Formlessness

Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you,

You just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sanity

Sanity is looking upon what you love

and knowing it as yourself."

~ From ACIM

All is well

The purpose of life

is to humiliate you until you realize that you are nobody,

know nothing and are absolutely helpless and hopeless.

Life will show you what you are not. What you are not:

Your physical form

Your emotions

Your thoughts, opinions, likes and dislikes

Your abilities

Your social status and connections

Your possessions

Why? Because they change.

Who sees these changes?

What you are doesn’t come and go

It is always here.

The irony of life is that

when I try to be clever, I experience being foolish.

When I try to be right, I experience the fear of being wrong.

When I try to be loved, I am assuming that I am not loved.

When I try to be close, I experience separation.

When I try to gain approval, I assume I am not being accepted.

When I try to be better, I experience not being good enough.

Live without a thought

All is perfect

All is one

All is well

The Parting Glance

"When you part from your friend

You grieve not

For that which you love most in him

may be clearer in his absence

As the mountain to the climber

is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship

save the deepening of the spirit."

~ Kahlil Gibran

Sunrise

How often you say,

Wake up!

You'll miss the sunrise.

But His Sun always

shines within me.

How can I miss the sunrise?

~Rumi♥

Past Love

"All the past

except its beauty

is gone,

And nothing

is left

but a blessing."

Relaxation

I'm tired.

I want to come home.

Who am I

when I am really me?

Who am I

when I don't try at all?

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,

That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,

It's ancient tale of being apart or together.

As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,

Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.

You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.

At the heart of time, love of one for another.

We have played along side millions of lovers,

Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,

the distressful tears of farewell,

Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you

The love of all man's days both past and forever:

Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.

The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -

And the songs of every poet past and forever.

~Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

My true love

Tell me what love is, what can it be?What is this yearning burning me?Can I survive it, will I endure?This is my sickness, is there a cure?
First his obsession seizing my brainStarting in passion, ending in painI start to shiver, then I'm on fireThen I'm aquiver with seething desire

Who knows the secret, who holds the key?

I long for something - what can it be?

My brain is reeling, I wonder why;And then the feeling I'm going to die.By day it haunts me, haunts me by night.This tender torment, tinged with delight!
Tell me what love is, what can it be?What is this yearning, burning in me?What is this yearning, burning in me?What is this yearning, burning in me?

Voi Che Sapete (Tell Me What Love Is) Lyrics

Charlotte Church

What is that deep yearning for connection?

No objects can fulfill it.

Perhaps I am searching for it in the wrong place.

There isn't a distance between me and my beloved.

"The minute I heard my first love story,

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,

they're in each other all along."

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks

Who We Really Are

It is time to notice what is always here, despite my seemingly never-ending stream of thought about "my" life. I want to tell the truth about what is always here. What is always here, whether I am happy or sad, angry or peaceful, in despair or joyful, full of self-hatred or blissful, is this underlying pervasive presence. It is gentle, it doesn't not judge, does not talk, has no face. And it is that which breaths me, animates my body, types these words.

This is my "original face" which has no attributes yet takes on all forms and disguises itself in different forms, including those I love and those I hate.

How to really die? It is to acknowledge this presence in the midst of all our dramas, internal or external. It is to acknowledge the origin of the dramas, and see that which makes all this possible.

"To whom do these thoughts arise"? ~ Ramana Marharshi

"Not that which the eye sees

But that whereby the eye can see

know that alone to be Brahman the eternal

Not what people here adore

Not that which the ear hears

But whereby the ear can hear

Know that alone to be Brahman the eternal

Not what people here adore

Not that which the mind thinks

but whereby the mind can think

Know that alone to be Brahman the eternal

Not what people here adore" ~ Upanishads

To die is to die to the person we think we are.

And what is a person? A person is a conglomeration of past stories, memories, relations and future aspirations. These are all thoughts and they don't exist in actuality. A person does not actually exist!

Is this body a "person"? No. It is a body. Without the thought: "This body is who I am", it is nothing! Absolutely nothing. This is the same for ALL bodies. Therefore in the Heart Sutra, Buddha said, "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form."

"Heart Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom" (Panruo Boluomiduo Xin Jing 般若波羅蜜多心經; Prajnaparamita-Hridaya-Sutra), translated into Chinese by Xuanzang 玄奘

觀自在菩薩。行深般若波羅蜜多時。照見五蘊皆空。度一切苦厄。

When Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was practicing the profound Perfection of the Wisdom (prajna paramita), he illuminated the Five Appearances (skandha) and saw that they are all empty (shunya), and he crossed beyond all suffering and difficulty.

舍利子，色不異空。 空不異色。

Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form.

色即是空。空即是色。受、想、行、識，亦復如是。

Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form.

So too are feeling, thoughts, formation, and consciousness.

舍利子，是諸法空相。不生，不滅。不垢，不淨，不增，不減。

Shariputra, all teachings (dharma) are empty of characteristics.

They are not produced, not destroyed, not defiled, not pure; and they neither increase nor diminish.

是故空中。無色。無受、想、行、識。無眼、耳、鼻、舌、身、意。無色、聲、香、味、觸、法。無眼界。乃至無意識界。無無明。亦無無明盡。乃至無老死。亦無老死盡。

Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, feeling, thought, formation, or consciousness; no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind; no sights, sounds, smells, tastes, objects of touch, or dharmas; no field of the eyes up to and including no field of mind consciousness; and no ignorance or ending of ignorance, up to and including no old age and death or ending of old age and death.

無苦、集、滅、道。無智，亦無得。

There is no suffering, no accumulating, no extinction, and no Way, and no understanding and no attaining.

以無所得故。菩提薩埵。依般若波羅蜜多故。心無罣礙。

Because nothing is attained, the Bodhisattva through reliance on prajna paramita is unimpeded in his mind.

無罣礙故。無有恐怖。遠離顛倒夢想。

Because there is no impediment, he is not afraid, and he leaves distorted dream-thinking far behind.

究竟涅槃。三世諸佛。依般若波羅蜜多故。

Ultimately Nirvana! All Buddhas of the three periods of time attain anuttara-samyak-sambodhi through reliance on prajna paramita.

得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。故知般若波羅蜜多。是大神咒。是大明咒是無上咒。是無等等咒。

Therefore know that prajna paramita is a Great Spiritual Mantra, a Great Bright Mantra, a Supreme Mantra, an Unequalled Mantra.

能除一切苦。真實不虛故。

It can remove all suffering; it is genuine and not false.

說般若波羅蜜多咒即說咒曰：揭帝，揭帝，般羅揭帝，般羅僧揭帝，菩提僧莎訶。

That is why the Mantra of Prajna Paramita was spoken.

Recite it like this:

Gaté Gaté Paragaté Parasamgaté. Bodhi Svaha!