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Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:55:24 -0700

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Sun, 28 Jun 2009 02:24:30 -0700

Five Sheaths or Koshas of Yoga*
by Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati�
SwamiJ.com�

We humans are like a lamp that has five lampshades over our light. Each of the lampshades is a different color and density. As the light shines through the lampshades, it is progressively changed in color and nature. It is a bitter-sweet coloring. On the one hand, the shades provide the individualized beauty of each lamp. Yet, the lampshades also obscure the pure light.��

The Yoga path of Self-realization is one of progressively moving inward, through each of those lampshades, so as to experience the purity at the eternal center of consciousness, while at the same time allowing that purity to animate through our individuality.�These five levels are called koshas, which literally means sheaths.

Physical - Annamaya kosha�
Energy - Pranamaya kosha�
Mental - Manamaya kosha�
Wisdom - Vijnanamaya kosha�
Bliss - Anandamaya kosha�
Self - Atman�

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Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:18:22 -0700

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Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:09:55 -0700

"I wonder if you have ever known what love is?

Because I think death and love walk together. Death, love, and life are one and the same.

But we have divided life, as we have divided the earth. We talk of love as being either carnal or spiritual and have set a battle going between the sacred and the profane. We have divided what love is from what love should be, so we never know what love is.

Love, surely, is a total feeling that is not senti- mental and in which there is no sense of separation. It is complete purity of feeling without the separative, fragmenting quality of the intellect. Love has no sense of continuity. Where there is a sense of continuity, love is already dead, and it smells of yesterday, with all its ugly memories, quarrels, brutalities. To love, one must die."

J. Krishnamurti

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Sun, 14 Jun 2009 05:31:11 -0700

Para leer en forma interrogativa

Julio Cort�zar

Has visto
verdaderamente has visto
la nieve los astros los pasos afelpados de la brisa

Has tocado
de verdad has tocado
el plato el pan la cara de esa mujer que tanto am�s

Has vivido
como un golpe en la frente
el instante el jadeo la ca�da la fuga

Has sabido
con cada poro de la piel sabido
que tus ojos tus manos tu sexo tu blando coraz�n
hab�a que tirarlos
hab�a que llorarlos
hab�a que inventarlos otra vez.

_____________________

Translation:

To be read in the interrogative

Julio Cort�zar

Have you seen
have you truly seen
the snow the stars the felt steps of the breeze

Have you touched
really have you touched
the plate the bread the face of that woman you love so much

Have you lived
like a blow to the head
the flash the gasp the fall the flight

Have you known
known in every pore of your skin
how your eyes your hands your sex your soft heart
must be thrown away
must be wept away
must be invented all over again.

Thanks Sonia, for a wonderful blog
http://etcetera.stumbleupon.com

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Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:38:02 -0700

This is love: to fly to heaven, every moment to rend a hundred veils;
At first instance, to break away from breath –
first step, to renounce feet;
To disregard this world, to see only that which you yourself have seen
I said,
“Heart, congratulations on entering the circle of lovers,
“On gazing beyond the range of the eye,
on running into the alley of the breasts.”
Whence came this breath, O heart?
Whence came this throbbing, O heart?
Bird, speak the tongue of birds: I can heed your cipher!
The heart said,
“I was in the factory whilst the home of water and clay was abaking.
“I was flying from the workshop whilst the workshop was being created.
“When I could no more resist, they dragged me; how shall I
tell the manner of that dragging?”
- Rumi
“Mystical Poems of Rumi 1″, A.J. Arberry
The University of Chicago Press, 1968

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Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:17:36 -0700

Anything...

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Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:51:12 -0700

Fire

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

~ Judy Brown ~

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Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:18:01 -0700

“Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.” Maxim Gorky

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love.” Washington Irving

“It seems to me that the best relationships, the ones that last, are frequently the ones rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than the night before, like a switch has been flicked somewhere, and the person who was just a friend is suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.” The X-Files

“But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives. ” Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

“You have to protect yourself, you can’t just give yourself away. But holding people away from you and denying yourself love, that doesn’t make you strong. If anything it makes you weaker because you’re doing it of fear of taking that chance. Of simply letting go and giving into it, and that’s what makes us what we are. Risks, that’s living. Being to scared to even try it - that’s a waste. I can say I made a lot of mistakes, but I don’t regret things. Because at least I didn’t spend a life standing outside, wondering what living would be like.” “This Lullaby” by Sarah Dessen

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Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:47:53 -0700

The Lovers

These three things are to be taken note of: the lowest love is sex - it is physical - and the highest refinement of love is compassion. Sex is below love, compassion is above love; love is exactly in the middle.

Very few people know what love is. Ninety-nine percent of people, unfortunately, think sexuality is love - it is not. Sexuality is very animal; it certainly has the potential of growing into love, but it is not actual love, only a potential....

If you become aware and alert, meditative, then sex can be transformed into love. And if your meditativeness becomes total, absolute, love can be transformed into compassion. Sex is the seed, love is the flower, compassion is the fragrance.

Buddha has defined compassion as love plus meditation. When your love is not just a desire for the other, when your love is not only a need, when your love is a sharing, when your love is not that of a beggar but an emperor, when your love is not asking for something in return but is ready only to give - to give for the sheer joy of giving - then add meditation to it and the pure fragrance is released. That is compassion; compassion is the highest phenomenon.

Osho Zen, Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing Chapter 3
Commentary:

What we call love is really a whole spectrum of relating, reaching from the earth to the sky. At the most earthy level, love is sexual attraction. Many of us remain stuck there, because our conditioning has burdened our sexuality with all kinds of expectations and repressions. Actually the biggest "problem" with sexual love is that it never lasts. Only if we accept this fact can we then really celebrate it for what it is - welcome its happening, and say good-bye with gratitude when it's not.

Then, as we mature, we can begin to experience the love that exists beyond sexuality and honors the unique individuality of the other. We begin to understand that our partner often functions as a mirror, reflecting unseen aspects of our deeper self and supporting us to become whole.

This love is based in freedom, not expectation or need. Its wings take us higher and higher towards the universal love that experiences all as one.