Who (be quiet) Are You?

Apr 29

“We have not come into this exquisite world

To hold ourselves hostage from love.

~ Hafiz, from ‘We Have Not Come to Take Prisoners’, ‘The Gift’, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

(Photo: ‘Take to the Sky’ by Alex Greenshpun)

Mar 18

[video]

Mar 07

all which isn’t singing is mere talking
and all talking’s talking to oneself
(whether that oneself be sought or seeking
master or disciple sheep or wolf)

gush to it as deity or devil
—toss in sobs and reasons threats and smiles
name it cruel fair or blessed evil—
it is you(ne i)nobody else

drive dumb mankind dizzy with haranguing
—you are deafened every mother’s son—
all is merely talk which isn’t singing
and all talking’s to oneself alone

but the very song of(as mountains
feel and lovers)singing is silence

~e.e. Cummings

(Photo by Alex Greenshpun)

Feb 26

‘Daughter of the Wind’ by Alex Greenshpun

“These flowers are like the pleasures of the world.” ~W. Shakespeare

Feb 19

“I am not telling you to grapple with the thoughts. There will be no end if you do it that way. Here lies the secret: there is the ‘I’, the source of all thoughts, and we have to catch it and see from where it arises. This is absolutely necessary. As a dog traces his master by following the track of his smell, you have to follow the inner development of the ‘I’ to reach its source, which is the [true] soul.”

~Sri Ramana Maharshi

(Photo by Alex Greenshpun)

Feb 18

“If you remain still, without paying attention to this, without paying attention to that, and without paying attention to anything at all, you will, simply through your powerful attention to being, become the reality, the vast eye, the unbounded space of consciousness.” —

Verse 647, Guru Vachaka Kovai

Feb 06

(Photo: ‘Rain’s Ephemeral Crown’ by Alex Greenshpun)

—- —- —-

sentences

by no means mention
what’s really
on your mind

nothing is
on my mind

don’t mention
it
—-
whatever you have
to say
will get itself
said

don’t worry

who worries?

that’s all i’m
telling
you:
don’t
—-
you go out
to the edge
of the universe,

it’ll still be
on your
mind

nothing
is

it’ll still
be there
—-
you don’t have to
try to remember
it

the fact is, you
can’t forget

forget what?

the nothing.
whatever it
is

-Robert Lax, from the journal A, p. 36 

Jan 29

“

The fewer the thoughts the happier you become.
The trouble begins when you think a lot.

That’s why I always say,
“Do not think past your nose”.

Jan 26

(Photo by Alex Greenshpun)

Be Still, it is the wind that sings

I am a pipe the wind blows through,
Be still, it is the wind that sings.
The course of my life and the things that I do
And the seeming false and the seeming true
Are the tune of the wind that neither knows
Good and ill, nor joys and woes.
But the ultimate awe is deeper yet
Than song or pipe or storm;
For pipe and tune are the formless wind
That seemed for a while to take form.
And words are good to escape from words
And strife to escape from strife,
But silence drinks in all the waves
Of song and death and life

~Arthur Osborne

Jan 19

I like to wash,
the dust of this world
In the droplets of dew.

~Matsuo Basho

(Photo by Alex Greenshpun)

Jan 18

Silence calling…

(Photo - “sea calling” by Srikaton Mindarwanto)

Jan 15

“I don’t know anything,
and that ‘I’ which knows is nothing but an ignorant fool.
I think, when I don’t think,
that I have no end and no beginning.
That which thinks has to take thousands of births.
When there is ‘I’ He is not; when He is, I am not.” — Swami Ramanagiri

“One doesn’t take to sadhana out of miseries, but on account of happiness. Only a happy person can become a good yogi. Nor does one take to sannyasa because one has lost something, but because one has gained something.” —

Swami Ramanagiri

Swami Ramanagiri was born into an aristocratic Swedish family in June 1921. Though he was related to the king of Sweden, it was the ‘royal’ yoga of Patanjali that finally claimed him. In his youth he came across Swami Vivekananda’s Raja Yoga and found he had an immediate affinity with the subject matter, so much so that he began to develop yogic siddhis soon after beginning the practices.

In early 1949 he came to Tiruvannamalai to meet Bhagavan for the first time. Though he had a natural inclination for raja yoga, having practised it for years, Swami Ramanagiri felt an immediate attraction to atma-vichara, the path of Sri Ramana. Since this was a departure from the practical teachings he had been taught by his diksha guru, Swami Ramanagiri felt that he should consult him about this change of direction. The diksha guru let him know that Bhagavan was his true Guru, and he encouraged him to follow the teachings he was being given at Ramanasramam. Swami Ramanagiri did self-enquiry intensively for forty days in Bhagavan’s presence and was rewarded, on Sivaratri day 1949, with a direct experience of the Self. When asked later about what had happened on that momentous day, he would usually say, ‘On that day I became a fool’. For the rest of his life he referred to himself in the third person as ‘this fool’.

“In the end it’s all very simple.
Either we give ourselves to Silence or we don’t.” — Adyashanti (via ashramof1)

Jan 14

“Life of man is what is. That which is, is. All the trouble arises by having a conception of it. Mind comes in. It has a conception. All trouble follows. If you are as you are, without a mind and its conceptions about various things, all will be well with you. If you seek the source of the mind, then alone all questions will be solved.” — Sri Ramana Maharshi