Spiritual Books

Adhyashanti

In True Meditation all objects (thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, etc.) are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to focus on, manipulate, control, or suppress any object of awareness. In True Meditation the emphasis is on being awareness—not on being aware of objects, but on resting as conscious being itself. In meditation you are not trying to change your experience; you are changing your relationship to your experience.

As you gently relax into awareness, the mind’s compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Silence of being will come more clearly into consciousness as a welcoming to rest and abide. An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will facilitate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition.

As you effortlessly rest into stillness more profoundly, awareness becomes free of the mind’s compulsive habit of control, contraction, and identification. Awareness returns to its natural condition of conscious being, absolute unmanifest potential—the silent abyss beyond all knowing.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Listening is an art not easily come by, but in it there is beauty and great understanding. We listen with the various depths of our being, but our listening is always with a preconception or from a particular point of view. We do not listen simply; there is always the intervening screen of our own thoughts, conclusions, and prejudices...To listen there must be an inward quietness, a freedom from the strain of acquiring, a relaxed attention.
This alert yet passive state is able to hear what is beyond the verbal conclusion. Words confuse; they are only the outward means of communication; but to commune beyond the noise of words, there must be in listening an alert passivity. Those who love may listen; but it is extremely rare to find a listener. Most of us are after results, achieving goals; we are forever overcoming and conquering, and so there is no listening. It is only in listening that one hears the song of the words.

Good people come to worship me for different reasons. Some come to the spiritual life because of suffering, some in order to understand life; some come through a desire to achieve life’s purpose, and some come who are men and women of wisdom.

Unwavering in devotion, always united with me, the man or woman of wisdom surpasses all the others. To them I am the dearest beloved, and they are very dear to me.

All those who follow the spiritual path are blessed. But the wise who are always established in union, for whom there is no higher goal than me, may be regarded as my very Self.

-Krishna, Bagavat Gita

Decisiveness is about having the ability to trust in yourself.

The arrangement of rocks plays a central role in Zen gardens. Rocks can be configured in endless ways, to represent microcosms, symbolizations, and abstractions. In my work as a garden designer and practicing Zen monk, you might say that my designs correspond to the state of my mind. This is why there is such a positive tension among the elements in Zen gardens.
The actual work I do is not something I can manage on my own. Large rocks and trees must be transported. Various tools are necessary, and the work itself requires a team.
Before completing a Zen garden, I need to borrow the hands of many.
In my experience, however, if I focus too much on what the team sees, then it can be difficult to complete the garden as an expression of my own thoughts.
Although it may seem counterintuitive, when it comes to coordinating what direction the rocks will face, the fewer people involved, the easier it is to synchronize.
And when it’s time to make the final adjustments, it’s best to do it alone.
Decisiveness is about having the ability to trust in yourself.

~from The Art of Simple Living

Swami Chinmayananda

The lotus grows in water, exists in water, and is nurtured and nourished by the waters. Ultimately, it is to perish in water. Naturally, the flower is nothing but an expression of the waters, sprung forth to manifestation due to the seed that was at the bottom!

Brahman, the Infinite, the One without a second, Itself expresses as the lotus – the subtle body – due to its own saṅkalpa. Existing in the infinite Consciousness, divine and all-pervading, a minute ray of It (Ᾱtman) functioning in and through these equipments is the individuality (jīva).

Ᾱtman, expressing through the ‘lotus of the intellect‘, is the unsteady, ever-agitated individual (jīva) which, when it leaves and transcends the intellect, comes back to merge with the waters of Consciousness around.

Students of the advaita philosophy can easily recognize in this picture an ampler suggestion than merely a poet’s fulfillment in a beautiful picture.

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Haemin Sunim

​​Humor opens closed hearts. Humor can free us from the grip of our thoughts. When we smile, we feel we can accept things we previously could not.We feel we can forgive those who have wronged us.Humor is an essential part of life.When we are joyful, our heart opens up to new things.When we are in a bad mood, we can’t be open to new things, no matter how wonderful they are. Without joy in our heart,our progress in life is slow and uninteresting.

