yes

All night I could not sleep

because of the moonlight on my bed.

I kept hearing a voice calling:

Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered "yes."

~ Zi Ye (Tzu Yeh),  (6th - 3rd c.B.C.E.)

from a collection of popular Chinese folk songs

translation by Arthur Waley

.









.

this too

.

.

Something is dying

Something is being born

.

The shedding

of the old

skin

is but the birth

of a new one…

.

The void

is

the falling

and flying

simultaneously

.

but we can only

grasp

one

side of the coin

at a time.

.

The silence

in between

breaths

.

whispers

the ephemeral nature

of all:

.

Peace is in the eye of the storm.

.
~ noornalini
photo by edward weston


.

being in love

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. 

It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. 

It is an existential truth: 

only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, 

of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person - 

without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, 

without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. 

They allow the other absolute freedom, 

because they know that if the other leaves, 

they will be as happy as they are now. 

Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, 

because it is not given by the other.

~  Osho

photo by edward weston

a message from Coleman Barks

.

.

A message from Coleman Barks:

Trying to explain my silence, and my inability, maybe, to say poems in public for an indeterminate while. Please forgive this group emailing. Last Sunday morning (Feb. 27, 2011) I had a stroke. I was talking on the truck Onstar phone to my love Lisa Starr. I began to slur words, and then became completely inarticulate, then fairly coherent, then not, then back to some clarity. Driving down Milledge, I turned left on Springdale and drove myself to the St. Mary's Emergency room (a Gold Plus Stroke Center). They immediately put me on TPA. So I have been tremendously lucky, actually. In three months, my neurologist doctor (Van Morris!) says (by early June), we will see 80% of what improvement (in my half-smile and my speech) is possible. I plan to work with speech therapists, hypnotists, and whoever else, to get better. Larry Dossey and Fran Quinn say prayer is also a big help.Grace and practice. So there is my challenge for the short run. I am mostly sleeping as much as I can (grace) and listening to recordings of my old voice in my kitchen and talking along (practice). I am not answering the phone or the door, or emails (only a few). Please forgive me these reclusive measures. Think of me as an old dormant bear, healing. Lisa is here. Benjamin and Cole and Briny are close by always. Plenty of helpers. I should also tell you too that my cognition is working. I can read and write just fine, and no motor functions are impaired. Arms and legs active and strong. It is really just a slightly droopy right eyelid and my having only half a smile. Speech is, to me, the big problem. It radically comes and goes with its effectiveness. Hopefully, the brain will re-route itself back to normal.Love to all, Coleman

(Please forward this to anyone who might be interested.)

.

moses and the shepherd

.

.

Moses heard a shepherd on the road praying. 

"God, where are you? I want to help you, to fix your shoes 

and comb your hair. I want to wash your clothes 

and pick the lice off. I want to bring you milk 

and kiss your little hands and feet when it's time

for you to go to bed. I want to sweep your room

and keep it neat. God, my sheep and goats are yours. 

All I can say remembering you is aaayyyyy

and aaahhhhhhhhhhhh."

.

Moses could stand it no longer. 

"Who are you talking to?"

"The one who made us and made

the earth and made the sky."

.

"Don't talk about shoes 

and socks with God! And what's this with your little

hands? Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like

you're chatting with your uncles. Only something 

that grows needs milk. Only someone with feet 

needs shoes. Not God!" 

.

The shepherd repented

and tore his clothes and wandered out into 

the desert. A sudden revelation came then to Moses:

.

You have separated me from one of my own. 

Did you come as a prophet to unite or to sever?

I have given each being a separate and unique way

of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.

.

What seems wrong to you is right for him. 

What is poison to one is honey to someone else. 

Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,

these mean nothing to me. I am apart from all that. 

.

Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better 

or worse. Hindus do Hindu things. The Dravidian

Muslims in India do what they do. It's all praise, 

and it's all right. I am not glorified in acts

.

of worship. It's the worshipers! I don't hear 

the words they say. I look inside at the humility.

That broken-open lowliness is the reality. Forget

phraseology! I want burning, burning. Be friends

.

with your burning. Those who pay attention to ways

of behaving and speaking are one sort. Lovers who

burn are another. Don't impose a property tax

on a burned-out village. Don't scold the lover. 

.

The "wrong" way he talks is better than a hundred

"right" ways of others. 

Inside the Kaaba

it doesn't matter which way you point 

your prayer rug!

The ocean diver doesn't need snowshoes!

The love-religion has no code or doctrine. 

Only God. 

So the ruby has nothing engraved on it!

It doesn't need markings. 

.

God began speaking

deeper mysteries to Moses, vision and words, 

which cannot be recorded here. Moses left himself

and came back. He went to eternity and came 

back here. Many times this happened. 

.

It's foolish of me 

to try and say this. If I did say it, 

it would uproot human intelligence. 

