the truceless wars

 

 

 

 

 

 The truceless wars

among beasts, and among men, are worlds apart.
The pigeon lays down fluttering life to flash
a russet tail. The haddock becomes harp seal,
then polar bear. The squirming termite licked
from a sharp stick awakes to invent tools.
The lamb lies down within the lion, yawns
yellow-fanged, and sleeps. Life struggles to evolve
higher in us, through questioning, toward hope.
But we sow salt. We leave a ground-zero wake
of futurelessness. Take the way a life
devolves from thought to blind mouths in the dust
wasted by semiautomatic fire.
This flesh is foolscap. We think we’re so smart,
but we create nothing, nothing. Nothing.

 

 

 

 

~ Marilyn Nelson

 

 born in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of a school teacher

 and a U. S. serviceman, a member of the last graduating class of Tuskegee Airmen. 

She is the author or translatorof more than 20 books and chapbooks for adults

 and children. A professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut,

 Marilyn was Poet Laureate of Connecticut, 2001– 2006, and founding director

 of Soul Mountain Retreat, a writers’ colony, 2004-2010.

 

with thanks to https://onbeing.org

keep yourself at the beginning of the beginning

 

 

 

 

 

Please try to help me go to the joy that is trying
to go to the beautiful helpful helpful beginning
of the beginning of the very trying freedom
that we make our great great great light
that is nothing but the laughter that is
fooling us into believing that we go
to the trash bin that is your life
that become the treasures
that live in the bottom
of the bin that is
your life yes
yes yes
yes –
please
try to dive
down to the
beautiful muck
that helps you get
that the world was made
from the garbage at the bottom
of the universe that was boiling over
with joy that wanted to become you you
you yes yes yes – please try to go to the colors
that kiss you great great great person of the light
that is becoming you you you yes yes – please
try to keep yourself in the bottom of the bin
yes yes – please try to go to the kissing
muck that is very true to your life yes
yes – please try to meet me there
yes yes – please try to bring
your beautiful nothing
there yes yes




~ Hannah Emerson

 author of The Kissing of Kissing

 with thanks to  https://onbeing.org

photo by  John Vermette

 

 

the speech of lovers

 

 

 

True silence is the speech of lovers. . . . 

True silence is a key to the immense and flaming heart of God.

 It is the beginning of a divine courtship that will end only in the immense,

 creative, fruitful, loving silence of final union with the Beloved.

Yes, such silence is holy, a prayer beyond all prayers. 

True silence leads to the final prayer of the constant presence of God,

 to the heights of contemplation, when the soul, finally at peace, 

lives by the will of whom she loves totally, utterly, and completely.

This silence, then, will break forth in a charity that overflows

 in the service of the neighbor without counting the cost. 

 

It will witness to Christ anywhere, always.

 Availability will become delightsome and easy,

 for in each person the soul will see the face of her Love.

 Hospitality will be deep and real, for a silent heart is a loving heart,

 and a loving heart is a hospice to the world. 

 

~ Catherine de Hueck Doherty

 

 a Russian-Canadian Catholic social worker 

and founder of the Madonna House Apostolate.

 A pioneer of social justice and a renowned national speaker,

 Doherty was also a prolific writer of hundreds of articles,

 best-selling author of dozens of books, and a dedicated wife and mother.

 In 1932, she gave up all her possessions, lived among the multitude of poor people

 in downtown Toronto and established Friendship House with its soup kitchen.

 She gave food to them when she had none for herself –

 

attachment

The soul that is attached to anything, 

however much good there may be in it, 

will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. 

 

For whether it be a strong wire rope 

or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, 

it matters not, if it really holds it fast; 

for, until the cord be broken, 

the bird cannot fly. 

 

 

 

 

~ Saint John of the Cross

.

unnameable

There is no where in you a paradise that is no place 
and there

You do not enter except without a story.

To enter there is to become unnameable.

Whoever is there is homeless for he has no door and 

no identity with which to go out and to come in.

Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot

exist except as unborn:

No disguise will avail him anything

Such a one is neither lost nor found.

But he who has an address is lost.

They fall, they fall into apartments and are securely 
established!

They find themselves in streets.  They are licensed

To proceed from place to place

They now know their own names

They can name several friends and know

Their own telephones must some time ring.

If all telephones ring at once, if all names are shouted

at once and all cars crash at one crossing:

If all cities explode and fly away in dust

Yet identities refuse to be lost.  There is a name and 

number for everyone.

There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon

holes for ashes:

Such security can business buy!

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?

Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the 

unborn flower of nothing:

This is the paradise tree.  It must remain unseen until

words end and arguments are silent.

~ Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

A person wakes from sleep

.

A person wakes from sleep
and does not know for a time
who she is, who he is.
This happens in a lifetime
once or twice.
It has happened to you, no doubt.
Some in that moment
panic,
some sigh with pleasure.
How each kind later envies the other,
who must so love their lives.

