Nice Poem..from Richard Rose

This poem is from a ZEN Master..his name was Richard Rose..too bad he died insane..loosing his mind from too much thinking ..since EVEN though there is POWER in the mind..forget it..he lived his last 12 years as a numb-nuts ..since he lost all his memory ..and he just survived,like an asshole should,indeed..

Very funny that he knew the mind essence ..as it shows in this poem..
But dying insane ..for me means he missed something..the good death....but of course he never really meditated..he thought he got the GOD by it's balls..but he understood this secret of magik ..anyway..
Kiss to him for the poem

love,danny(I've had some online interactions with his ,,disciples,,..he had NO method..yet they believe they got what he meant...is really ridiculous ..really....I just hope all end like him..lots of numbnuts..loosing their minds...so..in the tweeny town)(remember..you know a PERSON how he dies..not how he lives..for in that moment all your egos are taken away...like this fruitcake who gave no method,yet they worship him...ZEN master my ass..Zen Masters die sitting..not insane like Richard Rose..trust me...and the fact that he discovered the betweenes..didn't help him much when he died..did it?..
I also went poof into the light..do you see me bragging about it?
Hell no..
All he did in his life talk about how when his TRAUMA forced him into the absolute.
What was his trauma?..his lesbian girlfriend he was about to marry..
That was his TRAUMA..and he set in meditation AT last ..and knew the truth.
Looks like in his system we all males need to find a lesbian wife to get there..
Give me a break...morons....said the mahayogi...for I can explain his ,,betweenes,, on the spot..but not now..I'll explain later..now I'm eating a cheese hotdog..is better for me,than the lesbian solution of Richard Rose.
)
TWEENY TOWN
In Tweeny Town, in Tweeny Town
there lived a boy and maid.
And they went up and they went down,
but all their children stayed.
In Tweeny Town, in Tweeny Town
the two were free of sorrow.
For they delayed the ups and downs,
and looked for them tomorrow.
In Tweeny Town, in Tweeny Town
there were no rich or tragic,
Nor age or youth nor chain nor crown -
For between-ness was their magic.

Man is complex. The Truth is simple

Richard Rose was a ZEN Master..This means the right-path buddhist style using the MIND as the Path.
..............................
Man is complex. The Truth is simple. The path to the Truth needs to be complex only in coping with complex interference by man's mind. As that interference is removed, the path becomes proportionately more simple.
The questions that you must ask yourself naturally begin with a question as to whether you actually want to approach reality. The next question would ask yourself if you are going to postulate reality before discovering it. Are you aware that there is relative reality, which is the god of conventionality, and then there is reality, not yet attained fully, but which is understood to be ultimate or absolute reality.
Another question to ask yourself deals with the amount of time you can or are willing to spend in search of that Reality. Results are proportional to energy applied. Can you afford to waste twenty years of your life, probing and believing a system, only to find that it is incomplete, spurious or of an anodyne nature? That you lose your money in the process is not near as important as the time that is lost, because the older you get the more intractable and calcified the mental abilities become.
We should give some attention to the observations of life in relation to life's termination. Is memory synaptic or molecular, and not a spirit-attribute? If the former is true, what type of post-mortem survival can we expect? Is there any real immortality without the memory of previous or earthly actions and personality? Recent experiments with planaria, and with observations of the DNA molecule, lead us to believe that memory is physical.
It seems that if this is true, there are only two windows open by which we can hope to see immortality. One would be a system of spiritualizing physical memory, or of adjusting to a life after death that would be one of awareness only, or possibly of particularizing that awareness down to mundane and personality-memories.
Observing and tentatively accepting these ideas for the sake of planning future spiritual endeavors, we can see that wisdom, if it is at best only synaptic, cortical or molecular, ---will do us no good in any future life. So that many old systems of development aimed at the relative mind, and now meet with little response from the public that is more aware. And it does not matter if those systems were involved in magic, symbolic study, ritual, prayers, or in some arcane system of concentration. All is lost when the brain rots, or when the memory-bearing chromosome decays and allows the DNA molecule to disperse and deteriorate.
Man must first know that part of him which really IS, before he begins the cultivation of faculties. First know thyself. And this also implies that you must first become. The Albigen Papers include a system that tells you how to become.
They do not pretend to offer any somatic advantages or improvement of physical faculties, nor do they pretend to be a spiritual placebo, nor to improve your business, nor to flatter your estimates, nor to lengthen your life, --but they do hope to use some of that brief span of time to its best advantage in finding self-definition and essence-realization.

Richard Rose

Osho: The Rebellious Spirit?..Interesting

Up to now this is how man has lived: your yesterdays prepare you for your tomorrows. The very preparation becomes a hindrance. You cannot breathe freely, you cannot love freely, you cannot dance freely -- the past has crippled you in every possible way. The burden of the past is so heavy that everybody is crushed under it.

The rebel simply says goodbye to the past.

It is a constant process; hence, to be a rebel means to be continuously in rebellion -- because each moment is going to become past; every day is going to become past. It is not that the past is already in the graveyard -- you are moving through it every moment. Hence, the rebel has to learn a new art: the art of dying to each moment that has passed, so that he can live freely in the new moment that has come.

A rebel is a continuous process of rebellion; he is not static. And that is where I make a distinction between the revolutionary and the rebel.

The revolutionary is nothing but a reactionary.

He may be against a certain society, but he is always for another society. He may be against one culture, but he is immediately ready for another culture. He only goes on moving from one prison into another prison -- from Christianity to communism; from one religion to another religion -- from Hinduism to Christianity. He changes his prisons.

The rebel simply moves out of the past and never allows the past to dominate him. It is a constant, continuous process. The whole life of the rebel is a fire that burns. To the very last breath he is fresh, he is young. He will not respond to any situation according to his past experience; he will respond to every situation according to his present consciousness.

To be a rebel, to me, is the only way to be religious, and the so-called religions are not religions at all. They have destroyed humanity completely, enslaved human beings, chained their souls; so on the surface it seems that you are free, but deep inside you, religions have created a certain conscience which goes on dominating you. A rebel is one who throws away the whole past because he wants to live his own life according to his own longings, according to his own nature -- not according to some Gautam Buddha, or according to some Jesus Christ, or Moses.

The rebel is the only hope for the future of humanity.

The rebel will destroy all religions, all nations, all races -- because they are all rotten, past, hindering the progress of human evolution.

They are not allowing anybody to come to his full flowering: they don't want human beings on the earth -- they want sheep.

A rebel respects you, respects life, has a deep reverence for everything that grows, thrives, breathes. He does not put himself above you, holier than you, higher than you; he is just one amongst you. Only one thing he can claim: that he is more courageous than you are. He cannot save you -- only your courage can save you. He cannot lead you -- only your own guts can lead you to the fulfillment of your life.

Rebellion is a style of life. To me, it is the only religion which is authentic. Because if you live according to your own light you may go astray many times, and you may fall many times; but each fall, each going astray will make you wiser, more intelligent, more understanding, more human. There is no other way of learning than by making mistakes. Just don't make the same mistake again.

There is no God, except your own consciousness.

There is no need for any pope, or for Ayatollah Khomeini, or for any shankaracharya, to be mediators between you and God. These are the greatest criminals in the world, because they are exploiting your helplessness.

All the priests are pretending that they are mediators between you and the ultimate source of life. They know nothing of the ultimate source of life. Only you are capable of knowing your source of life. But your source of life is also the ultimate source of life -- because we are not separate. No man is an island; we are a vast continent underneath. Perhaps on the surface you look like an island -- and there are many islands -- but deep down in the ocean, you meet. You are part of one earth, one continent. The same is true about consciousness.

But one has to be free from churches, from temples, from mosques, from synagogues. One has to be just oneself, and take the challenge of life wherever it leads. You are the only guide.
You are your own master.

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From: "writer273rus"
Date: Thu Nov 3, 2005 8:53 am
Subject: a poem writer273rus
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i'm not guilty for having no verdicts
for my discourses rivers flowing upwards
for temples and libraries were made of cards
suddenly burst into laughing at once
i'm not guilty, not afraid anymore
for lie does not trouble my soul as before
for i'm no longer ironic to Love
so It breaking down, It blowing up
whatever - i used to believe – is decent
whatever – i thought – is my realization
whatever i reckon as exactly myself
no comment – just ego annihilation

Vladimir

The Paradox of Change

The Paradox of Change
by Bob Fergeson

"And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." - Luke 11:9

Both Jesus and St. Nicholas had one important thing in common: they were men of action, and taught through example. The theory came later, from those who recorded their lives and words. Neither of these men taught that we should wait around for them to save us, or that the inner kingdom was only entered by first gaining permission from paid priests and preachers. They taught that we must change first, in a fundamental inner way, and then the doors could be seen, knocked upon, and entered.

St. NicholasThe primary change that must precede any exterior change, is that of value or aim. Another way to put this is that what we love must change in order for our life to gain new direction. This inner or spiritual change comes first, an inner realization perhaps that things are not as they seem, and that if we are to find something permanent and unchanging, we can no longer put our faith in the ceaselessly changing outer world, a world of flux we now know cannot be depended on. This inner change causes or precedes the outer or psychological change. And from there, our actions too, may change.

