the invisible next

  

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She lets the confused stay confused

if that is what they want
and is always available
to those with a passion for the truth.

In the welter of opinions,
she is content with not-knowing.

She makes distinctions
but doesn’t take them seriously.

She sees the world constantly breaking
apart, and stays centered in the whole.

She sees the world endlessly changing
and never wants it to be
different from what it is.

—Chuang-tzu

Stephen Mitchell version

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What we have, and all we will have, is here in the earthly paradise. How to wring music from it, how to squeeze light out of it, is, as it has always been, the only true question. 

I’d say that to love the visible things in the visible world is to love their apokatastatic outline in the invisible next.


—Charles Wright
from an interview by J.D. McClatchy
The Art of Poetry XLI

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Be mindful of your self-talk.

It is a conversation with the universe.

—David James Lees

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love is the whole and more than all —E. E. Cummings

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The Net of Indra is a profound and subtle metaphor for the structure of reality. Imagine a vast net; at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear and reflects all the other jewels in the net, the way two mirrors placed opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a cell or an atom. 

Every jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in the universe, and a change in one jewel means a change, however slight, in every other jewel.

—Stephen Mitchell

The Enlightened Mind

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There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe.
The horizontal threads are in space.
The vertical threads are in time.

At every crossing of the threads, there is an individual,
and every individual is a crystal bead.

And every crystal bead reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net, but also every other reflection throughout the entire universe.


—The Rig Veda

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I don't give any exercise or practice because all practice is in time and is in mind. What I recommend is to simply stay quiet, don't make effort, don't think. 

This is all you have to do now. Do this now.

—Papaji

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the this and the that

    

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The Master is not trapped in opposites. His this is also a that. He sees that life becomes death and death becomes life, that right has a kernel of wrong within it and wrong a kernel of right, that the true turns into the false and the false into the true. 

He understands that nothing is absolute, that since every point of view depends on the viewer, affirmation and denial are equally beside the point. The place where the this and the that are not opposed to each other is called "the pivot of the Tao." When we find this pivot, we find ourselves at the center of the circle, and here we sit, serene, while Yes and No keep chasing each other around the circumference, endlessly. 

Mind can only create the qualities of good and bad by comparing. Remove the comparison, and there go the qualities. What remains is the pure unknown: ungraspable object, ungraspable subject, and the clear light of awareness streaming through. The pivot of the Tao is the mind free of its thoughts. It does not believe that this is a this or that that is a that. 

Let Yes and No sprint around the circumference toward a finish line that doesn't exist. How can they stop trying to win the argument of life until you stop? When you do, you realize that you were the only one running. Yes was you, No was you, the whole circumference, with its colored banners, its pom-pom girls and frenzied crowds - that was you as well. At the center, the eyes open and again it is the sweet morning of the world. There's nothing here to limit you, no one here to draw a circumference. In fact, there is no one here - not even you.

—Stephen Mitchell
The Second Book of the Tao

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