I

.

The shallow “I” of individualism can be possessed,

 developed, cultivated, pandered to, 

satisfied: it is the center of all our strivings for gain and satisfaction, 

whether material or spiritual.

.

But the deep “I” of the spirit, of solitude and of love, 

cannot be had, possessed, developed, perfected.

 It can only be, and act, 

according to the inner laws that are not of man’s contriving,

 but which come from God. . . .

.

It is beyond limitation. It is beyond selfish affirmation.

.

~ Thomas Merton

cease clinging and hankering

Many students come to see me from all over the place. 

Many of them are not free from their entanglement with objective things. 

I treat them right on the spot. 

If their trouble is due to grasping hands, I strike there.

 If their trouble is a loose mouth, I strike them there.

 If their trouble is hidden behind their eyes, it is there I strike. 

So far I have not found anyone who can set himself free.

 This is because they have all been caught up in the useless ways of the old masters. 

As for me, I do not have one only method which I give to everyone,

 but I relieve whatever the trouble is and set men free.

Friends, I tell you this: there is no Buddha, 

no spiritual path to follow,

 no training and no realization. 

What are you so feverishly running after? 

Putting a head on top of your own head, you blind idiots? 

Your head is right where it should be. 

The trouble lies in your not believing in yourselves enough. 

Because you don't believe in yourselves 

you are knocked here and there by all the conditions in which you find yourselves. 

Being enslaved and turned around by objective situations,

 you have no freedom whatever, you are not masters of yourselves. 

Stop turning to the outside and don't be attached to my words either. 

Just cease clinging to the past and hankering after the future. 

This will be better than ten years' pilgrimage..

~ Master Lin Chi Yi-Sen

Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me

.

Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,

if this is the time.

Do it gently with a touch of a hand,  or a look.

Every morning I wait at dawn.  That's when

it's happened before.  Or do it suddenly

like an execution.  How else

can I get ready for death?

...

~ Rumi

.

I Am But a Traveler In This Land & Know Little of Its Ways

.

Is everything a field of energy caused

by human projection? From the crib bars

hang the teething tools. Above the finger-drummed 

desk, a bit lip. The cyclone fence of buts

.

surrounds the soccer field of what if.

Sometimes it seems like a world where no one 

knows what he or she is doing, eight lanes 

both directions. How about a polymer

.

that contracts in response to electrical

charge? A swimming pool on the 18th floor? 

King Lear done by sock puppets? Anyone

who has traveled here knows the discrepancies

.

between idea and fact. The idea is the worm 

in the tequila and the next day is the fact. 

In between may be the sacred—real blood 

from the wooden virgin’s eyes, and the hoax—

.

landing sites in cornfields. Maybe ideas

are best sprung from actions like the children 

of Zeus. One gives us elastic and the omelette, 

another nightmares and SUVs. There’s considerable

.

wobble in the system, and the fan belt screams, 

waking the baby. Swaying in the darkened 

nursery, kissing the baby-smelling head: 

good idea! But also sadness looking at the sea.

.

The stranded whale, guided out of the cove 

by tugboats, turns and swims back in. 

The violinist will not let go her violin 

which is 200 years old and still on the train

.

thus she is dragged down the track. 

By what manner is the soul joined to the body? 

Answer: an arm connecting a violin

to a violinist. According to Freud,

.

there are no accidents. Astrologists

and Presbyterians agree for different reasons. 

You fall down the stairs with a birthday cake. 

You try to fit a blunderbuss into a laptop.

.

Human consciousness: is it the projector

or the screen? They come in orange jumpsuits 

and spray the grass so everything dies

but the grass. It is too late to ask Kafka

.

what he thinks. Sometimes they give you 

a box of ash, a handshake, and the rest 

is your problem. In one version,

the beggar turns out to be a king and grants

.

the poor couple a castle and a moat and two 

silver horses said to be sired by the wind.

That was before dentistry, which might have been 

a better gift. You did not want to get sick 

in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th centuries.

.

So too the 19th and 20th were to be avoided

but the doctor coming to bleed you is the master 

of the short story. After the kiss from whom 

he will never know, the lieutenant, going home,

.

touches a bush in which birds are singing.

.

~ Dean Young

from Skid

.

As you may know, Dean is in need of a heart transplant.

Over the past 10 or 15 years, Dean has lived with a degenerative heart condition--congestive heart failure due to idiopathic hypotropic cardiomyopathy. After periods of more-or-less remission, in which his heart was stabilized and improved with the help of medications, the function of his heart has worsened. Now, radically.

.

a video by D.J. Dolack of the recent benefit reading for dean Young at the National Arts Club in Manhattan.

Readers include Robert N. Casper, Joe Di Prisco, Matthea Harvey, Edward Hirsch, Mary Karr, Matthew Rohrer, Gerald Stern and Dara Wier.

.

...and Dean Young on the telephone.

