are pure awareness.
With this knowledge as your sword cut through your chains and be happy!
For you are already free, Without action or flaw, Luminous and bright.”

"My son, you consist of pure consciousness, and the world is not separate from you."
Click to expand...
Thanks for these.
And for this thread.
Apparently, BL has still something to offer after all.
 
Zopiclone bandit said:
Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one’s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one’s master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead.
― Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Click to expand...
When I feel bored and uninspired and lifeless, I imagine dying in scenarios similar to those. There is nothing better to make you feel alive than facing death.
 
"Whatever happens points to your existence as a perceiving centre. Disregard the pointers and be aware of what they are pointing to."
 
"Life and death are different names for the same fact, two sides of the same Maya (illusion). The true Self (Atman) is never born, never dies, and is beyond all conditions."
"Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment."

"If you identify yourself with the body, you will feel that you are dying, but in reality there is no death because you are not the body."

"With death, the idea 'I am this body' dies. The witness does not."

"The real does not die, the unreal never lived."

"People are afraid to die, because they do not know what death is. The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description."

"In some cases death is the best cure. A life may be worse than death, which is rarely an unpleasent experience, whatever the appearances. Therefore, pity the living, never the dead."

"I am told I was born. I do not remember.
I am told I shall die. I do not expect it."

@Foreigner
wink-eye.gif
 
Zopiclone bandit said:
Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment."

"If you identify yourself with the body, you will feel that you are dying, but in reality there is no death because you are not the body."
Click to expand...
Very nice!
I wish I had more time or maybe opportunity to get into the right mindspace to get deeper into philosophical statements like this.
But when I did, I came to a similar conclusion about life and death (not having read or heard about it)
 
“When forms that you had identified with, that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego, since ego is identification with form. When there is nothing to identify with anymore, who are you? When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, of I Am, is freed from its entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter. You realize your essential identity as formless, as an all-Pervasive presence, of Being prior to all forms, all identifications. You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That’s the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or that, but I Am.”
 
“There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. You think you know yourself when you know what you are. But you never know who you are. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot. See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don’t be too lazy to think.”
 
“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It
has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing
through the facade of pretence. It's the
complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true.”
― Adyashanti
 
“Whatever comes, don’t push it away. When it goes, do not grieve.”
― Mooji
 
“Be true to the thought of the moment and avoid distraction. Other than continuing to exert yourself, enter into nothing else, but go to the extent of living single thought by single thought.”
― Tsunetomo Yamamoto
 
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