.

How invisibly

it changes color

in this world,

the flower

of the human heart.

~ Komachi

pebble

.

The pebble

is a perfect creature

equal to itself

mindful of its limits

filled exactly

with a pebbly meaning

with a scent which does not remind one of anything

does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire

its ardour and coldness

are just and full of dignity

I feel a heavy remorse

when I hold it in my hand 

and its noble body

is permeated by false warmth

-- Pebbles cannot be tamed

to the end they will look at us

with a calm and very clear eye

~ Zbigniew Herbert

translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott

I would like to describe

.

I would like to describe the simplest emotion

joy or sadness

but not as others do

reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light

which is being born in me

but I know it does not resemble

any star

for it is not so bright

not so pure

and it is uncertain

I would like to describe courage

without dragging behind me a dusty lion

and also anxiety

without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way 

I would give all metaphors

in return for one word

drawn out of my breast like a rib

for one word

contained within the boundaries

of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say - I love

I run around like mad 

picking up handfuls of birds

and my tenderness

which after all is not made of water

asks the water for a face

and anger

different from fire

borrows from it

a loquacious tongue

so is blurred

so is blurred

in me what white-haired gentlemen 

separated once and for all

and said

this is the subject

and this is the object

we fall asleep with one had under our head

and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us 

and taste the earth

with their tiny roots

which next morning

we tear out painfully

~ Zbigniew Herbert 

translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott

just being

.

Dharmakaya is not just expressed in words, in sounds.  It can express itself in just being.  Sometimes if we don't do anything, we help more than if we do a lot.  We call that non-action.  It is like the calm person on a small boat in a storm.  That person does not have to do much, just to be himself, and the situation can change.  That is also an aspect of Dharmakaya: not talking, not teaching, just being.

This is true not only of humans, but other species as well.   Look at the trees in our yard.  An oak tree is an oak tree.  That is all it has to do.   If an oak tree is less than an oak tree, then we are all in trouble.  Therefore, the oak tree is preaching the Dharma.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

from Being Peace

the knower

.

By following any religion, 

cult or creed, 

one becomes inevitably conditioned, 

because one is obliged to conform and accept its disciplines, 

both physical and mental. 

One may get a little peace for some time, 

but such a peace will not last long. 

In your true nature, 

you are the knower of concepts and therefore 

prior to them.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

two washings

One morning in a strange bathroom

a woman tries again and again to wash the sleep 

from her eyelids' corners,

until she understands.  Ah, she thinks, it begins.

Then goes to put on the soup,

first rerinsing the beans, then lifting the cast-iron pot

back onto the stove with two steadying hands.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

I looked for my self

.

I looked for my self, but my self was gone.

The boundaries of my being

had disappeared in the sea.

Waves broke. Awareness rose again.

And a voice returned me to myself.

It always happens like this.

Sea turns on itself and foams,

and with every foaming bit

another body, another being takes form.

And when the sea sends word,

each foaming body

melts back to ocean-breath.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

sketch by e.e. cummings

audible to all men, at all times, in all places

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.

If the soul attends for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence.

She is audible to all men, at all times, in all places, 

and if we will we may always hearken to her admonitions.

~ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

from Thoreau and the Art of Life

art by Roderick Maclver

busy days

.

These were full and busy days...

This busy life is quite different from the shiftless leisure that shantyboaters are supposed to enjoy.  We became industrious and respected members of the community.  I even cut corn in the fall to get our winter's supply.  On Sundays we prepared for visitors.  I kept myself presentable, and did not become involved in any work which could not be dropped instantly.

This placed us in a new position with regard to the river.  Watching it from the shore, almost as a landsman, we might have felt a longing to drift with it again and, ever passing new shores,  make only brief stops along the way.  Yet we did not regret our present shore-bound life, rather we made the most of it; for the autumn and our departure would come soon enough.

~ Harlan Hubbard

from Shantyboat Journal

edited by Don Wallis

art by van gogh

the seer, though unseen

.