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Adyashanti

When we perceive ourselves as consciousness, as awareness itself, it is life changing. This is a significant insight, and we can even call it its own kind of awakening—a fundamental shift out of identification with thoughts and feelings to the purely subjective experience of being consciousness or awareness—but it is not an end point. It is a midpoint of realization. We still have a fundamental difference between the perceiver and the perceived, between awareness or consciousness and everything that awareness or consciousness is aware of or conscious of. Next come the deeper states of realization, when the perceiver or the witness state collapses and when the perception of subject and object collapses. That is when we find our truth about the nature of our existence.

Loch Kelly

You have to begin where you are, but the one who starts the journey is not the one who awakens. “You” do not awaken, and awareness does not awaken. Awake awareness, which is contentless and unconditioned, realizes that it has always been awake and is the primary foundation of your conditioning and human life. Many people call this realization, or remembering who we truly are. One person said: “This is the feeling of who I’ve been at all ages in my life, which hasn’t changed.” It is so ordinary that it is extraordinary. When you awaken, you awaken from a looping thought pattern that has been called “me” and feels located behind your eyes, in the middle of your head. But awakening doesn’t make you become a nobody, a bliss-ninny, or a vacant robot. You are simply not the particular identity that you formerly took yourself to be. This journey starts with freedom from identification with our bodies and minds, but it ends up including and embracing everything from open-hearted awareness.

Albert Einstein

A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his 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 this 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 primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.

THE WORLD AS I SEE IT, 1934

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Rupert Spira

Enlightenment or awakening is not a particular experience or state of mind that may be achieved by practicing hard enough or meditating long enough. It is the recognition of the very nature of the mind.

There is nothing more familiar or better known than the simple experience of being aware. If someone were to ask us the question, ‘Are you aware?’ we would all answer with absolute certainty, ‘Yes’, and our answer would come from direct experience.

It would come from our obvious and intimate experience of simply being aware. Just as the sun does not need to direct its light in any particular direction in order to illuminate itself, so awareness does not need to direct its attention, the light of its knowing, in any particular direction in order to know itself.

In fact, any direction in which the sun directed the rays of its light would only illuminate something other than itself. Likewise, any direction in which awareness shone the light of its knowing would only give it knowledge of something apparently other than itself.

Thus, to know itself awareness does not have to undertake any special activity or direct the light of its knowing in any particular direction. No effort is required for awareness to know itself. In fact, any effort would take it away from itself.

Awareness knows itself simply by being itself.

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Thich Nhat Hanh

Look around you what you see is not your environment, it is you. Whatever nationality or culture we belong to, whatever religion we follow, whether we're Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and atheists, we can all see that the Earth is not inert matter. She is great being, who has herself given birth to many other great beings including Buddhas and bodhisattvas, prophets and saints, sons and daughters of God and humankind. The Earth is a loving mother, nurturing and protecting all peoples and all species without discrimination. When you realize the Earth is so much more than simply your environment, you'll be moved to protect her in the same way as you would yourself. This is the kind of awareness, the kind of awakening that we need, and the future of the planet depends on whether we're able to cultivate this insight or not. The Earth and all species on Earth are in real danger. Yet if we can develop a deep relationship with the Earth, we'll have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change our way of life. We can all experience a feeling of deep admiration and love when we see the great harmony, elegance and beauty of the Earth. A simple branch of cherry blossom, the shell of a snail or the wing of a bat all bear witness to the Earth's masterful creativity. Every advance in our scientific understanding deepens our admiration and love for this wondrous planet. When we can truly see and understand the Earth, love is born in our hearts. We feel connected. That is the meaning of love: to be at one. Only when we've truly fallen back in love with the Earth will our actions spring from reverence and the insight of our interconnectedness. Yet many of us have become alienated from the Earth. We are lost, isolated and lonely. We work too hard, our lives are too busy, and we are restless and distracted, losing ourselves in consumption.


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