a thinking stillness

.

.

Uninterrupted, capacious,

they ponder.

Able to house many beings 

without distraction.

Traveling upward

no farther than they go down.

Across an ocean, someone

describes them as standing wells -

they sway with contentment,

as if a yellow bird had

perched on their branches;

they are impervious 

to opinion, and still this is so.

It may be that some

keep secrets,

though every touch

alters their bodies.

It may be that some 

are geniuses of their kind.

I would like, even once,

 to embrace on in its own language,

though I imagine, too,

a transaction unrecoverably cold,

as if two widows of anciently 

warring families met on a bus:

Why should even one of them excuse us?

I have listened with pleasure 

through early snow to the sharp

report of their losses.

Mixed gasoline and oil for the saw,

polished the table with bees' wax,

added the extra, unneeded log.

My concern only.  The bus

diesel on, the woman gets off,

buttoning her coat.

Incense of resin and lignin, 

of copper and leaf-sap;

token of circumspection, 

coppice of tranquil indifference,

shore-edge of pure abstain;

meditation of beetles held lightless -

I slip you into her pocket.

Single bead of the rosary: manzanita, cedar,

maple, aspen, willow, tan oak, pine.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

.

I - notion alone can have "intentions"

.

The I - notion alone can have "intentions"

 - for "ego" and "will" are synonymous.

Therefore the absence of the one 

is also absence of the other.

 

"Intentions" simply imply an act of will.  

The Taoist  wu wei does not imply phenomenal inactions,

 but the absence of volitional action. 

 

 The absence of volitional action implies the presence of noumenal action, 

which is the Taoist Te, the dynamic aspect of Tao. 

 What, then is noumenal action?

 

There is a positive implication in Shen Hui's definition of wu nein as a double absence, 

 the absence of no-thought or of non-conceptualization, which is the presence of that absence,

 and that presence is the suchness of thought which is precisely spontaneous action. 

 Non-volitional action (wu wei), whether perceptive, conceptive,

 or somatic is noumenal action, and noumenal action 

is the so-called "non-action" (non-volitional, 

non-egoitic action) of the Sage.

 

 

 

~ Wei Wu Wei

from All else is Bondage

.

in their mist-veiled garden

In the town where I was born lived a woman and her daughter, who walked in their sleep.

One night, while silence enfolded the world, the woman and her daughter, walking, yet asleep, met in their mist-veiled garden.

And the mother spoke, and she said: "At last, at last, my enemy!  You by whom my youth was destroyed - who have built up your life upon the ruins of mine!  Would I could kill you!"

And the daughter spoke, and she said: "O hateful woman, selfish and old!  Who stand between my freer self and me!  Who would have my life an echo of your own faded life!  Would you were dead!"

At that moment a cock crew, and both women awoke.  The mother said gently, "Is that you, darling?"  And the daughter answered gently, "Yes, dear."

~ Kahlil Gibran

from Poems, Parables and Drawings
art by gail kirtz

snowbanks north of the house

.

.

Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six

feet from the house ...

Thoughts that go so far.

The boy gets out of high school and reads no more

books;

the son stops calling home.

The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes no

more bread.

And the wife looks at her husband one night at a

party, and loves him no more.

The energy leaves the wine, and the minister falls

leaving the church.

It will not come closer

the one inside moves back, and the hands touch

nothing, and are safe.

.

The father grieves for his son, and will not leave the

room where the coffin stands.

He turns away from his wife, and she sleeps alone.

.

And the sea lifts and falls all night, the moon goes on

through the unattached heavens alone.The toe of the shoe pivots

in the dust ...

And the man in the black coat turns, and goes back

down the hill.

No one knows why he came, or why he turned away,

and did not climb the hill.

.

~ Robert Bly

photo by ansel adams

.

the in-turning flower of the fig

.

.

Within her dark robes

the nun is silent,

passion kept

between herself

and the largeness.

She moves

no differently

down granite stairs,

continues to sew poorly.

Questioned,

she would deny all.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

.

cure

.

It is less the medicine than the doctor that cures.

 

It is less the doctor than the organic consciousness that heals.

 

Always the organic consciousness is responsible for illness and for its cure.

 

The doctor inspires, gives the impulsion that leads to health, 

the medicine helps or hinders locally to that end.

 

Medicine-only is an attempt at healing despite the organic consciousness.

~ Wei Wu Wei

from Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon

Vincent

Vincent Willem van Gogh

Born March 30, 1853 in Groot-Zundert (today Zundert) in Breda, the Netherlands, 

Died, 29 July 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France,

is one of the founders of modern painting. 

He left (according to current knowledge) 864 paintings and 1000 drawings,

which are all done in the last decade of his life. 

His major work is stylistically Post-Impressionism

exerted strong influence on later artists, particularly the Fauves and Expressionists. 