A strange belief seen in some who profess to desire the truth is one that no effort or change is necessary, but that all one must do is wait, or believe, and that some force will do the work or changing for us. We should just sit, and perhaps talk high words of exalted states of complication or simplicity, and we will be enlightened or saved simply because we already are and just don't know it, or because our unconscious belief in our innate superiority will cause the gods and teachers to save us from the perils of life with no effort of our own. This is all nothing more than a rationalization for our own pride and laziness, or else fear of action and its consequences. While there is truth in the effortlessness of essence, and that the ego cannot create heaven in its own image, no matter the effort, this is only known after the fact, not before.

Waiting for inner change to occur without effort is actually the worshipping of our current psychological state. We do not wish for real change but for all resistance to our self-centered will to be removed, so that our self-survival mechanism can render us omnipotent and eternal. This is ego worship, nothing more. The willingness to change, in a real and drastic sense, is shown first by a willingness to accept the truth of ourselves as we are, regardless, and then by a willingness to work on changing our current psychological state. This shows the powers that be we are not afraid of mental change or emotional pain, and do not place our identification with our accidental state of being above fact of Truth, and our petty wants and worldly needs above love for Truth. We show we are willing to let go of our identification with our reaction-pattern, our "self," and face the unknown, knowing intuitively that the Kingdom is within.

This initial change of heart and mind, the change in our direction or aim, comes to each of us in our own manner. Some may find it through mental inquiry into their present state. Others may find it through an intuitive feeling, while still others come to it by the trauma of drastic events. Some may find it through contact with a teacher or friends. Whatever the path we take to this moment, and whether we are even aware of it at the time, the inner change is primary and causal. It works its way outward and affects our lives, whether we like it or not. We will eventually look back with understanding, perhaps, but always with gratitude and praise. If this has not happened to you, but you know for sure that your life can't be as good as it gets, then begin the effort: ask, knock, and seek, with all your heart and mind, and surely you will find.

Defining the Truth

Mr. Richard Rose had a unique presentation, unencumbered by pomp, pretense, or pseudo-logic. He spoke directly to the hearts and minds of his listeners, mixing penetrating insight with an all-encompassing humor that often stunned his audience, while simultaneously altering their view of the world. Many people came away from his talks with the distinct impression that, somehow, he was directly addressing their personal problems and inner states.

