misc xx

Religious people split into three main groups when faced with science. I shall label them the "know-nothings", the "know-alls", and the "no-contests" ~ Richard Dawkins




"Bhikkhus, whatever kinds of worldly merit there are, all are not worth one sixteenth part of the release of mind by universal friendliness; in shining, glowing and beaming radiance, in invisible shielding protection, such release of mind by universal friendliness far excels & surpasses them all..." Itivuttaka 27






"And how does a Bhikkhu abide with his mind imbued with friendliness extending over one direction? Just as he would feel friendliness on seeing a dearly favourite person, so he extends this same loving-kindness to all beings in all directions, one by one, & as above so below." ~ Abhidhamma Pitaka: Appamañña-vibhanga






I am a friend and helper to all,
I am sympathetic to all living beings.
I develop a mind full of love & one
who always delight in harmlessness!
I gladden my mind, fill it with joy,
and make it immovable and unshakable.
I develop these divine states of mind
not cultivated by simple men.
Theragatha 648-9






"You have been told that you should practice desirelessness. You have practiced desirelessness for thirty or forty years, but still desires are there. So something must be wrong somewhere. Nothing can be wrong with desire; something must be wrong with the one who has told you to practice desirelessness. This (desire) is a reality; that (desirelessness) is false – it is falsifying you. Desire is there. Desire as such can’t be wrong, can’t be false, because it is there." J. Krishnamurti

Exactly! And the Buddha never taught "desirelessness," but to see its rising and passing away, without clinging to it. Desire is just another "dhamma" as Ajahn Chah repeatedly emphasizes. It's energy, part of the flow of life. Suffering only has to do with our getting snagged by desire and caught up in it in terms of "I-making" and "my-making." That said, gaining freedom from such self-identification with desire isn't trivial, is it?


"If someone has helped you and you make of him your authority, then are you not preventing all further help, not only from him, but from everything about you? Does not help lie about you everywhere? Why look in only one direction? And when you are so enclosed so bound, can any help reach you?

But when you are open, there is unending help in all things, from the song of a bird to the call of a human being, from the blade of grass to the immensity of the heavens. The poison and corruption begin when you look to one person as your authority, your guide, your saviour."

J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living, First Series



"What is that to which we hold on so desperately, so fearfully, so anxiously? Are they not memories? Sirs, remove your memories, and where are you? And those memories are given life by constant accumulation and by constant recollection. Memory in itself has no substance, no vitality. The moment I say `I remember' I am identifying myself with the past. That is, as long as a man who is the result of the past, is concerned with the results of the past, there must be continuity.

And what happens to that which continues. Nothing, for it is only a habit. Habit is the only thing that can continue, and to which you give life from time to time. So, the thing which continues is memory, a dead thing to which you give life, which means that through a series of habits, accumulations and idiosyncrasies, the experiences are translated to produce all that you wish to have continued. Moreover, that which continues decays. That which is continuous is non-creative."
~ J. Krishnamurti






"Compassion is a kind of healing agent which helps us to tolerate the hurt of seeing the truth. The function of compassion in the Work is not to reduce hurt; its function is to lead to the truth. Much of the time, the truth is painful or scary. Compassion makes it possible to tolerate that hurt and fear. It is on the side of truth, and helps us to persist in our search for truth. The truth will ultimately dissolve the hurt, but this is a by-product. In fact, it is only when compassion is present that people will allow themselves to see the truth. Where there is no compassion there is no trust." A. H. Almaas (Diamond Heart Book 1, pg 92)




The Great Betrayal

"Stop striving after all kinds of things; stop dreaming, scheming, planning, working, achieving, attempting, moving, manipulating, trying to be something, trying to get somewhere. You forget the simplest, most obvious thing, which is to be here. If you are not in your body, you miss the source of all significance, meaning, and satisfaction.

How can you feel the satisfaction, if you are not here? We miss who we are, which is fundamentally beingness, existence. If we are not here, we exist only on the fringes of reality. We don't sufficiently value simply being. Instead, we value what we want to accomplish, or what we want to possess. It is our biggest mistake. It is called the "great betrayal." A.H. Almaas (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 12)

"Buddhists call this condition 'mirror-like awareness': The self is completely transparent to itself, can see and be itself fully, just like looking in the mirror. We then see things just as they are, without opinions, without projections, without ideas, without distortions: completely objective. When we realize mirror-like awareness, that transparency, clarity and complete colorlessness is seen at the same time to be complete perfection. This awareness makes us clear about ourselves, all the way to our true nature. So we are clearly and transparently cognizant of our condition at the moment.

In the work of self-realization, the self regains its light, which is perception, which is awareness, which is clarity, which is understanding, which is consciousness. The inner journey is a matter of increased awareness, increased consciousness, increased clarity, increased perception, increased understanding, and increased knowledge, which inherently embody the spiritual qualities of love, compassion and so on, and the various faculties of functioning..." A. H. Almaas (The Point of Existence, pg 282)

No Sacred Cows

"No sacred cows survive the realization of the non-conceptual, and one's realization becomes independent from any belief or teaching. He [she] recognizes that who and what he is is ultimately beyond any category, including all the spiritual categories. He realizes that Reality is not a description, and that any description, any teaching or belief system regardless how useful and accurate, falls short of Reality as it is. He recognizes the uniqueness of his realization without having to compare it with others, and appreciates the differences between the various teachings without having to rate them. His realization has gone beyond conceptual categories and, hence beyond comparisons and ratings. He believes in nothing, and adheres to no teaching or religion as final and ultimate. He has become a universal heretic, embracing all, yet free of all. A. H. Almaas (Inner Journey Home, pg 343)

"When the personality is analyzed in its minutiae you will see the cycle of action and reaction. Originally, there is the reality of what is there and then there is saying no to that reality. Then there is hope for another reality. Then there is desire for that other reality. Right? There is a rejection of now, a hope for something else in the future, and then the desire for it. The cycle of rejection, hope and desire altogether leads to an activity, to trying to achieve what is desired.

