a small green island

There is a small green island

where one white cow lives alone,

a meadow of an island.

 

The cow grazes till nightfall, full and fat,

but during the night she panics

and grows thin as a single hair.  "What shall I eat

tomorrow?  There's nothing left!"

 

By dawn, the grass has grown up again, waist-high.

The cow starts eating and by dark

the meadow is clipped short.

 

She's full of strength and energy, but she panics

in the dark as before, and grows 

abnormally thin overnight.

 

The cow does this over and over,

and this is all she does.

 

She never thinks, "This meadow has never failed

to grow back.  Why should I be afraid

every night that it won't?"

 

The cow is the bodily soul.

The island field is this world where

that grows lean with fear and fat with blessing,

 

lean and fat.  White cow,

don't make yourself miserable

with what's to come, or not to come.

 

 

 

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

 

 

 

nothing?

Once upon a time there was a man who had about twelve cows, and he loved his cows.  Every morning and evening he would praise them for the amount of  milk they were giving and praise them for their beauty.  One morning he noticed that the amount of milk had lessened.  Each day for a week he noticed the same thing.  So that night he decided to stay up and see what was going on.

About midnight, he happened to look up at the stars, and he saw one star that seemed to be getting larger.  It was - and the light got stronger as the star came closer and closer to earth.  It came straight down towards his cow pasture and stopped a few feet from him in the form of a great ball of light.  Inside the light there was a luminous woman.  As soon as her toes touched the ground, the light disappeared, and she stood there like an ordinary woman.

He said to her, "Are you the one who has been stealing milk from my cows?" "Yes," she said, "my sisters and I like the milk from your cows very much."  He said, "You are very beautiful, and I'm glad that you like my cows.  And so, this is what I want to say: If you marry me, we can live together, and I will never hit you and you won't have to take care of the cows all the time.  I'll take care of them part of the time myself.  Will you marry me?"  She said slowly, "Yes, I will.  But there's one condition.  I have brought this basket with me, and I want you to agree that you will never look into this basket.  You must never look into it, no matter how long we are married.  Do you agree to that?"  "Oh, I do,"  he said.

So they were married, and they lived together very well for six or seven months.  Then one day, while she was out herding the cows, he happened to notice that basket standing in a corner of the house.  He said to himself,  "Well, you know, she is my wife, so it could be considered to be my basket.  After all, this is my house, and the basket is in my house, and so it could be considered my basket!"  After he had said this, he opened the basket and then began to laugh.  "There's absolutely nothing in the basket!  Nothing! There's nothing in the basket!"  He kept saying these words and laughing so loud that his wife eventually heard the laughter.

She came into the house and she said to him, "Have you opened the basket?"  He began laughing again.  "I did!"  he said.  "I opened the basket!  There's nothing in it! There's nothing in the basket at all!  There's absolutely nothing in the basket! Nothing is in the basket!"

She said,"I have to leave now.  I have to go back."  He cried out. "Don't go!  Don't leave me!"  She said, "I have to go back now.  What I brought with me in the basket was spirit.  It's so like human beings to think that spirit is nothing."

And she was gone.

~  An African Story

from The Soul is Here for It's Own Joy - Sacred Poems from Many Cultures

edited by Robert Bly

african rock art from Chad

 

birds of passage

The

Classroom

Surely becomes disarrayed

When the teacher is out of sight

Because of our grand

Volcanic 

Spirits.

The 

Birds of passage

Arrive with a broken 

Wing,

Though

Are then lifted by God

So high and

"Low"

To experience the heart

Of everything.

The mind surely becomes disarrayed

When the Teacher is out

Of sight.

~ Hafiz

from The Gift

translations by Daniel Ladinisky

 

and love says

And love

Says,

"I will, I will take care of you,"

To everything that is

Near.

~ Hafiz

from The Gift

translation by Daniel Ladinsky

chickpea to cook

A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot

where it's being boiled.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

The cook knocks him down with the ladle.

"Don't you try to jump out.

You think I'm torturing you.

I'm giving you flavor,

so you can mix with spices and rice

and be the lovely vitality of a human being.

Remember when you drank rain in the garden.

That was for this."

Grace first. Sexual pleasure,

then a boiling new life begins,

and the Friend has something good to eat.

Eventually the chickpea 

will say to the cook,

 "Boil me some more.

Hit me with the skimming spoon.

I can't do this be myself.

I'm like an elephant that dreams of gardens

back in Hindustan and doesn't pay attention

to his driver.  You're my cook, my driver,

my way into existence. I love cooking."

The cook says, "I was once like you,

fresh from the ground,  Then I boiled in time,

and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

My animal soul grew powerful.

I controlled it with practices,

and boiled some more, and boiled once beyond that,

and become your teacher."

~ Rumi

from The essential Rumi

translations by Coleman Barks and John Moyne

Macarius and the pony

.

.

People in a village

At the desert's edge

Had a daughter

Who was changed (they thought)

By magic arts

Into a pony.

At first they berated her

"Why do you have to be a horse?"

She could think of no reply.

So they led her out with a halter 

Into the hot waste land

Where there was a saint

Called Macarius

Living in a cell.

"Father" they said

"This young mare here

Is, or was, our daughter.

Enemies, wicked men,

Magicians, have made her

The animal you see.

Now by your prayers to God

Change her back

Into the girl she used to be."

"My prayers" said Macarius,

"Will change nothing,

For I see no mare.

Why do you call this good child

An animal?"

But he led her into his cell

With her parents:

There he spoke to God 

Anointing the girl with oil;

And when they saw with what love 

He placed his hand upon her head

They realized, at once.

She was no animal.

She had never changed.

She had been a girl from the beginning.

"Your own eyes

(said Macarius)

Are your enemies.

Your own crooked thoughts

(said the anchorite)

Change people around you

Into birds and animals.

Your own ill-will

(said the clear-eyed one)

Peoples the world with specters."

.

~ Thomas Merton

from  The Collected Poems

.