Showing posts with label Stephen Mitchell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen Mitchell. Show all posts

Sunday, August 27, 2023

cello

 
 
 

 
 
It rests inside its close-fitting red-velvet-lined case
the way medieval monks slept inside their coffins.
But it doesn't  meditate on death; it has already died,
and barely remembers sunlight, water, the wind among the branches.
It lies there in the dark, feeling all through its graceful curves
the memory of a hundred years of music,
and sometimes dreaming of heaven: the Bach suites.
 
Taken out to be played, it knows that by itself it is nothing,
that it would be incapable of producing a single note
even if it were a Stradivarius.
So it gladly assents to having its strings tightened,
painful though this is; it wants to be perfectly in tune,
stretched to its utmost but not straining.
When it feels ready, it leans back and waits
for the bow to be drawn across,
for the resonance to fill it completely.
 
 
 
 
 
 ~ Stephen Mitchell
from Parables and Portraits
 
 
 
 

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

from the depths of your heart

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art by Odilon Redon, from the British Museum





Psalm 121 
 
I look deep into my heart,
to the core where wisdom arises.
 
Wisdom comes from the Unnamable
...and unifies heaven and earth.
 
The Unnamable is always with you,
shining from the depths of your heart. 




~ A Book of Psalms
 translated and adapted by Stephen Mitchell




Sunday, December 20, 2020

the parable of the sower

 
 
 


 
 
A sower went forth to sow.
Some of his seeds fell upon stony places.
Centuries passed; millennia.
And the seeds remained.
And the stones crumbled and became good soil,
and the seeds brought forth fruit.
 
"Wait a minute," said one listener.
"You can't play fast and loose that way with the natural facts.
The seeds would die long before the soil could receive them."
 
"Why would they die?"
 
"Because they can't hold out in stony places,
for thousands of years."
 
"But, my dear, what kind of seeds do you think we're 
talking about?"
 
 
 
 
 
Stephen Mitchell
from Parables and Portraits
 
 
 
  

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

the struggle

 
 
 
 

 
We tend to think of Sisyphus as a tragic hero, 
condemned by the gods to shoulder his rock 
sweatily up the mountain, and again up the mountain, forever. 
 
The truth is that Sisyphus is in love with the rock. 
He cherishes every roughness and every ounce of it.
 He talks to it, sings to it. It has become the Mysterious Other. 
He evens dreams of it as he sleepwalks upward. 
 
Life is unimaginable without it, looming always above him
 like a huge gray moon. He doesn’t realize that at any moment 
he is permitted to step aside, let the rock hurtle to the bottom, 
and go home. 
 
Tragedy is the inertial force of the mind.




~  Stephen Mitchell
art by Van Gogh




Saturday, September 12, 2020

before sorrow



 
 
Before sorrow, anger,
longing, or fear have arisen,
you are in the center.
 
When these emotions appear
and you know how to see through them,
you are in harmony.
 
That center is the root of the universe;
that harmony is the Tao,
which reaches out to all things.
 
 
 
 
~ Stephen Mitchell
 from The Second Book of the Tao
 
 
 


Sunday, July 19, 2020

at the center







The Master is not trapped in opposites. His this is also a that. 
He sees that life becomes death and death becomes life,
 that right has a kernel of wrong within it and wrong a kernel of right,
 that the true turns into the false and the false into the true. 

He understands that nothing is absolute,
 that since every point of view depends on the viewer, 
affirmation and denial are equally beside the point. 
The place where the this and the that are not opposed to each other
 is called "the pivot of the Tao." When we find this pivot, we find ourselves
 at the center of the circle, and here we sit, serene, 
while Yes and No keep chasing each other
 around the circumference, endlessly. 

Mind can only create the qualities of good and bad by comparing. 
Remove the comparison, and there go the qualities. 
What remains is the pure unknown: ungraspable object,
 ungraspable subject, and the clear light of awareness 
streaming through. The pivot of the Tao
 is the mind free of its thoughts.
 It doesn't believe that this is a this
 or that that is a that. 

Let Yes and No sprint around the circumference
 toward a finish line that doesn't exist. How can they stop trying
 to win the argument of life until you stop? When you do, 
you realize that you were the only one running.

 Yes was you,
 No was you, 
the whole circumference, with its colored banners,
 its pom-pom girls and frenzied crowds - that was you as well.
 At the center, the eyes open and again
 it's the sweet morning of the world. There's nothing here
 to limit you, no one here to draw a circumference.
 In fact, there's no one here - 
not even you.



~ Stephen Mitchell
from The Second Book of the Tao
art by Master Shen-Long
with thanks to Love is a Place




Tuesday, February 8, 2011

all their actions have vanished

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.
In an age when the Tao is followed,
no one rewards the talented
or pays special attention
to the lovely, the virtuous, or the wise.
Those who govern
are simply the highest branches
on the tree, and the people wander
in freedom, like deer in the woods.
They are honest but think nothing of it,
they naturally do what is right,
they are kind without any conception
of kindness, and are trustworthy
though they wouldn't know what that means.
They keep no records of their good deeds,
because good deeds are so common.
That is why all their actions
have vanished, without a trace.

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~ Stephen Mitchell
from The Second Book of the Tao

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