"To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear." ~Mark Nepo

Image: Mexican Wolf  / Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum  / March 2012

Mysterious

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. ~Albert Einstein

Not knowing

The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind;
The butterfly visits the flower with no-mind.
The flower opens, the butterfly comes;
The butterfly comes, the flower opens.
I don't know others,
Others don't know me.
By not-knowing we follow nature's course.

~from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen poems of Ryokan,

translated by John Stevens

Now

"This very moment is the perfect teacher,

and, lucky for us, it's with us wherever we are. "

~from When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön

Looking into the Nature of Experience

"Many of our ideas and beliefs about ourselves and the world are so deeply ingrained that we are unaware that they are beliefs and take them, without question, for the absolute truth." ~from The Transparency of Things by Rupert Spira

Innocence

"Look with innocent eyes, very open.
That innocence is always there.
It's a sense of wonder."  ~Adyashanti

"When we are coming from innocence, we are not coming from an idea, a point of view, or a belief." ~Adyashanti

"Innocence is a condition not dependent on age but on attitude. It lives in continual surprise, not knowing how things are supposed to go, not needing them to go a certain way." ~Catherine Ingram

"I know nothing, I want nothing." ~Sri Nisargadatta

"This is certainly not about a denial of anything. If anything, it's the end of denial. It's a life lived without the illusions. Without the mythology. Without the comforting beliefs. Even the belief in Oneness – that goes too. And what you are left with is unconditional love, beyond the concept of it. And you meet the world for the first time. Like a newborn baby." ~Jeff Foster

Can reality be known?

"Can the dagger stab itself? Can the hand grasp itself? Can the ocean dive into itself? Can the eye see itself? Can the tongue taste itself? Can the flower smell its own perfume? Can the mirror reflect itself?" ~Jnaneshvara

Nondual awareness or "this" is an experience in which there is no separation between subject and object and so it cannot be understood by the mind.