The Core Of The Onion

The revelation by modern physics of the void within the atom is more disturbing than the revelation by astronomy of the immense void of interstellar space.  Eddington

Do but extract from the corpulency of bodies, or resolve things beyond their First Matter, and you discover… the ubiquitary and omnipresent Essence of God.  Sir Thomas Browne

"Break that tiny seed."
"It is broken, lord."
"What do you see there?"
"Nothing, lord."
"My son, that subtle Essence which you cannot see there, from that very Essence this great banyan tree springs up. Believe me, my son, that subtle Essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self. And you, Svetaketu, are That."  Chhandogya Upanishad

We naturally believe ourselves far more capable of reaching the centre of things than of embracing the circumference… And yet we need no less capacity for attaining the Nothing than the All.  Pascal

Hsueh-feng went to the forest to cut trees with his disciple Chang-sheng. "Don't stop till your axe cuts to the very centre of the tree," warned the teacher.  The Iron Flute

Till now we have worked from the outside on what is within; now we tarry in the centre and rule what is external. Hitherto it was a service in aid of the Master; now it is a dissemination of the commands of this Master.  The Secret of the Golden Flower

At length a man cometh to a pure and total abstraction; and then he seemeth to himself to be all spirit and as if he had no body… The purer and perfecter such abstraction is, the higher is the man ascended to perfection.  Augustine Baker

All men have matter of sorrow: but most specially he feeleth matter of sorrow that knoweth and feeleth that he is. All other sorrows but this be as it were game to earnest.  Cloud of Unknowing

I realised the Essential Nature of my body and mind, that it was like the fluidity of the oceans of fragrance surrounding the Isles of the Blest. I came to realise that I had been all along throwing the broken shards of my thoughts of personality into the pure limpidity of my Essential Nature.  Surangama Sutra

It is a great joy to realise that the Fundamental Nature is qualityless.  Gampopa

The Tathagata is not to be seen by means of his possession of marks.  Diamond Sutra

Bodies are like pots with lids on: look and see what's in them. The pot of this body is filled with Water of Life; the pot of that body with the poison of death.  Rumi

In the deeps of his ground he knows and feels nothing, in soul or body, but a singular radiance with sensible well-being and all pervading savour.  Ruysbroeck

In this kind of seeing, one only sees that no shape is there… If a man wants to make certain of his body he cannot get at it.  The Secret of the Golden Flower

Knowing that this body is like froth, knowing it is of the nature of a mirage: breaking the flowery shafts of Mara, he (the disciple) will go where the King of Death will not see him.  Dhammapada

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog,
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!  Emily Dickinson


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