~   Jane Hirshfield

my doubt

I wake, doubt, beside you,

like a curtain half-open.

I dress doubting,

like a cup 

undecided if it has been dropped.

I eat doubting,

work doubting,

go out to a dubious cafe with skeptical friends.

I go to sleep doubting myself,

as a herd of goats

sleep in a suddenly gone-quiet truck.

I dream you, doubt,

nightly—

for what is the meaning of dreaming

if not that all we are while inside it

is transient, amorphous, in question?

Left hand and right hand,

doubt, you are in me,

throwing a basketball, guiding my knife and my fork.

Left knee and right knee,

we run for a bus,

for a meeting that surely will end before we arrive.

I would like

to grow content in you, doubt,

as a double-hung window

settles obedient into its hidden pulleys and ropes.

I doubt I can do so:

your own counterweight governs my nights and my days.

As the knob of hung lead holds steady

the open mouth of a window,

you hold me,

my kneeling before you resistant, stubborn,

offering these furious praises

I can't help but doubt you will ever be able to hear.

~ Jane Hirshfield

art by van gogh

surrender is the first step

.

[Since nature’s] beauties were such that even a fool

 could not force them into competition,

 this cured me once and for all of the pernicious tendency

 to compare and to prefer -an operation that does little good

 even when we are dealing with works of art

 and endless harm when we are dealing with nature.

 Total surrender is the first step towards the fruition of either.

 Shut your mouth; open your eyes and ears. 

Take in what is there and give no thought

 to what might have been there or what is somewhere else. 

That can come later, if it must come at all.

~ C. S. Lewis
 from Surprised by Joy

passing through

.

.

 

You are Life passing through your body, 

passing through your mind, 

passing through your soul. 

 

Once you find that out, 

not with logic, not with the intellect,

 but because you can feel that Life - 

you find out that you are,

 the force that makes the flowers open and close, 

that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. 

 

You find out that you are in every tree, 

and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock.

 

You are that force that moves the wind 

and breathes through your body. 

 

The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, 

and that is what you are. 

You are Life.

 

 

 

.

Don Miguel Ruiz

.

 

 

resting in gratitude

 

 

 

 

 

You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands.

 My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue.

 Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth,

 my eyes raised toward Your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face,

 tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in my bed and rest in You,

 oh God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer.

 

 I have been terribly tired for several days, but that too will pass. 

Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must be taught to listen;

 it is the most important thing we have to learn in this life.

 

 I am not challenging You, oh God, my life is one great dialogue with You.

 I may never become the great artist I would really like to be, 

but I am already secure in You, God. Sometimes I try my hand

 at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, 

but I always end up with just one single word: God. 

And that says everything, and there is no need for anything more. 

And all my creative powers are translated into inner dialogues with You. 

The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, 

and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches.

 

 

 

 

~ Etty Hillesum

from An Interrupted Life: The Diaries

translated by Arnold J. Pomerans

 

 

 

you can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable.

 But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook,

 wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace,

 and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited,

 and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings,

 and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things

 don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion

 and can embrace others. We accept others as they are,

 and then they have a chance to transform.

When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love.

 That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.

The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. 

You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness

 until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself

 and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness

 in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy

 for your own nourishment.

Then you have something to offer the other person.

If you have enough understanding and love, then every moment —

 whether it’s spent making breakfast, driving the car, watering the garden, 

or doing anything else in your day —

 can be a moment of joy.

In a deep relationship, there’s no longer a boundary between you and the other person.

 You are her and she is you. Your suffering is her suffering. Your understanding

 of your own suffering helps your loved one to suffer less.

 Suffering and happiness are no longer individual matters. 

What happens to your loved one happens to you.

 What happens to you happens to your loved one.

In true love, there’s no more separation or discrimination.

 His happiness is your happiness. Your suffering is his suffering.

 You can no longer say, “That’s your problem.”

When you love someone, you have to have trust and confidence.

Love without trust is not yet love. Of course, first you have to have trust,

 respect, and confidence in yourself. Trust that you have a good and compassionate nature.

 You are part of the universe; you are made of stars. When you look at your loved one,

 you see that he is also made of stars and carries eternity inside.

 Looking in this way, we naturally feel reverence. 

True love cannot be without trust and respect for oneself 

and for the other person.





~ Thich Nhat Hanh,
from his book How to Love 

chant of compassion,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  In memory of our beloved teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh

 we are releasing our best recording of the Namo’valokiteshvaraya chant of compassion,

 which was recorded in the Still Water Meditation Hall, Upper Hamlet,

 Plum Village, France, in autumn 2020.

 

 

 

tender presence

.

May you know that absence is full of tender presence and

that nothing is forgotten.

May the absences in your life be full of eternal echo.

May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere which

holds the presences that have left your life.

May you be generous in your embrace of loss.

May the sore well of grief turn into a well of seamless

presence.

