Sky: An Assay

A hawk flies though it, carrying

a still-twisting snake twice the length of its body.

Radiation, smoke, mosquitoes, the music of Mahler fly through it.

The sky makes room, adjusting its airy shoulders.

Sky doesn't age or remember,

carries neither grudges nor hope.

Every morning is new as the last one, uncreased

as the not quite imaginable first.

From the fate of thunderstorms, hailstorms, fog,

sky learns no lesson,

leaping through any window as soon as it's raised.

In speech, furious or tender,

it's still of passing sky the words are formed.

Whatever sky proposes is out in the open.

Clear even when not,

sky offers no model, no mirror - cloudy or bright -

to the ordinary heart: which is secretive,

rackety, domestic, harboring a wild uninterest in sky's disinterest.

And so we look right past sky, by it, through it,

to what also is moody and alters -

erosive mountains, eclipsable moons, stars distant but death-bound.

~ Jane Hirshfield

expioring the shadow

~ Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman

between the shadow and the soul

I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way 

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.



~ Pablo Neruda 

 art by Odilon Redon, Golden Cell

hands and shadows

While the hand moves
the shadow must follow.
Since the shadow gains its substance
from the hand
it has none of itself.
That which derives existence
from something else
how can we say
it truly exists?
It has a name, yes,
but is not that existence
which subsists through God.




~ Fakhruddin 'Iraqi
from Divine Flashes

transforming darkness

~ Jack Kornfield

 

aloneness

But loneliness is entirely different from aloneness. That loneliness must be passed to be alone. Loneliness is not comparable with aloneness. The man who knows loneliness can never know that which is alone. Are you in that state of aloneness? Our minds are not integrated to be alone. The very process of the mind is separative. And that which separates knows loneliness.

But aloneness is not separative. It is something which is not the many, which is not influenced by the many, which is not the result of the many, which is not put together as the mind is; the mind is of the many. Mind is not an entity that is alone, being put together, brought together, manufactured through centuries. Mind can never be alone. Mind can never know aloneness. But being aware of the loneliness when going through it, there comes into being that aloneness. Then only can there be that which is immeasurable. Unfortunately most of us seek dependence. We want companions; we want friends; we want to live in a state of separation, in a state which brings about conflict. That which is alone can never be in a state of conflict. But mind can never perceive that, can never understand that; it can only know loneliness.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from the talk On Love and Loneliness (1952)

national geographic photo

all these insane borders we protect

A woman's body, like the earth, has seasons;

when the mountain stream flows,

when the holy thaws,

when I am most fragile and in need,

it was then, it seemed,

God came closest.

God, like a medic on a field, is tending our souls.

Our horns get locked with desires, but don't hold yourself

too accountable; for all desires are really innocent. 

That is what the compassion in His eyes tell me.

Why this great war between the countries -- the countries --

inside of us?

What are all these insane borders we protect?

What are all these different names for the same church of love

we kneel in together? For it is true, together we live; and only

at that shrine where all are welcome will God sing

loud enough to be heard.

Our horns got locked with the earth and sky in some odd

marriage ritual; so what, don't worry. We should be proud of

ourselves for everything we helped create in this

magic world.

And God is always there, if you feel wounded. He kneels

over this earth like a divine medic,

and His love thaws the holy in us.

~ St. Teresa of Avila

from Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West

version by Daniel Ladinsky
art by Steve Shinn

together in a tapestry

We are all bound together in a tapestry that like the sea gives the impression of movement 
towards something but is actually just a maternal body of material...

The flowers buzz when the vibration of the bees stimulates their pistons 
and their molecules swell and their petals hum like cellos. Rocks are alive,
 the firstborn of the natural world, somber without will.

There is no freedom from this universe we were born into, because it is our
 vague source of sensation, our soul, the container of our guilt.

Skins liquefy in heat. And when a bald baby swallow dies on your palm, 
you feel warmth pouring over your skin, a kind of burning fountain 
that scalds you like pepper spray.

