Showing posts with label Terrance Keenan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terrance Keenan. Show all posts

Thursday, March 18, 2021

the music that is always there




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When I used to wake with night sweats my mind would spin in endless loops of anxiety,
 going over little irresolvable problems, like a miser counting pennies, unable to stop, to sleep.
 Even when I told myself there was truly nothing to worry about, and believed it,
 still, the wild worries persisted. The ghosts of these attacks haunted me for years.


Sometimes it's okay. 
Sometimes it's not one desperate act after another.
Sometimes we hear the music that is always there. As the old Irish homily goes:

"The most beautiful music is the music of what happens."

It is not necessary to run to a remote, quiet place to hear it. 
It is here already, always.
The essence of eternity is how we experience the present.
The witnesses are here in ourselves.
The fullness of our inheritance denies nothing.


The ravaged road goes on and on
in both directions.
Who can I ask to buy the bones?

Snow settles on hemlock and Yew.
This is enough.
To the end of my days
Without end amen.




~ Terrance Keenan
from Zen Encounters with Loneliness



Thursday, May 13, 2010

It is not skill


.
.
It is not skill, knowledge, intellect,
good luck or bad, but choosing
to feel the strange notes
of our wildness,
for there is not nothingness
despite the easy magic
of despair.
.
~  Terrance Keenan
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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Is there nothing that holds?


.
.
We change. This is a truism so blatant we could laugh at it, if we really believed it. 
We know things change, both things as circumstances and things as objects. 
The meadow across from the house where I grew up,
 which seemed like it had been there forever,
 has been filled with houses for forty years. 
To the people living in those homes the meadow, 
the games and egg hunts were never there. 
Only their own memories are there.
 In our heart of hearts, however, most of us harbor a deep belief, 
so deep we accept it without thinking,
 that some part of us, an essential us, remains the same, 
regardless of events or even memories. 
.
It's an illusory belief.
 Is there nothing that holds? No. Nothing. 
Nobody. Nada. Nadie.
 Even if we hold what seem to be the same feelings and thoughts years later?
 Isn't there something essential in them that holds?
 No.
.
~  Terrance Keenan, from 'St Nadie In Winter'
artwork by the author
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