In this week’s talk, Zach explores the dharma of our everyday lives. As soon as we become present, we know everything we need to know. Gaze deeply at a tree, a flower, or a stone, and you will learn all the truths of life. Zach demonstrates that even a cup can teach us dharma, as we learn about emptiness, clearing the mind, seeing the finite, and self-love from such a simple vessel.
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Quotes from the episode:
And if it’s true we are alone,
we are alone together,
the way blades of grass
are alone, but exist as a field.
Sometimes I feel it,
the green fuse that ignites us,
the wild thrum that unites us,
an inner hum that reminds us
of our shared humanity.
Just as thirty-five trillion
red blood cells join in one body
to become one blood.
Just as one hundred thirty-six thousand
notes make up one symphony.
Alone as we are, our small voices
weave into the one big conversation.
Our actions are essential
to the one infinite story of what it is
to be alive. When we feel alone,
we belong to the grand communion
of those who sometimes feel alone—
we are the dust, the dust that hopes,
a rising of dust, a thrill of dust,
the dust that dances in the light
with all other dust, the dust
that makes the world.
When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!
When someone deeply listens to you
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.
– John Fox
Thirty spokes share the hub of a wheel; yet it is its center that makes it useful.
We mold clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that makes the vessel useful.
We fashion wood for a house, but it is the emptiness inside that makes it livable.
We work with the substantial, but the emptiness is what we use.
– Lao Tzu
56.
If such a thing as “I” exists indeed,
Then terrors, granted, will torment it.
But since no self or “I” exists at all,
What is there left for fears to terrify?
57.
The teeth, the hair, the nails are not the “I,”
And “I” is not the bones or blood,
The mucus from the nose and phlegm are not the “I,”
And neither is it made of lymph or pus.
58.
The “I” is not the body’s grease or sweat,
The lungs and liver likewise do not constitute it.
Neither are the inner organs “I,”
Nor yet the body’s excrement and waste.
59.
The flesh and skin are not the “I,”
And neither are the body’s warmth and breath.
The cavities within the frame are not the “I,”
And “I” is not accounted for in sixfold consciousness.
7.70
Just as seeping venom fills the body,
Carried on the current of the blood,
An evil thought that finds its chance,
Will spread and permeate the mind.
– Shantideva, The Way of The Boddhisattva
The wind went over
me
saying
Why are you so distressed
Oh I said I
can’t seem to make
anything
round enough to last
But why
the wind
said
should you be so distressed
as if anything here belonged to you
as if anything here were your concern
– A.R. Ammons
Spiritual practice is not what you are doing, but what you are thinking: what is the motivation for your actions?
– Swami Satchidananda
Should I leave this burning house
of ceaseless thought
and taste the pure rain’s
single truth
falling upon my skin?
– Izumi Shikibu
Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains,
and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.
The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.
And the music from the stirings that no one touches, and the
source of all water.
…
It you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.
~ Kabir
The Yogi comes along in his famous orange.
But if inside he is colorless,
then what?
– Kabir
If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it.
Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it.
― Rumi
Ecstatic love is an ocean, and the Milky Way is a flake of foam floating on it.
– Rumi
As long as you take yourself to be a person,
a body and a mind,
separate from the stream of life,
having a will of its own,
pursuing its own aims,
you are living merely on the surface,
and whatever you do will be short-lived
and of little value.
When you desire and fear, and identify yourself with your feelings,
you create sorrow and bondage.
When you create, with love and wisdom, and remain unattached to your creations,
the result is harmony and peace.
Keep in mind your goal of freedom,
until it dawns on you that you are already free,
that freedom is not something in the distant future
to be earned with painful efforts,
but perennially one’s own, to be used!
Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage,
the courage to believe that you are free already
and to act on it.
We are free ‘here and now’,
It is only the mind that imagines bondage.
Once you know your mind and its miraculous powers,
and remove what poisoned it
-the idea of a separate and isolated person-
you just leave it alone to do its work
among things for which it is well suited.
– Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