Do you think this is a sign of the spirit ripping its energy into you to carry
 to the other side? I do. There are no actual objects over there, no materials
 but unformed steaming clouds, colors that harmonize musically, 
no gravity exists but elasticity composed of invisible images.

 

~ Fanny Howe
from 'The Child's Child'
The Needle's Eye: Passing through Youth

a hand is shaped for what it holds or makes

.

A hand is shaped for what it holds or makes.

Time takes what's handed to it then - warm bread, a stone,

a child whose fingers touch the page to keep her place.

Beloved, grown old separately, your face

shows me the changes on my own.

I see the histories it holds, the argument it makes

against the thresh of trees, the racing clouds, the race

of birds and sky birds always lose:

the lines have ranged, but not the cheek's strong bone.

My finger touching there recall that place.

Once we were one.  Then what time did, and hands, erased

us from the future we had owned.

For some, the future holds what hands release, not made.

We make a bridge.  We walked it.  Laced

night's sounds with passion.

Owls' pennywhistles, after, took our place.

Wasps leave their nest. Wind takes the papery case.

Our wooden house, less easily undone,

now houses others.  A life is shaped by what it holds or makes.

I make these words for what they can't replace.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

we victims - our suffering

~ Gangaji

change

~ Jack Kornfield

 

an old story

with thanks to brainpickings

no ground to stand on

~ Ram Dass



 

the third body

A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long

at this moment to be older, or younger, nor born

in any other nation, or time, or place.

They are content to be where they are, talking or not talking.

Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.

The man sees the way his fingers move;

he sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.

They obey a third body they have in common.

They have made a promise to love that body.

Age may come, parting may come, death will come.

A man and woman sit near each other;

as they breathe they feed someone we do not know, 

someone we know of, whom we have never seen.

~ Robert Bly

art by  Ismail Shammout

peace and the scary spider

~ Gangaji 

until we know everything

We know nothing until we know everything.

I have no object to defend

for all is of equal value

to me.

I cannot lose anything in this

place of abundance

I found.

If something my heart cherishes

is taken away,

I just say, "Lord, what happened?"

And a hundred more appear.

~ Saint Catherine of Siena, (1347-1380)

she felt the need to go out into the world and help her neighbors out of love for God.  Thus she was not only and ascetic and mystic, but also and activist...She devoted herself with such dedication to the sick and poor of Siena that they called her "our holy mother."

comment by Ursula King

art by Sano di Pietro

life's joys and sorrow

~ Jack Kornfield

 

the Indian parrot

There was a merchant setting out for India. 

He asked each male and female servant

what they wanted to be brought as a gift. 

Each told him a different exotic object:

A piece of silk, a brass figurine,

a pearl necklace. 

Then he asked his beautiful caged parrot,

the one with such a lovely voice,

and she said,

"When you see the Indian parrots,

describe my cage. Say that I need guidance

here in my separation from them. Ask how

our friendship can continue with me so confined

and them flying about freely in the meadow mist. 

Tell them that I remember well our mornings

moving together from tree to tree. 

Tell them to drink one cup of ecstatic wine

in honor of me here in the dregs of my life. 

Tell them that the sound of their quarreling

high in the trees would be sweeter

to hear than any music." 

This parrot is the spirit-bird in all of us,

that part that wants to return to freedom,

and is the freedom. What she wants

from India is herself! 

So this parrot gave her message to the merchant,

and when he reached India, he saw a field

full of parrots. He stopped

and called out what she had told him. 

One of the nearest parrots shivered

and stiffened and fell down dead. 

The merchant said, "This one is surely kin

to my parrot. I shouldn't have spoken." 

He finished his trading and returned home

with the presents for his workers. 

When he got to the parrot, she demanded her gift.

"What happened when you told my story

to the Indian parrots?" 

"I'm afraid to say."

"Master, you must!" 

"When I spoke your complaint to the field

of chattering parrots, it broke

one of their hearts. 

She must have been  close companion,

or a relative, for when she heard about you

she grew quiet and trembled, and died." 