...the Imperishable.  It is neither big nor small, neither long nor short,
 neither hot nor cold, neither bright nor dark, neither air nor space. 
 It is without attachment, without taste, smell, or touch, without eyes, ears, 
tongue, mouth, breath, or mind, without movement, without limitation,
without inside or outside.  It consumes nothing, and nothing consumes it.

In perfect accord with the will of the Imperishable, sun and moon make their orbits;
 heaven and earth remain in place; moments, hours, days, nights, fortnights, 
months, and seasons become years; river starting from the snow-clad mountains 
flow east and west, north and south, to the sea.

Without knowing the Imperishable, whoever performs rites and ceremonies
 and undergoes austerities, even for many years, reaps little benefit,
 because rites, ceremonies, and austerities are all perishable.  Whosoever dies 
without knowing the Imperishable dies in a pitiable state; but those who know 
the Imperishable attain immortality when the body is shed at death.

The Imperishable is the seer, though unseen; the hearer, though unheard;
 the thinker, though unthought; the knower, though unknown. Nothing 
other than the Imperishable can see, hear, think, or know.  It is in
 the Imperishable that space is woven, warp and woof.

~  from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

translated by Eknath Easwaran

Some Further Words

Let me be plain with you, dear reader.

I am an old-fashioned man. I like

the world of nature despite its mortal

dangers. I like the domestic world

of humans, so long as it pays its debts

to the natural world, and keeps its bounds.

I like the promise of Heaven. My purpose

is a language that can repay just thanks

and honor for those gifts, a tongue

set free from fashionable lies.

Neither this world nor any of its places

is an "environment." And a house

for sale is not a "home." Economics

is not "science," nor "information" knowledge.

A knave with a degree is a knave. A fool

in a public office is not a "leader."

A rich thief is a thief. And the ghost

of Arthur Moore, who taught me Chaucer,

returns in the night to say again:

"Let me tell you something, boy.

An intellectual whore is a whore."

The world is babbled to pieces after

the divorce of things from their names.

Ceaseless preparation for war

is not peace. Health is not procured

by sale of medication, or purity

by the addition of poison. Science

at the bidding of the corporations

is knowledge reduced to merchandise;

it is a whoredom of the mind,

and so is the art that calls this "progress."

So is the cowardice that calls it "inevitable."

I think the issues of "identity" mostly

are poppycock. We are what we have done,

which includes our promises, includes

our hopes, but promises first. I know

a "fetus" is a human child.

I loved my children from the time

they were conceived, having loved

their mother, who loved them

from the time they were conceived

and before. Who are we to say

the world did not begin in love?

I would like to die in love as I was born,

and as myself of life impoverished go

into the love all flesh begins

and ends in. I don't like machines,

which are neither mortal nor immortal,

though I am constrained to use them.

(Thus the age perfects its clench.)

Some day they will be gone, and that

will be a glad and a holy day.

I mean the dire machines that run

by burning the world's body and

its breath. When I see an airplane

fuming through the once-pure sky

or a vehicle of the outer space

with its little inner space

imitating a star at night, I say,

"Get out of there!" as I would speak

to a fox or a thief in the henhouse.

When I hear the stock market has fallen,

I say, "Long live gravity! Long live

stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces

of fantasy capitalism!" I think

an economy should be based on thrift,

on taking care of things, not on theft,

usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.

My purpose is a language that can make us whole,

though mortal, ignorant, and small.

The world is whole beyond human knowing.

The body's life is its own, untouched

by the little clockwork of explanation.

I approve of death, when it comes in time

to the old. I don't want to five

on mortal terms forever, or survive

an hour as a cooling stew of pieces

of other people. I don't believe that life

or knowledge can be given by machines.

The machine economy has set afire

the household of the human soul,

and all the creatures are burning within it

"Intellectual property" names

the deed by which the mind is bought

and sold, the world enslaved. We

who do not own ourselves, being free,

own by theft what belongs to God,

to the living world, and equally

to us all. Or how can we own a part

of what we only can possess

entirely? Life is a gift we have

only by giving it back again.

