Words of the Masters: True Intimacy

From the Taoist poet Basho (translated by Stephen Mitchell):

Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must let go of your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and don't learn. Your poetry arises by itself when you and the object have become one, when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden light glimmering there. However well phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling isn't natural -- if you and the object are separate -- then your poetry isn't true poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit.

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From the Soto Zen Master Dogen's Genjokoan (translated by Stephen Mitchell):

To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to drop off the mind-body of oneself and others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues forever.

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From the Hindu sage Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (chapter 3, verses 4-5, translation/commentary by Swami Savitripriya):

These three practices -- Concentration, Meditation and Samadhi -- when practiced together in sequence, one after the other -- are called the practice of Becoming the Object. This threefold practice enables you to enter into the underlying subtle field of matter which composes the object you are observing in order to enter into non-dual oneness with it, because the only way to truly know an object is to become the object. This is the aim of this psychology.

As you master this threefold practice, and become united in non-dual oneness with the sum total of the Divine Consciousness and Love which has become the form of the world, a new Enlightened Intelligence and Wisdom -- which can only be attained through a direct personal experience of Transcendental Truth -- will illumine your mind, and destroy the darkness of ignorance.