Eternity

One instant is eternity,

eternity is in the now;

When you see through this one instant,

you see through the one who sees. ( Wu-Men )

Here and Now

Life is only this place,

this time

and these people right

here and Now.

Being the Present Moment

Everything that happens in the present moment is necessary.
The crux of man’s dilemma lies in the concept of time. While chasing his mythical happiness of the future, man has no time to enjoy the present moment. And actually there is no such thing as the present because by the time one thinks of it, it has already become the past. Therefore, what is vital is not thinking about the present but actually being that present moment – and that is nothing other than enlightenment.
In order to understand this strange, unknown, starkly inevitable thing called death we must first understand life. What we must find out is what we are now. To die now to every moment and every experience is the death that is ETERNITY ITSELF. (RAMESH S . BALSEKAR)

The Now

Focus your attention on the Now

and tell me what problem

you have at this moment. ( Eckhart Tolle )

Pure Presence

The Self doesn't live forever in time,

it lives in the timeless present prior to time,

prior to history, change, succession.

The Self is present as Pure Presence,

not as everlasting duration,

a rather horrible notion.

Grace

Grace happens when you accept. Struggle happens when you reject or resist. Grace is natural. Struggle is unnatrual. Grace is effortless. Struggle takes great effort. Struggle means that you get in the way. Grace means that you stay out of the way.

Conscious Oneness

When the thunder roars, do you not hear your Self? When the lightning cracks, do you not see your Self? When clouds float quietly across the sky, is this not your very own limitless Being, waving back at you?

When I look for myself I find only the world as it is occuring, Herenow. No separation between subject and object other than what mind imposes. Samsara is the delusion that Nirvana is to be obtained. We are, and that is all.

Be Present!

Whenever you notice that some form of negativity has arisen within you, look on it not as a failure, but as a helpful signal that is telling you: "Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present." - Eckhart Tolle

Be Free!

You have projected onto yourself
a world of your own imagination,
based on memories, on desires and fears,
and you have imprisoned yourself in it.
Break the spell and be free.

Just keep Quiet

You are the unchangeable Awareness in which all activity takes place.
Always rest in peace.
You are eternal Being, unbounded and undivided.
Just keep Quiet.
All is well.
Keep Quiet Here and Now.
You are Happiness, you are Peace, you are Freedom.
Do not entertain any notions that you are in trouble.
Be kind to yourself.
Open to your Heart and simply Be. - Papaji

Meditation

Meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly. Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. The whole point is: one should not move in sleep. Then whatsoever you do is meditation.

Compassion

There's no joy like this!

For me, the purpose (or meaning, if you like) of life is to shift one's centre of gravity from who I thought I was to Who I AM. `Seeing' is important only as a means to this End - which is to be the Absolute Mystery, to know oneself as Absolutely Incomprehensible. There's no joy like this! - Douglas Harding

Underneath the layers of conditioning...

Once all of our conditioning is stripped away,
the true self is as clear as the brilliant sun.
Underneath the layers and layers of conditioning
accumulated over the course of a lifetime is a Buddha
whose light shines throughout the whole universe.
Inside the ego shell of conditioning,
a glimmer of that light is actually
what brings us to practice to begin with.
It is the bodhicitta, the bodhi mind,
the mind that says it does't make sense
that there should be all this pain and suffering,
or that it should be so difficult to just be ourselves
the way a tree can just be a tree or a dog can just be a dog.
We humans seem to have a complicated time
with just simply being human. We fight with each other,
kill each other; we bang heads all the time,
even with the ones we love.

Inner Stillness

When you lose touch with inner stillness,
you lose touch with yourself.
When you lose touch with yourself,
you lose yourself in the world.
Your innermost sense of self,
of who you are, is inseparable from stillness.
This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.

The ego

The ego is human;
egolessness is divine.
The ego is hell;
egolessness is paradise.

Mind Divides

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim
or a Christian or a European, or anything else,
you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent?
Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind.
When you separate yourself by belief,
by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.
So a man who is trying to understand violence
does not belong to any country, to any religion,
to any political party or partial system;
he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind. ( J. Krishnamurti )

Is God Real?

Is God Real? Since the question came up,
let's briefly go into it.
When it comes to spiritual realities,
the fact that when you are
in a meditative state of oneness,
a G-spot might light up
(or whatever brain correlate is being tracked),
says absolutely nothing about
the ontological status of the referent in that state.
Any G-spot activity in the brain
is the correlate of a meditative state, not its content.
When I look at an apple, an area in my brain
associated with its perception lights up,
but we do not therefore assume that
the apple exists only in the brain.
So why sould we assume that
God exists only in the brain because the same thing happens? ( Ken Wilber )

Thought & consciousness

Thinking and consciousness
are not synonymous.
Thinking is only a small
aspect of consciousness.
Thought cannot exist
without consciousness,
but consciousness does not need thought.

You Are The Sky

You are the sky.
The clouds are what happens,
what comes and goes.

A metaphor for practising with thoughts
which is sometimes used which describes
the process of practicing with them as follows:

Thoughts are like clouds moving across the sky.
You are the sky and the thoughts are just a movement,
like clouds. Don’t move attention towards them or away from them.

But there is something very important
that is being left out.
The metaphor implies a “watcher” of the clouds
and unless this “watcher” is also released,
we have not begun to practise with
the mechanisms of self-image that give rise to patterns of contraction.

We need to attend to thoughts like the sky attends to clouds,
not like someone sitting on the ground looking up at the clouds.