Ramana peeked out of my eyes this morning and for a moment I thought I had never lived till then 

Two students.

1. Do you practice meditation?

2. I notice that it sometimes practices me.

'The path exists but not the traveller on it.' Even the first part of that statement is open to question.

It is said "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."

To tell you the truth I haven't got the energy to dispatch the blighter.

Come to think of it, why bother killing your true self.

Nobodies are so big that there is no room for anything else and so small that they fit everywhere.

This 5 star hotel is your birthright. 

If you have to build it or maintain it, it's only a hovel.

This 5 star hotel is your birthright. 

If you have to build it or maintain it, it's only a hovel.

He wore many shoes over the years, some comfortable some uncomfortable. But the bare foot remained constant.

I watched a concept fly up into a tree, accompanied by a magpie.

-From 'Borderline Zen', a work in progress.

HOPE

Dilated Pupil: Master, what is hope?

Master: One of the most duplicitous words in the English dictionary.

From Borderline Zen, a work in progress

SAGE

Sage is our nature, time our shadow.

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.