May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear

from and may you have the courage to speak out for

the excluded ones.

May you become the gracious and passionate subject of

your own life.

May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle

words or false belonging.

May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and twilight

are one, and may your belonging inhabit its deepest

dreams within the shelter of the Great Belonging.

.

John O'Donohue
 from eternal echoes

.

be still and know

Imagine you are walking alone at night on a country road.  

No people or cars or houses around, just enough starlight to see your way, 

the only sound the sound of your shoes on the road and the swish

 of your clothes as you walk.  You feel the stillness inside of things come close. 

You stop. Now there are no sounds, except the almost-never-heard hush of things being.

You sense the stillness on all sides and an identical stillness within you.

 It makes you uneasy, as if you are about to be extinguished. 

 You try to think, to establish yourself against the stillness,

 but the voice of your thoughts sounds thin, metallic.  

You feel an irrepressible need to be distracted, to change the stillness

 and its overwhelming of you. 

You walk home thinking about plans for tomorrow.

But in the quiet of your room you realize what happened: you got scared. 

 You got scared of opening into the stillness, of allowing it to be.

  It was a close call.  You see how throughout your life you have invited 

one distraction after another to prevent just this from happening.  

Now you feel disappointed in yourself. So instead of turning on your computer

 or reading a book or getting something to eat, 

you sit down and invite the stillness back.

A phrase you once heard comes to you, 

from Psalm 46: "Be still, and know." Be still. Be still.

You arrange your body as you have learned to do.  You sit in a comfortable, 

alert position, with your back vertical so you don't slump or drift off. 

 You let your body be motionless, quiet.  The motionlessness of your body

 is a helpful friend; you know it is temporary, and in fact it is

 not really motionless - little shifts and sensations keep happening - 

but the relative stillness of your body reduces your identification with it,

 with the sense you are your body's ambitions and memories and likes and dislikes.

Learning to sit still, to settle like this, is called by Tibetan lamas "the first motionlessness."

 A quiet body at ease relaxes the persistence of thoughts.  Once the first motionlessness

 has been learned, they say, then it doesn't matter if the body is motionless or moving,

 for the the ground of stillness is always available.  But for now you need this helpful friend, 

and you sit still.

Now you invite what the lamas call "the second motionlessness."

 This is the still, empty openness "behind" each of your senses, 

the openness in which your senses arise.  You relax into that openness.

 To say it is not moving points to its nature, but that's not entirely accurate. 

 It is not the opposite of motion, or of the visible, or of sound. 

 This motionlessness is not definable - it is not a sensation.

 Nevertheless it has an almost kinesthetic effect on you, 

as if it is vanishing you, as if the existing one you thought you were, 

the receiver, the photographic plate that records your experience, this"one,"

 becomes transparent. You begin to feel the same threat of vanishing 

you felt on the road, but now you relax and let it be.

  "The third motionlessness" comes now, unbidden. 

 It is the stillness of presence itself - the stillness of a clearness that is always here,

 behind and within everything. It is what allows everything to show up.

  It is empty too not made out of anything, yet it is awesome and radiant in its presence.

  It is without being an it.

You remember now how the phrase from Psalm 46 continues:

 "Be still, and know I am God."

"God"  - this old, strange word that sounds like a judge and yet still resonates beyond that -

 could it mean - could it have first meant - this empty Presence without form,

 appearing as all form?  You realize you are trying to figure it out and you stop.

 Be still, and know I am God.  The knowing is not thinking.

 It is presence being present to presence.

You find yourself wavering here - one moment at ease in the clarity, 

and in the next thinking about it.  You hear the words again:

 Be still. Do nothing. Let be. Don't fill anything in. 

 No need to figure anything out. Relax.

A sense of peacefulness opens in you, vast and without dimension.  

This what Sufis call sakina - vast, peaceful tranquility without dimension -

 and suddenly you are smiling, your eyes are filling with tears - a joy -

 could it be called that? - a joyousness like praise and thankfulness together,

 love pouring forth from nowhere, the whole show showing up - 

mountain, sky, stars, bodies - from nothing, from stillness.

In remembering the Real, all hearts find joyous peace.

- Qur'an 13:28

~ Pir Elias Amidon

from Free Medicine

 

 

 

the struggle is over

.

.

.

VI.                    Riding the Bull

Mounting the bull, slowly I return homeward.

The voice of my flute intones through the evening.

Measuring with hand-beats the pulsation harmony, I direct the endless rhythm.

Whoever hears this melody will join me.

.

 

Comment: 

 

 This struggle is over; gain and loss are assimilated. 

 I sing the song of the village woodsman, and play the tunes of the children. 

 Astride the bull, I observe the clouds above.  

Onward I go, no matter who may wish to call me back.

.

 

 

 

 

 ~ Kakuan

from 10 BULLS

Transcribed by. Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps 

 Illustrated by Tomikichiro Tokuriki