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

.

these temple bones

 

5

If one day it happens

you find yourself with someone you love

in a café at one end

of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar

where wine takes the shapes of upward opening glasses,

and if you commit then, as we did, the error

of thinking,

one day all this will only be memory,

learn to reach deeper

into the sorrows

to come—to touch

the almost imaginary bones

under the face, to hear under the laughter

the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss

the mouth

that tells you, here,

here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

The still undanced cadence of vanishing.

~ Galway Kinnell 

excerpt from 

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight

in each a different part of the mystery becomes luminous

In your clay body, 

things are coming to expression and to light
 that were never known before,

 presences that never came to light or shape
 in any other individual.  

To paraphrase Heidegger, who said,
 "Man is a shepherd of being," 

 we could say,  "Man is a shepherd of clay." 
 You represent an unknown world

 that begs you to bring it to voice.  

Often the joy you feel 

does not belong to your individual biography 
but to the clay out of which you are formed. 

 At other times, 
you will find sorrow moving through you, 

like a dark mist over a landscape.
  This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you.

  It is a mistake to interfere 
with this movement of feeling.  

It is more appropriate to recognize
 that this emotion belongs more to your clay

 than to your mind.

  
It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass; 

 it is on its way elsewhere.  
We so easily forget that our clay

 has a memory that preceded our minds, 
a life of its own 

before it took its present form.   

Regardless of how modern we seem, 

we still remain ancient, 
sister and brothers of the one clay. 

 In each of us 

a different part of the mystery
 becomes luminous.  

To truly be and become yourself, 
you need the ancient radiance of others.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

art AI generated

I have come into this word to see this:

 

I have come into this world to see this:

the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height

of their arc of anger

because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound

and it is His – the Christ’s, our

Beloved’s.

I have come into this world to see this: all creatures hold hands as

we pass through this miraculous existence we share on the way

to even a greater being of soul,

a being of just ecstatic light, forever entwined and at play

with Him.

I have come into this world to hear this:

every song the earth has sung since it was conceived in

the Divine’s womb and began spinning from

His wish,

every song by wing and fin and hoof,

every song by hill and field and tree and woman and child,

every song of stream and rock,

every song of tool and lyre and flute,

every song of gold and emerald

and fire,

every song the heart should cry with magnificent dignity

to know itself as

God:

for all other knowledge will leave us again in want and aching –

only imbibing the glorious Sun

will complete us.

I have come into this world to experience this:

men so true to love

they would rather die before speaking

an unkind

word,

men so true their lives are His covenant –

the promise of

hope.

I have come into this world to see this:

the sword drop from men’s hands

even at the height of

their arc of

rage

because we have finally realized

there is just one flesh

we can wound.

~ Hafiz

from Love Poems From God 

by Daniel Ladinsky

with thanks to poetseers.org

the abyss between us

 

We don’t walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. 

All we can do is tell the other person what we see. 

We can point at things and try to name them. 

If we do this well, 

our friend can look at the world in a new way.

 We can meet.

...

I had a big beautiful cake in my head called 

“Feeling the Pain of Others” 

and I sliced it this way and that because 

I thought that emotion is the bridge between people, 

sentiment crosses space, sympathy is a gas, 

exhaled by one, inhaled by the other. Empathy! 

It’s just like melting. 

We can merge, you know. 

We can connect. 

We can cry at the same movie. 

You and I.

...

There is a real gap between me and the next person, 

there is a space between every human being. 

And it is not a frightening space. 

The empty air which exists between people

 might be crossed by emotion, but it might not. 

You need something else, or you need something first… 

Now, I think the word we need is “translation.”

...

These days I am obsessed by light, it is so hard to commodify.

 I am not talking about a beautiful dawn, or holidays in the sun,

 or the light that makes a photograph look good. 

I am talking about brightness itself, the air lit up.

 The gleam on the surfaces of my typing hands. 

I love the gift of its arrival.

 The light you see is always eight and a half minutes old. 

Always and again. 

And you think it is shared by everyone 

but it is not shared, exactly — 

our eyes are hit by our own, 

personal photons.

~ Anne Enright

excerpts from The Wren, the Wren

with thanks to the Marginalian

photo by Don Danko

we who never let each other sleep

I know the truth -- give up all other truths!

No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.

