" ... All other happenings, incidents, and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance."

"To penetrate into the essence of all Being and significance, and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance and benefit of others by expressing - in the world of form - Truth, Love, Purity, and Beauty . . . This is the sole game that has any intrinsic or absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents, and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance."

- Meher Baba

Why Meditate ...

"The primary purpose of meditation is to become familiar with our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness. Incidentally practice of meditation deeply affects our character. We are slaves to what we do not know and what we know we are masters."

Nisargadatta Maharaj [I Am That page13]

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HINLEY NORBU RINPOCHE

 
"Whenever wisdom mind is not recognized, there are countless projections of countless sentient beings with dualistic mind and its habits. At the same time, within countless sentient beings' minds, there are countless inherently born wisdom deities. If one's own mind remains in ordinary duality, there are always the countless, ordinary phenomena of sentient beings. But if one's own inherently born wisdom deities blossom through recognition and practice, one's own phenomena of other sentient beings will not exist, because they are transformed through self-apotheosis to the inherent wisdom of each sentient being. When one's own wisdom blossoms, other sentient beings' inherently born wisdom deities blossom, since other sentient beings are one's own phenomena. So all is fully enlightened at once into oneness, without even a single, ordinary sentient being remaining. From oneness, infinite, immeasurable, pure, insubstantial wisdom maṇḍala manifests."

— Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, White Sail

 AWAKENING

[CLICK Title to play audio]

Caitlyn Johnstone

December 19, 2022

Awakening from the lies of the news man,
the lies of the politician,
the lies of the teacher, the preacher, the pundit, the parent.

Awakening from the authorized worldviews,
the authorized narratives,
the authorized information,
the authorized ideas.

Awakening from dead thoughts written by dead men
on sheets made from dead trees.
Awakening from culture,
awakening from civilization,
from how-it-is stories,
from how-to-be stories,
from should and shouldn't stories,
from us and them stories.

Awakening from conditioning,
awakening from trauma,
awakening from subconscious dysfunction,
awakening from the heritage of pain and confusion
handed down through history from generation to generation.

Awakening from manipulation,
awakening from control,
awakening from grasping,
from pushing,
from pulling,
from hiding,
from holding life at bay,
from the inability to let life be as it is,
from the inability to let beingness play unmolested.

Awakening from identification with the body,
from identification with the mind,
from identification with any localized perspective,
from identification with the disembodied witness,
from identification with the field of consciousness,
from identification altogether.

Awakening from the illusion of separation,
from the illusion of the self,
from the illusion of the other,
from the illusion of time,
from the illusion of space,
from the illusions of the mind.

Awakening to truth,
whatever it may be.
Awakening to reality,
whatever its implications might entail.
Awakening to what is,
without caveat or precondition.

Awakening to peace.
Awakening to love.
Awakening to unconditionality.
Awakening to boundlessness.
Awakening to freedom.

Awakening for everyone.
Awakening for the whole world.
Awakening for humanity,
now and into the distant future.

Awakening together.
Awakening as one.
Opening each pair of eyelids,
one by one,
as we walk arm in arm
into the great unknown.

The Offensive Translator

 

Dad Jokes

 What is a Dad Joke?

Dad jokes. Depends, don't it, whether you're a Dad telling a joke, or you are an offspringer hearing the joke. Don't it?

What's a "Dad Joke"? A Dad Joke is a joke a Dad tells. Done. Next?

The common take on "Dad Jokes" seems to be that they're  groaners; and eye rollers. "Oh, Dad!"

So why do Dad's keep telling those "Dad Jokes"? To understand that, you have to be a Dad. If you're not, then probably this explanation might cross way overhead. 

A real Dad doesn't care much at all about such like that. You really don't understand being a Dad unless you are a Dad. There's an impassable gulf. 

There's a secret that Dad's know. I'm gonna violate a Dad Rule and let you in on it.

A real Dad carries with him forever the concern over the welfare of his issueance(s). Not a worry, but a bonded caring for his kids. He want's to know his kids are living well, living right. The Dad Joke is his way of getting a reading on his brood. How they react is telling. 

If there's love and bondedness then everyone is in on the joke. It may not even be funny. That's really part of the joke. But when there's love, there's appreciation. If the ungrateful little brats do the "Oh, Dad" eye roll, dismissive reaction, the Old Dad knows he quite possibly added to the world's idiocy. Dullards, who have to be spoon fed "Happy Meals" and sugar coated vitamins, and words and ideas that fit into a nicely decorated box of mutually conspired cherished conformity. 