Defining the Truth

Most serious-minded people talk about the "Truth." But they take it for granted. They never get down to setting up measurements by which to gauge the Truth so that they will realize it when they hear it. They presume to be able to recognize it, and some go as far as to presume to be the fortunate possessors of it.
The Truth is a path more than a realization of measurability. The scientist feels that he is a pursuer of Truth, but the products of the scientific laboratory are more likely to be cannons and culture rather than inklings of the first cause or man's picture of ultimate destiny. And the same scientist who may be trying to crack the atom or split a chromosome, may privately have massive rationalizations about religion, personal definition, or personal destiny. So that he is a mechanical seeker, but not an entire and dynamic seeker,--even though he functions mechanically in his scientific quest much more valuably than most of humanity.
Truth is a path because it is never fully realized, and because many aspects of the search for Truth remain relative. Man is a being whose consciousness depends upon fickle senses and a mind largely capable of witnessing in a relative manner, and largely incapable of direct knowledge.
Truth may well be absolute in nature, but to bicameral man with the necessary bi-polar survey of all things,--a definition of absolute or abstract things or states may be readily seized and accepted in relative form, that is, with relative and possibly equivocal words.
Every last one of us thinks we are right. Which means that we think we have the Truth or that if we do not have it, no one else will do any better. But everyone has a different definition of it. And with this different definition upon the minds of men, we have a subtle, unseen Tower of Babel which stands between the minds of men so that they cannot strive together. There is much talk of the brotherhood of seekers for Truth, but this brotherhood is split up into myriad groups with no common language or understanding. And all of this is because they presupposed, a priori, that which they expected Truth to be, and so defined it, rather than sought it for whatever it might be when found.
The Bible indicates that we should seek if we wish to find. Yet with equal authority Christ exhorts us to believe in Him if we wish to be saved. Now finding the Truth and being saved may be two entirely different projects, but believing is not compatible with seeking. The believer does not seek; he accepts that which another extends.
And with this bit of ambiguity the Christian world, for one, is hampered in honestly seeking for Truth. Lazily each sect rests upon a belief rather than upon a conviction. They comfort one another with the mutual back-scratching, and make decrees to the effect that other religions are worthy seekers also, but perhaps less fortunate. They comfort their congregation and financial supporter by telling them that man was never supposed to learn the True nature of things, and dumbfound the mind with the cliche that the finite mind will never perceive the infinite.
It cannot be that terrible. Absolute Truth is not absolutely inaccessible to us, and relative truth is definitely accessible. We must desire the Truth, and have a capacity for it else we could not receive it even if it came to us by accident.
We cannot shut our mind to any phase of reality, and still have a capacity for Truth in another field. For if we rationalize about one thing, then rationalization may well be a mental habit cooperating with our laziness or desire-thinking, and we are liable to rationalize about vital things. We cannot lie to ourselves in little things, or what we consider little things, and still be competent to receive knowledge of that which we admit to be more vital or more important.
The divergences of beliefs among men, whether these beliefs be religious, philosophic, or political, are not an indication of the infallibility of the masses nor of justification for the idea that everyone is correct to a degree. We like to think that the divergent observer is just looking at Truth from another or oblique angle. And rather than solve the problem, the divergent parties democratically vote everyone to be correct.
These procedures make for compatibility and social harmony, but they put the mind to sleep. We are either right or wrong. And if we are honest with ourselves and true to ourselves we do not wish to wait for twenty years to outgrow a religion. It is our sacred right as profaned animals to understand our state. It is our sacred right to doubt and to question. It must remain our valued trust,--that we trust no authority. We must listen and sit down with an occasional book, but any acceptance should be tentative until we have a complete picture.
When I say that we are either right or wrong, I am speaking of relative truth-seeking. In the absolute state, things may well be neither right or wrong, or both. And while we aspire to an absolute state, and to absolute Truth, it remains doubtful if we will ever attain the absolute Truth if we compromise relative truth, or shut our eyes to reality.
Let us not pretend to be seekers while we remain addicted to vanity or enslaved to conventions. Likewise we are living a lie when we dedicate years or decades to the pursuit of pleasure or ambition, when in the honest analysis, we can find no valid gain for our search. And when we are guided by fear or emotion to accept a creed, we have neither a chance for truth nor an honest self-identification.
Many people have found reality for the first time in the depths of alcoholism, or drug addiction, or rather, have found reality after passing through the depths. They managed to become alcoholics because alcohol alone, or drugs alone, made it possible for them to live with massive rationalizations in the form of religion or social mores, from which their inner intuition rebelled.
We live in a cloud of illusions. We cling to them, legislate them in our councils, create and deify them in our religious dogma, breed them into our children, and rarely realize that we are spinning this web of fiction for all the hours and days of our lives unless we are fortunate or unfortunate enough to die slowly. I was shocked the first time I heard a priest at a funeral pray that all of those present might be granted a slow death. For a moment I thought him a barbarian carrying to the extreme his cult of masochism. But perhaps that slow death may be the only moments of reality for the total life of many earthlings. Because a dying man is forced to face the fact that he is about to become zero, and the pseudo-comforts that promised glorious lights, trumpets and escorting angels, now have no meaning. All that the dying man knows is that he is about to begin to rot. Nothingness has more meaning to him, and embodies his world of reality more than all of the religions and cliches of a human-animal philosophy eternally cursed and confounded by language and its deceptions.
This dying man knows too late the value of the doubt, and the foolishness of faith unless that faith be in his own power to solve the problem or cut the Gordian knot. Blind faith is only rationalization. It is the little pig that does not wish to grow up, and procrastinates weaning. It is the weakling-child that replaces sturdy effort with boasting and lies of pretended achievement. The most fanatical and dangerous (that is recriminatory) type of religious zealot is the one that would make a political cause out of his favorite religion, rather than go through the effort to make his life a true religion of Search.
There is but one Truth. To equivocate for the sake of social compatibility is to sell our spiritual nature for cowardly bargaining with the herd, when the bargaining is not necessary. For ages the wise men have served notice that we must remain inconspicuous, and this silence will help avert the teeth of the herd. But unless someone occasionally speaks up, the sincere will have no encouragement.
We might ask here, "How shall we know the Truth? What is Reality?" We can only know the Truth by teaching ourselves to face the truth in all things. If we encourage our computer to come up with erroneous answers, because they are more desirable, then we are developing a computer that we may never be able to trust.
Let us take examples in social experience. Many of us, and many people we know employ incomplete formulae to govern their lives. After decades of misery they realize that they were lying to themselves. The decades would usually be prolonged but the person's friends become alienated, or they continue until some disastrous climax brings the truth into focus. This distress is usually caused by inadequate or incomplete assessment of the general picture of life.
We have the young bully who thinks that he is invincible. Repeated conquests have led him to believe that kindness is a sign of weakness. He may even believe that he is a gigantic avatar sent by the gods to boot the peasants of the earth into line. He does not bother to find out what line the gods want him to follow, for in reality it is his line.
The bully will eventually be rebuffed. Someone will change his philosophy with the same convincing force he meted out to others. His sadism will become inverted and he will see that he did not even have half of the picture of his destiny. But he may have rationalized half or three-fourths of his life away trying to be a bully before he relents and admits that he has little sure destiny except the all-conquering grave. And by the time he relents and realizes, it is too late for his brutalized brain to ponder anything beyond the grave.
Everyday we meet people who admit that they have been fooling themselves for years. They are generally up in years, and will be found more frequently in ale-houses than in churches. Instead of group-therapy, the churches specialize in mass-make-believe.
It is difficult to prescribe a conduct of Seekers of Truth. But Truth is that which is. A person who dyes his hair or wears a wig is not truthful. A person who wears clothes other than to cover himself is not truthful. A person who uses cosmetics except for comedy, is not truthful. The naked body with its tell-tale wrinkles, its sagging folds of fat, bowed legs, and collapsing organs, may be much more conducive to Truth than years of church-attendance, if we just observe in it our unglamorous destiny.
I am not advocating nudity since nudity may well be a rationalization or excuse to emphasize the urges of the body. Yet it is hard to tell which would do the worse for our salvation (enlightenment),--a parade of undyed nudes or a parade of vain clothes-horses on Easter Sunday.
Much of our religion is vanity. We clothe ourselves in it and strut about as if to mock the feathers of our neighbors. Too many of us think that we have chosen the true religion by virtue of our better intellect. We even manage to glorify ourselves by manifesting compassion for those who are less concerned with such toys as missionary work and conversion. We will carry a badge to show our superior position. The badge will be a quotation from the Bible, a talisman, a secret word, water on the head, or a missing foreskin.
What do we know for sure? We know very little. We find ourselves to be a rotting body, with thoughts and hope for something more permanent. Yet like children, we deck the body with importance, even as we vainly embalm the corpse to delay the truth. I am reminded of the case of the Narcissist, a woman who always wished to be a nun. She maintained that she was living for God, and that she was remaining pure for Him. In reality she was remaining pure because she abhorred change and aging. But her grand rationalization carried right through until her death. She refused a doctor out of modesty, and the result was a slow death. This woman never seemed to contemplate that God might have intended for her to reproduce. We evince the most blatant egotism when we announce that we are doing something for God. We who are not able to identify ourselves are about to oil the eternal mechanisms.
Let us look at this woman with candor. Let us just see that which she is. We will not presuppose that God created her, or that God is even around or concerned. This we do not know. But we know that she has been born with female organs, and feminine instincts to promote her female functioning. The prompting of those instincts, and the uncontrollable cycles imposed upon her by nature have become evil things or sins. She feels responsible for the hormones that might find their way into her blood, or the consequent thoughts that might find their way into her thinking. She lives a life of self-recrimination and confession in never-ending apology for having a body that she did not ask for, and which may have been created by agencies who are more responsible for it than the sufferer.
Again we do not denounce this unfortunate lady. Her tactic was her only means available to seek a better existence. She saw only a facet of the picture, and thought she had found the only door in the universe. She was a seeker in her own way, and her death-ordeal testifies to her intensity. But we cannot help but feel that her dynamic energy was wasted somewhat, and that the waste lies at the feet of the priest-union that preferred to let her make a life of sincere effort and tangential uselessness, out of what may have been a more articulate and understanding seeker. The priest-union preferred this to making an admission concerning the relative importance of moral teachings.
The purpose of this example is to show that it is possible for persons to follow a diligent tack all through life, which tack is absurd to minds of most other observers. It is possible that similar zealots find themselves on these life-long tangential paths because somewhere early in their lives they formed a fabric of rationalization rather than face reality.
That which is believed by the majority of humanity is not necessarily the truth. This is a common error, man makes. Man thinks that if everyone or the majority of people believe a thing, that popularity makes it the truth. At one time the universal concept was that the sun revolved about the earth. At one time the thinking or scientific world had a "phlogiston" theory which was later dissipated.
Faith can change material things to a limited degree only. It did not render the earth flat nor did it arrest the cycles of the sun. If the sun danced at Fatima it would have involved motions for that star which would not only have been noticeable elsewhere, but would have required that the sun travel at fantastic speeds out of its regular position. So that while millions of people may believe that the sun danced at Fatima, it is equally valid to offer or to believe that the minds of the viewers were simultaneously hallucinated, or hypnotized. I do not mean to imply that the hypnosis was caused by human agency, necessarily. Religious leaders when weary of their theological diggings, resort to edict and dogma. The scientific world, while more laborious, is prone to lean heavily upon its "concepts" and "theories," and much of the engineering in new fields treats these theories as fact by virtue of habit.
Again let us return to the observation of the two apparent types of truth. There is actually only one real Truth, but too soon we must admit that real Truth is absolute and ideal in nature. We are apt to coin another word, "relative truth," for want of a better word to express our attempts to calibrate validity with a relative and restricted mind. It is better to understand that while searching for the Truth we will believe things that we will later no longer believe to be the truth, and this previous state of appreciation I would prefer to call incomplete truth, leading perhaps eventually to absolute Truth.
The human family is constantly finding things to be more true or less true. It is finding more perfect material formulae, and is discarding inetticient or erroneous formulae. If it can apply this weeding-out process to the vast tangle of metaphysical and religious formulae, it will begin to make progress.
The human family has been in the past in the habit of accepting ideas or spiritual concepts without even a half-hearted attempt to set up a formula. We know nothing of life after death, of the nature of our own essence, or of the motivating agencies of the visible or invisible worlds. The human family for centuries has just accepted that which sounded good or quieted their fears and made the children more tractable.
Our civilization has come to a point where we know about quality and demand that our food contain certain qualities, and that those who handle it do so with clean hands. But that admittedly most valuable tbod which is spiritual, too often comes from mountebanks, misfits, and often degenerates who know that their pretense may never be challenged, or their venality exposed. Modern society accepts religions that render compatibility, that keep down crime, and that work in harmony with the state.
We are allowing ourselves to be tortured by our clergy, even as the witch-doctor applied the needle of fear to keep his sinecure, in primitive cultures. The clergy maintained darkness for centuries with their "Anti-modernistic Oaths," or equivalents of such. They were not concerned with the laity, who over those centuries were reacting with.more mature common-sense. While unable to deny that their function was that of a hammer, they maintained that God was the hand that swung the hammer. Generally if the peasant questioned the identity of the swinger of the hammer, he received a blow from the hammer.
A new trend now is growing. The men of science and the beatniks who proclaim their own common sense, have united to admit that God is dead. The new trend has no more validity than the old one. Yet, we may take a note. If the existence of God in the minds of men may be maintained by faith or belief, then denial or belief of non-existence may bring an end to God ,--if God has no more existence than in the minds of men. We must seek for that which is, and we will find that such facts are indestructible and not dependent on belief or human acceptance.
There is but one way to begin and promote such a search. It is the sorting of the most likely answer from the oceanic froth of data. It requires courage, diligence, perseverance and an open mind.

Mystic Missal Prayers

-Prayers-

Lead me from dreaming to waking.
Lead me from opacity to clarity.
Lead me from the complicated to the simple.
Lead me from the obscure to the obvious.
Lead me from intention to attention.
Lead me from what I'm told I am to what I see I am.
Lead me from confrontation to wide openness.
Lead me to the place I never left,
Where there is peace, and peace
- The Upanishads

1. Pray, and think what you will, your thoughts will be purified by prayer.
2. Pray, and do what you will. Your acts will be pleasing to God and useful and salutory to yourself.
3. Pray, and do not labour much to conquer your passions by your own strength. Prayer will destroy them in you.
4. Pray, and fear nothing. Fear no misfortunes, fear no disasters. Prayer will protect you and ward them off.
5. Pray somehow or other, only pray always and be disturbed by nothing.
6. It is to be noted, finally, that if the time of your vigilence in prayer is prolonged, then naturally no time will be left not only for doing sinful actions but even for thinking of them. -anonymous, from 'The Way of the Pilgrim'

" Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking." - Mr Gruffydd, How Green Was My Valley

St. Denis' Prayer -
You are wisdom, uncreated and eternal,
the supreme First Cause, above all being,
sovereign Godhead, soveneign goodness,
watching unseen the God-inspired wisdom of Christian people.
Raise us, we pray, that we may totally respond
to the supreme, unknown, ultimate, and splendid height
of your words, mysterious and inspired.
There all God's secret matters lie covered and hidden
under darkness both profound and brilliant, silent and wise.
You make what is ultimate and beyond brightness
secretly to shine in all that is most dark.
In your way, ever unseen and intangible,
You fill to the full with most beautiful splendor
those souls who close their eyes that they may see,
And I, please, with love that goes beyond mind
to all that is beyond mind,
seek to gain such for myself through this prayer.


