a tree with no name

There is a tree by the river and we have been watching it day after day for several weeks when the sun is about to rise. As the sun slowly rises over the horizon, over the trees, this particular tree becomes all of a sudden golden. All the leaves are bright with life, and as you watch it as the hours pass by, that tree whose name does not matter - what matters is that beautiful tree - an extraordinary quality seems to spread all over the land, over the river. And as the sun rises a little higher the leaves begin to flutter, to dance. And each hour seems to give to that tree a different quality. Before the sun rises it has a sombre feeling, quiet, far away, full of dignity. And as the day begins, the leaves with the light on them dance and give it that peculiar feeling that one has of great beauty. By midday, its shadow has deepened and you can sit there protected from the sun, never feeling lonely, with the tree as your companion. As you sit there, there is a relationship of deep abiding security and a freedom that only trees can know.


Krishnamurti to himself - His Last Journal

For free e-books on Krishnamurti, click
here

hard to comprehend

Forms, sounds, odours, tastes,
Tactiles and all objects of mind -
Desirable, lovely, agreeable,
So long as it's said: "They are."

There are considered happiness
By the world with its devas;
But where they cease,
That they consider suffering.

The noble ones have seen as happiness
The ceasing of identity.
This [view] of those who clearly see
Runs counter to the entire world.

What others speak of as happiness,
That the noble ones say is suffering;
What others speak of as suffering,
That the noble ones know as bliss.

Behold this Dhamma hard to comprehend:
Here the foolish are bewildered.
For those with blocked minds it is obscure.
Sheer darkness for those who do not see.

But for the good it is disclosed,
It is light here for those who see.
The dullards unskilled in the Dhamma
Don't understand it in its presence.

This Dhamma isn't easily understood
By those afflicted with lust for existence,
Who flow along in the stream of existence,
Deeply mired in Mara's realm.

Who else apart from the noble ones
Are able to understand this state?
When they have rightly known that state,
The taintless ones are fully quenched.


Samyutta Nikaya - Salayatanasamyutta


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Venerable Sheng Yen and Jet Li

Aung San Suu Kyi 64th birthday

64 for Aung San Suu Kyi

Bodhisattvacharyavatara

Bodhisattvacharyavatara

A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life by Shantideva

translated into English by
Stephan Bachelor

for the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives
Dharmshala India

faith and reason

Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason with Pema Chodron


Part 1




Other parts of the interview are available at YouTube

HOME

A must watch video of our planet, our home.

HOME

Siddhartha

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse at Google Books


Picture taken from Amazon.com

mindfulness

“Mindfulness is the path to the Deathless,
Heedlessness is the path to death.
The mindful never die,
the heedless are as if dead al ready.”

Dhammapada


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dependent arising

Thanissaro Bhikkhu teaches dependent arising in his latest writing.

The Shape of Suffering

dark places

"Sometimes the road lead through dark places.
Sometimes, the darkness is your friend."




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compassion is space

When you meet the pain of another with fear, it is often called pity.
When you're motivated by pity, you're motivated by a dense self-interest.
When you're motivated by pity, you're acting on the aversion you have to experiencing someone else's predicament.
You want to alleviate their discomfort as a means of alleviating your own.
Pity creates more fear and separation.
When love touches upon the pain of another, it is called compassion.
Compassion is just space.
Whatever that other person is experiencing, you have room for it in your heart.
It becomes work on yourself -to let go, to stay open, to feel that being within you.
When somebody is in incredible pain, though you can't do anything to alleviate it, you don't withdraw.
When people say, "Help me," you stay soft, your hand in theirs, sharing their pain without closing around it.
To have room in your heart for whatever pain arises, not differentiating between "I" and "other" is compassion.


Taken from: Who Dies - An Investigation of Conscious Living and Dying by Stephen Levine

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is life the incurable disease

Is life the incurable disease?
The infant is born howling
& we laugh,
the dead man smiles
& we cry,
resisting the passage,
always resisting the passage,
that turns life into eternity.

Blake sang alleluias
on his deathbed.
My own grandmother,
hardly a poet at all,
smiled
as we'd never seen her smile before.
Perhaps the dress of flesh
is no more than a familiar garment
that grows looser as one diets
on death, & perhaps we discard it
or give it to the poor in spirit,
who have not learned yet
what blessing it is
to go naked?


Erica Jong


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inner life

The more inner and the less outer life a novel presents, the higher and nobler will be its purpose... Art consists in achieving the maximum of inner motion with the minimum of outer motion; for it is the inner life which is the true object of our interest.

