births

 

 

 

 

 

We will never have any memory of dying.

We were so patient
about our being,
noting down
numbers, days,
years and months,
hair, and the mouths we kiss,
and that moment of dying
we let pass without a note—
we leave it to others as memory,
or we leave it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
Nor do we even keep
the memory of being born,
although to come into being was tumultuous and new;
and now you don’t remember a single detail
and haven’t kept even a trace
of your first light.

It’s well known that we are born.

It’s well known that in the room
or in the wood
or in the shelter in the fishermen’s quarter
or in the rustling canefields
there is a quite unusual silence,
a grave and wooden moment as
a woman prepares to give birth.

It’s well known that we were all born.

But of that abrupt translation
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and weeping and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition, that quivering
of an electric presence, raising up
one body more, like a living cup,
and of that woman left empty,
the mother who is left there in her blood
and her lacerated fullness,
and its end and its beginning, and disorder
tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers
till everything comes together and adds
one knot more to the thread of life,
nothing, nothing remains in your memory
of the savage sea which summoned up a wave
and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree.

The only thing you remember is your life. 

~  Pablo Neruda

from Plenos Poderes (Fully Empowered)

 art by Jackie Traverse

 with thanks to whiskey river

 

 

 

no strangers

 

 

 

 


under cherry blossoms’ shade
even those whom we don’t know
are not strangers 

 

 

 

~ Issa Kobayashi 

 

 

 

relatedness

 

 

 

 

 

 In reality there is a single integral community of the Earth 

that includes all its component members 

whether human or other than human.

 

 In this community every being has its own role to fulfill, 

its own dignity, its inner spontaneity. Every being has its own voice. 

Every being declares itself to the entire universe. 

Every being enters into communion with other beings. 

 

This capacity for relatedness, for presence to other beings,

 for spontaneity in action, is a capacity possessed by every mode of being

 throughout the entire universe.

 

 

 

~ Thomas Berry

 photo by Edward Sheriff Curtis

 

 

desire the truth?

 

 

 

We are all convinced that we desire the truth above all.

Nothing strange about this. It is natural to man, an intelligent being, 

to desire the truth.

 

 (I still dare to speak of man as "an intelligent being"!)

But actually, what we desire is not "the truth" so much as "to be in the right."

To seek the pure truth for its own sake may be natural to us,

 but we are not able to act always in this respect according to our nature.

What we seek is not the pure truth, but the partial truth that justifies our prejudices,

 our limitations, our selfishness. This is not "the truth." 

It is only an argument strong enough to prove us "right."
And usually our desire to be right is correlative to our conviction

 that somebody else (perhaps everybody else) is wrong.

Why do we want to prove them wrong?

Because we need them to be wrong. For if they are wrong, 

and we are right, then our untruth becomes truth: 

our selfishness becomes justice and virtue: 

our cruelty and lust cannot be fairly condemned.

We can rest secure in the fiction we have determined to embrace as "truth."

What we desire is not the truth, but rather that our lie should be proved "right,"

 and our iniquity be vindicated as "just."

No wonder we hate. No wonder we are violent. 

No wonder we exhaust ourselves in preparing for war!

And in doing so, of course, we offer the enemy another reason to believe

 that he is right, that he must arm, that he must get ready to destroy us.

Our own lie provides the foundation of truth on which he erects his own lie,

 and the two lies together react to produce hatred, murder, disaster.

~ Thomas Merton, 

from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

 with thanks to brainpickings

 

 

 

the swarming throng of "I"

 

 

 

 

 

 

The secret teachings lead the pupil further. 

They teach him to look, with the same serene indifference, 

at the incessant working of his mind and the physical activity 

displayed by the body. 

 

He ought to succeed in understanding, in noting that nothing

 of all that is from him, is him. 

He, physically and mentally,

 is a multitude of others.

This "multitude of others" includes the material elements—

the ground, one might say—which he owes to his heredity,

 his atavism, then those which he has ingested, which he has inhaled 

from before his birth, by the help of which his body was formed, 

and which, assimilated by him, have become, with the complex forces 

inherent in them, constituent parts of his being.

On the mental plane, this "multitude of others" includes many beings

 who are his contemporaries: people he consorts with, with whom he chats, 

whose actions he watches. 

 

Thus a continual inhibition is at work while the individual absorbs

 a part of the various energies given off by those with whom he is in contact, 

and these incongruous energies, installing themselves in that which

 he considers his "I", 

form there a swarming throng.

~ Alexandra David-Néel and Lama Yongten
frjom The Secret Oral Teachings

 in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

 

art from A detail from the Sea Journey: 

People Without Borders by Erub/Lifou 

Project, commissioned for APT9.

 

 with thanks to Love is a Place

 

 

 

 

painting tigers

 

 

 

 

brokenness and vulnerability

 

 

 

  brokenness and weakness 

also mysteriously pull us out of ourselves. 

We feel them both together.

Only vulnerability forces us beyond ourselves. 

Whenever we see true pain, most of us are drawn out

 of our own preoccupations and want to take away the pain. 

 

For example, when we rush toward a hurting child, 

 we want to take the suffering in our arms. 

That’s why so many saints wanted to get near suffering—

because as they said again and again, 

 it “saved” them from their smaller untrue self.(1)



I think grief puts us in touch with our vulnerabilities.