As the caged parrot heard this, she herself

quivered and sank to the cage floor. 

This merchant was a good man.

He grieved deeply for his parrot, murmuring

distracted phrases, self-contradictory -

cold, then loving - clear, then

murky with symbolism. 

A drowning man reaches for anything!

The Friend loves this flailing about

better than any lying still. 

The One who lives inside existence

stays constantly in motion,

and whatever you do, that king

watches through the window. 

When the merchant threw the "dead" parrot

out of the cage, it spread its wings

and glided to a nearby tree! 

The merchant suddenly understood the mystery.

"Sweet singer, what was in the message

that taught you this trick?" 

"She told me that it was the charm

of my voice that kept me caged.

Give it up, and be released!" 

The parrot told the merchant one or two more

spiritual truths. Then a tender goodbye. 

"God protect you," said the merchant

"as you go on your new way.

I hope to follow you!" 

~ Rumi 

from  One-Handed Basket Weaving

translated by Coleman Barks

.

vulnerability - Brene Brown

~ Brene Brown

vulnerability

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition 

or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice,

 vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent

 of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence

 of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt

 to become something we are not and most especially, to close off 

our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously,

 in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn 

of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational

 foundations of our identity.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events 

and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps 

the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human 

and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege

 that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, 

with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share 

our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically

 given up, as we approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability,

 how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate 

through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability

 as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, 

as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates 

of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter,

 never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.





~ David Whyte
from Consolations:The Solace, Nourishment and 
Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

 

the peace of wild things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.





~ Wendell Berry

perspectives on compassion - Dayanada Sarawati

~ Dayananda Saraswati

 

perspectives on compassion - Joan Halifax

~ Joan Halifax

 

perspectives on compassion - James Forbes

~ James Forbes

 

perspectives on compassion - Robert Thurman

~ Robert Thurman

 

perspectives on compassion - Robert Wright

~ Robert Wright

 

impermanence

~ Jack Kornfield

 

sit down

.

.

Once, there was a fellow who wanted out of the Zen monastery where he was living.
In Zen monasteries you must pay constant attention to what you’re doing,

 what you’re experiencing from moment to moment. After a time, this can get to you,

 which is precisely what happened to this fellow.

He went to see the master and said,

 “I can’t take this anymore. I want out.”

The master said,

 “Okay, then leave.”

He started for the door, and the master said,

 “That’s not your door.”

“Oh. Sorry.” The fellow looked around and spotted another door.

 As he headed for it, the master said,

 “That’s not your door.”

“Oh!” He looked around for another door, and as he headed for that one,

 the master said,

“That’s not your door!”

Bewildered and exasperated, the poor fellow said, “What do you mean?

 There’s no other door. You told me I could leave, but there’s no door I can leave by.”

“If there’s no door you can leave by,”

 said the master,

 “then sit down.”

We can only be here. We can’t leave. We’re always here.

 Examine your life and you’ll see. The master’s

“sit down”

 means to start paying attention to what’s actually going on,

 instead of running away from it. This is how it is with us.

 Because we ignore our true situation, we’re never satisfied.



~ Steve Hagen

images

.

. . . it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life,
 how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbor, 
your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods
–you have nothing but images.

The images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space
 there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether
 it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves 
but in ourselves, the space which divides people
 in all their relationships.

Now the very attention you give to a problem is the energy that solves that problem. 
When you give your complete attention–I mean with everything in you–
there is no observer at all. There is only the state of attention which is total energy, 
and that total energy is the highest form of intelligence. Naturally that state
 of mind must be completely silent and that silence, that stillness,
 comes when there is total attention, not disciplined stillness. 
That total silence in which there is neither the observer nor the thing observed
 is the highest form of a religious mind. But what takes place in that state
 cannot be put into words because what is said in words is not the fact.
 To find out for yourself you have to go through it.

~ J. Krishnamurti 

excerpt from Freedom from the Known

art by Georges Braque