ventilating the world with tenderness

~ Greg Boyle

hidden

Hidden in the heart of every creature

Exists the Self, subtler than the subtlest,

Greater than the greatest.  They go beyond

All sorrow who extinguish their self-will

And behold the glory of the Self

Through the grace of the Lord of Love.

Though one sits in meditation in a 

Particular place, the Self within

Can exercise his influence far away.

Though still, he moves everything everywhere.

When the wise realize the Self,

Formless in the midst of forms, changeless

In the midst of change, omnipresent

And supreme, they go beyond sorrow.

The Self cannot be known through study

Of the scriptures, nor through the intellect,

Nor through hearing discourses about it.

The Self can be attained only by those

Whom the Self chooses.  Verily unto them

Does the Self reveal himself.

~ The Katha Upanishad

translated by Eknath Easwaran

blessing in the chaos

To all that is chaotic

in you,

let there come silence.

Let there be

a calming

of the clamoring,

a stilling

of the voices that

have laid their claim

on you,

that have made their

home in you,

that go with you

even to the

holy places

but will not

let you rest,

will not let you

hear your life

with wholeness

or feel the grace

that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you

cease.

Let what divides you

cease.

Let there come an end

to what diminishes

and demeans,

and let depart

all that keeps you

in its cage.

Let there be

an opening

into the quiet

that lies beneath

the chaos,

where you find

the peace

you did not think

possible

and see what shimmers

within the storm.

The human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness,
 a place where everything comes together, 
where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform
 into vision, where damage will be made whole, 
where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise,
 where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. 
To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now. 

~ Jan Richardson

art by klimt

be helpless

Be helpless, dumbfounded,

Unable to say yes or no.

Then a stretcher will come from grace

to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.

If we say we can, we're lying.

If we say No, we don't see it,

That No will behead us

And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,

Beside ourselves, and only that, so

Miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,

We shall be saying finally,

With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.

When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,

We shall be a mighty kindness.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

haunted

We are looking for your laugh.

Trying to find the path back to it

between drooping trees.

Listening for your rustle

under bamboo,

brush of fig leaves,

feeling your step

on the porch,

natty lantana blossom

poked into your buttonhole.

We see your raised face

at both sides of a day.

How was it, you lived around

the edge of everything we did,

seasons of ailing; growing,

mountains of laundry; mail?

I am looking for you first; last

in the dark places,

when I turn my face away

from headlines at dawn,

dropping the rolled news to the floor.

Your rumble of calm

poured into me.

There was the saving grace

of care, from day one, the watching

and being watched

from every corner of the yard.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

from Transfer

the movement of love

Meditation is the movement of love. It isn't the love of the one

or of the many.  It is like water that anyone can drink out of any jar...

it is inexhaustible. 

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life,

 the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order,

 and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order,

 then that very order will bring about its own limitation, 

and the mind will be its prisoner.

 

 In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, 

from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore

 or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water,

 not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation

 is that you never know where you are, 

where you are going, what the end is.

~  J. Krishnamurti

from The Meditative Mind

with thanks to Love is a Place

 

stories of the Buddha's last days

~ Jack Kornfield

I cobbled their boots

How could I love my fellow men who tortured me?

One night I was dragged into a room 

and beaten near death with

their shoes

striking me hundreds of times

in the face, scarring me 

forever.

I cried out for God to help, until I fainted.

That night in a dream, in a dream more real than this world.

a strap from the Christ's sandal

fell from my bleeding

mouth,

and I looked at Him and He 

was weeping, and

spoke,

"I cobbled their boots;

how sorry 

I am.

What moves all things

is God."

~ St John of the Cross

from Love poems of God,

Twelve sacred voices from the East and West

in my wallet I carry a card

In my wallet I carry a card

which declares I have the power to marry.

In my wallet I carry a card

which declares I may drive.

 
In my wallet I carry a card

that says to a merchant I may be trusted to pay her.

 
In my wallet I carry a card

that states I can borrow a book in the town where I live.

 
In my hand I carry a card

Its lines declare I am cardless, carless,

stateless, and have no money.

It is buoyant and edgeless.

It names me one of the Order of All Who Will Die.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty

  

forgiveness

~ Jack Kornfield

 

mosquito

I say I

and

a small mosquito drinks from my tongue

but many say we and hear I

say you or he and 

hear I

what can we do with this problem

a bowl held in both hands

cannot be filled by the holder

x, says the blue whale

x, say the krill

solve for y, says the ocean, then multiply by existence

the feet of an ant make their own sound on the earth

ice is astonished by water

a person misreads

delirium as delphinium

and falls into

a blueness sleepy as beauty when sneezing

the pronoun dozes

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty

my species

even

a small purple artichoke

boiled

in its own bittered

and darkening

waters

grows tender,

grows tender and sweet

patience, I think,

my species

keep testing the spiny leaves

the spiny heart

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty

anxiety starts to disintegrate

Being conscious is cutting through your own melodrama

 and being right here. Exist in no mind, be empty, here now, 

and trust that as a situation arises, out of you will come 

what is necessary to deal with that situation 

including the use of your intellect when appropriate. 

 

Your intellect need not be constantly held on to keep reassuring

 you that you know where you’re at, out of fear of loss of control.

Ultimately,  that anxiety starts to disintegrate.

 And you start to define yourself as in flow with the universe; 

and whatever comes along—death, life joy, sadness

—is grist for the mill of awakening.

