A ruin is never simply empty

A ruin is never simply empty.  It remains a vivid temple of absence.  All other inhabited dwellings hold their memory and their presence is continually added to and deepened by succeeding generations.  It is, consequently, quite poignant that a long since vacated ruin still retain echoes of the presence of the vanished ones.  The German poet Friedrich Holderlin captures this unstated yet perennial presence of the echo of touch in abandoned places:

When night is like day

And over slow footpaths,

 Dense with golden dreams,

 Lulling breezes drift.

The abandoned place is dense with the presence of the absent ones who have walked there.

~ John O'Donohue, from: 'Eternal Echoes'

do by not doing

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Act by not acting;
do by not doing.
Enjoy the plain and simple.
Find that greatness in the small.
Take care of difficult problems
while they are still easy;
Do easy things before they become too hard.
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~  Tao Teh Ching

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look without imagination

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Learn to look without imagination, 

to listen without distortion:

 that is all.

 Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless,

 realize that every mode of perception is subjective,

 that what is seen or heard,

 touched or smelled, 

felt or thought, 

expected or imagined,

 is in the mind and not in reality,

 and you will experience peace and freedom from fear.

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~  Nisargadatta Maharaj

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This moment

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This
moment
as smooth
as a board,
and fresh,
this hour,
this day
as clean
as an untouched glass
--not a single
spiderweb
from the past:
we touch the moment
with our fingers,
we cut it
to size,
we direct
its blooming.
.It's living,
it's alive:
it brings nothing from yesterday that can't be redeemed,
nothing from the lost past.
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~  Pablo Neruda

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O, how incomprehensible

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O, how incomprehensible everything was, 

and actually sad, 

although it was also beautiful. 

One knew nothing. 

And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, 

that a veil would drop from it all; 

but then it passed,

 nothing happened,

 the riddle remained unsolved, 

the secret spell unbroken,

 and in the end one grew old and looked cunning . . . or wise

 . . . And still one knew nothing, perhaps, was still waiting and listening.

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~  Hermann Hesse

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from: Narcissus and Goldmund

where nothing is worth anything

Here, where nothing is worth anything,
I've set up a grass-thatched hut.
After eating,
I just stretch out for a nap.

As soon as it was built,
weeds were already growing back.
Now I've been here awhile
its covered in vines.

So the one in this hut just lives on,
unstuck,
not inside, out, in between.

The places where usual folk live,
I don't.
What they want,
I don't.

This tiny hut holds the total world,
an old man and
the radiance of forms and their nature,
all in ten feet square.

Bodhisattvas of the Vast Path
know about this but
the mediocre and marginal wonder,
"Isn't such a place too fragile to live in?"

Fragile or not,
the true master dwells here
where there is no
south or north, east or west.

Just sitting here,
it can't be surpassed:
below the green pines
a lit window.

Palaces and towers
of jade and vermilion
can't compare.

Just sitting,
my head covered,
all things rest.

So this mountain monk
has no understanding at all,
just lives on
without struggling to get loose.

Not going to
set out seats
and wait for guests.

Turning the light
to shine within,
turn it around again.

Vast,
unthinkable,
you can't face it
or turn away from it.

The root of it.

Meet the Awakened Ancestors,
become intimate with the teachings,
lash grass into thatch for a hut
and don't tire so easily.

Let it go,
release,
and your life of a hundred years
vanishes.

Open your hands.

Walk around.

Innocence.

The swarm of words,
and little stories
are just to loosen you
from where you are stuck.

If you want to know
the one in the hermitage
who never dies,
you can't avoid this skin-bag
right here.

~  Shitou Xiqian

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As long as you do not see

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As long as you do not see that it is mere habit,

 built on memory,

 prompted by desire,

 you will think yourself to be a person -

 living, feeling, thinking, active, passive, pleased or pained. 

Question yourself, ask yourself.

 'Is it so?'

 'Who am I'?

 'What is behind and beyond all things?'

 And soon you will see your mistake.

 And it is in the very nature of a mistake to cease to be, when seen.

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~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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In the secret cave of the heart

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In the secret cave of the heart, two are

seated by life's fountain.  The separate ego

drinks of the sweet and bitter stuff,

liking the sweet, disliking the bitter,

while the supreme Self drinks sweet and bitter

neither liking this nor disliking that.

The ego gropes in darkness, while the Self 

lives in light...

~ the Katha Upanishad

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I can give you my loneliness

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I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. 

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~ Jorge Luis Borges

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all objects in existence are wildly in love

 

 

 

 

They are always kissing, they can't

control themselves.

 

It is not possible

that any creature can have greater instincts

and perceptions than the 

mature human

mind.

 

God

ripened me.

So I see it is true;

all objects in existence are

 wildly in

love.

 

 

 

 

~ Meister Eckhart

 

 

 

 

all states of mind

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All states of mind, 

all names and forms of existence are rooted in non-enquiry, 

non-investigation, in imagination and credulity. 

It is right to say "I am," 

but to say "I am this," "I am that" is a sign of not enquiring, 

not examining, 

of mental weakness or lethargy.

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~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
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Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
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The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
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For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
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They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

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~ William Wordsworth

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we change

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We change. 

This is a truism so blatant we could laugh at it,

 if we really believed it. 

We know things change,

 both things as circumstances and things as objects. 

The meadow across from the house where I grew up,

 which seemed like it had been there forever,

 has been filled with houses for forty years. 

To the people living in those homes the meadow, 

the games and egg hunts were never there. 

Only their own memories are there.

 In our heart of hearts,

 however, most of us harbor a deep belief, 

so deep we accept it without thinking,

 that some part of us,

 an essential us, 

remains the same, 

regardless of events or even memories. 

.

It's an illusory belief.

 Is there nothing that holds?

 No. Nothing. 

Nobody. Nada. Nadie.

 Even if we hold what seem to be the same

 feelings and thoughts years later?

 Isn't there something essential in them that holds?

 No.

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~  Terrance Keenan

 from St Nadie In Winter

artwork by the author

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Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

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The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, 

because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and 

start paying attention to the universe. 

Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

 When you're unhappy, 

you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. 

You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

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~ Tom Robbins

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There are times when we stop

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We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. 
We move along the surface of things going from one quick base to another, 
often with a frenzy that wears us out.

We collect data, things, people, ideas, 'profound experiences',
 never penetrating any of them... 
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But there are other times. 
There are times when we stop. We sit still. 
We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. 
We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper. 

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~  James Carroll

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