this road is the heart opening

.

The window is the absence of the wall, and it gives air and light because it is empty. 

Be empty of all mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

...

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

—Wendell Berry

...

Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,
kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night. 

If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water,
I would have asked to be born a fish in this life.

If we could reach Him through nothing but berries and wild nuts
then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came
from the womb!

If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves
then goats would surely get to the Holy One before us!

If the worship of stone stature could bring us all the way,
I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.

Mirabai says, "The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God."


—Mirabai
Robert Bly version

...

All you need is to understand that you are the source of reality, that you give reality instead of getting it, that you need no support and no confirmation. 

Things are as they are because you accept them as they are. Stop accepting them and they will dissolve.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

not to worry

 

.

There is nothing to do. Just be. 

Do nothing. Be. 

No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. 

I do not even say: ‘be yourself’, since you do not know yourself. 

Just be. 

Having seen that you are neither the ‘outer’ world of perceivables, nor the ‘inner’ world of thinkables, 

that you are neither body nor mind, 
just be.

—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

being(ness

.

You are neither the body nor in the body — there is no such thing as body. You have grievously misunderstood yourself; to understand rightly — investigate.

...

You must come to a firm decision. You must forget the thought that you are the body and be only the knowledge ‘I am’, which has no form, no name. Just be. When you stabilize in that beingness, it will give all the knowledge and all the secrets to you, and when the secrets are given to you, you transcend the beingness, and you, the Absolute will know that you are also not the consciousness. Having gained all this knowledge, having understood what is what, a kind of quietude prevails, a tranquility. Beingness is transcended, but beingness is available.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

origin(al

.

Maharaj: There are may persons who have a great attachment to their own individuality. They want first and foremost to remain as an individual and then search, for they are not prepared to lose that individuality. While retaining their identity, they want to find out what is the truth. But in this process, you must get rid of the identity itself.

If you really find out what you are, you will see that you are not an individual, you are not a person, you are not a body. And people who cling to their body identity are not fit for this knowledge.

The names and forms that appear, with different colors and all that, their origin is water. But nobody says I'm water, they say I am the body. But if you see the origin of the body then ultimately the body has appeared only from water. All these plants and everything, all name and forms, they appear from water only. But still people don't identify themselves with water; they say I am the body.


—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Ultimate Medicine, Dialogues

...

From the waters everything is made, both what is manifest and what is Unmanifest.
Therefore, all manifestation (murti) is water.


—Prasna Upanishad 1.4-5

.

you are that

.

In a field
I am the absence
of field.

This is
always the case.

Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.

I move
to keep things whole.


—Mark Strand
keeping things whole

...

Remember, you are entirely on your own.

You must realize first of all that you are the proof of everything, including yourself.

None can prove your existence, because this existence must be confirmed by you first.

Your being and knowing you owe nobody.

You are entirely on your own. 

You do not come from somewhere, you do not go anywhere.

You are timeless being and awareness.


—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

The body is our general medium for having a world. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty

. 

... what is the direction of servitude between the body and the mind, and where does the constellation of certitudes we experience as a self reside in all of it?


—Maria Popova


how does a single-celled embryo grow up to be a differentiated biological body of organs?


—Amit Goswami

...

An embryo expands by cell division, making an exact replica of itself with all the same DNA, the same genes. But in the adult body, the cells are differentiated as to their functions.

... The proteins a cell makes determine cellular function; the genes have the code to make the proteins. ... But the source of the programs is not part of the DNA.

... Rupert Sheldrake (1981) has shown how nonlocal and nonphysical morphogenic fields are essential to understand biological form-making from the one-celled embryo. The instructions of form-making cell-differentiation (all cells contain the same genes, yet toe cell genes are activated very differently from brain cell genes), are nowhere to be found in the physical body, and that includes the genes (which are more or less instructions for protein-making).


—Amit Goswami
Quantum Doctor

...

What we call the body is not feet or shins,
The body, likewise, is not thighs or loins.
It’s not the belly nor indeed the back,
And from the chest and arms the body is not formed.

The body is not ribs or hands,
Armpits, shoulders, bowels, or entrails;
It is not the head or throat:
From none of these is “body” constituted.

If “body,” step by step,
Pervades and spreads itself throughout its members,
Its parts indeed are present in the parts,
But where does the “body,” in itself, abide!

If “body,” single and entire,
Is present in the hand and other members,
However many parts there are, the hand and all the rest,
You’ll find an equal quantity of “bodies.”

If “body” is not outside or within its parts,
How is it, then, residing in its members?
And since it has no basis other than its parts,
How can it be said to be at all?

Thus there is no “body” in the limbs,
But from illusion does the idea spring,
To be affixed to a specific shape—
Just as when a scarecrow is mistaken for a man.

