Wu-men

Ten thousand flowers in spring,
the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer,
snow in winter.
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

-Wu-men

Emptiness

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
- Lao Tzu

Chuang-tzu

It is everywhere.


To a mind that is still,
the whole universe surrenders.

Self-forgetting

"When we forget the self [ego],
we can remember the 10 000 things."


"To study the Way is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be enlightened
by all things of the universe.
To be enlightened by all things of the universe
is to cast off the body and mind of the self
as well as those of others.
Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out,
and life with traceless enlightenment
goes on forever and ever."

-Dogen

Glow of Hope

An Indian friend emailed me this image and told me it had been painted by the father of his classical Indian singing teacher. I remembered having seen the actual painting somewhere in India. A bit of internet research reminded me where:

Glow of Hope, alternately titled "Woman With the Lamp", is a painting by S.L. Haldankar. The work is currently stored in the Sri Jayachamarajendra Art Gallery at Jaganmohan Palace in Mysore, India.

"I within did Flow"

.

A native health and innocence
Within my bones did grow,
And while my God did all his Glories show,
I felt a vigour in my sense
That was all Spirit. I within did flow
With seas of life, like wine;
I nothing in the world did know
But ’twas divine.

This is part of a poem by the English mystic Thomas Traherne, a precursor of William Blake. He goes on to describe how, in his mystical state, everything he sees appears as a treasure, a treasure which he does not desire to own, because it belongs to him, utterly, already. This is the experience of realising the Self which is the creator and ownerless owner of the world.

Einstein on Self and the Mystical

"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive."
-Albert Einstein, 1954

"The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness."

-Albert Einstein – "The Merging of Spirit and Science"

I think I may have posted these quotes before at some stage, but worth revisiting.