Words fail but magnificence continues.

You are the monkey on your own back.

May that quiet resonance of peace and joy permeate the space where body and mind once hogged the stage.

Ping Pong

Dilated Pupil: Which is more productive on the path of self realisation, meditation or table tennis?

Master: You find a difference?

From Borderline Zen, a work in progress by Rudra

'Who is eating my chocolate biscuit?'

From 'Borderline Zen' a work in progress by Rudra

How could it be different?

Never a dull moment, even when there is a dull moment.

The snake pit of Karma

There is no way out, just a matter of choice whether to go quietly or be dragged kicking and screaming. Unfortunately, it is very debatable whether there is even that choice. Fortunately, that makes it easier. 

Unseen Hands

When you cease to care, everything cares for you and you care for everything

Holy Place

Big words, fancy theories, great understandings all swept away in the stream of simple awareness. Not condemned or accepted, just part of what is.

SANCTUARY

The play unfolds quite beyond us, through us and in us. The world sees us as deluded inmates. Inmates we surely are, but inmates of the sanctuary from the insane. So few admit themselves to the lunatic asylum with the express purpose of losing their minds.

-From Borderline Zen, a work in progress by Rudra

The play unfolds quite beyond us, through us and in us. The world sees us as deluded inmates. Inmates we surely are, but inmates of the sanctuary from the insane. So few admit themselves to the lunatic asylum with the express purpose of losing their minds.

 

-From Borderline Zen, A work in progress by Rudra

Turn Back Now

Despite most seekers clear view of the cracks in the façade they nurture a sliver of hope that the wall can be re-plastered. This despite the warning sign: ‘No help past this point, demolition underway, risk of annihilation’.

From Borderline Zen

LIGHT

There is no dog, but everywhere I hear him barking.

LIGHT

There is no dog, but I hear barking everywhere.

BEFORE IDENTITY

Rudra: “Please take off your shoes before you enter.”

Visitor: “But I’m not wearing any shoes.”

Rudra: “That’s it in a nutshell”.

From Borderline Zen Rudra's second book that he is working on.

THE SHOWROOM

Just as a doorman beckons to the passer-by

Inviting him to view the naked ladies,

As a showroom displays the latest models

And a piece of cheese leads the mouse to his certain death

So this glittering bait leads us to a momentary contentment.

Denial of the manifest existence is a further blasphemy

As blasphemous as a shotgun marriage to it.

The intricacy of thought patterns

Taken as real

Are ever more subtle.

 Hook, line and sinker come to mind.

Where does the poor me fit into all this?

Where can the ‘I’ take a rest?

Whose theory or practice will provide liberation from attachment?

A small voice whispers the timeless message

“There is no way out,

There is no ‘I’”

When the cupboard is completely bare

When even the dogs have given up sniffing around

A feast is laid.

Clean Sweep

This morning he awoke with the words 'swept clean'.

Life Off The Wheel

Whether I accept or not makes no difference to what is.

THE RELUCTANT WARRIOR

Encased in a suit of armour

Strapped to a warhorse

He charges into battle.

He doesn’t want to be a soldier

He can’t ride a horse.

If this is what is written

There are only two choices:

Grab the reins for dear life,

Aim the lance with measured accuracy 

Or release the reins

And jettison the weapon.

In both cases he is likely to lose his head,

Unless he awakens.

In that state there never was a head.

Songs of Praise

When the 'me' is here I am a student. When absent there is no student and no master. Yet a flavour of gratitude and devotion lingers.

 He is coincidentally named after the rudraksha tree whose seeds are used for making malas.

Queen of Peace

Princess Dyhana

Cat Burglar

Another thief caught red handed: "How am I doing on the path?"

On looking out to sea

How could this be your face

Your eyes, your ears?

Your breath, your palms

Your speech, your laugh?

For that matter

How could you lay claim to all you see?

Every scrap you label as yours

is someone else's.

What a cat burglar this mind is.

See how he enters from the roof,

invades the floors below

and blocks all exits.

If none of this is yours,

Let him have what he wants.

He is only stealing stolen property.

Gratitude is too small a word for this.

The Sweetest Flag

Yellow for caution

Red for Stop

Black for mourning

White; the universal solvent

Paint Stripper

"The spiritual journey," says Thomas Keating, "is not a career or success story. It is a series of  humiliations of the false self that becomes more and more profound."

Colleen Loehr  comments:
 "The world stood on its head.  For decades I had been seeking accumulation and self-enhancement when in fact all along the deeper longing was for the very opposite: diminution of that heavy burden of an imaginary ego-self ."


With thanks to:  http://emersonandtolle.blogspot.com/

FOREST LIFE

Not a forest leaf shimmers without the grace of The Ancestor.

 The wild boar can grunt all they like,

 Yet even that is divine music played on cracked instruments.

 The whining orchestra of this world is in another part of the forest.

 Here there is no resistance.

 Just home.

 While all around are yelping for home.

It could never be better than this and this and this, unless we think it.

 When thought colours the picture, the painting is spoilt.

 O man if only you knew how to be truly lazy.

Odyssey

I am at my most dangerous, and most vulnerable, when I think I know.

