My hermitage

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My hermitage lies in a forest all around me,

Everything is thick and green

no one finds this place,

Only those who have lost their way.

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No news of the affairs of men

Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.

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A thousand peaks, ten thousand mountain streams

yet no signs of anyone.

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~ Ryokan

art by Cezanne

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The great good news

The great good news is that 

love is free and it has not gone anywhere. 

In all of these eons that you have been hiding from love,

 love is still here, 

it is still open, 

it is still waiting for your commitment, 

still waiting for you to say,

"Yes, I give my life to the truth of love. 

I vow to let love live this life as it will, 

for better or worse, for richer or poorer." 

The love that you search for everywhere is already present within you. 

It may be evoked by any number of people or events. 

A mountain can evoke this love. 

A sunset can evoke this love. 

But finally, you must realize you are this love. 

The source of all love is within you. 

- Gangaji

Keep your intelligence white-hot
and your grief glistening
so your life will stay fresh.
Cry easily like a little baby.

~ Rumi

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The hunger of the hungry and the fullness of the full

 

 

 

 

If the soul was born with pinions

What are hovels to it, what are mansions?

What's Genghis Khan to it and what his Horde?

I have two enemies in all the world,

Two twins, inseparably fused:

The hunger of the hungry and the fullness of the full.

 

 

 

Marina Tsvetaeva, (1892-1941)

translation by David McDuff

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(Born in Moscow, she married Sergey Efron who fought with the White Guard. 

 One of her two children died of malnutrition in 1920.  They lived in exile

 in Prague and Paris.  Even though Sergey was secretly a soviet informer

 during their exile, he was executed by the secret police on their return

 to the Soviet Union.  Tsvetaeva hanged herself in 1941.)

 

 

 

out of the freezing sky

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Coming down out of the freezing sky

with its depths of light,

like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,

it was beautiful, and accurate,

striking the snow and whatever was there

with a force that left the imprint 

of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —

and the grabbing thrust of its feet,

and the indentation of what had been running

through the white valleys of the snow —

and then it rose, gracefully,

and flew back to the frozen marshes

to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,

in the blue shadows —

so I thought: 

maybe death isn't darkness, after all,

but so much light wrapping itself around us — 

as soft as feathers —

that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,

and shut our eyes, not without amazement,

and let ourselves be carried,

as through the translucence of mica,

to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,

that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —

in which we are washed and washed

out of our bones. 

~ Mary Oliver 

from Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

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Grace is not something to be acquired from others. 

If it is external, it is useless. 

All that is necessary is to know its existence in you.

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~ Ramana Maharshi

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Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu

That would be waving and that would be crying,

Crying and shouting and meaning farewell,

Farewell in the eyes and farewell at the centre,

Just to stand still without moving a hand.

In a world without heaven to follow, the stops

Would be endings, more poignant than partings, profounder,

And that would be saying farewell, repeating farewell,

Just to be there and just to behold.

To be one's singular self, to despise

The being that yielded so little, acquired

So little, too little to care, to turn

to the ever-jubilant weather, to sip

One's cup and never to say a word,

Or to sleep or just to lie there still,

Just to be there, just to be beheld,

That would be bidding farewell, be bidding farewell.

One likes to practice the thing. They practice,

Enough, for heaven. Ever-jubilant,

What is there here but weather, what spirit

Have I except it comes from the sun?

~Wallace Stevens

If the rise of the Fish

 

 

 

If for a moment

the leaves fell upward,

if it seemed a small flock

of brown-orange birds

circled over the trees,

if they circled then scattered each in 

its own direction for the lost seed

they had spotted in tall, gold-checkered grass.

If the bloom of flies on the window

in morning sun, if their singing insistence

on grief and desire.  If the fish.

If the rise of the fish.

If the blue morning held in the glass of the window,

if my fingers, my palms.  If my thighs.

If your hands, if my thighs.

If the seeds, among all the lost gold of the grass.

If your hands on my thighs, if your tongue.

If the leaves. If the singing fell upward.  If grief.

For a moment if singing and grief.