During his lifetime he sold only a few images, 

Belinda Thomson: Van Gogh - Paintings - The Masterpieces, p. 84

Some quotes by Vincent van Gogh:

.The more you love,

the more active you will be ....

Many a man has a big fire in his soul;

and no one comes to warm up to it ....

I want to flush, easily, seriously;

I want more soul and more love and more heart ....

Conversion is necessary

as the renewal of the leaves in the spring ....

.

with thanks to Semsakrebsler

.

lost in thought

.

interpretation 

is the beginning 

of misery

.

~ Benjamin Dean

more at zen poems

.

when love itself comes to kiss you

When love itself comes to kiss you,

don't hold back!  When the king

goes hunting, the forest smiles.

Now the king has become the place

and all the players, prey, bystander,

bow, arrow, hand and release.  How

does that feel?  Last night's dream

enters these open eyes.  When we die

and turn to dust, each particle will

be the whole.  You hear a mote whirl

taking form?  My music.  Love, calm,

patient.  The Friend has waded down

into existence, gotten stuck, and 

will not be seen again outside of

this.  We sometimes make spiderwebs

of smoke and saliva, fragile thought -

packets.  Leave thinking to the one

who gave intelligence .  In silence

there is eloquence.  Stop weaving,

and watch how the pattern improves.

~ Rumi

from the soul of Rumi

translations by Coleman Barks

photo by elliot erwitt

only the lowest servant of the kingdom, is worthy to become its ruler

Water is the softest and most yielding substance.

Yet nothing is better than water,

for overcoming the hard and rigid,

because nothing can compete with it.

Everyone knows that the soft and yielding

overcomes the rigid and hard,

but few can put this knowledge into practice.

Therefore the Master says:

"Only he who is the lowest servant of the kingdom,

is worthy to become its ruler.

He who is willing to tackle the most unpleasant tasks,

is the best ruler in the world."

True sayings seem contradictory.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

lingering in happiness

.

.

After rain after many days without rain,

it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,

and the dampness there, married now to gravity,

falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground

.

where it will disappear - but not, of course, vanish

except to our eyes.  The roots of the oaks will have their share,

and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss;

a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel;

.

and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,

will feel themselves being touched.

.

~ Mary Oliver

from Why I wake early

.

If only for once it were still

If only for once it were still.

If the not quite right and the why this

could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter,

and the static my senses make -

if all of it didn't keep me from coming awake -

Then in one vast thousandfold thought

I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,

even for the brevity of a smile,

to offer you 

to all that lives,

in gladness.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Monastic Life, I,7

the great longing

Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea.

We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together

 is deep and strong and strange.  Nay, it is deeper than my sister's depth

 and stronger than my brother's strength,

 and stranger than the strangeness of my madness.

Aeons upon aeons have passed since the first grey dawn made us

 visible to one another; and though we have seen the birth and the fullness

 and the death of many world, we are still eager and young.

We are  young and eager and yet we are mateless and unvisited, 

and though we lie in unbroken half embrace, we are uncomforted. 

 And what comfort is there for controlled desire and unspent passion?  

Whence shall come the flaming god to warm my sister's bed?  

And what she-torrent shall quench my brother's fire? 

And who is the woman that shall command my heart?

In the stillness of the night my sister murmurs in her sleep

 the fire-god's unknown name, and my brother call 

afar upon the cool and distant goddess. 

 But upon whom I call in my sleep I know not

Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. 

 We three are one in loneliness, and the love 

that binds us together is deep and strong and strange.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from Poems, Parables and Drawings

drawing by the author

for a time of change

The mind of time is hard to read.

We can never predict what it will bring,

Nor even from all that is already gone

Can we say what form it finally takes;

For time gathers its moments secretly.

Often we only know it's time to change

When a force has built inside the heart

That leaves us uneasy as we are.

Perhaps the work we do has lost its soul

Or the love where we once belonged

Calls nothing alive in us anymore.

We drift through this gray, increasing nowhere

Until we stand before a threshold we know

We have to cross to come alive once more.

May we have the courage to take the step

Into the unknown that beckons us;

Trust that a richer life awaits us there,

That we will lose nothing

But what has already died;

Feel the deeper knowing in us sure

Of all that is about to be born beyond

The pale frames where we stayed confined,

Not realizing how such vacant endurance

Was bleaching our soul's desire.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

the remains

.

.

I empty myself of the names of others.

I empty my pockets, I empty my shoes and leave them beside

the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family

album and look at myself as a boy.

.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.

I say my own name. I say goodbye.

The words follow each other downwind.

I love my wife but send her away.

.

My parents rise out of their thrones

into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?

Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.

I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

.

~ Mark Strand

with thanks to melancholynotes

.