Sri Anandamayi Ma
"Who is it that loves and who that suffers?
He alone stages a play with Himself.
The individual suffers because he perceives duality.
Find the One everywhere and in everything
and there will be an end to pain and suffering."
Sri Anandamayi Ma with Paramahansa Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi
Bodhgaya where the Lord Buddha attained enlightenment.
Gaya is located at a distance of 105 km from Patna in the state of Bihar. Buddha Gaya is located 7 miles south of Gaya and is one of the well visited Buddhist pilgrimage centers of the Indian subcontinent.
"The Bodhi tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment is considered to be the among the oldest and the most venerated tree in the world. This tree is said to be a descendant of the original tree, a branch of which was transplanted at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka during the period of Emperor Ashoka the great. It is believed that Emperor Ashoka’s Guru Upagupta led him to various holy sites in the Buddhist tradition, including this tree at Gaya. "
"We want happiness and we need happiness. In this life of ours there are many things that we want but actually do not need. But when it is a matter of happiness, we not only want it but we also need it. There is no happiness in mere seeing. There is no happiness in mere feeling. There is no happiness in mere achieving. Happiness can be found only in our conscious surrender to God’s Will."
"The mind enjoys happiness when it doubts and suspects. The heart enjoys happiness when it treasures insecurity. This is the way we enjoy happiness in the beginning. But there comes a time when real happiness, divine happiness, dawns. At that time the body is fully awake and consciously offering its service-light, the vital is dynamic, the mind is calm and quiet and the heart feels its oneness, its inseparable oneness with the rest of the world."
by: Sa’adi
The world, my brother! will abide with none,
By the world’s Maker let thy heart be won.
Rely not, nor repose on this world’s gain,
For many a son like thee she has reared and slain.
What matters, when the spirit seeks to fly,
If on a throne or on bare earth we die?
Poem By: Saadi
Photo by Sharani Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
Sa?di (in Persian: ?????, full name in English: Muslih-ud-Din Mushrif-ibn-Abdullah) (1184 – 1283/1291?) is one of the major Persian poets of the medieval period. He is recognized not only for the quality of his writing, but also for the depth of his social thought.
Edgar Cayce in 1910
Edgar Cayce was mystic who offered many "channelled readings" he hoped would be of spiritual benefit.
"Over a lifetime of giving at least two reading a day, Cayce branched out into discourses on the individual soul’s journey ("life-readings" detailing an individual’s past incarnations, personality, talents and karma), predictions of the future, and the origin and spiritual destiny of man and his relationship with God. The topics and answers given were only limited to the intention, imagination and need of the person asking them."
The Story of Edgar Cayce
By Thomas Sugrue from John’s Log
Edgar Cayce at Amazon.com
There is a River", the life story of Edgar Cayce, was the first book I read, and the spark that lit an all-consuming hunger for spirituality. I was practising self-taught meditation within a week, the result of reading a particularly resonant, life’s purpose answering passage: "What is the purpose of life? To realise God. How does one know God? Through meditation." With that I was off, my life consumed with a clear direction and meaning I had always known existed, but couldn’t articulate.
High praise indeed, but what of the book itself. There is a River was the very first book to be written about Edgar Cayce, and it’s release in 1943 catapulted him to a national fame and attention which he had never sought, attention which in part contributed to his death two years later from sheer exhaustion?he worked himself to death attempting to selflessly meet the nearly bottomless demand for his very special abilities.
The story begins with a highly religious youth of humble origins, normal in most respects aside from the fact, kept mostly to himself, that he held an ongoing conversation with his still visible dead grandfather, could see auras, and after sleeping on his schoolbooks could recite every word. Oh, and as a child he had "little playmates" who disappeared when others came around. He once enquired where they came from?"We are of the music, the light and the flowers…"
"Neither an individual effort nor an individual abnegation can bring about the transformation of your consciousness.
This transformation is possible only by the descent of a Higher Light. "
"Both the descent of Truth into the lower nature and the ascent of the lower nature into the higher Truth are capable of solving the problem of problems, the illumination of human consciousness. They are equally effective and have an equal speed. "
"Be Universal in your love.
You will see the universe to be the picture of your own being. "
Quotes By: Sri Chinmoy
From: Excerpt from Eternity’s Breath by Sri Chinmoy.
Photo by Kamalika Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
"To think of physical transformation without having some kind of realisation is to count your chickens before they are hatched. "
"Surrender has to look up with folded hands.
Transformation has to look down with palms facing the earth-consciousness. "
"The transformation of human nature in its completeness must unavoidably progress at the speed of a tortoise. "
"There is but one Knowledge. There is but one Realisation. You are at once the Seeker and the Fulfiller. "
"What is liberation? It is the extinction of a divided consciousness in the all-pervading oneness of the Supreme. "
"What is meant by spiritual perfection? It is the constant capacity to live in God and to reveal Him in one’s every moment. "
"In the field of true spirituality, Experience serves as breakfast; Realisation as lunch; Transformation as dinner."
by: Sri Chinmoy
"AUM is the soundless sound. It is the vibration of the Supreme. It is called the Seed-Sound of the Universe, for with this sound, the Supreme set into motion the first vibration of His creation. The teeming universe is sustained perpetually by the creative vibration of the Divine AUM. "
By: Sri Chinmoy
Excerpt from Eternity’s Breath by Sri Chinmoy. at Sri Chinmoy Library
"The syllable AUM is indivisible, but each portion of it represents a different aspect of the Supreme. The Sanskrit A represents and embodies the Consciousness of the Creator, Brahma; the Sanskrit U. the Preserver, Vishnu; the Sanskrit M, the Transformer, Shiva. Taken together, A U M is the spontaneous cosmic rhythm with which God embraces the universe. "
"The universal AUM, put forth by the Supreme, is an infinite Ocean. The individual AUM, chanted by man, is a drop in that Ocean. It cannot be separated from the Ocean but nevertheless even the tiniest drop can claim the Ocean as its very own. Chanting AUM, man touches and calls forth the cosmic vibration of the Supreme Sound. When one can hear the Soundless Sound within oneself, when one can identify oneself with it, when one can live within the AUM, one can be freed from the fetters of ignorance and realise the Supreme within and without."
"The unknown embraces ignorance with its self-limitation. The unknowable embraces AUM with His absolute Self-revelation. "
"Without birth is the Supreme; without birth is AUM. Without end is the Supreme; without end is AUM. Immortality is AUM’s universal Identity. "
"When we are in ignorance, AUM feeds us, for AUM is God. When we are in Knowledge, AUM still feeds us. When we are beyond both ignorance and Knowledge, AUM continues to feed us, for it is the nectar which gives life to creation, born and unborn."
faint sunlight
injecting the veins
of a falling leaf
By: Gabriel Rosenstock
— from Haiku: The Art of Disappearing, by Gabriel Rosenstock (unpublished manuscript)
Photo by Richard
Poems of Gabriel Rosenstock at Poetseers.org
Poems of Gabriel Rosenstock at Poetry Chaikhana