The Chalice of Wisdom - Part 1

"The beginning of meditation is the end of our outer search for the remedy. It is the recognition that we have only one problem in our lives and that problem is ourselves. Meditation is the end of hiding in our hobbies, religions, food, alcohol, drugs, etc.
In meditation, we give up the search and finally just sit with ourselves with nothing else to do. We are simply present. And for most of us, this is a horrifying experience. Few of us are able to just be present with no distractions or fantasies for more than a few moments, because our minds begin to go wild as our egos are exposed. We begin to see how we constantly create the melodrama of our lives.

Now we are sitting quietly, doing nothing but being present with ourselves. And we are thinking. The mind is flooded with thoughts. And as we watch our thoughts, we notice that we always have a favorite subject to think about ourselves! We are truly self-obsessed! We carefully filter all our experience in life through our mantra of I, Me, Mine. We are self-obsessed, and yet we honestly do not have a clue who we really are. Whenever we begin to talk about who we think we are, we are in fact reciting programs and scripts we have received throughout our lives as human robots. The fact that we don't know who we really are is the source of our desperation, and yet at the very same time, to recognize this fact is the beginning of our true awakening into life."

An excerpt from...http://www.theawakenedheartcenter.com/meditation.htm

Thank You! everyone for filling this space with your presence.
You are all so beautiful.



Love and Gratitude!

Your presence is a very bright light here, ClearWater.
And to all the other bright lights shining here, thank you.

In Love,
Bushycat

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Thank you for having moved some of your posts from invision to here Clearwater .
I love the dynamic of this thread colored by each one's soul signature .

Love for You

mudra

"Do not waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love Always
mudra

Love from me
mudra

IMPORTANCE OF SANGHA
Lama Surya Das


In looking for ideas that are useful here, I have been thinking a lot lately about friendliness, friendship, and cheerfulness. You don't hear so much about that in the meditation halls. I think that sangha and collaboration is the path, of the coming decade, maybe the coming centuries. This requires a sense of ourselves as kindred spirits working and exploring and playing together. There is wisdom and higher consciousness in that. There is everything that we talk about built into that, and without that we are dead in the water, like dinosaurs.

There is a story in the sutras: Ananda, Lord Buddha's long-time personal attendant and monk-disciple, asks Buddha:&quot;Lord, is it true what has been said, that good spiritual friends are fully half of the holy life?&quot;The Master replied, &quot;No, Ananda, good spiritual friends are the whole of the holy life. Find refuge in the sangha community.&quot;

read on: http://www.dzogchen.org/april-2010-newsletter/#Importance

Love Always
mudra

.

Lost at Last

The Self- Initiation of God

“the Great Emptiness of being fully conscious”
Being Everything
One becomes
One’s Self !
And
Is lost again !

I love this part so much !

OM

Mellen Thomas


Love Always
mudra

mudra wrote:"Do not waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love Always
mudra

When such as I cast out remorse,
So great a sweetness flows into the breast.
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

-Yeats


In Love,
Bushycat

Question: How can Dzogchen help us in our daily jobs and careers?

Dalai Lama: ...it is quite difficult to have an experience of Dzogchen, but once you do have that experience, it can be extremely beneficial in dealing with your day to day life, your job, and your career. This is because that kind of experience will give you the ability to prevent yourself from being overwhelmed by circumstances, good or bad. You will not fall into extreme states of mind: you will not get over-excited or depressed. Your attitude toward circumstances and events will be as if you were someone observing the mind, without being drawn away by circumstances.

For example, when you see a reflection of a form in a mirror, the reflection appears within the mirror but it is not projected from within. In the same way, when you confront the situations of life, or deal with others, your attitude too will be mirror-like.

Also, when a reflection appears in the mirror, the mirror does not have to go after the object that is reflected: it simply reflects, spontaneously, on the surface. The same with you: since there is no attachment or agitation at having these 'reflections' in your mind, you will feel tremendous ease and relief. You are not preoccupied by what arises in the mind, nor does it cause you any distress. You are free from conceptuality or any form of objectifying. And so it really does help you, in allowing you to be free from being caught up in the play of emotions like hatred, attachment, and the like. "

--from Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection by His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
translated by Thupten Jinpa and Richard Barron


For a definition of Dzogchen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzogchen

Love Always
mudra

"The Higher Power is fine, as far as that term and the common usage of it goes. However, mostly its a placeholder for something beyond ourselves that we long for but don't understand very well. I'm far more interested in cultivating the Common Power to be found within each and every one of us, the recognition of which transforms all of our lives and relationships."

Lama Surya Das, "New Dharma Talks"

Love Always
mudra

"Let go the past,” the Buddha said, “let go the future, and let go what is in between, transcending the things of time. With your mind free in every direction, you will not return to birth and aging.”

Love Always
mudra

Centering in truth

Truth involves establishing an aware relationship between your inner core and the circumstances in your life. Centering in truth involves the ability to perceive a fundamental wisdom, reflected within yourself and the people you know.

http://lightworkers.org/blog/102458/centering-truth

Love Always
mudra

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