Your Own Heart Is Waiting For You

There are still many gifts unopened from your birthday.

~ Hafiz

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Late Ripeness

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget -- I kept saying --
that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef -- they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

"Immobility and silence are not inactive. The flower fills the space with perfume, the candle -- with light. They do nothing yet they change everything by their mere presence."

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

"This pure mind... shines forever with the radiance of its own perfection. But most people are not aware of it, and think that mind is just the faculty that sees, hears, feels, and knows. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing, they don't perceive the radiance of the source. If they could eliminate all conceptual thinking, this source would appear, like the sun rising..."

~ Huang-po

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Whatever you've been doing, you're using your mind to do it. And your mind will always fool you. It will make you believe you're getting somewhere. You're becoming something great. But it's really the ego. It is the ego that is controlling the mind.

~ Robert Adams

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

The entire conversation around awakening, awareness, satsang, advaita, enlightenment, nonduality, etc. was a huge distraction from Love. It is only when I saw, very recently, the pride of "wanting to be special" that I realized how lost I was. I cannot be special. I can only be kind, loving, generous, honest, loyal, humble and diligent in my effort to distinguish the difference between Love and fear.

~ Benjamin Smythe

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Your own Heart is waiting for you when you're sick and tired and done scouring the landscape of illusion for the substance and love it can never give you.

~Mags Deane

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Oh lovers, where are you going?
Who are you looking for?
Your beloved is right here.

She lives in your own neighborhood.
Her face is veiled.
She hides behind screens calling for you,
While you search and lose yourself
In the wilderness and the desert.

Cease looking for flowers,
There blooms a garden in your own home.
While you go looking for trinkets,
Your treasure house awaits you
In your own being

There is no need for suffering, God is here!

~ Rumi