Tag Archives: joy

silence is our real nature

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This morning, a beautiful offering from Jean Klein – Silence. It’s another gem from my mother’s folder. You may be familiar with it – it’s somewhat of a classic, but if you’re like me you’ll never tire of its wisdom-blessing.

Since every line is a meditation, I have taken some liberty with the formatting.

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Rajasthan, India - Tantric painting

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Silence is our real nature.  What we are, fundamentally, is only silence.

Silence is free from beginning and end.  It was before the beginning of all things.

It is causeless.  Its greatness lies in the fact that it simply is.

In silence all objects have their home ground.

It is the light that gives objects their shape and form.

All movement, all activity is harmonized by silence.

Silence has no opposite in noise.

It is beyond positive and negative.

Silence dissolves all objects.

It is not related to any counterpart which belongs to the mind.  Silence has nothing to do with mind.

It cannot be defined but it can be felt directly because it is our nearness.

Silence is freedom without restriction or center.

It is our wholeness, neither inside nor outside the body.

Silence is joyful, not pleasurable.  It is not psychological.  It is feeling without a feeler.

Silence needs no intermediary.

Silence is holy.  It is healing.

There is no fear in silence.

Silence is autonomous like love and beauty.  It is untouched by time.

Silence is meditation, free from any intention, free from anyone who meditates.

Silence is the absence of oneself.  Or rather, silence is the absence of absence.

Sound which comes from silence is music.  All activity is creative when it comes from silence.  It is constantly a new beginning.

Silence precedes speech and poetry and music and all art.

Silence is the home ground of all creative activity.  What is truly creative is the word, is Truth.

Silence is the Word.  Silence is Truth.

The one established in silence lives in constant offering, in prayer without asking, in thankfulness, in continual love.

– Jean Klein

This short biography of Dr Jean Klein by Andrew Rawlinson is an excellent introduction to an extraordinary sage. [pdf]

Image – anonymous Hindu Tantric painting, Rajasthan, India.
Made using tempera, gouache, and watercolor on salvaged papers, these paintings from Rajasthan form a distinct lexicon dating back to the 17th century.  They were/are used to awaken heightened states of consciousness. They are not produced for commercial purposes, but simply pinned up on the wall for use in private meditation.

See Franck André Jamme’s stunning book: Tantra Song: Tantric Painting from Rajasthan

when you know yourself

silence stillness simplicity serenity solitude

keep far away

 

joy in spite of all

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A weary angel
prepares for
the season of joy;

prepares its
spirit to fly
and sing joyfully.

IN SPITE OF ALL

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Michael Leunig: Joy in Spite of All

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In spite of all.

Homemade
heartfelt joy –
ORGANICALLY GROWN.
The work of angels.

The energy of joy –
IN SPITE OF ALL.

– Michael Leunig

May the angels visit you and your beloveds with their blessings of joy these holidays.

And may you be blessed to remember that you are one of their throng: Sing praises, for there truly is no “out there” there!

love and joy, thanks and celebration

glad tidings of great joy

I watch me appear; I watch me disappear

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I am never absent, I cannot be escaped
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear

I am unaffected, I have no preference
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear

Forget ‘Big Brother’ and CCTV:
there’s an eye there is no hiding from
and it’s known as “I” to me.

It prowls this world of dream and drama
ceaselessly scoping the cosmos and all creation:
macroscopic, microscopic and myopic too,
the outer worlds and inner…

Eyes wide open, eyes shut tight
I can never escape its unlit light.

I am unmoved, I am all movement
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear

I am never absent, I cannot be escaped
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear

– miriam louisa

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I watch me appear; I watch me disappear
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Gangaji expresses this warts-and-all totality to perfection:

At a certain point, a couple of years after [the disappearance of the ‘me’ as separate entity], I was aware of a sense of myself as a person starting to slowly return.  And I thought, “Oh, no, what does this mean?” because at that point I had been counseling people not to reconstruct themselves after this kind of experience.  There was a moment of wondering if this sense of myself meant I had lost anything, but by then I knew enough to check and see.  When I did, I saw clearly that the truth that needs no scaffolding was not bothered by any sense or perception of myself as being this human animal, this body-mind configuration.  Silent conscious awareness was not bothered by any disappearance of the sense of this form and not bothered by its reappearance.