If the blue of the body fell upward, out of our hands.

If the morning held it like leaves.

 

 

 

 

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

 

 

 

 

You will know love when the mind is very still

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You will know love when the mind is very still and free from its search for gratification and escapes.  First, the mind must come entirely to an end.  Mind is the result of thought, and thought is merely a passage, a means to an end.  When life is merely a passage to something, how can there be love?  Love comes into being when the mind is naturally quiet, not made quiet, when it sees the false as false and the true as true.  When the mind is quiet, then whatever happens is the action of love, it is not the action of knowledge.  Knowledge is mere experience, and experience is not love.  Experience cannot know love.  Love comes into being when we understand the total process of ourselves, and the understanding of ourselves is the beginning of wisdom.

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~ J. Krishnamurti

from his talk in Madras, Feb. 5th 1950

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It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. 

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~  Henry David Thoreau

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Poetry has an immediate effect on the mind. 

The simple act of reading poetry 

alters thought patterns and the shuttle of the breath. 

Poetry induces trance. 

Its words are chant. Its rhythms are drum beats. 

Its images become the icons 

of the inner eye. 

Poetry is more than a description 

of the sacred experience; 

it carries the experience itself.

~ Ivan M. Granger

find Ivan at: http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/G/GrangerIvanM/index.htm

When I speak of darkness, I mean the absence of knowledge

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And so to stand firmly and avoid pitfalls, 

keep to the path you are on.  

Let your longing relentlessly beat upon the  cloud of unknowing 

that lies between you and your God.  

Pierce that cloud with the keen shaft of your love, 

spurn the thought of anything less, 

and do not give up this work for anything.  

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For the contemplative work of love by itself will eventually heal you...

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And so diligently persevere until you feel joy in it.  For in the beginning it is usual to feel nothing but a kind of darkness about your mind, or as it were, a cloud of unknowing.  You will seem to know nothing and to feel nothing except a naked intent toward God in the depths of your being.  Try as you might, this darkness and this cloud will remain between you and your God.  You will feel frustrated, for your mind will be unable to grasp him, and you heart will not relish the delight of his love.  But learn to be at home in this darkness. Return to it as often as you can, letting your spirit cry out to him whom you love.  

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the fourteenth century anonymous author,

the Cloud of Unknowing

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awaken...a meadow of delight

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On the day when

The weight deadens

On your shoulders

And you stumble,

May the clay dance

To balance you.

And when your eyes

Freeze behind

The gray window

And the ghost of loss gets into you,

May a flock of colors,

Indigo, red, green

and azure blue,

Come to awaken in you

A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

In the curragh of thought

And a stain of ocean

Blackens beneath you,

May there come across the waters

A path of yellow moonlight

To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

May the clarity of light be yours,

May the fluency of the ocean be yours,

May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And, so may a slow

Wind work these words

Of love around you,

An invisible cloak

To mind your life.

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~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

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[you who never arrived]

You who never arrived

in my arms, Beloved, who were lost

from the start,

I don't even know what songs

would please you, I have given up trying

to recognize you in the surging wave of the next 

moment.  All the immense 

images in me - the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,

cities, towers, and bridges, and un-

suspected turns in the path,

and those powerful lands that were once

pulsing with the life of the gods -

all rise within me to mean

you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all 

the gardens I have ever gazed at,

longing.  An open window

in a country house -, and you almost

stepped out, pensive, to meet me.  Streets that I chanced upon, -

you had just walked down them and vanished.

And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors

were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back

my too-sudden image.  Who knows?  perhaps the same

bird echoed through both of us 

yesterday, separate, in the evening...

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from the Uncollected Poems

translated by Stephen Mitchell

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Dusk in the Country

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The riddle silently sees its image. It spins evening

among the motionless reeds.

There is a frailty no one notices

there, in the web of grass.

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Silent cattle stare with green eyes.

They mosey in evening calm down to the water.

And the lake holds its immense spoon

up to all the mouths.

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~ Harry Edmund Martinson

translation by Robert Bly

art by the author

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