₦airaland Forum

To attain our aim we should stop at nothing even if we must join forces with the devil.

Some one has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my life. The people who have adored me—there have not been very many, but there have been some—have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet them, they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman!

The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.

The greater the crime perpetrated by the leadership, the less likely it is that the people will ever believe their leaders to be capable of perpetrating such an event.

By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.

If you dont like a Rule... Just Follow it.. Reach on the Top.. and Change the Rule

Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.

What luck, for governments, that the people are stupid!

Nivasati

Life is a play, it's a motion, and if you're conscious of it, you can direct the play by letting go. If you're not conscious of it, you try and direct things, and of course they don't come out quite as well. But in order to let go and not direct, you have to direct everything in your life to the point where you go off that diving board into nothingness, which is where, as I'm sure you know, we all start from. So this is Zen Master Rama wishing you well. Get out there on that field and give `em hell, tiger. Give `em heaven too. (Zazen music ends.)

If you address every aspect of your life, from balancing your checkbook to the way you do your shopping, the way your clothes are in the closets, the way you work out, the way you sing, the way you think, the way you feel -- if you address everything in your life properly, which you learn to do through the practice of Zen over a period of years, and you learn to meditate perfectly and you work out fully, then you will have those magic moments in every aspect of your life.

When I dive, I dive into a different dimensional plane. As I go off that board, I'm not in this world anymore. Someone might see the body, but my spirit has left the body and gone elsewhere. It's gone everywhere or nowhere. And then what will happen? I can't say; I won't know about it until it's over. I won't know what the dance was like until it's all over. I won't know what the Frisbee throw was like until it connects perfectly with that other person. If the ego comes up, it'll block it. If fears come up, they will block it. So you have to conquer these things in your daily life and in your practice. And you need to go off that diving board with all the power in your possession from leading a perfect life. That's the Zen mind -- perfect life -- and then you're free.

It is the same thing in everyone's life. If I've led my life totally deliberately and not omitted one thing that was necessary, nor done things that were unnecessary, then when I come to the end of that diving board, I don't have to worry about how the dive is going to be. I'm not concerned. I can just fall off the board, and it will be perfect. I won't even remember what happened. The diving board is not just a physical diving board. It's a diving board inside our minds. When I dance, when I play soccer, whatever it is, when the critical moment comes for the move, I can do things that are extraordinary from the normal, rational point of view because my life has been lived deliberately. My life is tight, my spirit is impeccable, I'm happy and free and I've mastered the mind so that at that moment I go off the diving board, as I said, I enter into the nothingness of things.

When I play in sports or when I dance, which for me is a kind of sport, dancing on the stage in public, the things I do out in the desert, when I teach mysticism -- I can't explain, even to myself, how I do what I do. There's a moment when I come up to the end of the diving board, and that moment is reflected in every second in my life. I've lived my life a certain way, I've given some things up. I've done some things perhaps that I didn't initially want to do. But I have lived my life a certain way, and everything in my life points to that point when I come up to the end of the diving board. If I've made one mistake, if I haven't done one thing right, if I wasn't deliberate, if I wasn't happy when I needed to be happy, if I didn't mourn when I needed to mourn, if I wasn't poignant when I needed to be poignant, if I didn't work when I needed to work, then when I come up to that diving board, if I'm not exactly at the pinnacle of my personal power, how can the dive be? How hot can it be?

If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.

The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members.

Hum Ramalai

Success in anything depends upon being smart, not just being strong. And winners are people who are smart. They work hard, but they use their minds, not just their bodies. When you can be completely impassive in play -- in other words, you're not trying to push it out, nor are you holding it back, and you are impassive and the whole universe is shining through your eyes -- then you become fluid and completely unpredictable and no one knows, including yourself, what you will do next, how you will hit the ball, where you will run, what you will do, how you will move, how you did what you just did. You couldn't even explain it.

There are two types of athletes, good athletes. There are athletes who power up. They work hard and they use their will to a certain extent to accomplish something. I can remember when I was first learning to play a little bit of tennis, I was out knocking the ball around and this guy who was pretty good came by. He was a powerful man, and he took that tennis ball and he smashed it over to me a few times. I was almost knocked over, not by the ball, but by the energy that was coming out of this guy. It was very aggressive; it was real tough, masculine energy (Rama imitates a tough guy) -- “That's right guys, I'm tougher than you." (Back to normal voice.) A guy like this will be playing tennis, and some days he'll be really good and some days he won't because that's not a reliable source of energy. If he had learned -- he was doing well, he was very good -- but if he had learned to be completely impassive, he would have been unpredictable. In other words, people who use the mind and aggressive energy to blow their opponent away and intimidate them can be figured out. Anybody you can figure out you can defeat, and you can figure out anybody unless they're enlightened. You can't figure out someone who's enlightened and in enlightened states of mind because they don't make any sense -- because they don't operate from the plane of mind. Success in anything depends upon being smart, not just being strong. And winners are people who are smart. They work hard, but they use their minds, not just their bodies. When you can be completely impassive in play -- in other words, you're not trying to push it out, nor are you holding it back, and you are impassive and the whole universe is shining through your eyes -- then you become fluid and completely unpredictable and no one knows, including yourself, what you will do next, how you will hit the ball, where you will run, what you will do, how you will move, how you did what you just did. You couldn't even explain it. When I play in sports o

Your life either takes your energy or gives you energy, and you need to set up your life so that it gives you energy. If your relationships are draining you and not empowering you, you must sever them if you wish the chi to flow properly. If your career is draining you and not adding to you, then you have to drop it and develop another one that adds to you. The way you spend your time, the place you live, the way you dress, the way you think of yourself -- you must constantly raise yourself to higher and higher levels of energy efficiency, and of course, then happiness will be a result of this. The reason one enters into lower mental states -- depression, delusion, frustration, anger, hostility, trivial emotions that waste tremendous amounts of energy -- is because you don't have enough power or chi flowing through you.

