The Only Thing worth doing Dharma quotes

from http://www.shambhala.com/blog

THE ONLY THING WORTH DOING

At present we have this rare and good human life of freedom and fortune, but it won’t last forever. We are certain to die and don’t know when. At death nothing at all but our spiritual practice will be of any use to us. That is the only thing worth doing—everything else is a futile waste of energy. We tire ourselves for the sake of reward and reputation and in our search for the kind of companions we prefer, but we can take none of these with us when we die. They must be left behind and only the imprints of negative actions we have performed in the process of trying to acquire them accompany us to our next rebirth. This is not hard to understand, but we must remember it and think about it till it affects the way we think and feel.

from the text Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment written by Atisha, 11th century

Atisha, the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist scholar and saint, came to Tibet at the invitation of the king of Western Tibet, Lha Lama Yeshe Wo, and his nephew, Jangchub Wo. His coming initiated the period of the second transmission of Buddhism to Tibet, formative for the Sakya Kagyu and Gelug traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Atisha’s most celebrated text, Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment,sets forth the entire Buddhist path within the framework of three levels of motivation on the part of the practitioner. Atisha’s text thus became the source of the lamrim tradition, or graduated stages of the path to enlightenment, an approach to spiritual practice incorporated within all schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

Its better to practice Dharma quote

from. http://www.shambhala.com/blog

Dharma quote from Atisha Lamp to Path of Enlightment

Its better to Practice

Dromtönpa once saw a monk doing circumambulations and intuitively knew he was doing them for a worldly motive. He remarked, “It’s good to do circumambulations, but it would be better to practice.” Later he saw the same monk making prostrations. “Prostrations are good,” he said, “but it would be better to practice.” After some time, the monk began to do meditation and Dromtönpa again remarked that doing retreats was laudable, but it would be even better to practice. Finally the monk, who by this time was thoroughly perplexed, inquired what he meant by the word practice. Dromtönpa answered that it meant letting go of our preoccupation with this life and developing true love and compassion.
If what we do is for this life, it is a wordly endeavor, no matter how much it resembles a spiritual practice. If we don’t overcome that concern, we aren’t true practitioners. If we don’t overcome our concern for the well-being of our future lives, we don’t have a real wish for freedom.

Atisha, the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist scholar and saint, came to Tibet at the invitation of the king of Western Tibet, Lha Lama Yeshe Wo, and his nephew, Jangchub Wo. His coming initiated the period of the second transmission of Buddhism to Tibet, formative for the Sakya Kagyu and Gelug traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Atisha’s most celebrated text, Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment,sets forth the entire Buddhist path within the framework of three levels of motivation on the part of the practitioner.

Aug 18 Practice, practice, practice – The greatest motivator

Excerpts of show notes

Aug 18 Practice, practice, practice – The Greatest Motivator

Karl Friedrich Graf von Dürckheim

On consciousness unlimited blog talk radio

In the JUST BE IT blog talk radio show

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/consciousnessunlimited/2012/08/19/just-be-it

I had a wonderful expanding my mind and having a greater understanding  of the fact that that we are all consciousness and realizing again that practice, practice, practice is the key. And in this episode I will share with you the Greatest motivator for a spiritual practice: the fact that You and I will die – and nothing can change that.

Buddha says :

Even so you are holding on, and are attached, you cannot stay here,

So what use is it , to be afraid and anxius about something,

Which is unchangeable.

This episode is inspired by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his beautiful book called “ Advice on dying and living a better Life” here he shares from his vast wisdom about the importance of becoming aware of our transientness.

Death is unchangeable and sooner or later we must leave all of it, even our name.

And the Dalai Lama says that the awareness of our transciency gives us an urgency to decide to practice, practice a onscious connection to our TRUE SELF.

 Before we look into that more deeply let us look at what Buddhism is saying about practice:

And just today I came across a wonderful little story called It is better to practice from Buddhist way which I will share with you after the break.

This is from the Shambala website with its Dharma Quotes. The quote comes a most celebrated text called Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment by Atisha, who was an Indian Buddhist.

You can find the whole quote and more information about Atisha in my blog justbeittalk.wordpress.com

The story is called It is better to practice

Dromtönpa once saw a monk doing circumambulations and intuitively knew he was doing them for a worldly motive. He remarked, “It’s good to do circumambulations *, but it would be better to practice.” Later he saw the same monk making prostrations. “Prostrations**  are good,” he said, “but it would be better to practice.” After some time, the monk began to do meditation and Dromtönpa again remarked that doing retreats was laudable, but it would be even better to practice. Finally the monk, who by this time was thoroughly perplexed, inquired what he meant by the word practice. Dromtönpa answered that it meant letting go of our preoccupation with this life and developing true love and compassion.