The school of soft knocks

In the boarding school of Self-Realisation the day starts with Dis-Assembly. The pupils have to answer to 'present 'or 'not present'. Only those who affirm to both are admitted to classes. The rest go to class as usual.

No point of view

On the one hand

On the other hand

There is no other hand

Master Veal Man

THE DERVISH HAT

He was given a tall Turkish Hat,

Not knowing how to use it,

Or what it was for,

He asked the advice of friends.

One said 'it’s to hide your donkey's ears'

Another 'it’s so you can walk tall'

A third 'it allows the Kundalini to expand’

A fourth 'it will contain all that hot air'

A wiser one said:

‘Take it off your head,
Turn it upside down,

Empty the ego in the trash can

Then use it as a begging bowl'.

What used to own things is now on bended knee.

Sanity

Wisdom appears at unscheduled moments and in unlikely places. But wherever it appears it is like gold, like a call to attention for the heart. 

In sickness and in health

 

 

THE PROPHET

 

 

You are the prophet

You are the scriptures,

The wisdom and the way.

You are the Buddha, the teachings,

The source from which

Abundant Kindness springs.

You are the carefree life.

 

You are a nobody, a nothing,

With nowhere to go

Nothing to know.

Your greatest asset your helplessness

Your jewel a supreme carelessness.

 

Swept here and there

By the tides of the world

Blown hither and thither

By chaos and chance

You find no rest

Yet you are rest itself.

 

In this understanding

A mighty heart is set free

All things fit

Into this order of abandon.

When Mary starts to sing....

Rudra has been absorbing the most beautiful kind wisdom from a recently discovered blog and wants to share it with you:

http://emersonandtolle.blogspot.com/

Knowing anything at all

Even knowledge of the truth is unimportant.

 Going beyond and yet remaining is worth all.

What to do?

A little secret: There is nothing you have to do,  just do what you have to.

And that means you.

Death row, for the mind, is so scary and so liberating.

Luckily none of it is up to us.

Things as they are.

Rudra writes to a friend:

'How changeable the mind is and how it LOVES its assessments, especally  
of other people. How can we be other than what we are? That means others are as helpless as us. That's where mercy and laughter come in.'

Scared to death

What a day; a day without wages, a day with every trouble imaginable. It seems to be there for the me that imagines it, and

the me appears to be so damned real. it is of course until it isnt.

Outside of that the miracle unfolds. cats and dogs are not thinking of yesterday or tomorrow the security guards at the bank on the other hand are very afraid, the dears.

Catching water with a sieve

Rudra writes to a friend who, after attending Satsang,  sees that there is nothing to be done:

"All I can add is that things are still done....satsang and deer hunting still take place. We remain helpless  trying to improve or figure things out; trying to understand and package the message with something that will never do it. The mind's understanding can never be enough. It is like trying to contain water with a sieve. Here lies the joy of helplessness. 

The power of 'satsang' in whatever form is its ability to quiet the mind..... but nothing to take home.

Nothing to take home or understand....yet it does seem we are being pulled in, despite any efforts or effortless efforts.

From this point there is no map and no directions. If you say 'not this way' it IS a way. If you say 'this way' it is also a way......What to do?????????"

Trapped? Free? What was the question again?

 Bliss is when there is no one left to be blissful. 

Fall on your sword

There is nothing to do. It is all being done

The Mother of all suffering

When there is no one there, there is no birth or death. When there is an atom of a me...all hell breaks loose.

The bird of certainty

The mind clings to a notion of 'something to do'. There will be a never ending succession of things to do. Yet the statement that 'there is nothing to do' is often spurious unless accompanied by a complete knowing of that truth. Better by far is attention to that which springs from branch to branch, notion to notion. This includes that which sits on a branch satisfied with its final position, its certainty. This bird must inevitably fall, undernourished, from the tree. So  its back to sincerity and attention. Wherever these lead can be embraced with a grateful heart.

Freedom's Door

The thought that ‘this is not my life’ is pleasant and true, but still a thought. The knowing ‘that this is not my life’ on the other hand is freedom’s door.

The Old Imposter

 In love there are no axes to grind and no agendas to be unfurled; it does its own thing. 

A simple sign

In the empty state there is nothing to worry or be scared about! In the worried state there is plenty to be scared about.

Rudra on retreat

Rudra spent 3 days on retreat with Jac O'Keefe at the end of which she said something to the effect of 'if you think you have something to bring home with you, you didn't get it. If you think 'you got it' you didn't.' Rudra's friend Richard said in sotto voce "If you didn't get it, you got it".


Roushka was there too and after it was explained  to him about the direct path and the progressive path he plumped for the progressive one. He justified this by the remark 'I'm built for comfort not for speed'. Little does he know that the paths meet further up the road. So we sent him a wave and wish him God Speed, the old rascal.

At the Funfare

Shooting ducks at the fun-fare. Shoot one and another pops up and another. Rudra wore himself out aiming, shooting and reloading. he found it best to let them float by. After all it was only a fun-fare and not to be taken too seriously. Oddly enough he spent the whole day there and was fascinated by the display without having to lift a finger.

In an instant

Years of spiritual practice flew out the door when a fish jumped near the shore.

Knock Knock

 Is there someone at home? Or only home being some-ones?