O great and holy God, I pray thee, set open my inwardness to me; that I may rightly know what I am; and open in me what was shut up in Adam. - Jacob Boehme

O sweet nature of the unborn light,
purify my mind and
enlighten my understanding
so that I may be conscious of you! - Meister Eckhart

Reflect that many are called but few are chosen and that, if you are not careful, your perdition is more certain than your salvation, especially since the path to eternal life is so constricted. -

Eternal One! Thou self-existent Cause
Of all existence, source of love and light;
Thou universal uncreated God,
In whom all things exist and have their being,
Who lives in all things and all things in Him;
Infinite art Thou, inconceivable
Beyond the grasp of finite intellect;
Unknowable to all except thyself.
Nothing exists but Thou, and there is nothing
In which no Good exists; Thou art, but we
Appear to be; for forms are empty nothings,
If not inhabited by Thee; they are
Thyself made manifest. - Franz Hartmann

Your prayer should be, " Break the legs
of what I want to happen. Humilate
my desire. Eat me like candy.
It's spring, and finally
I have no will." - Rumi

God,
unto whom all hearts are open,
unto whom all wills do speak,
from whom no secret thing is hidden,
I beseech thee
so to cleanse the purpose of my heart
with the unutterable gift of thy grace
that I may perfectly love thee,
and worthily praise thee.
Amen

Heaven above,
Heaven below.
Stars above,
Stars below.
All that is above,
All that is below.
Grasp this
and rejoice.

May I recognize whatever visions appear, as the reflections of mine own consciousness;
May I know them to be of the nature of apparitions in the Bardo: When at this all-important moment of opportunity of achieving a great end.
May I not fear the bands of Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, mine own thought-forms. - Bardo Thodol

O God, the Giver of Life, Remover of pains and sorrows, Bestower of happiness, and Creator of the Universe;
Thou art luminous, pure, and adorable; We meditate on Thee;
May Thou inspire and guide our intellect in the right direction.
- Gayatri Mantra

Father…
Guide me that I might see clearly.
Bless me that I might understand.
Strengthen me that I might live my understanding. - Robert Cergol

Hymn to Almighty God "In Charleston graveyard upon Release"

Hail moon! Hail sun!
Hail sacred tree.
The center now shall hold!
Almighty God, who healeth me,
All praise to Thee

For Thou art One!
I know! I know!
As Thou art There above.
But Many in us Here below.
O yes, I know!
I know it's so!

I'll give my best
I'll give my all.
In Faith, I am assured.
That from this World we cannot fall.
No! Not at all.
We cannot fall!

So let me live.
So let me die.
A moth unto Thy Flame.
Light unto Light! To Thee I fly.
Nor question why.
To Thee I fly.

My burden great.
My spirit free.
A goal I dimly see.
Almighty God, who healeth me.
All praise to Thee!
All praise to Thee!

John E. Davis II


Lord, I am broken and have no hope, Thou art my first, my last, and only Refuge.

There is only God, there is no reality but God.

I take refuge with the Lord of the Dawn,
from the mischief of created things,
from the mischief of those who practice secret arts, and
from the mischief of the Envious One as he practices envy.

O my Lord! bestow wisdom on me, and join me with the righteous; Grant me honorable mention on the tongue of truth among the latest (generations); Make me one of the inheritors of the Garden of Bliss.

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Lord, grant me
Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and
Wisdom to know the difference.

Oh Soul, thou fair lady of my perfect dream, how can I bring thee peace?
Forgive my inconstant love, and the needless filling of your bountiful breast with tribulation.
Rest your fair head on the One who gives Peace,
Understanding of our trials, and the
Grace that delivers us from ourselves.

Make every act an offering to me (God); regard me as your only protector. Relying on interior discipline, meditate on me always. Remembering me, you shall overcome all difficulties through my grace. But if you will not heed me in your self-will, nothing will avail you. -Bhagavad Gita 18:57-58

"I am convinced that intense self-introspection does not require large amounts of time. It requires only short meditations which regardless of the form they take, in essence, amount to a prayer -- a plea to the higher self for help and guidance. This sets in motion a direction so that amidst busy-ness and hard work -- that higher self will manifest and the inner man will get through to communicate -- which you will experience as insight or mini-realizations -- that translate into a change of being." - Bob Cergol

Douglas Harding on Prayer : Well, we have to distinguish between two kinds of prayer. There is one kind of prayer which is petitionary - asking for my tummy-ache to get better or for the weather to improve, or someone to stop behaving nastily to me. That kind of petitionary prayer is not of interest to me, and I don't think it is effective. I suppose it may be for some people. It could act as a kind of magic if you put faith in some providence out there who will work this magic for you. But it's not for me.
The other kind of prayer, which is very different, is like this: Say I desire the health of someone I love very much, or my own health, or my own ability to do my job, that kind of thing - which are really very deserving requests - but adding always at the end 'Thy will be done'. I would like this, but not my will but Thy will be done. Then the question is who is praying to who? and of course in the last absolute resort it is who you really are having a conversation with who you really are. It's a kind of internal process within your true identity, and not only important, but indispensable.

THE PROPHET - Kahlil Gibran..LOVE

LOVE

Then said Almitra, "Speak to us of Love."

And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said: When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God." And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Spiritual Teachers-more Zen stories...

Spiritual Teachers

Noticing that his father was growing old, the son of a burglar asked his father to teach him the trade so that he could carry on the family business after his father had retired.

The father agreed, and that night they broke into a house together.
Opening a large chest the father told his son to go in and pick out the clothing. As soon as the boy was inside, the father locked the chest and then made a lot of noise so that the whole house was aroused. Then he slipped quietly away.

Locked inside the chest the boy was angry, terrified, and puzzled as to how he was going to get out. Then an idea flashed to him- he made a noise like a cat. The family told a maid to take a candle and examine the chest. When the lid was unlocked the boy jumped out, blew the candle, pushed his way past the astonished maid, and ran out. The people ran after him. Noticing a well by the side of the road the boy threw in a large stone, then hid in the darkness. The pursuers gathered around the well trying to see the burglar drowning himself.

When the boy got home he was very angry at his father and he tried to tell him the story; but the father said: 'Don't bother to tell me the details, you are here- you have learned the art.'


zen2

During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived - everyone except the Zen master.

Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this master was. When he wasn't treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger.
"You fool," he shouted as he reached for his sword, "don't you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!"

But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved.
"And do you realize," the master replied calmly, "that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?"

Spiritual Teachers

Meditation and Compassion

Once it happened that a young man belonging to a very rich and aristocratic family, came to a Zen master. He had known everything, indulged in every desire; he had enough money, so there was no problem. But then he got fed up -- fed up with sex, fed up with women, fed up with wine. He came to the Zen master and said, "Now I am fed up with the world. Is there some way that I can know myself, who I am?"
The young man said, "But before you say anything, let me tell you something about myself. I am indecisive and cannot continue anything for long, so if you give me some technique or if you tell me to meditate, I may do it for a few days and then I will escape, knowing well that there is nothing in the world, knowing well that only misery awaits there, death. But this is my type of mind. I cannot continue, I cannot persist in anything, so before you choose something, remember this."

The master said, "Then it will be very difficult if you cannot persist, because long effort will be needed to undo all that you have done in the past. You will have to travel back. It will have to be a regression. You will have to reach back to the moment when you were born, when fresh, young. That freshness will have to be achieved again. It is not ahead, but back that you will have to go -- to become a child again. But if you say you cannot persist and that within days you will escape, it will be difficult. But let me ask you one question: Have you ever been interested in something so deeply that you were absorbed completely?"

The young man thought and he said, "Yes, only in chess, the game of chess, I have been very much interested. I love it, and that's the only thing that is saving me. Everything else has fallen away; only chess is still with me, and with it I can somehow pass my time."
The master said, "Then something can be done. You wait." He called the attendant and told him to bring one monk who had been meditating for twelve years in the monastery, and to tell the monk to bring a chessboard.
The chessboard was brought; the monk came. He was acquainted a little with chess, but for twelve years he had been meditating in a cell. He had forgotten the world and chess and everything.

The master said to him, "Listen, monk! -- this is going to be a dangerous game. If you are defeated by this young man, the sword is here and I will cut off your head, because I wouldn't like a meditative monk -- who has been meditating for twelve years -- to be defeated by an ordinary young man. But I promise you, if you die by my hand then you will reach the highest heaven. So don't be disturbed."
The young man became also a little uneasy, and then the master turned to him and said, "Look, you say that you get absorbed in chess, so now get totally absorbed -- because this is a question of life and death. If you are defeated I will cut off your head, and remember, I cannot promise heaven for you. This man is okay, he will go anyhow, but I cannot promise any heaven for you. If you die hell is the place -- immediately you will go to the seventh hell."
For a moment the young man thought to escape. This was going to be a dangerous game, and he had not come here for this. But then it looked dishonorable; he was a samurai, a son of a warrior, and just because of death, imminent death, to escape was not in his blood. So he said, "Okay."