.

Moses ran after the shepherd, following the bewildered 

footprints, 

in one place moving like a castle

across a chessboard. In another, sideways, 

like a bishop. 

Now surging like a wave cresting,

now sliding down like a fish, 

with always his feet

making geomancy symbols in the sand, 

recording his

wandering state. 

.

Moses finally caught up with him. 

"I was wrong. God has revealed to me that there are

no rules for worship. Say whatever and however

your loving tells you to. 

Your sweetest blasphemy

is the truest devotion. Through you a whole world

is freed. 

Loosen your tongue and don't worry 

what comes out. It's all the light of the spirit."

.

The shepherd replied, "Moses, Moses, 

I've gone beyond even that.

You applied the whip, 

and my horse shied and jumped out of itself.

The divine nature and my human nature came together. 

Bless your scolding hand.

.

I can't say what has happened.

What I'm saying now is not my real condition.

It can't be said."

.

The shepherd grew quiet.

When you look in a mirror, you see yourself, 

not the state of the mirror. 

The flute player

gives breath into a flute, and who makes the music?

The flute player!

Whenever you speak praise

or thanksgiving to God, it's always like

this dear shepherd's simplicity.

.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

.

music is in the piano only when it is played

.

.

We are not one with this world. We are not

the complexity our body is, nor the summer air

idling in the big maple without purpose.

We are a shape the wind makes in these leaves

as it passes through. We are not the wood

any more than the fire, but the heat which is a marriage

between the two. We are certainly not the lake

nor the fish in it, but the something that is

pleased by them. We are the stillness when

a mighty Mediterranean noon subtracts even the voices of

insects by the broken farmhouse. We are evident

when the orchestra plays, and yet are not part

of the strings or brass. Like the song that exists

only in the singing, and is not the singer.

God does not live among the church bells

but is briefly resident there. We are occasional

like that. A lifetime of easy happiness mixed

with pain and loss, trying always to name and hold

on to the enterprise under way in our chest.

Reality is not what we marry as a feeling. It is what

walks up the dirt path, through the excessive heat

and giant sky, the sea stretching away.

He continues past the nunnery to the old villa

where he will sit on the terrace with her, their sides

touching. In the quiet that is the music of that place,

which is the difference between silence and windlessness.

.

~ Jack Gilbert

with thanks to saturn rising

.

I melted in it and came home

I exhausted myself, looking.

No one ever finds this by trying.

I melted in it and came home,

where every jar is full,

but no one drinks.

~ Lalla

from Naked Songs

translations by Coleman Barks

green-stripped melons

.

They lie

under stars in a field.

They lie under rain in a field.

Under sun.

.

Some people

are like this as well—

like a painting

hidden beneath another painting.

.

An unexpected weight

the sign of their ripeness.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Alaska Quarterly

.

overspilling

Of all that God has shown me

I can speak just the smallest word,

Not more than a honey bee

Takes on his foot

From an overspilling jar.

~ Mechtild of Magdeburg

from Women in Praise of the Sacred

with you

.

.

O my Lord,

the stars glitter

and the eyes of men are closed.

Kings have locked their doors

and each lover is alone with his love.

.

Here, I am alone with you.

.

~ Rabi'a

from Women in Praise of the Sacred

art by Leonardo da Vinci

I was passionate

.

I was passionate,

filled with longing,

I searched

far and wide.

But the day

that the Truthful One

found me,

I was at home.

~ Lalla

translated by Jane Hirshfield

All will come again into its strength

.

All will come again into its strength:

the fields undivided, the waters undammed,

the trees towering and the walls built low.

And in the valleys, people as strong

and varied as the land.

.

And no churches where God

is imprisoned and lamented

like a trapped and wounded animal.

The houses welcoming all who knock

and a sense of boundless offering

in all relations, and in you and me.

.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,

no belittling of death,

but only longing for what belongs to us

and serving earth, least we remain unused.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 The Book of Pilgrimage, II,25

.

the kings of the world are old and feeble

The kings of the world are old and feeble.

They bring forth no heirs.

Their sons are dying before they are men,

and their pale daughters

abandon themselves to the brokers of violence.

Their crowns are exchanged for money

and melted down into machines,

and there is no health in it.

Does the ore feel trapped

in coins and gears?  In the petty life

imposed upon it

does it feel homesick for earth?

If metal could escape

from coffers and factories,

and the torn-open mountains

close around it again,

we would be whole.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Pilgrimage, II,24

.

no miracles, please

.

.

All who seek you

test you.

And those who find you 

bind you to image and gesture.

.

I would rather sense you

as the earth senses you.

In my ripening 

ripens

what you are.

.

I need from you no tricks

to prove you exist.

Time, I know,

is other than you.

.

No miracles, please.

just let your laws

become clearer

from generation to generation.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Pilgrimage, II,15

.