Any hope, desire, activity, or reactivity necessitate more than anything else rejection of the now. If the now is completely accepted there will not be a hope, there will not be a desire, there will not be a movement away from or toward any movement at all. There will be stillness, complete stillness." A. H. Almaas (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 177)

doing so. We do not question the right of people to believe what they will. But the concept of religious intolerance is commonly extended to include not criticizing others’ beliefs. This is partially because beliefs that are non-rational are considered not subject to rational examinations. This may be true about the contents of belief, but is not true about what the effects operating out of a given belief have on the world. If a belief that sends children to war with the promise of a special paradise cannot be challenged as harmful, that concept of intolerance is intolerable.

We define tolerance as simply not trying to impose one’s views on others through coercion. We also consider any view of tolerance that cuts off examination of anything the human can inquire into basically authoritarian. Why should religion, whose power is monumental, be exempt? We view ecological uncaringness, overpopulation, and uncared-for children as major threats to survival. In our conception of morality, structures that promote these are immoral.”

Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad
from “The Guru Papers—Masks of Authoritarian Power”

"And if we dare to look into those eyes, then we shall feel their suffering in our hearts. More and more people have seen that appeal and felt it in their hearts. All around the world there is an awakening of understanding and compassion, and understanding that reaches out to help the suffering animals in their vanishing homelands. That embraces hungry, sick, and desperate human beings, people who are starving while the fortunate among us have so much more than we need. And if, one by one, we help them, the hurting animals, the desperate humans, then together we shall alleviate so much of the hunger, fear, and pain in the world. Together we can bring change to the world, gradually replacing fear and hatred with compassion and love. Love for all living beings."
— Jane Goodall


"People say to me so often, 'Jane how can you be so peaceful when everywhere around you people want books signed, people are asking these questions and yet you seem peaceful,' and I always answer that it is the peace of the forest that I carry inside." ~ Jane Goodall


"Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior, of our place in nature." ~ Jane Goodall

"If you look through all the different cultures. Right from the earliest, earliest days with the animistic religions, we have sought to have some kind of explanation for our life, for our being, that is outside of our humanity." ~ Jane Goodall

"If it should turn out that we have mishandled our own lives as several civilizations before us have done, it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure.” Loren Eiseley



"When a man talks to me about the One and Maya and the Absolute, I am tempted to ask him, 'My friend, how much have you experienced of these things in which you instruct me or how much are you telling me out of a vacuum or merely from intellectual appreciation?' If you have merely ideas and no experience, you are no authority for me and your logic is to me but the clashing of cymbals good to deafen an opponent into silence, but of no use for knowledge.

If you say you have experienced, then I have to ask you, ‘Are you sure you have measured all possible experience?’ If you have not, then how can you be sure that my contradictory experience is not equally true? If you say you have, then I know you to be deluded or a pretender, one who has experienced a fragment or nothing; for God in His entire being is unknowable, avijnatam vijanatam.” Sri Aurbindo

"To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depths of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"One night I went for a walk by the sea along the empty shore. It was not gay, but neither was it sad – it was beautiful. The deep blue sky was flecked with clouds of a blue deeper than the fundamental blue of intense cobalt, and others of a clearer blue, like the blue whiteness of the Milky Way. In the blue depth the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, pink, more brilliant, more sparkling gemlike than at home – even in Paris: opals you might call them, emeralds, lapis luzuli, rubies, sapphires. The sea was very deep ultramarine – the shore a sort of violet and faint russet as I saw it, and on the dunes (they are about seventeen feet high) some bushes Prussian blue."
—Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo

"The goal of any esoteric work must be that of objectivity, first in our understanding of ourselves, and then, as our filters and programs are dislodged, of the world. A true esoteric teaching will, therefore, not only focus on 'Know Thyself,' but will also provide knowledge about the reality of our reality. If one or the other of these aspects are missing from a teaching, then you can be certain that it is incomplete, and an incomplete teaching, even if through ignorance of the teacher, even if unconscious, is dangerous."

Henry See from "Spiritual Predator: Prem Rawat AKA Maharaji"


"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

~ Eleanor Roosevelt




"Whenever we feel that we are definitely right, so much so that we refuse to open up to anything or anybody else, right there we are wrong. It becomes wrong view. When suffering arises, where does it arise from? The cause is wrong view, the fruit of that being suffering. If it was right view it wouldn’t cause suffering.

So I say, 'Allow space, don’t cling to things.' 'Right' is just another supposition, just let it pass. 'Wrong' is another apparent condition, just let it be that. If you feel you are right and yet others contend the issue, don’t argue, just let it go. As soon as you know, let go. This is the straight way." Ajahn Chah


"Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war... Mostly the animals understand their roles, but man, by comparison, seems troubled by a message that, it is often said, he cannot quite remember or has gotten wrong... Bereft of instinct, he must search continually for meanings... Man was a reader before he became a writer, a reader of what Coleridge once called the mighty alphabet of the universe." ~ Loren Eiseley