We see the somethingness of something, a football, a Frisbee. The Frisbee is a round disk; that's the somethingness. You touch it, you feel it, you throw it. But it has another side; it has a nothingness, which you cannot perceive with your physical mind or your physical senses. There is a part of you, there's a place within your mind that understands this, if you can get to it. When you stop your thoughts completely, you enter into the nothingness of your mind, and at that point you can perceive the nothingness of the Frisbee or of anything. When you unite the nothingness of your mind with the nothingness of the Frisbee, then the Frisbee is not a Frisbee, and you are not you. Then there is perfect play, and that is the goal, if we wish to call it that, of Zen in reference to sports and athletics. It's not to win; it's not to lose. It's to realize the nothingness of things and of yourself.

A person who practices sports and athletics, who is able to stop their thoughts during the play and allow the universe to spill through them, is capable of great magic. And as I said, sports and athletics can be a path in Zen. They can be a way to develop your consciousness and your mind, in concordance with daily practice of zazen meditation. To just practice sports exclusively is not enough. It's necessary to set aside time for meditation sessions in which there is no physical movement at all. You need to learn to move with your spirit, not just with your body, to move into other realms of mind. Then, when the spirit is free and the body is well developed, magic occurs. You are able to let go and become the play

I recommend, literally for everyone -- unless there's some medical reason or other personal reason -- who practices mind control, who practices Zen, to engage in the study of some type of sports or athletics, particularly martial arts, be it from Tai Chi on to karate, whatever it is, where you are using your body and working out very hard -- again, within the normal limitations of your body's abilities and under sound medical advice. You're not undertaking a sport that you're not physically prepared for. Always check with your doctor first, naturally. But then, if you get the green light and if your body is capable of it, go for it because it will do much to enhance your study of Zen.

In the West, we think of sports and athletics as individual achievement -- the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. In other words, it all revolves around you and the ego. The whole reason you're doing it, is so you can be a winner. You can beat someone else. You can be the hero. (Rama imitates a woman's excited voice) "Oh Bob, you're so wonderful!" (Back to normal voice.) This has nothing to do with the Zen of sports and athletics. It's inefficient and you don't play that well. You might be a hotshot; you might do OK for a while, but you could have done much better, and you could have been a lot happier with your play and with your life. It’s necessary then to undertake

It’s necessary then to undertake the discipline of spirit. It’s not for everyone -- the path of self-discovery. But if you are serious about sports and athletics, if that is your life, then you need to begin the discipline of spirit, and that's what the Zen master shows you, the discipline of mind. With the power of mind, almost anything can be accomplished. And just as you developed your body, now you have to develop your mind. If you've been engaging in the discipline of mind and neglecting sports and athletics, then it's time.

Any good athlete is always in a state of perpetual training, as is the Zen student. Zen students see themselves as athletes. Their competitive sport is enlightenment. They're not competitive with anyone else, only with enlightenment do we compete.

One of the advantages of practicing meditation, of course, is that it's quite possible, if you are a very good meditator, to speed up the healing process by directing energy to the part of the body that's injured. Now, all of this has to do with the release of the chi. The chi is the central energy or power that we use in physical expression, and when the chi is flowing smoothly and properly in our lives, we can be very adept athletically. If the chi is blocked, if it isn't flowing properly or if it's being wasted by useless activities in our lives, by useless emotions that drain us, by associations with individuals that drain us, by purposeless activities, by boredom and so on, then we don't have enough chi, enough power when it comes time to perform.

You have to become a master of self-discipline, and this is done through practice. And you have to learn to live with athletic injuries. In Frisbee, of course, it's usually the finger injury unless you're running after one and jumping crazily and showing off and you land on your ear, which teaches you, don't be a show off. Keep your mind on business. Keep your mind on perfection. Watch what you're doing. Follow through. In Frisbee, the finger injury is a powerful injury because when you throw the Frisbee and release it, very often you can scrape the skin, particularly if you are throwing very hard. In running and in many sports, it's the knees and the ankles. It can be the elbows in tennis. It can be the back; it can be anything and everything sometimes.

In other words, it's easier to develop the mind independently through meditation than it is just through athletic practice. As you sit and practice meditation, your mind will become awesomely powerful. If, at the same time, you're also working out at different times of the day, working on your body, and you put the two together -- a strong mind and a strong body -- it will be unbelievable. You have to become a master o

It is also necessary to meditate, to practice zazen, for an hour or two a day broken up into a couple of sessions. You need to learn the art of meditation. It's easiest to master the mind exclusively, initially. That is to say, while a certain degree of mental mastery will come as you practice sports and athletics, if you use your mind completely and interface it with your moves, you will also gain much, much more from pure meditation. People who practice martial arts have learned a little meditation. But if, in addition, you meditate for an added hour or two a day and learn to shape and develop your mind, then you will find that when you practice -- whatever type of sports or athletics you're engaged in -- you will in all probability reach much higher levels of efficiency in your practice because your mind is strong and focused. In other words, it's easier to develop the mind

similar happening inside your mind. You're using the practice of mind and body to make the mind stronger and the body stronger. In order to make those moves perfectly, you have to engage your attention, you have to pull your mind out of its mundane thoughts and awareness and bring it into the body movement. The more completely you concentrate -- which is the key word here, at least in the beginning -- the more completely you concentrate on the practice, the stronger your mind becomes.