The game started. The young man started trembling like a leaf in a strong wind, the whole body trembling. He started perspiring, and cold perspiration came to his body; he started sweating from his head to the soles of his feet. It was a question of life and death, and thinking stopped, because whenever there is such an emergency you cannot afford thought. Thought is for leisure. When there is no problem you can think; when there is really a problem thinking stops, because the mind needs time, and when there is an emergency there is no time. You have to do something immediately.
Every moment, death was coming nearer. The monk started, and he looked so serene and calm that the young man thought, "Well, death is certain!" But when the thoughts disappeared, he became totally absorbed in the moment. When thoughts disappeared, he also forgot that death was awaiting -- because death too is a thought. He forgot about death, he forgot about life, he became just a part of the game, absorbed, totally immersed in it.

By and by, as the mind disappeared completely, he started playing beautifully. He had never played that way. In the beginning the monk was winning, but within minutes the young man got absorbed, started beautiful movements, and the monk started losing. Only the moment existed, only the present. There was no problem then; the body became okay, trembling stopped, perspiration evaporated. He was light like a feather, weightless. The perspiration even helped -- he became weightless, his whole body felt as if it could fly. His mind was no more there. Perception became clear, absolutely clear, and he could see ahead, five moves ahead. He had never played so beautifully. The other's game started crumbling; within minutes the other would be defeated, and his victory was certain.
Then suddenly, when his eyes were clear, mirrorlike, when perception was profound, deep, he looked at the monk. He was so innocent. Twelve years of meditation -- he had become like a flower; twelve years of austerity -- he had become absolutely pure. No desire, no thought, no goal, no purpose existed for him. He was as innocent as possible... not even a child is so innocent. His beautiful face, his clear, skyblue eyes.... This young man started feeling compassion for him -- sooner or later his head would be cut off. The moment he felt this compassion, unknown doors opened, and something absolutely unknown started filling his heart. He felt so blissful. All over his inner being flowers started falling. He felt so blissful... he had never known this bliss, this beautitude, this benediction.

Then he started making wrong moves knowingly, because the thought came to his mind, "If I am killed nothing is disturbed; I have nothing of worth. But if this monk is killed something beautiful will be destroyed; but for me, just a useless existence...." He started making wrong movements consciously, to make the monk win. At that moment the master upturned the table, started laughing and said, "Nobody is going to be defeated here. You both have won."
This monk was already in heaven, he was rich; no need to cut off his head. He was not troubled at all when the master said, "Your head is to be cut off." Not a single thought arose in his mind. There was no question of choice -- if the master says it is going to be so, it is okay. He said yes with his whole heart. That was why there was no perspiration, no trembling. He was playing chess; death was not a problem.
And the master said, "You have won, and your victory has been greater than this monk's. Now I will initiate you. You can be here, and soon you will be enlightened."
Both basic things had happened: meditation and compassion. Buddha has called these two the basic: pragya and karuna, meditation and compassion.
The young man said, "Explain it to me. Something has happened I don't know about. I am already transformed; I am not the same young man who came to you a few hours ago. That man is already dead. Something has happened -- you have done a miracle."

drawing by DeepaThe master said, "Because death was so imminent, you couldn't think, thoughts stopped. Death was so close by, thinking was impossible. Death was so near, there was no gap between you and death, and thoughts need space to move. There was no space, so thinking stopped. Meditation happened spontaneously. But that was not enough, because that type of meditation which happens because of emergency will be lost; when the emergency is gone that meditation will be lost. So I couldn't throw the board at that moment, I had to wait."
If meditation really happens, whatsoever the cause, compassion has to follow. Compassion is the flowering of meditation. If compassion is not coming, your meditation is, somewhere, wrong.

Then I looked at your face. You were filled with bliss and your eyes became buddhalike. You looked at the monk, and you felt and you thought, "It is better to sacrifice myself than this monk. This monk is more valuable than me."
This is compassion -- when the other becomes more valuable than you. This is love -- when you can sacrifice yourself for the other. When you become the means and the other becomes the end, this is love. When you are the end and the other is used as a means, this is lust. Lust is always cunning and love is always compassionate.
"Then I saw in your eyes the compassion arising, and then you started to make wrong movements just to be defeated, so that you would be killed and this monk saved. At that moment I had to throw the board. You had won. Now you can be here. I have taught you both meditation and compassion. Now follow this track, and let them become spontaneous in you -- not situational, not depending on any emergency, but just a quality of your being."

The Dividing Mind-"Every last one of us thinks we are right"

"Every last one of us thinks we are right" -

The Dividing Mind

Our mind has an amazing ability to split itself. The effect of this on the seeker of self-knowledge is to lead him about in endless circles of egos, never getting a true look at himself. "The world is divided into people who think they are right" also applies to the world inside our heads. The ego has to maintain this position of being right, or the center of the universe, in order to keep its position as the unquestioned 'I'. It accomplishes this by splitting into different roles. This is the Ego1-Ego 2 game, in which the main ego, or Ego 1, creates a scapegoat, Ego 2, on which to place all negative aspects about itself. It cannot be wrong and maintain its absolute rule, so when the facts speak otherwise, Ego 2 becomes the culprit. The variations of this are legion. Thus, a ceaseless internal conflict is perpetuated and any attempt to go within is effectively blocked. And we wonder why the unexamined life is misery.

This process is started long before memory, when the parents use this same escape mechanism on their children. The parent keeps its attention away from its own negative aspects by using the child as Ego 2. The child is then taught the trick, growing up using this mind-splitting to remain 'right' regardless of the facts of its own behavior or thoughts. The voice of the parent will remain in them, goading them to create their own endless versions of Ego 2 as facets of their personality, to be planted eventually in children of their own.

This process can be seen most clearly in extreme cases where either trauma or frustration reached such a level as to cause the mind to escape by creating another 'person' complete with its own world. In cases of trauma so intense as to be completely unacceptable, the mind may create a new, safe personality and forget the former one which was subject to the traumatic event. All conscious connection with the traumatic event is thus lost. In cases of frustration or extreme boredom, the mind may compensate by creating a grandiose paradigm in which to reside, where it lives in inner fantasy to escape the 'average' existence of the fact state. The ego cannot tolerate 'average'. "Always remember your unique, just like everyone else." In either case, the mind has succeeded in creating a refuge where it can remain 'right'. This is all simply a mechanism of nature to insure that the individuals of the species do not self-terminate prematurely. The sad part is our ignorance of it all, and our continuing identification with the mind's creations. We are not very good at observing ourselves, but most excellent at creating new 'selves' and their worlds.

If we come to the point where no fantasy will do the trick, however grandiose or safe, and where we begin to see we are not 'right' or 'wrong' but simply ignorant, we may begin to yearn for something more than the ego can provide. The Inner Self is continually trying to draw our attention to how we fool ourselves, and relentlessly showing us how to get back in touch with the facts. This is an inner process to which we have a right and need, and with which we can reconnect. It lies beyond the ego-centric position, and comes about when we start to observe ourselves rather than create or visualize 'selves' we then identify with, in either a positive or negative manner. The adage "know thyself" now has new meaning. It does not say "if you don't like what's happening, but wish to stay identified with the manifest, create a new 'you' ". Learning to observe, or listen, takes courage and patience but leads to an amazing situation. You become everything when you are not anything. There are many techniques that can help us learn to listen. In the quiet of a mind at peace, the tools of dream interpretation, intense self-analysis, group confrontation, time alone in contemplation, and even life itself can teach the earnest seeker what he is not, and how to re-establish contact with the Inner Self. Listen with attentiveness; the Inner Self may be heard above and beyond the mind-splitting clamor and dis-ease of the ego and its creations.

Bob Fergeson

Lead me from dreaming to waking.
Lead me from opacity to clarity.
Lead me from the complicated to the simple.
Lead me from the obscure to the obvious.
Lead me from intention to attention.
Lead me from what I'm told I am to what I see I am.
Lead me from confrontation to wide openness.
Lead me to the place I never left,
Where there is peace, and peace
- The Upanishads

Interview with Ma Tsu

Interview with Ma Tsu

Hui Hai as a young man traveled to the monastery of the renowned Ch'an Master Ma Tsu (d. 788) and had the following first interview:

Ma Tsu: What do you hope to gain by coming here?
Hui Hai: I have come seeking the Buddha-Dharma [the way to Truth].
Ma Tsu: Instead of looking to the treasure house which is your very own, you have left home and gone wandering far away. What for?....
Hui Hai: Please tell me to what you alluded when you spoke of a treasure house of my own.
Ma Tsu: That which asked the question is your treasure house. It contains absolutely everything you need and lacks nothing at all. It is there for you to use freely, so why this vain search for something outside yourself?

From Blofeld's commentary on the Hui Hai Treatise:

"An important technique aimed at that perfect mind-control by which the achievementless achievement is achieved is that of dhyana (here meaning ch'an-ting or sazen [sitting meditation]), whereby the mind is turned inward upon itself and the innermost recesses of our being are so well explored that we at last come face to face with that unsullied Mind which is neither yours nor mine, nor anybody else's, and yet discoverable in all of us."

The Hound of Heaven

The Buddha does not flee from men, it is men who flee the Buddha.

