seek the mystery

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. 
If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, 
you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer. 

They think they have, so they stop thinking. 
But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery,
 plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. 

The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. 

~ Ken Kesey

from The Art of Fiction - interview by Robert Faggen, 

The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994)

The madness of love

The madness of love 

Is a blessed fate;

And if we understood this

We would seek no other:

It brings into unity to

What was divided,

And this is the truth:

Bitterness it makes sweet,

It makes the stranger a neighbor,

And what was lowly it raises on high.

  

~ Hadewijch of Antwerp

photo by Ansel Adams

.

metaphors and symbols

Someone who found the inner path

who, dedicated to deep meditation,

got a glimpse of this essential truth,

that we choose God and World

only as metaphors and symbols.

 Every thought and action then

becomes an inner conversation,

a meeting between God and World.

~ Hermann Hesse

from The Seasons of the Soul

 

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. 
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
 Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected
 even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon
 and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, 
or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you,
 just as the moon does not break the water. 

You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water
 does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop 
is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long
 or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, 
and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.

~ Dogen Zenji (1200 - 1253)

between heaven and earth

Sacred or secular

manners and conventions

make no difference to him

Completely free

leaving it all to heaven

he seems a simplton

No one catches

a glimpse inside

his mind

this old man

all by himself

between heaven and earth

~ Muso Soseki

translated by W. S. Merwin

congruence with the chosen

The chooser's happiness lies in his congruence with the chosen,
The peace of iron filings, obedient to the forces of the magnetic field.


Calm is the soul that is emptied of all self,
In the eternal moment of co-inherence.
A happiness within you - but not yours.


–Dag Hammarskjöld
from Markings
 liap

foundations

I built on the sand

And it tumbled down,

I built on a rock

And it tumbled down.

Now when I build, I shall begin

With the smoke from the chimney.

~ Leopold Staff

translated by Czeslaw Milosz

You Are Tired (I Think) by e.e.cummings

You are tired,

(I think)

Of the always puzzle of living and doing;

And so am I.

Come with me, then,

And we’ll leave it far and far away—

(Only you and I, understand!)

You have played,

(I think)

And broke the toys you were fondest of,

And are a little tired now;

Tired of things that break, and—

Just tired.

So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,

And I knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—

Open to me!

For I will show you places Nobody knows,

And, if you like,

The perfect places of Sleep.

Ah, come with me!

I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,

That floats forever and a day;

I’ll sing you the hyacinth song

Of the probable stars;

I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,

Until I find the Only Flower,

Which shall keep (I think) your little heart

While the moon comes out of the sea.

~ e.e.cummings

the wise silence

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.

Meantime within man is the soul of the whole;
the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.

And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

from The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson,

The Over-Soul