*circumambulations is a sacred ritual where the monk is circling a sacred object like a stupa in a Buddhist temple or the Christian monks circling around in the courtyard of their monastery.

**prostrations are rituals lying on the floor full body, getting up and lying down again

If that what we do is for this! life, it is a wordly endeavor, no matter how much it resembles a spiritual practice. If we don’t overcome that concern, we aren’t true practitioners. END OF QUOTE

We need to develop compassion with all beings humans, plants, animals..and that all of them will be freed from the Wheel of Karma  moving home as a realized spirit. And in the Buddhist teaching all our spiritual practice must always have in mind all our future life with the ultimate realization into Buddha hood in mind.

I like to focus on another important aspect of practice I am getting more and more in touch with.

I just came back from a 4 week retreat I do every year and it was quiet amazing and brought me on a whole new level in my consciousness and awareness of who I am.

So right now I am smack in the middle of this questions: How do I hold and stabilize the gifts  and accomplishment in my Daily Life?

I am sure many of you listeners been there:

You listened to an exciting webcast and you are much motivated to really change things in your Life

Or  to an inspiring church sermon or beautiful church service and you know now to love your family, or you attended a  profound spiritual retreat and yet, after a while all of it seems to withers away and you watch yourself moving back in some of  same old habits and reactions.

So in this episode and the next coming episodes I will  explore this question more deeply

Calling the upcoming future episodes  practice, practice practice.

Also  The Dalai Lama states in his book dying Advice on dying a Better Life:

Even people who came from a year long retreat were not able to keep a long term effect, because they did not hold on to on a daily basis  and I quote to “the  urgency of their own transcience , their own death coming..

So if practicing means to meditate in the early hours, that is certainly extremely very useful andimportant. Here I am moving my attention to my True Self, getting in touch with the SILENCE behind the thoughts   that is the OBSERVER, the I AM.  And during the day I do feel I am connected to an extra battery and for the whole day I can pull from this, if I choose to put my attention to it. That seems to be the key to frequently put my awareness to that of who I really AM, pure consciousness,  99.9% pure energy…and then all my action and responses can come from that connectedness..

One could say that the connections made in my mediation done in my room, in the early hours all by myself  must be brought into the light of the day,  and prove itself there in the busyness of the market place where so many things want to pull me outside of the I AM into my small self.

This takes motivation to be that consistent despite the strong input my senses I receive from the world out there.

The Dalai Lama recommend to be always aware of the transientness of myself which then will motivate me to practice consistently.

He says and I

QUOTE: To contemplate about the transientness does not only inspire to practice it does deliver the fuel for it!” END OF QUOTE

And that in itself does not seem easy, right? Everything around me seems to look sooo permanent, my brain tells me that the world  is real and hard and stable like a rock (even though Quantum physics has proven that all is energy and I have and will again discuss that in this show).

I feel family and friends stay forever and when I think about my death I say later, later, later …its kind of far away, even so my Life span is getting shorter each day

A part of me says Oh yes I know I am gonna die, but….(right now I am busy making a fortune, enjoying the summer son and on and on)

What I am looking at  is that a part of us allows us to stay in the shallowness of Life far removed from daily contemplating death, after all its scary.

Rainer Maria  Rilke who often  was contemplating the “fleeting moments of Life, us the most fleeting of all” says: that our whole Life is a preparation just for that event. And he asks how well are you gonna die and will you by then understood what it is all about?

We do not allow ourselves to think these deep thoughts, right? and if we do its all doom and gloom and bad and dark. We are programmed to believe there is nothing out there after

And I like to quote this beautiful sentence from the book of the Dalai Lama:

“The profound, the deep has lost against the trivial,  says Dalai Lama and I like to add in  mass society”..

Indeed a part of us does  not want to see what’s real.

and I say a part of us, because in REALITY  I am not that, I AM THAT I AM, I am Atman, I am 99 % pure vibrating powerful energy and you are that!

We have been very successful to put death outside of our Life because the transient nature of all things, the constant flux of change is too uncomfortable for our small self to face.  We are so awkward about dying that we need trained companions to help us.

To be aware that with every breath I am moving closer to death is extremely uncomfortable…my small little self wants attachment and security.

It takes a lot to daily become aware that I am already dying. However it can be the greatest motivator to explore who I really am : Spirit learning to be human, as Grandmother Parisha says.

And the DALAI LAMA says_”: Only when you have a strong sense of the certainty of death and the uncertainty of its date, then you will be motivated from deep inside.