If you're a kid with a Dad, think about it. You only got one Dad. He's half of you. Laugh.

So, here's a Dad Joke ...

Adding the capper ... "Your Mother and I are getting a divorce, and we're blaming it on you."

 

Suffering

 

Any suffering is simply indicative that you are not in communion with existence, that the fish is not in the ocean.

My effort is to leave you alone with meditation, with no mediator between you and existence. When you are not in meditation you are separated from existence and that is your suffering. It's the same as when you take a fish out of the ocean and throw it on the bank -- the misery and the suffering and the tortures he goes through, the hankering and the effort to reach back to the ocean because it is where he belongs. He is part of the ocean and he cannot remain apart.

Osho ...

"The really unfortunate people are those who don’t have any desire to know truth, who simply go on lingering for no reason at all. Whether they are alive or dead, it makes no difference to them. They have no passion in life. They are not searching for anything, and of course if you don’t search you will not find.
Those who search are going to be in continuous trouble and anguish and anxiety. The search can drive them mad... but it is worth it. Even if one goes mad for many lives then too the search cannot be stopped. It is worth any cost; at any cost it is not costly.

So go on meditating on it, go on brooding over it. Go on cherishing the idea, the desire, the passion. Water it, nourish it. It will take you into many troubles. It will not allow you a very comfortable life – no, not at all. It will never give you any security. It will not allow you to settle into any comfortable, worldly way, no. Wherever you are it will drive you into further search again and again. But this is good. All this turmoil and all this storm is good. After the storm is silence. So go happy, continue to meditate, and come back whenever you feel like it, mm? And wherever you are, work for me too! Good."

Osho, Only Losers Can Win in This Game

~ NAMKHAI NORBU RINPOCHE

Conditioned by the mind, one becomes strongly habituated to illusory actions. And then it's the same as far as pure Enlightenment is concerned; beyond one's own mind there is no dazzling light to come shining in from outside to wake one up. If one recognizes one's own intrinsic State as pure from the beginning and only temporarily obscured by impurities, and if one maintains the presence of this recognition without becoming distracted, then all the impurities dissolve. This is the essence of the Path. Then the inherent quality of the great original purity of the Primordial State manifests, and one recognizes it and becomes the master of it as a lived experience. This experience of the real knowledge of the authentic original condition, or the true awareness of the State, is what is called Nirvana. So Enlightenment is nothing other than one's own mind in its purified condition. For this reason Padma Sambhava said: 'the mind is the creator of Samsara and of Nirvana. Outside the mind there exists neither Samsara nor Nirvana. 'Having thus established that the basis of Samsara and Nirvana is the mind, it follows that all that seems concrete in the world, and all the seeming solidity of beings themselves, is nothing but an illusory vision of one's own mind.


At this point, with mindfulness and determination, it is necessary to maintain a continuous present awareness without becoming distracted. If, for example, one wants to stop a river from flowing, one must block it at its source, in such a way that its flow is definitively interrupted; whatever other point you may choose to block it at, you will not obtain the same result. Similarly, if we want to cut the root of Samsara, we must cut the root of the mind that has created it; otherwise there would be no way of becoming free of Samsara. If we want all the suffering and hindrances arising from our negative actions to dissolve, we must cut the root of the mind, which produced them. If we don't do this, even if we carry out virtuous actions with our body and voice, there will be no result beyond a momentary fleeting benefit. Besides, never having cut the root of negative actions, they can once again be newly accumulated, in just the same way that if one only lops off a few leaves and branches from a tree instead of cutting its main root, far from the tree shriveling up, it will without doubt grow once again. If the mind, the King that creates everything, is not left in its natural condition, even if one practices the tantric methods of the 'Developing' and 'Perfecting' stages, and recites many mantras, one is not on the path to total liberation.


Therefore, because the continuation in the presence of the true State is the essence of all the Paths, the root of all meditations, the conclusion of all spiritual practices, the juice of all esoteric methods, the heart of all ultimate teachings, it is necessary to seek to maintain a continuous presence without becoming distracted. What this means is: don't follow the past, don't anticipate the future, and don't follow illusory thoughts that arise in the present; but turning within oneself, one should observe one's own true condition and maintain the awareness of it just as it is, beyond conceptual limitations of the 'three times'. One must remain in the uncorrected condition of one's own natural state, free from the impurity of judgments between 'being and non-being', 'having and not-having', 'good and bad', and so on.

Excerpts from The Mirror: Advice on Presence and Awareness