 

 

 

 

Ram Dass 

rain light

All day the stars watch from long ago

my mother said I am going now

when you are alone you will be all right

whether or not you know you will know

look at the old house in the dawn rain

all the flowers are forms of water

the sun reminds them through a white cloud

touches the patchwork spread on the hill

the washed colors of the after life

that lived there long before you were born 

see how they wake without a question

even through the whole world is burning

~ W. S. Merwin

from The Shadow of Sirius
iris by van gogh

grow accustomed

We grow accustomed to the Dark -

When light is put away -

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Goodbye -

A Moment - We uncertain step

For newness of the night -

Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -

And meet the Road - erect -

And so of larger - Darkness -

Those Evenings of the Brain -

When no a Moon disclose a sign -

Or Star - come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -

And sometimes hit a Tree

Directly in the Forehead -

 But as they learn to see -

Either the Darkness alters -

Or something in the sight

Adjusts itself to Midnight -

And Life steps almost straight.

~ Emily Dickenson 

the last day

This may be the last day of my life.

I lifted my right hand to wave at the sun,

but I did not wave at it in farewell.

I was glad I could still see it - that's all.

~ Fernando Pessoa

translation by Richard Zenith

 

love

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills—

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn't always understand.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

translation by Robert Hass

from The Collected Poems

art by Picasso

so little

I said so little.

Days were short.

Short days.

Short nights.

Short years.

I said so little.

I couldn't keep up.

My heart grew weary

From joy,

Despair,

Ardor,

Hope.

The jaws of Leviathan

Were closing upon me.

Naked, I lay on the shores

Of desert islands.

The white whale of the world

Hauled me down to its pit.

And now I don’t know

What in all that was real.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee

priceless gifts

An empty day without events.

And that is why

it grew immense

as space. And suddenly

happiness of being

entered me.

I heard

in my heartbeat

the birth of time

and each instant of life

one after the other

came rushing in

like priceless gifts.

~ Anna Swirszczynska

from Talking to My Body

 translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

between the roof planks

It is true,

the wind blows terribly here -

but moonlight

also leaks between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

~ Izumi Shikibu, (974-1034)

She is considered by some to be the greatest woman poet of Japanese literature.

from:  Women in Praise of the Sacred, edited by Jane Hirshfield

the white horse

 The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on

and the horse looks at him in silence.

They are so silent they are in another world.

~ D. H. Lawrence

singing

On a branch

floating downriver,

a cricket singing.

Issa

 art by Seiko

 

all will come again

All will come again into its strength:

the fields undivided, the waters undammed,

the trees towering and the walls built low.

And in the valleys, people as strong

and varied as the land.

And no churches where God

is imprisoned and lamented

like a trapped and wounded animal.

The houses welcoming all who knock

and a sense of boundless offering

in all relations, and in you and me.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,

no belittling of death,

but only longing for what belongs to us

and serving earth, lest we remain unused.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
 from: 'The Book of Hours'

a face

It's just by chance, who
you are, but given myself
I take care of this being.
Nobody else will remember
its hunger, cold, loneliness:
I will be reminded, and care.

This face, like an old watch,
I carry wherever I go.
Grandmothers, grandfathers, you pictures,
you should forgive my regret:
my wanting another. I carry it
as you did. It belongs
somewhere, and I am taking it there.

On corners I let the wind
have all the world, and I turn
as a ship accepts the waves
but is itself and has a voyage
built into it, stubbornly.

The choice of being who you are
is offered us, or being nothing.
The mask of myself is an old gift
nobody else took. So I brought it here.

  ~ William Stafford

I am not I

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.






~ Juan Ramon Jimenez
translated by Robert Bly

inside a stone

Go inside a stone

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove

Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.

I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:

No one knows how to answer it.

Yet within, it must be cool and quiet

Even though a cow steps on it full weight,

Even though a child throws it in a river;

The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed

To the river bottom

Where the fishes come to knock on it

An listen.

I have seen sparks fly out

When two stones are rubbed,

So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;

Perhaps there is a moon shining

From somewhere, as though behind a hill-

Just enough light to make out

The strange writings, the star-charts

On the inner walls.

~ Charles Simic 

photo by  Hans Strand

Capricho Arabe

~ Sharon Isbin

just a story

~ James Ford

from  Journeys on the Razor-Edged Path

  by Simons Roof

the promise

Stay, I said

to the cut flowers.

They bowed

their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,

who fled.

Stay, leaf.

It reddened,

embarrassed for me and itself.

Stay, I said to my body.

It sat as a dog does,

obedient for a moment,

soon starting to tremble.

Stay, to the earth

of riverine valley meadows,

of fossiled escarpments,

of limestone and sandstone.

It looked back

with a changing expression, in silence.

Stay, I said to my loves.

Each answered,

Always.

~ Jane Hirshfield

on finding a guide

You wear coarse wool, but you're a king,

as the soul's energy hides, as love

remembers. You enter this room in a human

shape and as the atmosphere we breathe.

You are the central pole through the nine

levels connecting them and us to absolute

absence. So that we can have what we want,

you give failure and frustration. You want

only the company of the lion and the lion

cub, no wobbly legs. That man there, you

suggest, might remove his head before

entering the temple. Then he could listen

without ears to a voice that says, My

creature. A month of walking the road, you

make that distance in one day. Never mind

gold and silver payments. When you feel

generous, give your head. My beauty,

you have no need for a guide. The one

who follows and the one who leads are

inseparable, as the moon and the circle

around it. An Arab drags his camel town

to town. You go through your troubles

and changing beliefs, both no different from

the moon moving across or basil growing

and getting cut for a bouquet. It doesn't

matter you've been lost. The hoopoe is

still looking for you. It's another

beginning, my friend, this waking in a

morning with no haze, and help coming

without your asking! A glass submerged

is turning inside the wine. With grief

waved away, sweet gratefulness arrives.

~ Rumi 

Coleman Barks, Nevit Ergin version