slip beyond

...love impels people to service.  If love starts with a downward motion,

 burrowing into the vulnerability of self, exposing nakedness, 

it ends with an active upward motion.  It arouses great energy 

and desire to serve.  The person in love is buying little presents, 

fetching the glass from the next room, bringing a tissue when there's flu,

 driving through traffic to pick the beloved up at the airport.

 Love is waking up night after night to breastfeed, living year after year to nurture.

  It is risking and sacrificing your life for your buddy's in a battle. 

 Love ennobles and transforms. 

 In no other state do people so often live as we want them to live. 

 In no other commitment are people so likely to slip beyond the logic

 of self-interest and unconditional commitments

 that manifest themselves in daily acts of care.

Occasionally you meet someone with a thousand-year heart. 

 The person with the thousand-year heart has made the most of the passionate,

 tumultuous phase of love. Those months or years of passion have engraved 

a deep commitment in their mind.  The person or thing they once loved hotly

 they now love warmly but steadily, happily, unshakably.  

They don't even think of loving their beloved because they want something back...

 They just naturally offer love as a matter of course

 It is gift-love, not reciprocity-love.

~ David Brooks

from The Road to Character

what lovers

 

what lovers would not unite beyond belief and annihilate

their separation forever if they

had the power

to do so?

...

What lovers would

not want to die

embraced?

~ Meister Eckhart

The thief who became a disciple

One evening as Shichiri Kojun was reciting sutras a thief with a sharp sword entered,
 demanding either his money or his life.

Shichiri told him:  "Do not disturb me.  You can find the money in that drawer." 
 Then he resumed his recitation.

A little while afterwards he stopped and called:  "Don't take it all. 
 I need some to pay taxes with tomorrow."

The intruder gathered up most of the money and started to leave. 
 "Thank a person when you receive a gift,"  Shichiri added. 
 The man thanked him and made off.

A few days afterwards the fellow was caught and confessed,
 among others, the offence against Shichiri.  
When Shichiri was called as a witness he said:  
 "This man is no thief, at least as far as I am concerned.  
I gave him the money and he thanked me for it."

After he had finished his prison term,
 the man went to Shichiri and became his disciple.

~ from Zen Flesh Zen Bones
 compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki

members of each other

The way we are, we are members of each other. 

All of us. Everything. 

The difference ain't in who is a member and who is not, 

but in who knows it and who don’t.

...

It was a community always disappointed in itself, 

disappointing its members, 

always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, 

always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill…

And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, 

beyond time, by one another’s love, compassion, and forgiveness, 

as it is said we may be perfected by grace.

And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, 

and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. 

How could we? 

It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time.

~ Wendell Berry

excerpts from Jaber Crow

for lost friends

.

.

As twilight makes a rainbow robe

From the concealed colors of day

In order for time to stay alive

Within the dark weight of night,

May we lose no one we love

From the shelter of our hearts.

.

When we love another heart

And allow it to love us, 

We journey deep below time

Into that eternal weave

Where nothing unravels.

.

May we have the grace to see

Despite the hurt of rupture,

The searing of anger,

And the empty disappointment,

That whoever we have loved,

Such love can never quench.

.

Though a door may have closed,

Closed between us,

May we be able to view

Our lost friends with eyes

Wise with calming grace;

Forgive them the damage

We were left to inherit;

.

Free ourselves from the chains

Of forlorn resentment;

Bring warmth again to 

Where the heart has frozen

In order that beyond the walls

Of our cherished hurt

And chosen distance

We may be able to 

Celebrate the gifts they brought,

Learn and grow from the pain,

And prosper into difference,

Wishing them the peace

Where spirit can summon

Beauty from wounded space.

.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

.

listen

.

.

Listen to your life. 

See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.

 In the boredom and the pain of it 

no less than the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, 

smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it

 because in the last analysis all moments are key moments,

 and life itself is grace.

.

~  Frederick Buechner

.

about true seekers

 

Wayfarer, know that in the battlefield of pain,

love may come with annihilation.

You whose existence is mingled

with nonexistence,

you whose joys are mingled with grief,

if you don't experience some ups and downs,

how will you ever know relief?

You bravely strike like lightning,

then cover yourself with rubbish

to protect against the shock.

What are you doing?

Rise up like a true seeker.

Set fire to reason

and flare into a mad lover.

If you hesitate over this alchemy,

at least come and take a quick look.

How long will you stay in your head?

Become like me, leave your self.

For once, show foresight

so that in the end you too can become

a dervish and joyfully arrive

at annihilation of the self.

I who am neither myself nor other than myself

have traveled beyond reason, good and evil thoughts.

I've lost my self within myself.

The only cure is the incurable.

When the sun of poverty landed on me,

both worlds twirled together into a single shaft of light.

And when I saw that column of light

I passed on into no self; became

a drop of water and joined the stream.

All that I had won and lost,

I threw away into black waters.

I disappeared, became lost, void.

I became a shadow without a single atom,

a drop of water that had joined the ocean.

Good luck finding that droplet.

Such loss of self is not for all,

but I joined the eternal union

and there are many like me.

Who in the world, from a dust mote to the moon,

wouldn't want to be lost this way?

~ Farid ud-Din Attar  (1120? - 1220?)

English version by Sholeh Wolpé

from The Conferences of the Birds

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

why we tell stories

I 

Because we used to have leaves 

and on damp days 

our muscles feel a tug, 

painful now, from when roots 

pulled us into the ground 

and because our children believe 

they can fly, an instinct retained 

from when the bones in our arms 

were shaped like zithers and broke 

neatly under their feathers 

and because before we had lungs 

we knew how far it was to the bottom 

as we floated open-eyed 

like painted scarves through the scenery 

of dreams, and because we awakened 

and learned to speak 

2 

We sat by the fire in our caves, 

and because we were poor, we made up a tale 

about a treasure mountain 

that would open only for us 

and because we were always defeated, 

we invented impossible riddles 

only we could solve, 

monsters only we could kill, 

women who could love no one else 

and because we had survived 

sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, 

we discovered bones that rose 

from the dark earth and sang 

as white birds in the trees 

3 

Because the story of our life 

becomes our life 

Because each of us tells 

the same story 

but tells it differently 

and none of us tells it 

the same way twice 

Because grandmothers looking like spiders 

want to enchant the children 

and grandfathers need to convince us 

what happened happened because of them 

and though we listen only 

haphazardly, with one ear, 

we will begin our story 

with the word and

~ Lisel Mueller

from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems

knowing nothing

.

Love is not the reason.

Love is the lure,

the thin goat staked out in the clearing.

The lion has stalked

the village for a long time.

It does not want the goat,

who stands thin and bleating,

tied to its bit of wood.

The goat is not the reason

The reason is the lion,

whose one desire is to enter -

Not the goat, which is

only the lure, only excuse,

but the one burning life

it has hunted for a long time

disguised as hunger.  Disguised as love.

Which is not the reason.

Or would you think

that the bones of a lion reason?

Would you think that the tongue?

The lion does not want the goat,

it wants only to live.  Alone if it must.

In pain if it must.  Knowing nothing.

Like the goat, it wants only to live.

Like love. Or would you think that the heart?

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Lives of the Heart

.