Arthur Schopenhauer

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an Arahat

(An Arahat's) good actions may appear quite similar to the moral deeds of noble(though unliberated)worldlings, but the Arahat's actions are not motivated by the slightest trace of craving and ignorance. In the Arahat's mind, there is no greed (craving) by way of wishing that his virtue be recognized and appreciated, no delusion (ignorance) by way of a proud satisfaction in "being good", no illusionary expectations as to the result of these good actions; nor is there any other self-reference in any form whatever. An Arahat's good actions are a spontaneous outflow of a fully purified mind and heart, responding without hesitation to situations where help is needed and possible. But though his actions may be inspired by sympathy and compassion, beneath them there is detachment and deep serenity instead of emotional involvement. As long as the momentum of his life-force lasts, the Arahat lives on as an embodiment of wisdom and compassion. But as the Arahat's mind no longer clings to anything, not even to the results of his actions, there is no potentiality left for any future rebirth. The life-nourishing sap conveyed by the roots has ceased to flow, and the roots of continued existence themselves are cut off.

The Roots of Good and Evil by Nyanaponika Thera


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great silence

The great silences of the desert are not void of sound,
but void of distractions.
One day, this landscape will take
the language out of me.

Terry Tempest Williams


Picture by: Stefan Mendelsohn @ Flickr

transforming pain

Pain is part of our experience of life in a human body. There is no way to escape from feeling pain sooner or later. We often fear pain and feel victimized by it. Being in pain now we may remember pain of the past and anticipate more pain in the future. And pain can remind us that our life span is finite, our connection to life fragile, and beings everywhere experience pain in one way or another.

Continue reading:
Transforming Pain by Roshi Joan Halifax



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mindfulness

Mindfulness has, if we may personify it, a rather unassuming character. Compared with it, mental factors such as devotion, energy, imagination and intelligence are certainly more colourful personalities, making an immediate and strong impacct on people and situations. Their conquests are sometimes rapid and vast, though often insecure.

Mindfulness, on the other hand, is of an unobtrusive nature. Its virtues shine inwardly, and in ordinary life most of its merits are passed on to other mental faculties which generally receive all the credit. One must know mindfulness well and cultivate its acquaintance before one can appreciate its value and its silent penetrative influence. Mindfulness walks slowly and deliberately, and its daily task is of a rather humdrum nature. Yet where it places its feet it cannot easily be dislodged, and it acquires and bestows true mastery of the ground it covers.

Nyanaponika Thera, The Power of Mindfulness

See also: The Vision of Dhamma - Buddhist Writings of Nyanaponika Thera

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true freedom

The Sutta Nipata, in its oldest and most characteristic parts, is a deeply stirring Song of Freedom. The verses of this ancient book are a challenging call to us to leave behind the narrow confines of our imprisoned existence with its ever-growing walls of accumulated habits of life and thought. They beckon us to free ourselves from the enslavement to our passions and to our thousand little whims and wishes. A call to freedom is always timely because in our lives we constantly bind ourselves to this and that, or let ourselves be bound in various ways by others and by circumstances. To some extent, normal life cannot entirely escape from such a situation. In fact, "binding" oneself to a worthy task and duty or to an ennobling human relationship is an indispensable antidote to the opposite tendency: the dissipation of our energies.

But, having the comfort of a "secure footing" in life, we too easily forget to walk on. Instead, we prefer to "strengthen our position," to improve and embellish the little cage we build for ourselves out of habits, ideas and beliefs. Once we have settled down in our habitual ways of living and thinking, we feel less and less inclined to give them up for the sake of risky ventures into a freedom of life and thought full of dangers and uncertainties. True freedom places on us the uncomfortable burden of ever-fresh responsible decisions, which have to be guided by mindfulness, wisdom and human sympathy. Few are willing to accept the full weight of such a burden. Instead, they prefer to be led and bound by the rules given by others, and by habits mainly dominated by self-interest and social conventions.

Nyanaponika Thera

Taken from "The Worn Out Skin". Read full article at Access to Insight

For a list of Nyanaponika Thera's writings, goto: Nyanaponika Thera at Access to Insight

words are windows (or they are walls)

I feel so sentenced by your words,
I feel so judged and sent away,
Before I go I've got to know
Is that what you mean to say?
Before I rise to my defence,
Before I speak in hurt or fear,
Before I build that wall of words,
Tell me, did I really hear?

Words are windows, or they're walls,
They sentence us, or set us free.
When I speak and when I hear,
Let the love light shine through me.
There are things I need to say,
Things that mean so much to me,
If my words don't make me clear,
Will you help me to be free?
If I seemed to put you down,
If you felt I didn't care,
Try to listen through my words
To the feelings that we share.


Ruth Bebermeyer


From Nonviolent Communication: a Language of Life
By Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.
Encinitas, CA: Puddle Dancer Press, 2003