One of master Gasan's monks visited the university in Tokyo. When he returned, he asked the master if he had ever read the Christian Bible. "No," Gasan replied, "Please read some of it to me." The monk opened the Bible to the Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel, and began reading. After reading Christ's words about the lilies* in the field, he paused. Master Gasan was silent for a long time. "Yes," he finally said, "Whoever uttered these words is an enlightened being. What you have read to me is the essence of everything I have been trying to teach you here!"

*Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
They toil not, neither do they spin;
And yet I say unto you,
that even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.

"Silence is the sister of the divine. Meister Eckhart said that there is nothing in the world that resembles God so much as silence. Silence is a great friend of the soul; it unveils the riches of solitude. It is very difficult to reach that quality of inner silence. You must make a space for it so that it may begin to work for you. In a certain sense, you do not need the whole armoury and vocabulary of therapies, psychologies, or spiritual programmes. If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you. These are some wonderful lines from the French poet, Rene Char: 'Intensity is silent, its image is not. I love everything that dazzles me and then accentuates the darkness within me.' Here is an image of silence as the force that discloses hidden depth.

One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsayable between two people. In modern life there is an immense rush to express. Sometimes the quality of what is expressed is superficial and immensely repetitive. A greater tolerance of silence is desirable, that fecund silence which is the source of our most resonant language. The depth and substance of a friendship mirrors itself in the quality and shelter of the silence between two people.

As you begin to befriend your inner silence, one of the first things you will notice is the superficial chatter on the surface level of your mind. Once you recognize this, the silence deepens. a distinction begins to emerge between the images that you have of your self and your own deeper nature. Sometimes much of the conflict in our spirituality has nothing to do with our deeper nature but rather with the false surface constructs we build. We then get caught in working out a grammar and geometry of how these surface images and positions relate to each other; meanwhile our deeper nature remains unattended."

Written by John O'Donohue
from Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World
www.hsuyun.org


Om Atman Gallery

"Virtue may be defined as the conscious union
of human weakness with divine strength."
Philokalia II, 230:79

"Women signify the supreme realization of the virtues,
which is love. Love is the unfailing pleasure and indivisible
union of those who participate through their longing in what
is good by nature. Truth signifies the fulfilment of all spiritual
knowledge and of all the things that can be known. For the
natural activities of all created things are drawn by a certain
universal intelligence to this truth as their origin and fulfillment.
For the Origin and Cause of created beings has as truth conquered
all things naturally, and has drawn their activity to Himself.
'Women are extremely strong but truth conquers all'
(I Esd. 3:12). By women he means the divinizing virtues
which give rise to the love that unites men with God and
with one another." Philokalia II, 217


William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Painting Charity

"Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire.
A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes
in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch.
But it's a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight.
Stay here at the flame's core. "

Rumi


Painting by Scott Nellis
from my friend Kittim

The heart will teach us all we need to learn
We have dreams, we hold them to the light like diamonds
Some we keep to light the dark nights on our journey
The heart can see beyond our prayers
Beyond our fondest schemes
Trust your heart

There's a time that comes once every morning
When you choose the kind of day you will have
It comes in with the sun and you know you've begun
To live the life you dream
You can light all your candles to the dawn
And surrender yourself to the sunrise
You can make it wrong you can make it right
You can live the life you dream.
Judy Collins

from al_qhadhulu

"In Pythagorian theory, the number ten is figurative
of the Source of All.
In Jewish esoteric theory, as formulated in the Kabbalah,
the number ten is most directly connected with the Sefiroth,
the metaphysical 'numbers' or 'numerations' of the ten
principal aspects of God..
This consummates the cyclic movement through which God,
as a decad, completes Himself.. It has its roots in the
conception of the celestial hierarchy formulated by
St. Dionysios the Areopagite."

Philokalia, 173

"The cause and origin of the passions is the misuse of things."
The Philokalia

And better than a hundred years lived apathetic and unenergetic
is one day lived energetic and firm.

Dhammapada, 8 (translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu)

Walked into a store at Cedar Grove South Jersey
past Red Bank thought of you Pastor Lenny
as I read the exit sign, they were playing one of her songs
but this is not the one.

http://greekpoliticalissues.blogspot.com/2009/05/mantheakis-post-greek-government-abuse.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,451105,00.html

The Mantheakis Post - Karamanlis Closes Parliament Without
Warning Giving Immunity from Prosecution to His Ministers
for all Scandals from 2004-2007

http://greekpoliticalissues.blogspot.com/2009/05/mantheakis-post-karamanlis-closes.html

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man
who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
Once harm has been done, even a fool understands it.

Homer, The Iliad

Oi Rheontes

I

All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true,
All visions wild and strange;
Man is the measure of all truth
Unto himself. All truth is change:
All men do walk in sleep, and all
Have faith in that they dream:
For all things are as they seem to all,
And all things flow like a stream.


II

There is no rest, no calm, no pause,
Nor good nor ill, nor light nor shade,
Nor essence nor eternal laws:
For nothing is, but all is made.
But if I dream that all these are,
They are to me for that I dream;
For all things are as they seem to all,
And all things flow like a stream.


Tennyson's note.