Lovingkindness

When love is drawn from its totality and applied in action there is no longer an abstractness to philosophize about.  Even kindness alone finds its limitation in one’s own self-identification and its "demand" upon oneself or upon others to necessarily "show" that toward everyone.

Lovingkindness draws its impulse and its power from love, imbuing kindness with a release from self in the fuller expression of one’s true nature.

The source of that nature is love, and ever was love.  The source drives the force of action, and guides it all, as does Krishna the chariot of Arjuna on the battlefield.

If I acknowledge myself to be a mere drop of water, then it's a matter of course that I draw something from a river current which is constant, which has no beginning or end.  And that river has its source in the sea, in the ocean by whichever name – likewise, wending its way through life’s terrains, gathering and losing and being wet, returning to that sea or that ocean by whatever name.

So neither orthodox nor heretic, nor the zealous fundamentalist nor the atheist, need impress me in the least; for, it not being "about me" I can concern myself with the source, practice lovingkindness without "being right" or "expecting" tolerance from anyone at all.  It is one of the sincerest proofs of real independence, if it is anything.

Lovingkindness is not developing a head in the clouds but a head on your shoulders, with two eyes focused straight ahead on the living being right in front of you, and a full-bodied love pouring from the heart getting you wet and everyone in proximity to you.  Wet with light.  It doesn't "belong" to you, so you don't have to sweat "owning" it or "proving anything.  Even proximity is but as limited as your own imagination.

My beloved friend Joe Miller often said, "what is needed are three things: common sense, a sense of humor, and more common sense."

This in turn cultivates a real and authentic generosity.

Spending more time with that source, rather than eating up one's valuable time and energy over "being right" or "expecting kindness" or spouting "tolerance", would profit the very depth of anyone actively appreciating the precious opportunities one's own life has presented one without going out and looking for anything to "confirm" one's self-identity.

And one would find more confidence in prayer, if one cared to discover the value in that.

Lovingkindness is not collecting clothes or money, or dragging care packages all over - one may do that of course, it's alright.  When the Beloved Embodiment in my life, of relying on the source, first communicated to me in three simple instructions:  love everyone, serve (or feed) everyone, remember God - that "serving" meant being conscious toward all and that "feeding" meant nourishing.  Food and goods are but forms of nourishment.  Christ said there is water from which to drink, by which none shall ever after know thirst.  And that by immersing in the source, streams of living water will flow from your belly.

It is also lovingkindness to take a stand, to hold the unpopular position, to not shrink from battle when faced with the gravest challenge on the field of endeavor from the very forces who are not bringing with them any manner of lovingkindness.

It behoves one to probe what taking Human form is about.

Transcendent Generosity

 

To restrict generosity to what your coffers can or cannot offer, is to miss Buddha's intent, by measuring oneself against the many noble philanthropists who have given from their coffers.

That is one kind of expression of generosity.  There are others.  And each manner of generosity is but a manner - the actual practice of any or another will increase the capacity for practicing generosity - according to that manner.

Karuna:  compassion, lovingkindness, a sovereign love - these both are, and give more possibility for, more generosity.  "I'm doing" or "I'm not" or "I can't" - are all assertions of ego.

There is generosity of time, or of thought or feeling, of visualisation, of word, of action - in breadth and in depth.  This is to be meditated on.  This is what is meant.  This generosity is conscious and intelligent, genuinely free of idiot-naive generosity, free of shoulds or musts, free of  trendy "tolerance"-peddling, or of any cult of political correctness.  Real generosity is sovereign in nature, an authentic expression of one's basic sanity, of Heart-Mind.

It is found and cultivated in stillness - not the deadening of thought but its enlivening through the discipline of first studying one's own mind.  There is no judgement here, just objective observation and reflection.  Concerning generosity with material wealth, however vast and impressive or comparatively humble: motives objectively considered reveal the inherent nature behind it.  It's not that generosity is in itself "wrong" - the reference point directing it may however be decidedly conscious or unconscious.  Some acts of generosity are driven by notions of compensation, or of guilt, or of control and domination, or of recognition and reputation, or tax benefits, or of a duty.  It can generate a good feeling or feeling of goodness, of being good, doing good.  It can also generate joy, enhance lovingkindness.

To differentiate and exercise discriminating wisdom, generosity is for meditation, in this one studies one's mind and what is moving it.  Real altruism is All-True or it is nothing.

Generosity toward strangers without or at the expense of one's person, or of one's family - or in the case of a head of State: at the disastrous cost of one's people and nation - is the neurotic and irresponsible experiment of a manipulative ego with issues.

Helper-Syndrome has nothing to do with generosity, yet always uses this as a cover for this destructive behavior.  There is no self-image in real generosity, there are no deals.  So if you build a huge clinic which becomes an institution of standing, you build it.  If you give your last dollar to someone in need, you give it.  There is already a law of reciprocation, you needn't look for any.  One needn't stack "points" - generosity comes from an inner wealth, not an inner poverty.

In meditating on this one expands toward oneself, toward those near, and those loved.  This cultivates the feeling and is authentic of itself.  The expansion builds outwardly toward community, toward one's own environment of sentient Beings, toward the world as one applies visualisation. It builds inwardly toward one's own past, present, future - without harboring wishes or desires in the conventional sense, just steadily cultivating lovingkindness.  It is not to deny or dismiss or belittle emotions - anger, fear, panic, concerns, preferences - it just transcends all of these.

It is not practiced according to rules or ideologies, it is the free expression and demonstration of following one's true nature.  The most generous thing one can do is to embrace and practice this, and transmit it by example to those hungering for a taste of benevolent reality.

 

Deepener of Your Faith

I am neither Jew nor Christian, nor Sikh nor Buddhist,
and neither am I Hindu nor Muslim, certainly not atheist.
I AM the Deepener of YOUR Faith. That is my job.
Concentrate and behold, give focus there, don't sob
about your uncertainty or project your conviction
on everyone else – pay attention in self-reflection!
Trust the Sun in your breast, in your belly its fire,
go there – give in to its breadth! - breathe, radiate higher
into all spheres penetrating out, out – touching hearts:
burning forth, bringing health, knowing every cell every part,
loving every dimension of each, detached and indifferent
toward being right or being wrong, toward Orient or Occident –
sloughing all identity you probe the subtle, let guide divinity...
Compassion toward past, here is reality, birthing your future – now is eternity.
You have no idea – and that is well, you don't always have to know –
your ear atuned within, your eye as well, allowing this certainty to grow;
no time wasted over heaven or hell, but empathy and lovingkindness
count for everything, and with sincerity you will know what success
tastes like when your tongue repeats the sound of breath which is the Name
which came to you in the womb of her from whom you sprang –
and has been with you from the Beginning, before Time.

There Is Not A Day Goes By

There is not a day goes by, nor a night, that the thought of my heart
is not immersed in Prayer and Presence, in concentrated lovingkindness
toward and embracing and enveloping and for the deliverence and healing:
of all victims of perpetrators and predators, of victims who later could
themselves become perpetrators, and of victims who remain victims.

Not a moment actually goes by without my holding close to my breast

in prayer and in yearning, those daughters in Nigeria

who are my own concern, and women and gays and Christians and children
throughout the abetted and vetted cultures of tyranny and violence, who are
either persecuted, terrorized, tortured, murdered or "executed" -
while Islam may have no monopoly on such outrages,

it certainly has a corner on that market.

Children who are mistreated and abused systematically, kidnapped,
sold for sex in a most unkind cult and culture of pädophilia, more widespread
and abetted than one cares to imagine - networked, as with satanic covens

(which one dare not mention);

these occupy indeed my politically powerless days of which there is not one

to which I don't dedicate hours to Prayer and Presence.
Where in Scripture is spoken of "not merely persons but

powers and principalities,"

we can speak today of lobbies, networks and tyrannies, systems of
overweening presence and power and designs on absolute control.

Therefore:  Prayer and Presence, the presence of real light,
and the prayer of faith - to fight for the light against the night, with
faith in the face of all daunting odds, of power which is of the world, of

indifference and of decadence, of sloth of heart.

Of all the tea-candles I burn in a week, the one constant is the
six-day oil candle which burns and is replaced, that this flame is
never extinguished, but burns 24/7, burns undeterred for those
who belong to ourselves, those whom we want to see free.

So for the hundreth time I am invited any reading this,

to join me in the following:

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2012/01/candle-for-farthing.html

This Little Acre

(ca. 1986/7) 

Elixir sweet is the Will refined,

      it empow'rs the personality –

      it swells from heart and stills the mind,

      ennobling our reality.

Of the Self-in-all I sing to you,

      of the joy surpassing reason;

      come sing with me of life renewed,

      come season upon season.

In the expression of hospitality

introductions are an empty gesture

for charity is in the glance.

In the lovingkindness of heart

words are few because inadequate …

for Thought molds and cultivates

the feeling and consideration of feeling.

When one is in love one is in love,

and when that is greater than all considerations

the oceanic quality of the heart

dictates all boundaries,

carrying off all that's entrusted to it

to a place solid beyond imagining,

where no rises or depressions upset the balance,

where the virgin quantity of one's innocence

and profound effervescent beauty are restored.

While we still occupy this little acre,

                                 you and I,

be like a pump and draw this ocean

into a cup, absorbing it in depth.

Sovereignty of Love

 
Lovers know neither heaven nor hell,

visit neither, seek nor avoid either

full of hope or fear.

Heaven is for egos that do good, hell is for egos that do evil.

They are only dreams of the ego, as is the ego.

The lover is not an ego, the lover is empty, effaced in the beloved,

gladly serving the actual living truth of this.

The lover reflects and embodies, channels and radiates

the Sovereignty of Love.

No ideology known to Human-kind, and no outer garment

of dress or style or appearance or exotic uniformity meant to distinguish,

can ever Be this.

The authority of love, the sovereignty and dominion of love:

concentrated and married to it internally,

manifesting it outwardly here, now and always,

establishing It, rather than an imperial church or a caliphate,

one inherits the earth.

And is good to it.

The lover only acts with lovingkindness

out of sheer love for and appreciation of the divine Being,

or of Being divine, or of life and of giving life.

There is no thought of reward for the lover,

as love is sovereign and no beggar after crumbs.

One's origin and one's destination are one and the same: light.

Sacred song is only called such and experienced so,

insofar as it introduces and projects, establishes into a space or realm

The Absolute Sovereignty of Love,

producing joy, anchored in spirit, in light, nourishing without limit

those living and departed who can receive it.

Even these words are not It.

Yet if they disturb or inspire one single mind,

or move or open one single heart . . .

it's a start.