February 19, 2015: Sky Schultz: Finding God in Nature, Science and Mystical Poetry.

     ANNOUNCEMENT from Sky Schultz: On Friday night this week: ie February 20, 2015 I will be presenting a talk/dialog in which he will summarize the universe and other matters. The talk is called: "Finding God in Nature, Science, and Mystical Poetry." (It might be useful to you if you happen to have misplaced God 'He/She/It' and need to get in touch with To Whom it may concern.)
     Why should you come? The room will be warm. There will be snacks. You will meet wonderful people, if anybody comes. There will be quotes from the world's greatest spiritual teachers. And, of course, my world-class humor and magic. Play a trick on your friends: invite them.
     Friday February 20/ 7:00 to 8:00 PM, Schlitz Audobon Nature Center. This program is handicap accessible. Preregistration is required. To register call 414-352-2880.  Member: $10 Non/Member $15.
     If you can't make it, and if you have a good excuse, you might invite me to your house, church, synagogue, or community for this delightful and profound talk; the cost is $0.15. ( I am sort of like Mark Twain's preacher who charged nothing for his sermons, and they were worth it.)
     By the way, I'm just setting up a new blog with my film, "Common Miracles," featured on the site...http://skyschultz.blogspot.com/


     Sky presented the above talk and led the discussion at today's Spirit Mind Body meeting. The presentation is full of laughs, wonderful photos, and very profound quotes which smashed us in the brain, one after the other. It was a great spiritual time! I will post more about this morning's talk later. Sky plans to send some of the quotes so that I can post them accurately. I highly recommend attending his performance tomorrow night, at Schlitz Audobon Center.

    Sky told us that he was going to give us a little talk about nothing. However, space is not nothing. In fact space is full of stuff.  The Hubble Space Telescope photos interposed with many quotes from famous personalities indeed showed that space is not nothing. Certainly we can be amazed at our universe from the galaxies spanning light years down to the amazing smallest creature in pond water. One example of such a creature, the tardigrades, commonly known as water bears, a primitive arthropod which can tolerate complete desiccation for almost an infinite period of time, only to be able to come back to life when rehydrated in pond water. These creatures can survive at temperatures from -273 degrees to 475 degrees Fahrenheit.

D. H. Lawrence:  "All that we know is nothing; we are merely crammed wastepaper baskets, unless we are in touch with that which laughs at all our knowing."

In the Bhagavad Gita:"In the minds of those who are too attached to sense enjoyment and material opulence, and who are bewildered by such things, the resolute determination of devotional service to the Supreme Lord does not take place."

Colin Drake said: "The mind when not engaged creates problems."

Some deep quotes attributed to Lao Tzu:  "Kindness in words creates confidence; Kindness in thinking creates profundity; Kindness in giving creates love.     To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.   Stop trying to leave, and you will arrive, Stop seeking, and you will see. Stop running away, and you will be found.   If you are depressed, you are living in the past; If you are anxious, you are living in the future; If you are at peace, you are living in the present.   The Journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.     Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.   The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth."    Well, in looking up some of these quotes, I could go on and on. These sayings attributed to Lao Tzu are wonderful.   

Albert Einstein said: " There are only two ways to live: one is as though nothing is a miracle; the other way is as though everything is a miracle."   "I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking."   "Ego equals 1 divided by knowledge."

     Niels Bohr said: "The opposite of a truth is another profound truth."

     Georgia O'Keefe:  "It take a long time to see a flower."
 
Alan Watts:  "We must see that consciousness is neither an isolate soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies that makes a nervous system possible."

Thich Nhat Hanh:  On the concept of Inter-Being: The idea of “Interbeing” – introduced by Thich Nhat Hanh into the North American Buddhist vocabulary – may be viewed as a formulation of the doctrine of  “dependant co-arising” in the Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta.
In the Heart of Understanding – Thay’s commentary on the Heart of the Prajnaparamita Sutra – he writes:

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-“ with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.

The observation that we “inter-are”, while true and poetic is not really the most important element of “Interbeing”. The important part is the realization that there is no independent self – that the perception of self, of “me”, of “mine” is an illusion.  Awareness that “I” am made of “non-I” elements leads to the understanding of non-self and it is the realization of non-self that brings an end to suffering.


 The Mirror of this World

Every particle of the world is a mirror,
In each atom lies the blazing light
of a thousand suns
Cleave the heart of a rain-drop,
a hundred pure oceans will flow forth.
Look closely at a grain of sand,
The seed of a thousand beings can be seen
The foot of an ant is larger than an elephant;
In essence, a drop of water
is no different than the Nile.
In the heart of a barley-corn
lies the fruit of a hundred harvests;
Within the pulp of a millet seed
an entire universe can be found.
In the wing of a fly, an ocean of wonder;
In the pupil of the eye, an endless heaven.
Though the inner chamber of the heart is small,
the Lord of both worlds
gladly makes his home there.

- Mahmud Shabestari
Reproduced from the blog of Eknath Easwaran, from Strength in the Storm, creating calm in difficult times.




Black Elk quotes:

And while I stood there
I saw more than I can tell
and I understood more than I saw;
for I was seeing in a sacred manner
the shapes of all things in the spirit,
and the shape of all shapes
as they must live together like one being.

     
All things are our relatives;
what we do to everything, we
do to ourselves. All is really One."

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us     Black Elk of the Oglala Lakota Sioux  (1863-1950)