The fact that the sense of me as form reappeared was actually a teaching for me because it threw me into profound inquiry.  And in that inquiry I saw that this sense of being a separate entity appears and disappears all the time, even in a day—for everyone.  It’s just that until we have an experience of it disappearing, and then discovering the true “I” to still be present, only then do we have the possibility of recognizing that the disappearance or the reappearance doesn’t really touch the unmoving truth.

It was at this point I felt myself reincarnating as an ordinary human being.  I didn’t fight the ordinariness coming back, because I was always aware that whatever came back—an emotion, a sense of me, a negative thought, etc.—it didn’t touch what had been revealed…

To this day, I can say that from that moment there has been no lack of resolution and fulfillment.  There have been negative states as well as positive.  There has been grief as well as joy.  There have been trials and there have been defeats, but nothing has dislodged the certainty that who I am includes all.

© Gangaji, 2012
[My emphasis.]
Source:  http://www.onethemagazine.com/blog/2012/10/12/answer-to-a-prayer/

Image source:  Rumi Facebook page

 

the eye-kissing light

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Photograph by Alan Larus

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Light, my light, the world-filling light,
the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light!
Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life;
the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love;
the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.

The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light.
Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.
The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling,
and it scatters gems in profusion.

Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling, and gladness without measure.
The heaven’s river has drowned its banks and the flood of joy is abroad.

Gitanjali – The Offering Songs
~ Rabindranath Tagore

Photograph by Alan Larus

love and joy, thanks and celebration

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Sitting in my rainforest sanctuary on Christmas Day, alone and at peace, listening to the forest sing its hymns of praise, wondering when the mercury will stop climbing and the mozzies munching – noticing a little urge to send my thoughts of love and joy, thanks and celebration, to all the beloveds who join me on this wee patch of cyberspace.  I’ve shared my delight of the art and writing of Michael Leunig in other posts; this is his beautiful Christmas prayer.

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Christmas.

Dear God, it is timely that we give thanks for the lives of all prophets,
teachers, healers and revolutionaries, living and dead, acclaimed or obscure,
who have rebelled, worked and suffered for the cause of love and joy.

We also celebrate that part of us, that part within ourselves,
which has rebelled, worked and suffered for the cause of love and joy.

We give thanks and celebrate.

Amen

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Michael Leunig - Bush Christmas

Huge clouds of brown butterflies swirl up into the dazzling light, parrots swoop to grassy earth, honeyeaters ravish the sweet flowers of the bottlebrush, echidnas trundle steadily in search of each other, lizards dart among ants and ancient rocks, the fine branchlets of the manna gums quiver to the mating growls of koalas, ibises stroll and feast on grasshoppers and gleaming Christmas beetles hang from eucalyptus leaves like small green baubles. The birds sing gloriously and not a wrong note is heard. This is Christmas in the [Australian] bush.

For joy and meaning [let us] turn to our natural country and witness miracles of vitality and new life, of inspiration and profound beauty; all in some humble, quiet and improbable place.

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I’m happy to confess that I am holed up in a “humble, quiet and improbable place.”  But whatever and wherever your place may be, I pray that your holy-days are a source of the miraculous, the vital, the beautiful and the sacred.

Quoted text from www.theage.com.au
Artwork by Michael Leunig

be secluded and silent

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Another year approaches its use-by date and I am moved to thank each one of you for your interest in this little blog over the past year. Your company on the Way is cherished.

May your holiday season be joyful and safe.
May the New Year bring untold gracious blessings.
May you be always anchored in the unborn, undying Light.
May Love be your only guide, and may you know deep abiding contentment.

I see the candle, the face, the eye,
an altar where the soul bows,
a gladness and refuge.

My loving says, “Here – I can leave
my personality here,”
My reason agrees! “How can I object
when a rose makes the bent backs
stand up like cypresses?”
Such surrender changes everything.

Be secluded and silent. Stay in
the delight, and be brought the cup
that will come. No artfulness.
Practice quiet and this new joy.

~ Rumi

Image –  miriam louisa simons, Rose:  painting on Duppion silk, 100cm x 100cm

the unbroken

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There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.

~ Rashani Réa

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