Reclusland

“All composite things pass away…” – Buddha (famous last words…)

“By your belief in granular singularities, you deny all movement – evolutionary or devolutionary.  Belief fixes a granular universe and causes that universe to persist.  Nothing can be allowed to change because that way your non-moving universe vanishes.  But it moves of itself when you do not move.  It evolves beyond you and is no longer accessible to you” – One of Frank Herbert’s Zensunni admonitions.

“Peace is Letting Go-Returning to the Silence that cannot enter the realm of words because it is too pure to be contained in words. This is why the tree, the stone, the river, and the mountain are quiet.” -Malidoma Some (via Parabola Magazine‘s FB page)

(I)t’s not logically consistent that things are exactly perfect in this moment, and there is endless room for self-improvement. Those are contradictory statements… But I think here’s the thing about that paradox: if you fall into either side of the paradox, you fall from grace…. (I)f you fall into the addiction of self-improvement, then you really never enjoy this moment because you’re always trying to fix yourself.   On the other hand, you can fall into the other side, into the delusion of everything is perfect.  And that I would say is the delusion of enlightenment, which is very common in Advaita, nondual circles. This idea, “Well, there’s nobody here, there’s nothing to fix.” Well, how come your life looks so broken then? How come you’ve got relationships that don’t work and you can’t pay the rent if everything is perfect as it is? So…both are the truth: things are perfect and you are in a dance that is evolutionary. And when you are actually willing to be in the evolutionary dance, you can see there are endless things to fix and improve and work on as an art form—but it has no end. You’re in an endless process of upgrading that really has no final point of arrival. – Arjuna Ardagh (from IATE)

When Hyakujo Osho delivered a certain series of sermons, an old man always followed the monks to the main hall and listened to him. When the monks left the hall, the old man would also leave. One day, however, he remained behind, and Hyakujo asked him, “Who are you, standing here before me?” The old man replied, “I am not a human being. In the old days of Kashyapa Buddha, I was a head monk, living here on this mountain. One day a student asked me, ‘Does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?’ I answered, ‘No, he does not.’ Since then I have been doomed to undergo five hundred rebirths as a fox. I beg you now to give the turning word to release me from my life as a fox. Tell me, does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?” Hyakujo answered, “He does not ignore causation.” No sooner had the old man heard these words than he was enlightened. – The Gateless Gate, Koan 2

Let us play, but in reverse,
the Waltz of Eden’s Fall.
Perhaps we’ll yet regain that Garden,
coming through its Western wall.