Clarity, contemplated . . .
It's Sol's day . . . The heat hammer is falling on the planet.
Many of us are afraid of silence … Having plenty of stimuli makes it easy for us to distract ourselves from what we’re feeling. But when there is silence, all these things present themselves clearly. – Thich Nhat Hanh
Today is the birth date of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. The author of what many believe to be the greatest piece of literature written about Stalinist Russia, she was born 135 years ago on this date in 1889 Bolshoy Fontan, near Odessa, Ukraine, Russian Empire.
Before you buy your next box of cereal or bologna for your next sandwich, or that bucket of fried chicken . . .check this out and be prepared to skip the ads ...
Good and bad. Right and wrong. Love and hate. Success and failure. Nirvana and samsara. We experience the world through the lens of duality. The brain divides everything it perceives into good and bad, like and dislike—generating attachments to what we like and aversion towards what we dislike. These attachments and aversions become the source of our suffering... The Buddhist teachings remind us that opposites can’t exist without each other. – “Three Teachings: The Dharma Door of Nonduality,” Tricycle, 2024.
Opening to it, the Watercourse will bring a nondual awareness that sees beyond apparent opposites to the essential unity. Beyond the confines of the thinking mind, dualities collapse into a state of oneness—the true nature of ourselves and all of life.
While the dualities of brain symbol generation is the source of addictions, that same symbol generation has led us to science and its revelations – especially in the areas of the quantum field, and consequent with the great wisdom traditions – that the duality is illusion within a nondual and universal manifestation.
If the traveler is asked
“Where are you?”
He will answer, “On The Way.”
“Where are you walking?”
“Along The Way.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“From The Way.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the Way coming from The Way.”
[Like a white stone]
Like a white stone deep in a draw-well lying,
as hard and clear, a memory lies in me.
I cannot strive nor have I heart for striving:
It is such pain and yet such ecstasy. . .
The ancient gods changed men to things, but left them
a consciousness that smoldered endlessly,
that splendid sorrows might endure forever.
And you are changed into a memory.
– Anna Akhmatova
Akhmatova and Modigliani: A creative spark in The Flight of Time. Left out of almost every biography of either one of them. Almost.