The Diamond Sutra

The Diamond Sutra says: "If their minds grasp the Dharma, they will still cling to the notion of an ego (a being and a life); if their minds grasp the Non-Dharma, they will still cling to the notion of an ego. Therefore we should not grasp at and hold onto the notions either of Dharma or Non-Dharma." This is holding the true Dharma. If you understand this doctrine, that is true deliverance. That, indeed, is reaching the gate of nonduality. [Hui Hai's treatise is packed with quotes. In addition to being named the Great Pearl, he could be called the Great Quoter - another similarity to Yours Truly!]

What is Awakening to the Way?

The nature of the Absolute is void and yet not void.... A sutra says: "Understand that one point and a thousand others will accordingly grow clear; misunderstand that one and ten thousand delusions will encompass you. He who holds to that one has no more problems to solve." This is the great marvelous awakening to the Way (Truth).

Can a Despised Man Find Enlightenment?

Bodhi is attainable at the very moment we make up our minds to achieve it....

Q: Do Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism really amount to one doctrine or to three?

A: Employed by men of great capacity, they are the same.... all of them spring forth from the functioning of the one self-nature.... Whether a man remains deluded or gains Illumination depends upon himself, not upon differences or similarity of doctrine.

Once a commentator on the Vimalakirti Sutra said, It is written in our sutra: "You should regard the six heretics as your teachers. After you have joined the Order, you should be misled by them and take part in their fall.... You should vilify the Buddha and destroy the Dharma. You should not belong to the Sangha and you should not attain deliverance. If you can behave like this, you may take my food."

When Subhuti, one of Buddha's disciples, knocked at Vimalakirti's door and asked for food, the Upasaka [meditator] spoke the above words. The development of a universal mind, which alone can enable them to reach their goal, is above such dualities as avoiding heretics, revering the Buddha, protecting the Dharma, joining the Order, and so forth. The six heretics are the six senses; though they constantly mislead us, we cannot get away from them to find the Absolute elsewhere. In other words, we should realize the Absolute from the very midst of relativities and contraries.

Q: Please tell us how to achieve deliverance.

A: Never having been bound, you have no need to seek deliverance. Straightforward functioning and straightforward conduct cannot be surpassed.

Q: Does this apply even to those who have yet to perceive their own nature?

A: Your not having perceived your own nature does not imply that you lack that nature. Why so? Because perception itself IS that nature....

TAT Forum

All the True Vows
by David Whyte

All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.

There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.

By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.

Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,

it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.

Remember, in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you'll find
what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke for the first time
after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late
to turn my face again.">TAT Forum: "All the True Vows
by David Whyte

All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.

There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.

By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.

Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,

it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.

Remember, in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you'll find
what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke for the first time
after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late
to turn my face again."

After the Absolute -- Chapter 7

"First, You need to want the Truth more than anything else. Not at first maybe--you might start with just a mild curiosity. But eventually, if anything is going to crack for you, you'll need a tremendous hunger for the Truth.

"There's a story of the student who asked a Zen master what it took to reach Enlightenment. The master led him into a nearby lake until they were chest deep in water, then he grabbed the student and held his head under water. At first the student didn't resist because it was the master and he figured there must be a good reason for it. But as he started to run out of air he began to struggle more and more until eventually he was fighting with everything he had to get free. Finally the master let him up and the student gasped and coughed and almost collapsed. When he got control of himself again he asked the master why he had held him under. The master said, "When you want the Truth as much as you wanted air just now, there’s no way you can miss it."

There was scattered laughter in the audience, but Rose did not smile or pause.

"Second," he continued, "you need energy. You need to become dynamic enough to do the digging and work it takes--finding the books, the teachers, the methods, and acting on the things you discover along the way. This requires a lot of energy, so you'll need to conserve what you have and use it for this purpose.

"And third, it takes commitment--a simple pledge to yourself and any God who might be listening. These are the three things. Without these, all philosophies are empty words."

Rose had yet to look at his notes. He seemed to be taking his cues from the mood of the room.

"There are no guarantees in this line of work, this business of becoming," he said. "Anyone who tells you otherwise has something he's trying to sell. The only thing I, or anyone else who's been down this road, can do is give you the benefit of his own experiences."

So Rose proceeded to do just that, recounting for the audience the stages of his life's search--the time of faith in the seminary, the pursuit of logic and science in college, the years of meditation and ascetic disciplines.

"Then," he said, "at thirty years of age I had an experience that came about as a result of none of these factors."

"Would you say, then, that you found God in your Experience?"

"You become God, yes," Rose said matter-of-factly. "Although I hesitate to use that word because it comes with a long history of childish connotations. We're not talking about a big guy with white whiskers keeping tabs on how many rules we break."

"I think of God as more of a 'Universal Mind,'" the man continued quietly.

"Well, perhaps," Rose said. "But the Absolute is beyond Universal Mind. Mind is still a dimension. You discover this by losing your own individual mind. Then you realize--because Mind is still there--that what you had all your life was not the individual mind you thought you had, but merely contact with an undifferentiated Mind dimension.

"So, yes, it’s accurate to say I found God, or became God, in the experience. But it’s also accurate to say I found nothing. There was no one there but me. You command creation, and yet you’re not operating under the illusion that you can change anything."

A tall man who had been taking notes throughout the talk raised his hand.

"Then you encountered no other intelligences during your Experience?"

"I didn't see anybody there but me. And yet, I sensed that something was helping me, maybe even guiding me--something that was just outside the picture. In fact, I sometimes think the whole experience was orchestrated for the purpose of showing me that Richard Rose the body doesn't exist."

"So you had help?" another man asked.

"Yes. I believe the whole experience was engineered. I just never got a good look at who or what was helping me. It was benevolent help, of course, but not protective. If you’re going to visit the Totality and the Void, your Holy Guardian Angel can't tell you beforehand that everything will be all right, that he'll be right there with you. No. You have to die like a dog. Die without hope. Only then can you make the personal discovery that through it all you are still observing--'I'm still here!' It wasn't until I returned that I realized something had created the Experience, even the physical conditions preceding it."

"But aren't there other systems that can bring you to the Truth without all this disaster?"

"To know death properly, a person must die."

"Then why would anyone want to pursue something like that, I mean, if they knew it meant they had to die to get there?"

"Who dies? What dies?" Rose asked, not altogether rhetorically. "Sometimes you have to plow under a city to build something more beautiful."

The room stayed silent.

"I know. Nobody looks for death," Rose continued. "I wasn't looking for death. I didn't want to find Nothingness. In fact, I always wanted to assert my individuality to the greatest degree of it's intensity."

I could hear a young woman's voice from the front row. "The whole experience doesn't sound very pleasant."

"Who said it would be?"

"I mean, its not the type of spiritual experiences I've been reading about."

"Then you're reading about lesser experiences. Enlightenment is the death of the mind. Death. You think you are dying--completely and forever. And it's good to think that because it kills the ego. When a person feels himself dying he immediately drops all his egos.

"It has to be this way. You must go through death with no hope of survival. Because you have to be truthful with yourself--all those tales about life after death could be fiction. But when you die honestly, you die with absolute despair. And that absolute despair removes the last ego you've got left--the spiritual ego that believes the individual mind is immortal.

"But then something amazing happens. After you die, you find yourself still here, observing this mess. And that observing is the secret of immortality. In fact, the only thing I think is valuable to know is that when you die, the Observer still lives.

"What I found in the Experience is that the soul of man is God. Every human being has the potential to discover this. To discover his essence, his soul. And in the act of discovery one becomes what he has discovered. If we were nothing more than the projected illusion we call 'me,' at death we would go out like a candle.

A student sitting on the steps in the aisle raised his hand.

"Where did the soul of man come from?" he asked.

"Does it have to come from something? Couldn't it just be? It is."

"If the soul of man can just be, why can't we just be? Why all this effort?"

"Because we are not the soul of man," Rose said, suddenly animated. "We are not the soul of man! We are shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. Each individual on this planet has the potential to find his soul, to become a soul. But you are not a soul until you discover yourself, your True Self. And yet it is also accurate to say that what you are is a soul. You don't have a soul, you are a soul. What you have is a projected body-mind unit that operates in the vicinity of the soul that is observing your fictional life.

"But you will not gain immortality by listening to me or anyone else try to explain this, or by believing me or anyone else. The only immortality possible is to become fully identified with the soul--the Observer, your True Self--before your body dies. Then you will not die with the body. In traditional Zen this is expressed with the saying, 'If you die before you die, then when you die you will not die.'"

"But you said you found Nothingness."

"Yes, but a person can't conceive of Nothingness. In the Experience, you don't think of Nothingness. Nothingness descends upon you."

"Isn't that oblivion?"

"Nothingness is not oblivion. I don't think anyone really finds oblivion at death. Certain people--purely instinctive people who are living a basic animal existence--might descend into blackness for a period. But for how long, I don't know.

"Death is different for each person, then?"

"Absolutely. If everyone found the same thing at death--if your actions on earth had no effect on your situation after death--then there wouldn't be much point in me talking."

"So what will it be like for you?"

Rose smiled. "My life is no longer tied to this planet. This place is a stage, and when you leave, you turn out the lights."

There was a long pause before the next question.

"Don't you believe in reincarnation, Mister Rose?" The speaker was an attractive middle-aged woman.

