overtone

.

Some listening were certain they could hear

through the notes summoned from the strings one more

following at a distance low but clear

a resonance never part of the score

not noticed during the rehearsals nor

prayed into the performance and yet here

with the first note it had been waiting for

holding silent the iced minors of fear

the key of grief the mourning from before

the names were read of those no longer there

that sound of what made no sound any more

made up the cords that in a later year

some still believed that they could overhear

echoing music played during a war

~ W.S. Merwin

from The Pupil

photo found at child of danu's little book of wonder

the pear

.

November. One pear

sways on the tree past leaves, past reason.

In the nursing home, my friend has fallen.

Chased, he said, from the freckled woods

by angry Thoreau, Coleridge, and Beaumarchais.

Delusion too, it seems, can be well-read.

He is courteous, well-spoken even in dread.

The old fineness in him hangs on

for dear life. "My mind now?

A small ship under the wake of a large.

They force you to walk on your heels here,

the angles matter.  Four or five degrees,

and you're lost." Life is dear to him yet,

though he believes it his own fault he grieves,

his own fault his old friends have turned against him

like crows against an injured of their kind.

There is no kindness here, no flint of mercy.

Descend, descend,

some voice must urge, inside the pear-stem.

The argument goes on, he cannot outrun it.

Dawnlight to dawnlight, I look: it is still there.

~ Jane Hirshfield 

from Come, Thief

art by janis zroback

only a state of being

.

There is in fact only one state, 

not two states such as the conscious and the unconscious there is only a state of being, 

which is consciousness, 

though you may divide it as the conscious and the unconscious. 

But that consciousness is always of the past, never of the present; 

you are conscious only of things that are over. 

You are conscious of what I am trying to convey the second afterwards, are you not? 

You understand it a moment later. 

You are never conscious or aware of the now. 

Watch your own hearts and minds and you will see that 

consciousness is functioning between the past and the future 

and that the present is merely a passage of the past to the future.

If you watch your own mind at work, 

you will see that the movement to the past and to the future is a process in which the present is not. 

Either the past is a means of escape from the present, which may be unpleasant, 

or the future is a hope away from the present. 

So the mind is occupied with the past or with the future and sloughs off the present. 

It either condemns and rejects the fact or accepts and identifies itself with the fact. 

Such a mind is obviously not capable of seeing any fact as a fact. 

That is our state of consciousness, which is conditioned by the past and our thought, 

is the conditioned response to the challenge of a fact; 

the more you respond according to the conditioning of belief, of the past, 

the more there is strengthening of the past.

That strengthening of the past is obviously the continuity of itself, which it calls the future. 

So that is the state of our mind, 

of our consciousness;a pendulum swinging backwards and forwards between the past and the future.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

thanks to j. krishnamurti online

look at love

.

look at love

how it tangles

with the one fallen in love

look at spirit

how it fuses with earth

giving it new life

why are you so busy

with this or that or good or bad

pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all

the known and the unknown

see how the unknown merges into the known

why think separately

of this life and the next

when one is born from the last

look at your heart and tongue

one feels but deaf and dumb

the other speaks in words and signs

look at water and fire

earth and wind

enemies and friends all at once

the wolf and the lamb

the lion and the deer

far away yet together

look at the unity of this

spring and winter

manifested in the equinox

you too must mingle my friends

since the earth and the sky

are mingled just for you and me

be like sugarcane

sweet yet silent

don't get mixed up with bitter words

my beloved grows right out of my own heart

how much more union can there be

~ Rumi

from Fountain of Fire

translated by Nader Khalili

art by klimt

no entity

.

There is no entity separate from craving; there is only craving, there is no one who craves. 

Craving takes on different masks at different times, depending on its interests.

The memory of these varying interests meets the new, which brings about conflict, 
and so the chooser is born, 
establishing himself as an entity separate and distinct from craving.

But the entity is not different from its qualities. 
The entity who tries to fill or run away from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, 
is not different from that which he is avoiding; he is it. 

He cannot run away from himself; all that he can do is to understand himself. 
He is his loneliness, his emptiness; 
and as long as he regards it as something separate from himself;
 he will be in illusion and endless conflict. 
When he directly experiences that he is his own loneliness, 
then only can there be freedom from fear. 

Fear exists only in relationship to an idea, and idea is the response of memory as thought. 
Thought is the result of experience; and though it can ponder over emptiness,
 have sensations with regard to it, it cannot know emptiness directly. 

The word loneliness, with its memories of pain and fear, prevents the experiencing of it afresh. 
The word is memory, and when the word is no longer significant,
then the relationship between the experiencer and the experienced is wholly different; 
then that relationship is direct and not through a word, through memory; 
then the experiencer is the experience, 
which alone brings freedom from fear.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

thanks to krishnamurti online

nothing to gain

.

There is nothing to gain. 

Abandon all imaginings and know yourself as you are. 

...

All craving is due to a sense of insufficiency. 

When you know that you lack nothing, 

that all there is, is you and yours, desire ceases.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

like water

.

The best, like water, 

Benefit all and do not compete. 

They dwell in lowly spots that everyone else scorns. 

Putting others before themselves, 

They find themselves in the foremost place 

And come very near to the Tao. 

~  Lao Tzu

reluctance

.

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

And looked at the world and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

No longer blown hither and thither;

The last lone aster is gone;

The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

~ Robert Frost

with thanks to writers almanac

all things are empty

.

All things are empty: 

Nothing is born, nothing dies, 

nothing is pure, 

nothing is stained, 

nothing increases and nothing decreases. 

So, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no thought, no will, no consciousness. 

There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind.

 There is no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no imagining. 

No plane of sight, no plane of thought. There is no ignorance, and no end to ignorance. 