As long as the conditions are assembled,
A body will appear and seem to be a man.
As long as all the parts are likewise present,
It’s there that we will see a body.

Likewise, since it is a group of fingers,
The hand itself is not a single entity.
And so it is with fingers, made of joints—
And joints themselves consist of many parts.

These parts themselves will break down into atoms,
And atoms will divide according to direction.
These fragments, too, will also fall to nothing.
Thus atoms are like empty space—
they have no real existence.

All form, therefore, is like a dream,
And who will be attached to it, who thus investigates!
The body, in this way, has no existence;
What is male, therefore, and what is female!


—Shantideva
The Way of the Bodhisattva

...

The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Every vestige of your imaginative self must first die, then the universe is your own, it becomes your body and your expression. Nothing can truly affect you, you are free beyond description.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

not two

.

The body provides something for the spirit to look after and use.

—Alan Turing

...

I am not one of those who neglect the body in order to make of it a sacrificial offering for the soul, since my soul would thoroughly dislike being served in such a fashion.


—Rainer Maria Rilke

...

Creation, invention: there is nothing more real than this body that I imagine; there is nothing less real than this body that I touch that turns into a heap of salt or vanishes into a column of smoke. With that smoke my desire will invent another body. Eroticism is the experience of a full life that appears to us as a palpable whole and through which we enter totality.


—Octavio Paz
An Erotic Beyond: Sade
translated from the Spanish by Elliot Weinburger

...

Discover yourself.

There is in the body a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body.

Discover that current and stay with it.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

strangerain
.

(Costing not less than everything) —T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding, excerpt

Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one.
 

—Albert Einstein



.

We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it.
We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.
This is true for the entire universe.


—The Upanishads

...

Give up all.

The correct understanding will be when you realize that whatever you have understood so far, is invalid.

Give up all and you gain all. Then life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an inexhaustible source.

In that light the world appears dimly, like a dream.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

...

As stars, a lamp, a fault of vision,

As dewdrops or a bubble,

A dream, a lightning flash, a cloud,

So one should see conditioned things.


—Diamond Sutra

...



Start seeing everything as God,

But keep it a secret.


—Hafiz

 

.
wait - what ?
.

 

 

Consciousness is not a thing, but a process of inference —Karl Friston | Aeon Essays

.

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. 

—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

...

You cannot fight pain and pleasure on the level of consciousness.  

To go beyond them you must go beyond consciousness, which is possible only when you look at consciousness as something that happens to you and not in you, as something external, alien, superimposed. 

Then, suddenly you are free of consciousness, really alone, with nothing to intrude. 

And that is your true state.

—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

...

The best time is late afternoon

when the sun strobes through

the columns of trees as you are hiking up,

and when you find an agreeable rock

to sit on, you will be able to see

the light pouring down into the woods

and breaking into the shapes and tones

of things and you will hear nothing

but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy

falling of a cone or nut through the trees,

and if this is your day you might even

spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese

driving overhead toward some destination.

But it is hard to speak of these things

how the voices of light enter the body

and begin to recite their stories

how the earth holds us painfully against

its breast made of humus and brambles

how we who will soon be gone regard

the entities that continue to return

greener than ever, spring water flowing

through a meadow and the shadows of clouds

passing over the hills and the ground

where we stand in the tremble of thought

taking the vast outside into ourselves.

—Billy Collins
Directions (excerpt), The Art of Drowning

.

wherever you go, there you are

. 

Just turn away from all that occupies the mind;

do whatever work you have to complete,
avoid new obligations;

keep empty, keep available, but resist not what comes uninvited.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj

...
 

wherever you are is the entry point

—Kabir

.

Desire itself is movement / Not in itself desirable; —T.S. Eliot

.

Weak desires can be removed by introspection and meditation,
but strong, deep-rooted ones must be fulfilled and their fruits, sweet or bitter, tasted.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

...

From so much loving and journeying, books emerge.
And if they don’t contain kisses or landscapes,
if they don’t contain a man with his hands full,
if they don’t contain a woman in every drop,

hunger, desire, anger, roads,
they are no use as a shield or a bell:
they have no eyes, and won’t be able to open them,
they have the dead sound of precepts.

I loved the entangling of flesh,
and out of blood and love I carved my poems.
In hard earth I brought a rose to flower,
fought over by fire and dew.

That’s how I could keep on singing.


—Pablo Neruda
Ars Magnetica

...

Mind led body
to the edge of the precipice.

They stared in desire

at the naked abyss.

If you love me, said mind,

take that step into silence.

If you love me, said body,

turn and exist.


—Anne Stevenson
vertigo

.

needful things

 .

Love is not selective, desire is selective.

In Love there are no strangers.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

...

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. 

The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.


—Nikos Kazantzakis

.