"I don't believe it or disbelieve it. I've got no proof either way. I may have been here before, but I have no memory of it. What I've noticed, though, is that the people who push reincarnation the hardest are generally using it as an excuse to keep from putting out any spiritual effort in this lifetime.

"I will say that as an explanation for human suffering and the inequities you see in society, reincarnation is a more easily digestible system to the human intellect than the concept of 'one chance then heaven or hell forever.' But just because it's more digestible doesn't mean it's true. In fact, the more palatable an explanation for things is, the more likely it is that it's been created out of the wishful mind of man.

"Besides," he added, turning back to the woman who asked the question, "if people do come back, it's only because they don't realize they could just stay dead and be a lot better off. In their ignorance they feel somehow compelled to continue to play the game, to go back on stage."

A young man directly in front of me raised his hand and Rose nodded in his direction.

"What is it like to come back, Mister Rose?" he asked. "Is the world different, or do you leave the Experience behind?"

"The world is never the same again. For me now, it's like I'm an insane man watching all this. Of course that's a very liberating state to be in," he said with a grin. "An insane man is free to do all sorts of insane things."

The laughter provided a welcome break from the seriousness. The whole room seemed to loosen up, including Rose.

"It was pretty rough at first, though. The night I came back I couldn't stop weeping. I just wandered the streets crying uncontrollably, looking for a bridge high enough to jump off of. Seriously. I didn't want to live. I couldn't stand the thought of being back here in the nightmare. The only reason I didn't jump is the rivers are shallow out there and I was afraid I'd just get stuck in the mud.

"Then I passed a church and that gave me hope. I figured that priests spend their lives looking, maybe one of them has read something about what just happened to me. So I knocked on the door. This blob of a priest with an enormous gut answers and he looks at me like I'm some kind of worm. I knew he wasn't going to be any help, so I asked him, 'Are there any older priests around?' There I am, standing on the church steps with tears streaming down my cheeks and he doesn’t even invite me in. He just scowls at me and says, 'How long has it been since you've been to confession.'

"And I thought, 'Where's my gun?'" Rose continued talking through the laughter. "Really. I wanted to shoot the bastard. But the anger was good. It helped bring me out of it. It helped me stop weeping.

"Gradually, the worst of the trauma passed and I started drifting back into life again. But I still felt terribly out of place in a world that I knew without a shadow of a doubt was an illusion--having just visited the real place. For several weeks people were transparent to me. I mean literally transparent--I could see right through their bodies.

"So I figured I'd better head back home, because I still wasn't too stable. I had an old friend living in Alliance, Ohio, and he got me a job at the place he was working. That's when everything became beautiful to me. Hills were once more hills, valleys once more valleys. Children looked like baby dolls. The starkness of the Absolute I had visited now made life and motion appear as beauty to me. Those months following my Experience were the happiest of my life, except maybe for the years of peace and bliss I had in my twenties when I was living a very ascetic lifestyle.

"Every day I'd come back to my room after work and sit down in front of the typewriter. I'd given up on trying to talk about the Experience--you just can't describe an Absolute condition using relative terms--but I had hoped to write a book of poetry and at least try to capture the beauty of the illusion I'd been forced to come back to. Most of it I tore up as soon as I wrote it. But then one day something came over me and I was able to write about my Experience. That’s when I wrote ‘The Three Books of the Absolute.’

"It was like automatic writing," Rose continued. "The words just appeared on the page."

A hand was raised near the front of the room. "Do you think your years of asceticism brought about your Experience?"

"Not really. It was like a period of adolescence on the way to adulthood. Necessary, but not directly causal. However, I do think that all that experimentation, investigation, and especially conservation of my energy, was definitely part of the preparation for my Experience."

"What's the other part?"

"The main preparation for Enlightenment is trauma. But you don't need to engage in any special disciplines to induce it. Your life will give you plenty of trauma whether you're on a spiritual path or not. Indulge in it while you can. You'll have plenty of peace in the marble orchard--maybe." Rose laughed in a way that made me uneasy.

"What I mean is," he continued, "you have to go through these traumas in life--now, while you're on Earth--in order to improve your situation after death. Everyone may be immortal, but we don't all go to the same place when we die. Awareness may not terminate for anyone, but you can't expect to advance into a dimension that you haven't mentally vaccinated yourself to beforehand. If the average mind--with its convictions and limitations--landed in an Absolute dimension, it would think it was either in oblivion or hell."

"Will a person who’s been doing spiritual practices, like meditating regularly, get a foreshadowing of what you finally experienced?"

"No. This does not accrue gradually. It happens suddenly and is never anything like you might imagine beforehand. I always thought a spiritual experience would be sheer beauty. I had visions of reaching some beautiful fields of flowers or God knows what. And the fact that I found something so utterly devastating and contrary to my desires convinced me that the experience was genuine, and not the product of wishful thinking.

"It's the effort you put forth--the vector you create--that propels you into this, not an accumulation of knowledge. You're engaged in a relentless pursuit of Truth, yes, but even in the midst of it you suspect that you are incapable of perceiving the Truth. So you engage in the obsessive pursuit of a goal while simultaneously believing you will never be successful. You live this! A person on the spiritual path lives this every moment of every day of his life. You push and push and push without hope. And then, no words or logic can explain what finally happens. It's an explosion. Your being changes."

"But doesn't the wisdom you acquire on your search coalesce in Enlightenment?"

"No," Rose said flatly. "That is not the path. You can't acquire wisdom because you don't know what it is. The path is subtractive. You keep sorting through the garbage pile to see if something real lies underneath it. And after you get done subtracting everything, what's left is an Absolute condition. That's what's real, not the little bits and pieces you set aside because you thought they were true along the way. You don't know anything until you know Everything."

"Do you think other people have had the same type of experience you did?"

"Oh yes, I know that now. But after my Experience I felt completely isolated. It wasn't until years later that I found out about other spiritual incidents. I was in Steubenville, Ohio--we had a little group that met there--and after one of the meetings a woman handed me a copy of Richard Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness." When I read it I knew I wasn’t alone.

"But cosmic consciousness isn't the final experience," Rose continued. "The people in Bucke's book describe an experience where they understand the harmonious interworkings of everything in the universe. They see lights and experience bliss, and so on. This is wonderful. But experiencing the Absolute goes beyond all that. In the Absolute there is no bliss or sorrow."

The land of the wise men

What Have We Lost?

What Have We Lost?
by Bob Fergeson

"When Freud coined the phrase that the ego was 'the true seat
of anxiety,' he was giving voice to a very true and profound intuition."
~ C.G. Jung, Psychological Commentary, Tibetan Book of the Dead

We come into this life complete unto Ourselves. Helpless in body and mind, and a bit forgetful perhaps, but still possessing faith in our Self-sufficiency. As we begin to look around us at the fascinating play of form and feeling, we slowly begin to lose our innocent Self-absorption and begin to be seduced into the present dimension. We can't help it, being terribly naive and still somewhat innocent (though carrying an unconscious package deep inside, the basis for our arrival here in the bardo of life). This regretfully changes, as we are soon permeated with an unseen fog-like state of mind we inherit from our newly chosen home environment. Constantly battered by moods and emotions we do not understand and cannot question, we find ourselves facing a daily onslaught of conflict and stress, followed by relief and pleasure, all designed to hook our attention in the outer world. The unconscious tendencies we have waiting patiently inside soon enough find their counterparts in the willing environment. Our mind is eventually set in concrete by the pattern of action-reaction with the world as we have encountered it, leaving little freedom of movement. We become hopelessly outer-oriented. With every passing year, the pattern becomes more fixed, and we ourselves become more convinced that the solution lies in more of the same. More control, more action-reaction, more identification, until we finally conquer and become master of the very environment that made us, or so we think. As someone once pointed out, this a good working definition of insanity. But here we are.

We have become hypnotized by the world. Our mind, and the minds of those who taught us from birth, have convinced us that we are an individual, a separate "thing" in a world of separated things. This sooner or later creates the unquestioned, complete identification with this illusory "thing," this knot between the sentient Self and the world. This knot is called ego, nebulous at best, though it calls itself "I." Because we have transferred our very sense of being into something unreal, which must be continually created and enforced, we feel an underlying anxiety, a longing for something, something stable and inherently self-sufficient. We, as ego, mistakenly transform this anxiety into a hope and belief in fear and desire, and we turn again and again to the world for the solution to our own mind-made problem. The Tibetan Book of the Dead gives us a hint at how serious this transference of meaning from the real to the unreal can be. Death of the body may not break the spell. Even in our dreams and fantasies, we are continually wandering, looking for safety and fulfillment in ego-building and unquestioned belief in our desires and fears. We have lost our Selves, and can only react to the creations of our own now desperate minds.

As we continue through life, becoming more and more engrossed, our thoughts and actions reinforce themselves and the driving forces behind them, leaving less and less chance for any meaningful change. Just as in the world of the after-death Bardos, where at every step of the way the mind becomes more and more sensually oriented, more and more emotionally strident and confused, where in desperation, the wanderer eventually returns to life and the world of bodies and things in order to manifest its unconscious fears and desires, so is it also in this life. We wander from one game of desire to another, encouraged by success and pleasure, and driven by fear and our growing anxiety: the carrot and the stick that deny us any rest. We become obsessed with our health and possessions, and when faced with death, will do anything for even one more week of existence. We continue to turn towards life, bodies, and emotional highs and lows, making the same mistakes over and over, never guessing that the solution lies within, not in the manic, repetitious attempt to control the outer environment.