The Dalai Lama goes in this book further. He shares 16 verses of a poem by the Panchem Lama. It is a guideline for special Buddhist practices, to overcome the fear of dying and to prepare spirituality for the different phases of death.

And he clearly says that it would be good to practice this, as on the day of your death there might be no one who could help with your transition, maybe only weeping family members and friends.

There is a beautiful practice Grandmother Parisha recommended to get a sense of our death. Write down the days you have left to live…and update them daily, weekly or monthly.  Lets assume you take 90 or 80 years of age,  deduct your age and that number gives you the years left. Multiply by 365

For me using 90 as a number today its about 11.315 days, not a real big number, considering that I started out with over 32.850!!

Let me know what you think about that? You can email me at justbeit13@gmail.com

Contemplating on death also brings you closer to contemplate on time. As some of us know , and Einstein has said time and space are relative, they are in relation to our perception and only exist in this material, third world dimension.

So how am I spending my time? as Grandmother Parisha says, Time is very precious in this dimension, it cannot be replaced. We can replace money but time is gone and it is important that we make wise choices how and with whom and for what do we spend it. This simple calculation can give us a strong sense of the closeness of death, one might then feel the urgency to train his mind and body, to focus on meaning and depth in Life and to move into the endeavour to understand who I really am and what this is all about.

How do you spend the days  10.00 15.000 or 20.000  left?

In the book the Dalai Lama writes:

If one has understood the difficulty to actually obtain a human body, than one has no excuse to inactively stand around . If one realizes the great meaning of this human body, than one has not trouble anymore of senselessly waste time.

So once you and I really  got  how precious this human existence and the time spent is,  …we also can motivate ourselves to live a Life that is in harmony with our TRUE SELF, that is an expression of our hightest good…and not to regret to have wasted this precious life time.

To regret that we did not live like we really wanted to is the number one theme of people who are dying. An Australian palliative care professional found out that people who are dying spoke mostly about that: I wish I had…

She wrote a book called “The Top 5 regrets of Dying, her name is Bronnie Ware

You can download it as an ebook. See my blog.

Here are the top 5 regrets people shared:

I wish I had more courageous to live my own Life.

The author says that there are many people who went thru Life and did most of the time that, what other believed, they should be doing.

No. 2

I wish I had not worked so hard.

Being caught up in the fear for material security, or acknowledgment many regret they spent too much time working and not enough time living.

No 3

I wish I had told my real feelings.

Many people, says the author, are holding back their own truth, their own inner wisdom …they play nice. That also leads to a Life which does not allow for complete expression of oneself and the satisfaction of Being all you can be.

No. 4

I wish I had kept contact to my friends.

Many people regret that they did not keep in touch with people important to them.

The demands of Life pulled them elsewhere and at the end they realize that the nurturing and deep connectedness with people who nurtured their soul was something they missed out on.

No. 5

I wish I would have allowed myself to be more happy.

The author shares the feeling of many people who are dying, that they did not make the choices for a happier life. Either they got stucked in old patterns of remorse and holding on to old anger or simply did not want to be uncomfortable, to change for a better Life. The fear of the small self to change.

All regrets focus around the fact that none of them lived up to their full potential.

Of course, the author,  Bonnie Ware, also met  people who do not regret any thing  and left with a smile on their face.

In the moment we consciously connect to our True Self, thru contemplation and spiritual practice, we will be guided to change our way of living. We will then live our own Truth, express our True Self – even it means change and that is uncomfortable.

So let me summarize what I covered today
First, here one more time the practice I recommend for your own personal journey.

Calculate the number of days you have left until you become 80 or 90, this gives you an approximate number of days left and a strong sense how close death really is.

I would suggest you update the number weekly or at least monthly.

Have the number clearly present in your home or desk.

Second, In his book the Holiness of Dalai Lama Advice on dying nd living a better Life . he summarizes  in a simple and clear way, that a sense of our transientness, the certainty of our death, will motivate us strongly in our effort to consciously connect to our Inner Being. That means to take on a consistent spiritual practice is the best decision we can make:.

QUOTE

As death is coming without doubt

As out life span cannot be extended and actually is getting shorter, shorter

As there is not much time to be in spiritual practice, even in this Life

The decision must be: we must practice.

As the time of our death is not known

As there are many causes of death, and only a few causes for Life

As our life span in this world is not know

The decision must be: we must practice now.

END OF QUOTE

July 19 The Inner Being calling Karf Friedrich Graf von Duerckheim

Excerpts of show notes

July 19 The Inner Being calling

 Just Be it Show on consciousness unlimited blog talk radio

Today I would like to go back to the basic question which we started this show:

The world calling us outside and the Inner Being calling us inside.

