the work of happiness

I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall --
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furniture
Has stood a life's span in a single place,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.

 

 

 

 

~  May Sarton
from May Sarton, Collected Poems, 1930-1993

 

 

out of my deeper heart

Out of my deeper heart a bird rose and flew skyward.

Higher and higher did it rise, yet larger and larger did it grow.

At first it was but like a swallow, then a lark, then an eagle,
 then as vast as a spring cloud, and then it filled the starry heavens.

Out of my heart a bird flew skyward. 
And it waxed larger as it flew. 
 Yet it left not my heart.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Forerunner, His Parables and Poems

art by  Shel Waldman

our daily abiding awareness

 

~ James Finley 

turn your attention

 

God dwells in you, as you, 

and you don't have to 'do' anything

 to be God-realized or Self-realized,

 it is already your true and natural state.

Just drop all seeking, 

turn your attention inward, 

and sacrifice your mind to

 the One Self radiating in the Heart

 of your very being. 

For this to be your own presently lived experience, 

Self-Inquiry is the one direct and immediate way.

~ Sri Ramana

photo by Ansel Adams

with thanks to love is a place

we

 

Two beggars

sharing a meal of the food they've been given

The new moon shines intensely

~ Ko Un

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

love is

 

~ Rupert Spira

thirsty I remain

 

I need a lover and a friend

All friendships you transcend

And impotent I remain

You are Noah and the Ark

You are the light and the dark

Behind the veil I remain

You are passion and are rage

You are the bird and the cage

Lost in flight I remain

You are the wine and the cup

You are the ocean and the drop

While afloat I remain

I said, "O Soul of the world

My desperation has taken hold!"

"I am thy essence," without scold,

"Value me much more than gold."

You are the bait and the trap

You are the path and the map

While in search I remain

You are poison and the sweet

You are defeated and defeat

Sword in hand I remain

You are the wood and the saw

You are cooked, and are raw

While in a pot I remain

You are sunshine and the fog

You are water and the jug

While thirsty I remain

Sweet fragrance of Shams is

The joy and pride of Tabriz

Perfume trader I remain.

~ Rumi

with thanks to No Mind's Land

Buddhist emptiness

 

silence and contemplation

 

~ Thomas Merton

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people are hurt, and nature can heal

 

A documentry of Lhakpa Sherpa, a fearless example

 of strength and perserverance.

 

“Look at me, I’m not educated,”

 she says of her achievements. 

“[If] I can do it, anybody can do whatever they want. 

People are hurt, and nature can heal people and change them.”

~ Lhakpa Sherpa

film by Lucy Walker

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

 photo by Kathy Chow

 

 

romanesque arches

Inside the huge Romanesque church the tourists jostled in the half darkness.

vault gaped behind vault, no complete view.

A few candle flames flickered.

An angel with no face embraced me

and whispered through my whole body:

"Don't be ashamed of being human, be proud!

Inside you vault opens behind vault endlessly.

You will never be complete, that's how it's meant to be."

Blind with tears

I was pushed out on the sun-seething piazza

together with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Mr Tanaka, and Signora Sabatini,

and inside each of them vault opened behind vault endlessly.

~ Tomas Tranströmer

from The Half Finished Heaven

translated by Robert Bly

becoming a healing presence in a traumatized world

 

~ James Finley

wholly into ourselves

Nature, and the things we live with and use, 
precede us and come after us. But they are, 
so long as we are here, our possession and our friendship.
 They know us with our needs and our pleasures,
 as they did those of our ancestors, 
whose trusted companions they were.

So it follows that all that is here is not to be despised 
and put down, but, precisely because it did precede us, 
to be taken by us with the innermost understanding 
that these appearances and things must be seen and transformed.

Transformed? Yes. For our task is to take this earth so deeply 
and wholly into ourselves that it will resurrect within our being. 
We are bees of the invisible. Passionately we plunder the honey of the visible
 in order to gather it in the great golden hive of the invisible.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from a letter to Witold Hulewicz

November 13, 1925

like bees return to the hive

Learn self-conquest, preserve thus for a time,

and you will perceive very clearly the advantage which you gain from it.

As soon as you apply yourself to contemplation,

you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together:

they seem like bees which return to the hive

and there shut themselves up to work at the making of honey.

~ Saint Teresa of Avila

Complete concentration is complete relaxation.

 The ability to work on a job with total concentration, 
and then put it out of your mind when necessary,
 is a skill which can be cultivated. 
Through practice, 

 
we can learn to drop whatever we are doing

 and turn our attention to a more urgent need.
 When you are absorbed in a favorite book 

and your partner interrupts you, 
set the book aside and give your complete attention

 to what he or she is saying.
 If part of your mind is on the conversation

 and part on what you have been reading, 
there will be division and tension in the mind. 

 

When we practice this one-pointedness during the day,
 it will greatly help our meditation.
 The mind will much more quickly become recollected. 

~  Eknath Easwaran

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