Sunday, November 19, 2006

Adaptation of Shri Shankaracharya's Six Stanzas on Nirvana

It is not mind,
consciousness,
thought or emotion,
attention, memory
sense impressions, the senses,
phenomena, the body, the physical world,
desires or aversions, pleasure or pain,
self-importance, conditioning,
virtue or vice, sacred or profane,
agent or acted upon, dead or living,
it is deathless and birthless,
it is has no properties or qualities
It is without an other,
it is without relatives, friends, teachers,
it is even without the state of being alone.
It is formless and unimaginable.
It is coextensive with all that is,
yet it is imperceptible.
It is not the experience of nirvana or liberation;
it cannot be experienced or known.
It does not exist,
yet it is even without the quality of being non-existent.
I am that.

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