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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Date: Sun Apr 20, 2003 11:03 pm
Subject: Lalla on Household Chores

There are those sleeping who are awake, and others awake who are
sound asleep.

Some of those bathing in sacred pools will never get clean.

And there are others doing household chores who are free of any
action.

- Lalla 14th Century North Indian mystic
From "Naked Song" Versions by Coleman Barks Maypop 1992

SPIRITUAL vs. MATERIAL DESIRE

When he tries to extend his power over objects,
those objects gain control of him.
He who is controlled by objects loses possession of his inner self...
Prisoners in the world of object,
they have no choice but to submit to the demands of matter!
They are pressed down and crushed by external forces:
fashion, the market, events, public opinion.
Never in a whole lifetime do they recover their right mind!...
What a pity!

- Chuang Tzu

People have to make up for their spiritual impoverishment by
accumulating material things. When spiritual blessings come,
material things seem unimportant. But spiritual blessings do not
come until we desire them and relinquish desire for material things.
As long as we desire material things this is all we receive, and we
remain spiritually impoverished.

- Peace Pilgrim, `Peace Pilgrim'

In a human being is such a love, a pain, an itch, a desire that, even
if he were to possess a hundred thousand worlds, he would not rest or
find peace. People work variously at all sorts of callings, crafts,
and professions, and they learn astrology and medicine, and so forth,
but they are not at peace because what they are seeking cannot be
found. The beloved is called dilaram because the heart finds peace
through the beloved. How then can it find peace through anything
else?

- `Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi'

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