one of the things that has changed in me is that i have begun to fall in love with the universe
and it's hard to talk about that
let me uh read to you two poems this first one is by a buddhist monk named Thich Nhat Hanh
very beautiful monk i won't read the whole thing
i am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond i am also the grass snake who approaching
in silence feeds itself on the frog i am the child in uganda all skin and bones my legs
as thin as bamboo sticks i am also the merchant of arms selling deadly weapons to uganda i am
the 12 year old girl refugee in a small boat who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by
a sea pirate i am also the pirate my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving my joy is like spring
so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life my pain is like a river of tears
so full it fills up all the four oceans please call me by my correct names so that i can hear
at the same time all my cries and my laughs so that i could see that my joy and pain are but one
please call me by my correct names
so that i could become awake so the door of my heart be left open the door of compassion
all my names
the quality of love has no boundaries there's no other in love there is us
at one level and at the deeper level there is only i we are merged in love call me by my true names
the other quote is uh still in dualism but it's on the edge it's a quote from the poet kabir
since the day when i met with my lord there has been no end to the sport of our love
i see with eyes open and smile and behold his beauty everywhere i utter his name and whatever i
see it reminds me of him whatever i do it becomes his worship wherever i go
i remove round him all i achieve is his service when i lie down i lie prostrate at his feet
whether i rise or sit down i can never forget him for the rhythm of his music beats in my ears
now
in the states of awareness where you see there is one
there are no boundaries there are no separateness
and then as that one starts to come into form as separate
you look at these separate forms it has taken
with a quality of awe and wonder when you're looking from there
when you're looking from the point between what's called the form and the formless right at the edge
and you look down at form or out at form or upward form i don't there's no direction you look at form
you see the absolute ah awful beauty of form and you see as plato talks about it the law
the law that you appreciate as what you call god oftentimes is just all
form in law it's all lawfully related it's called the dao in chinese the way of things
it's the way in which all forms are related to all other forms and you look and you see it's
perfect you can look in physics or chemistry or astronomy or astrology or psychology or music or
wherever you look you begin to see that forms are related all to all other forms all in lawful ways
it gets interesting when you get down to quarks and things like that but
everything above that it looks pretty wrong
and there is an interesting term when you look at
the way in which those things are all lawfully related you say it's perfect
my guru in india used to say to me ram das don't you see it's all perfect i'd say perfect perfect
what about bangladesh what about africa what about tyranny what about violence what about greed
don't you see it's all perfect can't you step back for a moment from your humanity to see
the way of things can't you see the way it's all lawfully unfolding the question is have
you the courage to see what you're seeing or does it seem to take away your humanity
because when you look and you say it's all perfect
the problem is it's so impersonal somebody falls down in front of you and you say karma
see there's no warmth to it but if you come down into your human heart the pain is unbearable
because there is so much suffering everywhere
and you look and that there's rape and there's child molestation and there's ecological
insensitivity and there's tyranny and there's terrorism and there's which one is at first
starving the homeless that who is it where's where does your heart go first and what most people do
is they close their heart down and they armor it to protect it from the immense amount of suffering
they armor it with their mind with thoughts with a web or a net or a veil of thought that
armors the heart so that they don't get hurt and overwhelmed by the immensity of the suffering
because you know how when your child hurts you give anything and the quality of the heart is
the heart has no boundaries my heart goes out to you is the expression the heart will give
the heart doesn't know boundaries the mind knows the boundaries the heart says here take
my automobile take my apartment take anything the mind saying now wait a minute be reasonable
and there is an interesting dialogue that goes on within us and so this armoring protects not
only our hearts from the amount of suffering outside but it protects our separateness from
our heart which would give away our separateness it would give away everything give away everything
and so the interesting question is how do you keep your heart open in health
and what does it mean to be in love with the world and what does it mean in action what do you do
the answer lies again in the statement at least the answer that i have found thus far
that there's nowhere to stand that if you stand only in your humanity it's unbearable
if you stand in the area of perfection it's impersonal if you get them both going at once
it is the root of what i understand true compassion to be a lie about
it is something where unlike job which questions god at some point you do what you do because your
human heart hurts and you want to do what you can to relieve the suffering of the people you love
and at the same moment there's not a flicker in you as to it is all as it must be
i work with aids patients now i do a lot of work with aids patients and a fellow calls
me and he just found he has aids and he was a law student and all of his plans have now gone
awry and his whole life has changed and he's frightened and my heart my human heart cries with
him and so he hears there's a fellow human heart that's empathizing with him at the same moment
there's another part of me that's just looking at the universe as it is and saying yes and this too
and this too he has a new curriculum now
this is heavy work for his soul he's going to do new work in terms of awakening
because when you look at individuals from the level of soul or awareness or spiritual entities
you see the entire earth plane and all the personality and all the physical things and
the death and sickness and illness and all of it you see it all as the curriculum of the soul
when you look at it from the personality point of view it's horrible
and that seems so unfair and suffering seems so cruel
and for you to hear the term suffering is grace not that you would ask for it
but that when it comes your way you work with it you work with it as part of your spiritual journey
of awakening because the only reason anybody suffers is because of the clinging of their mind
starvation is just a certain set of pangs the fact that you suffer when you starve
is because of the mind's identification with the separateness
when ramana maharshi the great saint in india was dying and his devotees were crying bhagwan
bhagwan don't leave us don't leave us he said don't be silly where could i go
i'm just dropping my body it's no big deal
you have that level of awareness then the whole meaning of suffering changes
and all suffering is showing you is where your mind is still clinging
to pull your awareness back from your the time-binding nature of mind
allows you to be fully here
to be fully here am i happy
yes i'm happy i'm happy because it's spring i'm happy because people are having babies that are
bringing joy into their lives i'm happy because flowers are blooming i'm happy for a myriad reason
am i sad yes i am sad because every 45 seconds a child is dying needlessly from hunger
i'm sad because there is so much inhumanity among humans to each other and to other species
i'm sad because there's so much fear in this moment i am both happy and sad as long as you
try to stay in the world of polarities happy sad dark light positive negative good evil
you cannot experience the richness of the moment the richness of the moment is the one
that lies just behind the two
you