Look -- it is evening, look, it is nearly night:

what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,

the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.

And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we

who never let each other sleep above it.

~ Marina Tsvetaeva

English version by Elaine Feinstein

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

it all moves

 

 

 

 

 

 

At night outside it all moves or
almost moves–trees, grass,
touches of wind. The room you have
in the world is ready to change.
Clouds parade by, and stars in their
configurations. Birds from far
touch the fabric around them–you can
feel their wings move. Somewhere under
the earth it waits, that emanation
of all things. It breathes. It pulls you
slowly out through doors or windows
and you spread in the thin halo of night mist.

 

 

 

 

~ William Stafford 

so close

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

.

caught up in the idea

 

We are a wave appearing on the surface of the ocean.

 The body of a wave does not last very long – 

perhaps only ten to twenty seconds.

 

The wave is subject to beginning and ending,

 to going up and coming down. 

The wave may be caught in the idea that 

‘I am here now and I won’t be here later.’

 And the wave may feel afraid or even angry.

 But the wave also has her ocean body. 

She has come from the ocean, 

and she will go back to the ocean.

 She has both her wave body and her ocean body.

 She is not only a wave; she is also the ocean. 

The wave does not need to look

 for a separate ocean body, 

because she is in this very moment 

both her wave body and her ocean body.

 As soon as the wave can go back to herself

 and touch her true nature,

 which is water,

 then all fear and

 anxiety disappear.

 ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

kindness in Navajo teachings

 

~ Traditional Navajo Teachings

may my heart always be open

may my heart always be open to little

birds who are the secrets of living

whatever they sing is better than to know

and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry

and fearless and thirsty and supple

and even if it's sunday may i be wrong

for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully

and love yourself so more than truly

there's never been quite such a fool who could fail

pulling all the sky over him with one smile

e.e.cummings

.

you know yourself only through the senses and the mind

 

 You know yourself only through the senses and the mind. 

You take yourself to be what they suggest;

 having no direct knowledge of yourself,

 you have mere ideas; all mediocre, 

second-hand, by hearsay.

Whatever you think you are you take it to be true; 

the habit of imagining yourself perceivable and

describable is very strong with you.

I see as you see, hear as you hear, taste as you taste,

 eat as you eat. 

I also feel thirst and hunger.

 When starved or sick,

 my body and mind go weak.

 All this I perceive quite clearly, but somehow I am not in it, 

I feel myself as if floating over it, aloof and detached.

 Even not aloof and detached. 

There is aloofness and detachment as there is thirst and

hunger; there is also the awareness of it all 

and a sense of Immense distance, 

as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them

 were somewhere far out on the horizon. 

I am like a cinema screen -- clear and empty -- 

the pictures pass over it and disappear, 

leaving it as clear and empty as before. 

In no way is the screen affected by the pictures, 

nor are the pictures affected by the screen. 

The screen intercepts and reflects the pictures,

 it does not shape them.

 It has nothing to do with the rolls of films.

 These are as they are, lumps of destiny (prarabdha),

 but not my destiny; the destinies of the people on the screen.

~ from I AM THAT

Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

happiness is the very nature of the Self

 

Happiness is the very nature of the Self:

happiness and the Self are not different.

There is no happiness in any object of the world.

We imagine through our ignorance that we

derive happiness from objects. 

When the mind goes out seeking,

it expereinces misery.

In truth, when its desires are fulfilled,

it returns to its own place and enjoys

the happiness that is the Self.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

aboriginal art

surrendering, lose myself in your loosened hair

 

 

Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,

let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.

Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart

fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,

or a broken string. 

 Let my joyfully streaming face

make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise

and blossom.  

How dear you will be to me then, you nights 

of anguish. 

 Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you,

inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself

in your loosened hair. 

 How we squander our hours of pain.

How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration

to see if they have an end.

  Though they are really

our winter-enduring foliage,

 our dark evergreen,

one season in our inner year -,

 not only a season

in time -,

 but are place and settlement, 

foundation and soil and home.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Duino Elegies, The Tenth Elegy

translation by stephen mitchell

art by van gogh

in the heart of every creature

.

.

.

Hidden in the heart of every creature

Exists the Self, subtler that the subtlest,

Greater than the greatest…

.

The Self cannot be known through study,

…nor through the intellect,

nor through discourses about it.

.

~  Katha Upanishad

.