I will read some text from Karl Friedrich Graf von Dürckheim and look in general at the idea of the transpersonal psychology. The Inner being is calling us and yet we are literally caught up in the world out there and its demands.

And we go back and forth between these 2 planes of existence in our Life as Karl F. Dürckheim says it so clearly

From morning to night the world calls us outward, wants to be recognized as the world and mastered.

The Inner Being calls us consistently from inside and into our Inner World.

 This is a quote from his book Daily routine as practice from which we will hear more in this episode.

It is not wrong to do and gain, and to move toward something to create reality…yet the key is that it must be controlled so to speak by our True Self our Inner Being and not as most of the time by the ego the small Life.

So to live a Life this is guided by our Inner Voice, while we learn to be human.

Karl Friedrich Graf von Dürckheim was born in 1896  and died in 1988 when he was 92.
He was a German diplomat working in Japan,  a psychotherapist and Zen-Master. The words Graf von means that he comes from a family of nobility.

In his early twenties, he was reading in the Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu and studied with Zen masters. “Suddenly it happened! I was listening and lightning went through me. The veil was torn asunder, I was awake! I had just experienced ‘It’. Everything existed and nothing existed. Another Reality had broken through this world. I myself existed and did not exist. I had experienced that which is spoken of in all centuries: individuals, in whatever stage of their lives, have had an experience which struck them with the force of lightning and linked them once and for all to the circuits of True Life.”

He had recognized the Christian Mystic, Meister Eckhart who lived in the 1400 in Germany as his first inspiring master. In the early 1950 he found a centre together with a wife Dürckheim founded the “Center of existential and psychological formation and encounter”  It was located in the Black Forest in South Germany and quiet influential in Europe in these years. He said that what I am doing is not the transmission of Zen Buddhism; on the contrary, that which I seek after is something universally human who comes from our origins and happens to be more emphasized in eastern practices than in the western.” END OF QUOTE

With the so called initiation therapy, K.F. von Dürckheim is part of the transpersonal psychology movement. This is the only psychology who acknowledges the existence of an inner spirit, an inner Being. One could say that the founding father of transpersonal psychology is Carl Gustav Jung, the famous Swiss psychotherapist and also
Charles Tart Ph.D.  He works especially on a bridge between modern science and spirituality. For Charles Tart says that by the consistent and stubborn denial of modern science of what we could call consciousness, or the reality of the spiritual, people really could get hurt. Vital aspects if not the main aspect of their being are rejected and so not expressed in our western society.

Also the holotropic breathing of Stanislav Grof is part of transpersonal psychology, which works guided by the Inner Being of the client with the vastness of the Inner consciousness, .We covered his work in our episode from March 23, 2012.

Dürckheim says, the basic concept of all transpersonal psychology that the therapist is not the healer, but rather a companion on the way. And in his work and Initiation therapy, he focuses on that the paradox of our Ego and little self being in the world out there and out Inner Being, the true self our own true nature calling us. And this Inner calling is increasing for many of us, challenging us to forget what we know and do.
“The world demands from us knowledge and proficiency.
The Inner Being demands from us, that in our Service of Becoming, we forget the Known and the Doing of it. “

In transpersonal psychology the therapist is like a midwife, who is helping the client to move beyond the ego self. That is very scary because on would indeed have to give up what it knows and how it understand the world. As Paul Lowe says it is easy to give up your house, your work for a moving closer to the demands of the Inner True Nature. But to give up the knowledge and values of the egos, to give up what we know, to empty ourselves is very scary of the Ego. As Paul Lowe says: “ It might be easy to give up our home or our house to move on a spiritual path However to be willing to completely questioning how we live, and what we think about the world, that is very difficult. “

The therapist – as a midwife accompanies us in this process: to find your true self, your true nature and you can know start a Life in the world with great contentment, inner peace and happiness, solely guided by your Inner Being

And I quote again from the writings of K.F. Duerkcheim:

The world demands consistently that we are doing something.

The Inner Being demands from us that we simply let the Right Thing happen.

 

There is nothing bad about that, as long as we serving having faith and trusting in  the guidance of our Inner Being and not our ego, as long as we are coming from our Inner being and are in this world but not off this world. It’s not about escaping somewhere else, but it’s about consciously expressing who we really are and from that Beingness doing and working in the world.

How different would our world look today if the majority of people lived like that?

Karl Graf von Dürckeim (KFD) says:  The Inner Path and the Outer Path (the path of the world are not ruling out each other. They actually determine each other, as we know we are creating the world out there.