The world is change. Any hiding place or fortification we crawl into, or pleasure palace we build, will fail us, someday. All form is subject to this never-ceasing change. Only in the Formless can we find the road Home. This wandering from bardo to bardo, dream to dream, gives no peace or true understanding. The true cure for our anxiety and longing is the death of the ego, not the body. We have lost our connection to our Inner Self, not some thing, or some needed control over things. Instead, with non-attachment and great attention, look at the world, at the little life you think you love and hate so much, and at your anxious fear of it, at your coming death. Question everything, especially your self. Then, hopefully this dream of existence will be seen for what it is: a never-ending play of form upon emotion, a wandering through desire and fear that never ceases. Turn your attention back to your Source, to the Love within, and find peace for the wanderer, the lost traveler in the endless bardos of life, death, and dreams

Sacred Places: Tree Of Knowledge Can Liberate You

Sacred Places: Tree Of Knowledge Can Liberate You




Siddhartha Gautam roamed in search of the secret of sorrow and suffering. At Gaya, a village on the banks of the river Niranjana in Bihar, he sat in silent contemplation under a banyan tree.



He attained enlightenment there, and became known as the Buddha. The spot began to be referred to as the Throne of Wisdom, and the banyan tree is now known as the Eternal Wisdom Tree, the Akshaya Bodhibriksha .



The tree stands for inexhaustible life, and is therefore a symbol of immortality. With its roots underground and branches rising to the sky it symbolises heavenward ascension.



The branches that hang down to take root in the ground symbolise the continuing support of merit through earnest devotion.



In ancient India the acharya and his disciples would sit together under a tree, mostly a banyan tree, and endlessly discuss the mysteries of the universe.



The Upanishads emerged from such disputations. In Shankaracharya's Hymn to Dakshinamurti , the following verse describes this tradition: "I bow down to Dakshinamurti, the Teacher of the three worlds, who, seated on the ground under the banyan tree, grants knowledge to all the learned sages who have assembled around him. How strange! The assembled disciples were all aged, and the guru was young. The Guru's sermon was conveyed through his silence, and all doubts of the disciples were cleared up."



Ultimate wisdom is be-yond the reach of mind and speech. Yamaraj explains to Nachiketa in the Kathopanishad: "This atma is not realised through long lectures nor through intellectual effort nor through listening to many sermons."



The Buddha experienced the truth of this saying in his own experiments. The Truth dawned upon him in silent contemplation on the Throne of Wisdom under the eternal Tree of Wisdom.



To western travellers, however, the banyan appeared as a tree shrouded in dark mystery. Pliny, Raleigh and others have commented on the evil nature of the tree. Thus, for them, "the proliferating tree is a tree of error... As this tree, so did man grow straight and upright towards God until such time as he had transgressed and broken the Commandment of his Creator. And like unto the boughs of this tree, he began to bend downwards, and toward the earth, which all the rest of Adam's posterity have done, rooting themselves and fastening themselves to this corrupt world." After the Fall, as Milton described in Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve tried to hide their guilt and shame "under a pillared shade, high overarched, and echoing walks between".



The tree is still echoing the warning: You grow straight and upright until such time as you transgress the limits prescribed for you. As soon as you transgress, you begin to bend downwards rooting yourself in corruption. Like the banyan, the peepal tree ashwattha (that which does not last till tomorrow), also represents a great truth in the Indian tradition.



The Gita (XV.1-4) says: "They speak of a Cosmic Tree. It is the ever-changing tree of the phenomenal world. Its roots go up, and its branches go down. He who knows it is a man of knowledge. Its form is not visible here, neither its end, nor origin, nor its basis. After cutting down the firmly fixed tree by the mighty sword of non-attachment, one attains the goal from which there is no return."



This idea of the cosmic tree is found in several other traditions also. For the Hebrew tradition states that the Tree of Life spreads downwards from above, and is entirely bathed in the light of the sun. Dante too portrays the pattern of the celestial spheres as the foliage of a tree whose roots (origin) spread upwards.

Monkey stuff..are you a monkey?

MONDAY, Aug. 15 (HealthDay News) -- In recent studies, scientists tracked the behaviors of shoppers and investors as they spent money snapping up things on sale or investing in low-risk transactions.

And when these same consumers noticed that one shopper was getting a special deal, they reacted in a very human way: by flinging their money back in the seller's face in a righteous show of anger.

But these study subjects weren't human -- they were a troop of capuchin monkeys, native to the jungles of South America.

Scientists say the capuchins' "animal behavioral economics" are bringing new insights to everything from the stock market to the tit-for-tat reciprocity of daily human life.

"You can't explain everything that happens in economics by market forces -- you have to look at the human animal. And as soon as you look at the human animal, you notice that we have a lot in common with other animals, too," said Frans de Waal, a professor of psychology at Emory University and director of the Living Links Center at Emory's Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

Until fairly recently, economists believed the marketplace worked on a simple principle: everyone was out to maximize their own personal gain. But that theory doesn't quite fit with reality, according to Yale University primate researcher and professor of psychology Laurie Santos.

"For example, there's the curious problem of why humans don't put as much money into stocks as they do into bonds," she said. Over the long-term, stocks always outperform bonds, even though short-term dips in an individual stock's value are common. With stocks "you're more likely to look in your portfolio and say 'Oh, I lost $1,000 this month' -- even though you still make more money over the course of a year than you would with bonds," Santos said.

So why don't humans make the rational choice and play the stock market more?

The answer lies in the "reference point" -- an irrational habit that humans have of gauging economic performance against what happened yesterday or last month, or by the type of success or failure a neighbor might be having. Many economists have suggested that this illogical tendency is simply a product of human society, easily changed.

"Is this really the case?" Santos wondered. "Or is it something that's much more deeply ingrained?"

She turned to our primate cousins for help.

Working with a group of capuchins in her Yale lab, Santos and her colleagues first spent a few weeks training them to the concept of "money" -- in this case aluminum tokens that were exchangeable for food. "Even though we trained them, the monkeys spontaneously understood on their own that the market was 'fungible' -- that they could buy anything with the token -- grapes, apples, whatever was offered," she noted.

What's more, they also spontaneously latched on to the simple rules that drive the human marketplace. For example, if the researchers started swapping a token for one piece of apple but two grapes (essentially a "50 Percent Off All Grapes!" sale) the monkeys immediately chose to spend their money where it bought the most -- grapes. "It's what an economist calls a 'shift in consumption,'" Santos said.

The capuchins were also in tune with the "reference point." In one experiment, monkeys were given two options in spending their token: one researcher who offered just one piece of apple but sometimes rewarded the monkey with a "bonus" second piece; or a second researcher who initially showed the monkey two pieces but sometimes delivered just one apple slice in exchange for the token.

Either way, it was a gamble: the monkey was guaranteed at least one slice -- but might get two.

However, the capuchins overwhelmingly rejected transacting with the researcher who presented them with the two apple slices. The reason? "If they think they are going to get two pieces of apple, one piece just doesn't seem that great," Santos said. "But if they think they are going to get one piece, then getting two pieces seems really awesome."

This behavior -- a disproportionate fear of loss versus gain -- is exactly the reason humans prefer bonds to more lucrative stocks, she said. Her team plans to publish the study results soon.

Experiments conducted at the Yerkes lab and published in 2003 in Nature were even more intriguing.

A team led by Dr. Sarah Brosnan found that capuchins quickly understood that humans would accept pebbles (money) in exchange for cucumber slices. Monkeys swapped pebbles for cucumbers happily. Then, one day, a researcher suddenly rewarded just one of the monkeys with grapes -- a much more desirable commodity.

The result was pandemonium, de Waal explained. All of the monkeys who had not received the grape "suddenly got very agitated, they got obviously mad at us, the experimenter, the situation." The capuchins essentially went on strike, hurling both pebbles and cucumber slices -- which they had been greedily munching just a minute before -- out of the test chamber.

According to de Waal, this type of "outrage" against apparent inequalities in the marketplace influences human financial dealings every day. "It's irrational, and the monkeys were showing a similar irrationality -- of course a piece of cucumber is better than no piece of cucumber. But when a neighbor gets grapes, the cucumber is rejected," he said.

The capuchins are highly social animals, but it's pretty clear they're not acting from a sense of social injustice. "They don't understand the long-range implications for themselves, their society or their position. But in the same way, we probably don't either, most of the time," de Waal said.

Among capuchins and humans alike, the resentment primates feel when they think they are getting less than their neighbor is, "does, in the long run, have an effect on the level of cooperation you get from others," he said. "You're making sure that you get the right amount of reward for the right effort."

In the end, then, the capuchin studies suggest that "irrational" human economic behaviors may have logical roots in our evolution as highly social animals.

According to Santos, "It suggests that to really convince people to overcome these biases, we may have to dig a little deeper before we can get them to behave a little more rationally on their own."