Let us agree: "the laborer is worthy

of his hire," but he cannot own what he knows,

which must be freely told, or labor

dies with the laborer. The farmer

is worthy of the harvest made

in time, but he must leave the light

by which he planted, grew, and reaped,

the seed immortal in mortality,

freely to the time to come. The land

too he keeps by giving it up,

as the thinker receives and gives a thought,

as the singer sings in the common air.

I don't believe that "scientific genius"

in its naive assertions of power

is equal either to nature or

to human culture. Its thoughtless invasions

of the nuclei of atoms and cells

and this world's every habitation

have not brought us to the light

but sent us wandering farther through

the dark. Nor do I believe

.artistic genius" is the possession

of any artist. No one has made

the art by which one makes the works

of art. Each one who speaks speaks

as a convocation. We live as councils

of ghosts. It is not "human genius"

that makes us human, but an old love,

an old intelligence of the heart

we gather to us from the world,

from the creatures, from the angels

of inspiration, from the dead--

an intelligence merely nonexistent

to those who do not have it, but --

to those who have it more dear than life.

And just as tenderly to be known

are the affections that make a woman and a man

their household and their homeland one.

These too, though known, cannot be told

to those who do not know them, and fewer

of us learn them, year by year.

These affections are leaving the world

like the colors of extinct birds,

like the songs of a dead language.

Think of the genius of the animals,

every one truly what it is:

gnat, fox, minnow, swallow, each made

of light and luminous within itself.

They know (better than we do) how

to live in the places where they live.

And so I would like to be a true

human being, dear reader-a choice

not altogether possible now.

But this is what I'm for, the side

I'm on. And this is what you should

expect of me, as I expect it of

myself, though for realization we

may wait a thousand or a million years.

~ Wendell Berry

from the American Poetry Review (May/June 2002)

putting aside the things of the mind

.

Truth is not for those who are respectable, nor for those who desire self-extension, self-fulfillment. Truth is not for those who are seeking security, permanency; for the permanency they seek is merely the opposite of impermanency. Being caught in the net of time, they seek that which is permanent, but the permanent they seek is not the real because what they seek is the product of their thought. Therefore, a man who would discover reality must cease to seek -which does not mean that he must be contented with what is. On the contrary, a man who is intent upon the discovery of truth must be inwardly a complete revolutionary. He cannot belong to any class, to any nation, to any group or ideology, to any organized religion; for truth is not in the temple or the church, truth is not to be found in the things made by the hand or by the mind. Truth comes into being only when the things of the mind and of the hand are put aside, and that putting aside of the things of the mind and of the hand is not a matter of time. Truth comes to him who is free of time, who is not using time as a means of self-extension. Time means memory of yesterday, memory of your family, of your race, of your particular character, of the accumulation of your experience which makes up the 'me' and the 'mine'.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

with thanks to J. Krishnamurti Online

art by Dali

seek the unforeseen

Whoever cannot seek

the unforeseen sees nothing,

for the known way

is an impasse.

~ Heraclitus

Naomi Shihab Nye

.

.

exclude nothing

.

We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; 

everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. 

That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us:

to have courage for the most strange, 

the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. 

That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; 

the experiences that are called "visions," the whole so-called "spirit-world," 

death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, 

have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life 

that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. 

 But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; 

the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, 

as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities 

and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. 

For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves 

from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: 

it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience 

with which one does not think oneself able to cope. 

But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, 

not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive 

and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. 

For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room,

 it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, 

a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. 

Thus they have a certain security. 

And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human 

which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons 

and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode. 

We, however, are not prisoners. 

No traps or snares are set about us, 

and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. 

We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, 

and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation 

become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, 

scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. 

We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. 

Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us; 

are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. 

And if only we arrange our life according to that principle 

which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, 

then that which now still seems to us the most alien 

will become what we most trust and find most faithful. 

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons 

that at the last moment turn into princesses; 

perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting 

to see us once beautiful and brave. 

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being 

something helpless that wants help from us. 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke