Pamela Leavey

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Tag: Emptiness

Food For Thought: Like Swans

Those who awaken never rest in one place. Like swans, they rise and leave the lake. On the air they rise and fly an invisible course. Their food is knowledge. They live on emptiness. … They have seen how to break free. Who can follow them? ~Buddha (563 – 483 BC)
(Photo: Three Mute Swans at Joppa Flats in Newburyport, MA ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2012)

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Food For Thought: Compassion and Emptiness

I ran across this quote the other day and found there was so much to ponder…

Compassion and emptiness are two sides of the same coin.  Don’t relax your grip on compassion, and don’t let emptiness become nihilistic nothingness.  To cultivate these two in union is very important. — Rinchen Tashi of Gyalzang

Life is always such a balancing act.

(Photo: Hybrid Day Lily ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2012)

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Food For Thought

J. Krishnamurti… Energy without a center

The complete stillness of the brain is an extraordinary thing; it is highly sensitive, vigorous, fully alive, aware of every outward movement but utterly still. It is still as it is completely open, without any hindrance, without any secret wants and pursuits; it is still as there is no conflict which is essentially a state of contradiction. It is utterly still in emptiness; this emptiness is not a state of vacuum, a blankness; it is energy without a centre, without a border. Walking down the crowded street, smelly and sordid, with the buses roaring by, the brain was aware of the things about it and the body was walking along, sensitive, alive to the smells, to the dirt, to the sweating labourers but there was no centre from which watching, directing, censoring took place. During the whole of that mile and back the brain was without a movement, as thought and feeling; the body was getting tired, unaccustomed to the frightful heat and humidity though the sun had set some time ago. It was a strange phenomenon though it had happened several times before. One can never get used to any of these things for it is not a thing of habit and desire. It is always surprising, after it is over. ~~ Krishnamurti’s Notebook Part 6

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Food For Thought: Passion Without a Cause

J. Krishnamurti

In the state of passion without a cause there is intensity free of all attachment; but when passion has a cause, there is attachment, and attachment is the beginning of sorrow. Most of us are attached, we cling to a person, to a country, to a belief, to an idea, and when the object of our attachment is taken away or otherwise loses its significance, we find ourselves empty, insufficient. This emptiness we try to fill by clinging to something else, which again becomes the object of our passion.

Examine your own heart and mind. I am merely a mirror in which you are looking at yourself. If you don’t want to look, that is quite all right; but if you do want to look, then look at yourself clearly, ruthlessly, with intensity -not in the hope of dissolving your miseries, your anxieties, your sense of guilt, but in order to understand this extraordinary passion which always leads to sorrow.

When passion has a cause it becomes lust. When there is a passion for something -for a person, for an idea, for some kind of fulfillment- then out of that passion there comes contradiction, conflict, effort. You strive to achieve or maintain a particular state, or to recapture one that has been and is gone. But the passion of which I am speaking does not give rise to contradiction, conflict. It is totally unrelated to a cause, and therefore it is not an effect.  ~ The Book of Life

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