We are challenged day and night by our Inner Being and by the looming world which is in our hands and responsibility. So the focus of our spiritual effort must be a never ending to reconcile both.

The world presses us forward and keeps us going without pause,

so we could come to something stationary.

The Inner Being demands from us to look at It, non-attached,

The world forces us to think about security.

The Inner Being encourages us to constantly Dare Something New.

END OF QUOTE

To let the right thing happen, without the busyness and the clinging and attachments of the ego is quite difficult for many of us.

I remember many years ago Grandmother Parisha asked me to write down, journal for myself the question: why am I not giving more time to the advancement of my spiritual being? And while I was writing I discovered that one of the main theme was that I was afraid, afraid to give up my comfortableness, the so called security of the little self, and most of all not wanting to give up control, not to allow to let things happen.

So you listener might have had the experience that we have been at a retreat, a workshop a seminar and felt really in touch, in touch with who we are and we came home with visions and inspirations
in spiratio we were in spirit, fired up to live our deepest Inner callings and we were ready to dare something new.
Though, the world came and pressed us forward demanding doing without pause in we lost it again, the conditioning of our ego forced us to do the things we thought we need to do, the demands caused us to be proficient again…and slowly over time we lost touch with our true calling again.

In the Iniation therapy K.F. D. included very much the body and its energetic fields, so working with the breath, the voice and the energetic fields opens a client up to his body. The body in this context is seen as an armor,  a muscular tension which does not allow the flow of the energy of the Higher Self to happen. This armor must be broken with intense breathing work (rolfing, breath therapy and similar methods are based on this findings of Wilhelm Reich in the 1920)

We have tightened up, we have so much tightened up that we are not even able to bet in touch with our True nature, because all energies are blocked. So intense body work is part of the Initiation therapy of K.F. Duerckheim.

The world makes us speak and act incessantly.

The Inner Being demands, that we become silent and act, without doing.

As in the TAO: doing without doing is important…once we have moved beyond the protective shield, the armor, the tightness showing in our body-mind unit, we are able to move into a powerful Beingness which creates simply out of being not doing. So the work here is over the body, like in EFT which works with the meridians to remove false beliefs and habits, by working with the meridians the energy field of the body.

For me this approach has been very helpful…I find that the body not only has wisdom and his own consciousness working miracously all the things which need to function, it also holds the key to unlock the walls of our my True nature, my true Inner calling.

The world obeys to us, when we understand and grasp it.

The Inner Being opens itself to us, when we endure The Incomprehensible.

To endure the incomprehensible…to have faith in that, what we cannot describe nor put in words which our mind cannot grasp : we are consciousness and  part of the Absolute consciousness that is the underlying omnipotent force or God which is the underlying reality of all there is.

To endure that we have no real understanding what our Inner Being is, and when we are finally making that connection consciously, Now we have no need any more to understand, because the ego, the critical mind does not exist in this very moment..

The bearing force of the Inner Being will proof itself,

when we let go that which holds us in the world.

The practice in our daily Life as KFD calls is consistent moving within and turning away. It means letting go of the world and allowing the Core to become expressed.

KFD says we either are very tight have an armor or we live in a constant state of disintegration, dissolving, loosing our self. The right balance is allowing and trusting the Right thing will happen and self responsible cooperation. However, says KFD most of us are moving back and forth between tightness and the disintegration.

Loosing one self: Alcohol, being constantly occupied with tv, business, shopping, sport, hobby could become  part of the disintegration as we are not allowing to relax into who we really are.

Much of the tightness in the shoulders which we hardly notice, is the symptom for a tightness an armor of our ego.

It is important to let that go and move into the center of our body: the Hara. That is the energies of our lower bowl which is holding the upper corso, describes KFD, The Hara is an energy point located two fingers under the naval and a vital point of concentration, breath work in Zen and in KFD work. Here once could not only find the center of his body-mind untit, but also access to the center of himself, the Inner Being.

The Inner Being renews and transforms us only,

when we disconnect ourselves again from that, which enriches us in the world.

This were we might need help, be it through a therapist who encourages us to move beyond our fear of letting go all who we are in the world, all that enriches us here or a spiritual teacher who moves us  to dare the Unkown in us.

And I like to end this episode with a quote from KFD in his book called “The way of transformation”.

Quote:

The man, who really is on the Way, and therefore has hard times in the world will not  turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages his old self to survive.

Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably  help him to risk himself. So he may endure the suffering and pass courageously through it. Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within him. In this lies the dignity of daring.” – from “The Way of Transformation”, Karl Friedrich Graf von Dürckheim