There is no old age and death, and no end to old age and death. 

There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no end to suffering, no path to suffering. 

There is no attainment of wisdom, and no wisdom to attain.

~ the heart sutra

hunger

.

A red horse crops grass,

A black crow 

delves bugs from a dirt pile.

A woman watches in envy what is so simple.

~ Jane Hirshfield

philosophy and religion

.

...he who defines his conduct by ethics

imprisons his song-bird in a cage.

The freest song comes not through bars and wires. 

...he to whom worshiping is a window, to open but also to shut, 

has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.

...if you would know God be not a solver of riddles.

Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.

...look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, 

outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.

...see Him smiling in flowers, and then rising and waving His hands in trees.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Prophet

solitude

.

Let us look for secret things

somewhere in the world,

on the blue shore of silence

or where the storm has passed,

rampaging like a train.

There the faint signs are left,

coins of time and water,

debris, celestial ash

and the irreplaceable rapture

of sharing in the labour

of solitude and the sand.

~ Pablo Neruda

excerpt from On the Blue Shores of Silence

alzheimer's

.

When a fine old carpet

is eaten by mice,

the colors and patterns

of what’s left behind

do not change.

As bedrock, tilted,

stays bedrock,

its purple and red striations unbroken.

Unstrippable birthright grandeur.

“How are you,” I asked,

not knowing what to expect.

“Contrary to Keatsian joy,” he replied.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

art by Camille Pissarro, 1877

the cloudy vase

.

Past time,

I threw the flowers out,

washed out

the cloudy vase.

How easily

the old clearness

leapt,

like a practiced tiger,

back inside it.

~ Jane Hirshfield

art by leonardo da vinci, 
 Galleria Nazionale, Parma, Italy.

the boundaries of my being had disappeared

I looked for my self, but my self was gone.

The boundaries of my being

had disappeared in the sea.

Waves broke. Awareness rose again.

And a voice returned me to myself.

It always happens like this.

Sea turns on itself and foams,

and with every foaming bit

another body, another being takes form.

And when the sea sends word,

each foaming body

melts back to ocean-breath.

 ~ Rumi 

translation by Coleman Barks

art by van gogh

call and answer

.

Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days

And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed

The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?

I say to myself: “Go on, cry. What’s the sense

Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!

See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!”

We will have to call especially loud to reach

Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding

In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.

Have we agreed to so many wars that we can’t

Escape from silence? If we don’t lift our voices, we allow

Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.

How come we've listened to the great criers—Neruda,

Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass—and now

We’re silent as sparrows in the little bushes?

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.

Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?

Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.

~ Robert Bly

opening the hands between here and here

.

On the dark road, only the weight of the rope.

Yet the horse is there.

~ Jane Hirshfield

A Suite of Appearances

.

In another time, we will want to know how the earth looked

then, and were people the way we are now. In another time,

the records they left will convince us that we are unchanged

and could be at ease in the past, and not alone in the present.

And we shall be pleased. But beyond all that, what cannot

be seen or explained will always be elsewhere, always supposed,

invisible even beneath the signs – the beautiful surface,

the uncommon knowledge – that point its way. In another time,

what cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted

to say that language is error, and all things are wronged

by representation. The self, we shall say, can never be

seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.

~ Mark Strand

with thanks to whiskey river

birds nest

.

Birds nest in my arms,

on my shoulders, behind my knees,

between my breasts there are quails,

they must think I'm a tree.

The swans think I'm a fountain,

they all come down and drink when I talk.

When sheep pass, they pass over me,

and perched on my fingers, the sparrows eat,

the ants think I'm earth,

and men think I'm nothing.

~ Gloria Fuertes

translated by Philip Levine

sketch by van gogh

the holy longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,

because the massman will mock it right away.

I  praise what is truly alive,

what longs to flame to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights

where you were begotten,  where you have begotten,

a strange feeling comes over you

when you see the silent candle burning..

Now you are no longer caught

in the obsession with darkness,

and a desire for higher love-making

sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,

now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light

you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced

this: to die and so to grow,

you are only a troubled guest

on the dark earth.

~ Goethe
translation by Robert Bly
art by van gogh

.

names

.

You should try to hear the name the Holy One has for things.

There is something in the phrase: "The Holy One taught him names."

We name everything according to the number of legs it has;

The holy one names it according to what is inside.

Moses waved his stick; he thought it was a "rod."

But inside its name was "dragonish snake."

We thought the name of Umar meant: "agitator against priests;"

But in eternity his name is "the one who believes."

No one knows our name until our last breath goes out.

~ Rumi

version by Robert Bly

the teaching

Enlightenment absorbs this universe of qualities.

When that merging occurs, there is nothing

but God. This is the only doctrine. 

There is no word for it, no mind

to understand it with, no categories

of transcendence or non-transcendence,

no vow of silence, no mystical attitude. 

There is no Shiva and no Shakti

in enlightenment, and if there is something

that remains, that whatever-it-is

is the only teaching. 

~ Lalla

across the swamp

.

It is the roots from all the trees that have died

out here, that's how you can walk

safely over the soft places.

Roots like these keep their firmness, it's possible

they've lain here centuries.

And there is still some dark remains

of them under the moss.

They are still in the world and hold

you up so you can make it over.

And when you push out into the mountain lake, high

up, you feel how the memory

of that cold person

who drowned himself here once

helps hold up your frail boat.

He, really crazy, trusted his life

to water and eternity.

~ Olav H. Hauge

translated by Robert Bly

photo by Jay Sturdevant

knowing nothing

.

Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates;

the new love opens them.

The sound of the gates opening wakes the beautiful woman asleep.

Kabir says:   Fantastic!  Don't let a chance like this go by!

~ Kabir

version by Robert Bly