Atacama - Meditation

 

 

 

 

 

Opening the door on voidness of identity,
Clear awareness floods everywhere,
And though everywhere, nowhere is an identity found.

-Milarepa, "Drinking the Mountain Stream"

 

 

 

When you do something, you should burn yourself completely,

like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

-Shunryu Suzuki

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just as vessels made of clay

by a potter all have breaking as their end,

so is the life of mortals.

-Sutta Nipata

 

 

 

There are two kinds of suffering:

the suffering that leads to more suffering

and the suffering that leads to the end of suffering.

If you are not willing to face the second kind of suffering,

you will surely continue to experience the first.

-Ajahn Chah, "Still Forest Pool"

 

 

 

What others call happiness, that the Noble ones declare to be suffering.

What others call suffering, that the Noble ones have found to be happiness.

See how difficult it is to understand the Dhamma!

Herein those without insight have completely gone astray.

-Sutta Nipata

 

 

 

 

 

 

To travel with the unawakened makes the journey long and hard

and is as painful as traveling with an enemy.

But the company of the wise is as pleasant as meeting with friends.

Follow the wise, the intelligent, and the awakened.

Follow them as the moon follows the path of the stars.

-Dhammapada

 

 

 

Subhuti asked: "How can the practitioner who wishes to help all beings find enlightenment awaken to the complete and perfect wisdom?"

The Buddha said: "This most subtle awakening comes about

through moment-to-moment attentiveness.

By way of attentiveness,

there is attunement to the ways in which things manifest,

such as form and consciousness.

The practitioner awakens to perfect wisdom

by becoming blissfully free from obsessions

with habits, names, sense experiences, personal feelings,

and with dread of dying and all the despair that goes with it."

-Prajnaparamita

 

 

 

 

 

 

They awaken, always wide awake:
Gotama's disciples
whose mindfulness, both day and night,
is constantly immersed
in the body.

-Dhammapada 299, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

 

 

 

There is a difference between watching the mind and controlling the mind. Watching the mind with a gentle,

open attitude allows the mind to settle down and come to rest.

Trying to control the mind,

or trying to control the way one's spiritual practice will unfold,

just stirs up more agitation and suffering.

-Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those who have great realization about delusion are buddhas.

Those who are greatly deluded within realization are sentient beings.

-Dogen, "Flowers Fall"

 

 

 

What is meant by nonduality, Mahatmi?

It means that light and shade, long and short, black and white,

can only be experienced in relation to each other;

light is not independent of shade, nor black of white.

There are no opposites, only relationships.

In the same way,

nirvana and the ordinary world of suffering are not two things

but related to each other.

There is no nirvana except where the world of suffering is;

there is no world of suffering apart from nirvana.

For existence is not mutually exclusive.

-Lankavatara Sutra

 

 

 

Those who regard
non-essence as essence
and see essence as non-,
don't get to the essence,
ranging about in wrong resolves.

But those who know
essence as essence,
and non-essence as non-,
get to the essence,
ranging about in right resolves.

-Dhammapada 11-12, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

 

 

 

 

 

 

Through heedfulness, Indra won
to lordship over the gods.
Heedfulness is praised,
heedlessness censured--
always.

-Dhammapada 30, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

 

 

 

They're addicted to heedlessness
—dullards, fools—
while one who is wise
cherishes heedfulness
as his highest wealth.

-Dhammapada, 2, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

 

 

 

Keep on pondering,

and suddenly the flower of mind will bloom with enlightenment,

illuminating the whole universe.

This can be called getting it in the mind, responding to it in action.

Thereupon you can turn the earth into gold and churn the rivers into cream. Wouldn't that make life exhilarating?

-Chien-ju

 

 

 

 

 

 

What, monks, is totality?

It is just the eye with the objects of sight,

the ear with the objects of hearing,

the nose with the objects of smell,

the body with the objects of touch

and the mind with the objects of cognition.

This, monks, is called totality.

-Samyutta Nikaya

 

 

 

Someone who is about to admonish another must realize within himself

five qualities before doing so [that he may be able to say], thus:

"In due season will I speak, not out of season.

In truth I will speak, not in falsehood.

Gently will I speak, not harshly.

To his profit will I speak, not to his loss.

With kindly intent will I speak, not in anger."

-"Vinaya Pitaka," translated by F.S. Woodward

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transient is this world; like phantoms and dreams,
Substance it has none. Grasp not the world nor your kin;
Cut the strings of lust and hatred; meditate in woods and mountains.
If without effort you remain loosely in the "natural state,"

soon Mahamudra you will win and attain the Non-attainment.

-Tilopa, "The Song of Mahamudra"

 

 

 

This mind is like a fish out of water that thrashes and throws itself about,

its thoughts following each of its cravings.

Such a wandering mind is weak and unsteady,

attracted here, there and everywhere.

How good it is to control it and know the happiness of freedom.

-Dhammapada

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subhuti asked: "How does a person practice all the perfections?"

The Buddha replied: "By not perceiving any duality.

Through understanding this nonduality he teaches reality to all beings.

With physical energy, he travels widely to teach.

With mental energy, he guards against the arising of such ideas

as "permanence or impermanence," "good or evil," and so on.

With the perfection of wisdom, he does not consider anything ultimately real

but serves all beings with loving attention

so that energy, patience, and meditation will be aroused in them.

but even though he attends to the minutest detail of whatever must be done,

he never grasps it or tries to make ultimate sense of it,

because he knows it has no enduring substance of its own."

-Prajnaparmita

 

 

 

Subhuti asked: "Is perfect wisdom beyond thinking?

Is it unimaginable and totally unique

but nevertheless reaching the unreachable

and attaining the unattainable?"

The Buddha replied: "Yes, Subhuti, it is exactly so.

And why is perfect wisdom beyond thinking?

It is because all its points of reference cannot be thought about

but can be apprehended.

One is the disappearance of the self-conscious person into pure presence.

Another is the knowing of the essenceless essence of all things in the world.

And another is luminous knowledge that knows without a knower.

None of these points can sustain ordinary thought

because they are not objects or subjects.

They can't be imagined or touched or approached in any way

by any ordinary mode of consciousness,

therefore they are beyond thinking."

-Prajnaparamita

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Somewhere In My Soul

by Ernesto Cortazar