To make an online donation, please visit Dean Young's page at the National Foundation for Transplants.

thanks to Rebel Girl for the update

.

returning to the source is tranquility

If you can empty your mind of all thoughts

your heart will embrace the tranquility of peace.

Watch the workings of all of creation,

but contemplate their return to the source.

All creatures in the universe

return to the point where they began.

Returning to the source is tranquility

because we submit to Heaven's mandate.

Returning to Heaven's mandate is called being constant.

Knowing the constant is called 'enlightenment'.

Not knowing the constant is the source of evil deeds

because we have no roots.

By knowing the constant we can accept things as they are.

By accepting things as they are, we become impartial.

By being impartial, we become one with Heaven.

By being one with Heaven, we become one with Tao.

Being one with Tao, we are no longer concerned about

losing our life because we know the Tao is constant

and we are one with Tao.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translated by j. h. mcdonald

cave art: chauvet-pont-d'arc

.

Unto this Darkness

.

.

Unto this Darkness which is

beyond Light

we pray that we may come, and 

may attain unto vision through

the loss of sight and knowledge,

and that in ceasing thus to see or

to know

we may learn to know that which 

is beyond all perception and 

understanding

(for this emptying of

our faculties

is true sight and knowledge).

.

~ Pseudo-Dionysius

Dionysius the Areopagite called Pseudo - to differentiate him from the Dionysius mentioned by Paul in Acts.  He lived in the 6th Century and has had a profound impact on Christian mystics.

.

.

desert places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast

In a field I looked into going past,

And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,

But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

 

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.

All animals are smothered in their lairs.

I am too absent-spirited to count;

The loneliness includes me unawares.

 

And lonely as it is that loneliness

Will be more lonely ere it will be less--

A blanker whiteness of benighted snow

With no expression, nothing to express.

 

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars--on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Robert Frost

walk in the dark

If a man

wishes to be sure

of the road he travels on,

he must close his eyes 

and walk in the dark.

~ Saint John of the Cross

seeing for oneself, the value and the limitations of the knowing, and understanding of the mind 

can allow the faith to step boldly into the unknowing of silence, of darkness,
 and find ourselves within the unspeakable.

I am blind

.

I am blind and do not see the things of this world; 

but when the Light comes from above, it enlightens my Heart, 

and I can see, for the Eye of my Heart sees everything.

The Heart is a sanctuary of the Center in which there is a little space 

wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye. 

This is the Eye of Wakentaka by which he sees all things,

and through which we see Him.

.

~  Black Elk

.

The Night Abraham Called to the Stars

.

Do you remember the night Abraham first saw

The stars? He cried to Saturn: "You are my Lord!"

How happy he was! When he saw the Dawn Star,

.

He cried, ""You are my Lord!" How destroyed he was

When he watched them set. Friends, he is like us:

We take as our Lord the stars that go down.

.

We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.

We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel

The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.

.

And no one can convince us that mud is not 

Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.

We are ready to spend the rest of our life

.

Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.

We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.

We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.

.

My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping

Abandoned woman by night. Friend, tell me what to do,

Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.

.

~ Robert Bly

.

a turtle's pace

.

Consider the turtle.  A whole summer - June, July, and August -

 is not too good nor too much to hatch a turtle in.  

 

Perchance you have worried yourself, despaired of the world, 

meditated the end of life, and all things seemed rushing to destruction;

 but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with a turtle's pace.

.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from a journal entry, 1856

art by Roderick Maclver

.

water lily

.

.

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so

will deprive me, for it is infinite.

The ripple of water, the shade of the sky

are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,

I never close myself with refusal-

in the rhythm of my daily soul

I do not desire-I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,

making the dreams of night real:

into my body at the bottom of the water

I attract the beyonds of mirrors...

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke 

translated by A. Poulin 

.

you, darkness

You, darkness, that I come from

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world, 

for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone

and then no one outside learns of you. 

But the darkness pulls in everything-

shapes and fires, animals and myself, 

how easily it gathers them! -

powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me. 

I have faith in nights. 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke


.

vulnerability

.

Sensitivity implies being vulnerable. 

One is sensitive to one's reactions, to one's hurts, one's beleaguered existence: 

that is, one is sensitive about oneself and in this vulnerable state there is really self-interest 

and therefore the capability of being hurt, of becoming neurotic. 

 

It is a form of resistance which is essentially concentrated on the self. 

 

The strength of vulnerability is not self-centred. 

It is like the young spring leaf that can withstand strong winds and flourish. 

This vulnerability is incapable of being hurt, whatever the circumstances. 

Vulnerability is without centre as the self. 

It has an extraordinary strength, vitality and beauty.

 

 

 

J. Krishnamurti

from Letters to the Schools Vol. 2

photo by albert koetsier

 

 

 

.

bees

.

In every instant, two gates. One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell.

Mostly we go through neither.

.

Mostly we nod to our neighbor,

lean down to pick up the paper,

go back into the house.

.

But the faint cries—ecstasy? horror?

Or did you think it the sound

of distant bees,

making only the thick honey of this good life?

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

.