 I think the feeling of grief lets us know the power of wounds

 to shape our stories. I think it lets us know how capable we are

 of having our hearts broken and our feelings hurt. 

 

I think it lets us know the link that we each have because we’re human.

 Because we’re human, we hurt. Because we’re human, we have tears to cry.

 Because we’re human, our hearts are broken. Because we’re human,

 we understand that loss is a universal language. Everybody grieves.

 All of humanity grieves. All of us have setbacks, broken dreams.

 All of us have broken relationships or unrealized possibilities. 

All of us have bodies that just don’t do what they used to do.

 Though grief is personal, every person grieves.(2)

 

 

 

 

 ~ Richard Rohr(1) 

and Dr. Jacqui Lewis(2)

 

 

 

the world rolls right on

 

 

 

 

 

 

mountain sounds carry a chill wisdom
an upwelling spring whispers subtle tales
pine breezes stir the fire beneath my tea
bamboo shadows soak deep into my robe

I grind my ink: clouds scraping across the crags
copy out a verse: birds settling on branches
as the world rolls right on by
its every turn tracing out non-action

 

 

 

 

 

~ Shih Shu 

English version by James H. Sanford

from  The Clouds Should Know Me By Now: 

Buddhist Poet Monks of China

 Edited by Red Pine 

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

 

 

take a look - recognizing our biases

 

 

 

 



People can't see what they can’t see. 

Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall, 

trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion. 

No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them,

 unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias. . . .

Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.

Complementary Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I’ll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.

 

 

 

 

 

 ~ Brian McLaren

from  Why Don’t They Get It? Overcoming Bias in Others 

 with thanks to Beth Cioffoletti, quotes and musings

art by Caravaggio

 

 

 

 

look through it and you will see the world

 

 

 

If you look at zero you see nothing; but look through it and you will see the world.

 For zero brings into focus the great, organic sprawl of mathematics, 

and mathematics in turn the complex nature of things. 

 

From counting to calculating, from estimating the odds to knowing exactly

 when the tides in our affairs will crest, the shining tools of mathematics 

let us follow the tacking course everything takes through everything else –

 and all of their parts swing on the smallest of pivots, zero

With these mental devices we make visible the hidden laws 

controlling the objects around us in their cycles and swerves. 

Even the mind itself is mirrored in mathematics,

 its endless reflections now confusing,

 now clarifying insight.

 

The story begins some 5,000 years ago with the Sumerians, 

those lively people who settled in Mesopotamia (part of what is now Iraq). 

When you read, on one of their clay tablets, this exchange between father and son:

 “Where did you go?” “Nowhere.” “Then why are you late?”, 

you realize that 5,000 years are like an evening gone.

The Sumerians counted by 1s and 10s but also by 60s. 

This may seem bizarre until you recall that we do too, using 60 for minutes

 in an hour (and 6 × 60 = 360 for degrees in a circle). Worse, we also count by 12

 when it comes to months in a year, 7 for days in a week, 24 for hours in a day

 and 16 for ounces in a pound or a pint. Up until 1971 the British counted

 their pennies in heaps of 12 to a shilling but heaps of 20 shillings to a pound.

Tug on each of these different systems and you’ll unravel a history

 of customs and compromises, showing what you thought was quirky

 to be the most natural thing in the world. In the case of the Sumerians,

 a 60-base (sexagesimal) system most likely sprang from their dealings

 with another culture whose system of weights — 

and hence of monetary value — differed from their own.

 

Haven’t we all an ancient sense that for something to exist it must have a name?

 Many a child refuses to accept the argument that the numbers go on forever

 (just add one to any candidate for the last) because names run out.

 For them a googol — 1 with 100 zeroes after it — is a large and living friend,

 as is a googolplex (10 to the googol power, in an Archimedean spirit).

Names belong to things, but zero belongs to nothing. 

It counts the totality of what isn’t there. By this reasoning it must be everywhere

 with regard to this and that: with regard, for instance, to the number

 of humming-birds in that bowl with seven — or now six — apples.

 Then what does zero name? It looks like a smaller version of 

Gertrude Stein’s Oakland, having no there there.

While having a symbol for zero matters, having the notion matters more, 

and whether this came from the Babylonians directly or through the Greeks,

 what is hanging in the balance here in India is the character this notion will take:

 will it be the idea of the absence of any number —

 or the idea of a number for such absence?

 

~ Robert Kaplan

excerpts from The Nothing that Is:

A natural history of zero 

with thanks to brainpickings

 

 

 

How poems are made

Letting go
In order to hold one
I gradually understand
How poems are made.

There is a place the fear must go.

There is a place the choice must go.

There is a place the loss must go.

The leftover love.

The love that spills out

Of the too full cup

And runs and hides

Its too full self

In shame.

I gradually comprehend

How poems are made

To the upbeat flight of memories.

The flagged beats of the running 

Heart.

I understand how poems are made.

They are the tears

That season the smile.

The stiff-neck laughter

That crowds the throat.

The leftover love.

I know how poems are made.

There is a place the loss must go.

There is a place the gain must go.

The leftover love.

~ Alice Walker

one loss

One loss

folds itself inside another.

It is like the origami

held inside a plain sheet of paper

Not creased yet.

Not yet more heavy.

The hand stays steady.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come Thief