no entity

.

There is no entity separate from craving; there is only craving, there is no one who craves. 

Craving takes on different masks at different times, depending on its interests.

The memory of these varying interests meets the new, which brings about conflict, 
and so the chooser is born, 
establishing himself as an entity separate and distinct from craving.

But the entity is not different from its qualities. 
The entity who tries to fill or run away from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, 
is not different from that which he is avoiding; he is it. 

He cannot run away from himself; all that he can do is to understand himself. 
He is his loneliness, his emptiness; 
and as long as he regards it as something separate from himself;
 he will be in illusion and endless conflict. 
When he directly experiences that he is his own loneliness, 
then only can there be freedom from fear. 

Fear exists only in relationship to an idea, and idea is the response of memory as thought. 
Thought is the result of experience; and though it can ponder over emptiness,
 have sensations with regard to it, it cannot know emptiness directly. 

The word loneliness, with its memories of pain and fear, prevents the experiencing of it afresh. 
The word is memory, and when the word is no longer significant,
then the relationship between the experiencer and the experienced is wholly different; 
then that relationship is direct and not through a word, through memory; 
then the experiencer is the experience, 
which alone brings freedom from fear.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

thanks to krishnamurti online

nothing to gain

.

There is nothing to gain. 

Abandon all imaginings and know yourself as you are. 

...

All craving is due to a sense of insufficiency. 

When you know that you lack nothing, 

that all there is, is you and yours, desire ceases.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

like water

.

The best, like water, 

Benefit all and do not compete. 

They dwell in lowly spots that everyone else scorns. 

Putting others before themselves, 

They find themselves in the foremost place 

And come very near to the Tao. 

~  Lao Tzu

reluctance

.

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

And looked at the world and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

No longer blown hither and thither;

The last lone aster is gone;

The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

~ Robert Frost

with thanks to writers almanac

all things are empty

.

All things are empty: 

Nothing is born, nothing dies, 

nothing is pure, 

nothing is stained, 

nothing increases and nothing decreases. 

So, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no thought, no will, no consciousness. 

There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind.

 There is no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no imagining. 

No plane of sight, no plane of thought. There is no ignorance, and no end to ignorance. 

There is no old age and death, and no end to old age and death. 

There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no end to suffering, no path to suffering. 

There is no attainment of wisdom, and no wisdom to attain.

~ the heart sutra

hunger

.

A red horse crops grass,

A black crow 

delves bugs from a dirt pile.

A woman watches in envy what is so simple.

~ Jane Hirshfield

philosophy and religion

.

...he who defines his conduct by ethics

imprisons his song-bird in a cage.

The freest song comes not through bars and wires. 

...he to whom worshiping is a window, to open but also to shut, 

has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.

...if you would know God be not a solver of riddles.

Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.

...look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, 

outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.

...see Him smiling in flowers, and then rising and waving His hands in trees.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Prophet

solitude

.

Let us look for secret things

somewhere in the world,

on the blue shore of silence

or where the storm has passed,

rampaging like a train.

There the faint signs are left,

coins of time and water,

debris, celestial ash

and the irreplaceable rapture

of sharing in the labour

of solitude and the sand.

~ Pablo Neruda

excerpt from On the Blue Shores of Silence

alzheimer's

.

When a fine old carpet

is eaten by mice,

the colors and patterns

of what’s left behind

do not change.

As bedrock, tilted,

stays bedrock,

its purple and red striations unbroken.

Unstrippable birthright grandeur.

“How are you,” I asked,

not knowing what to expect.

“Contrary to Keatsian joy,” he replied.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

art by Camille Pissarro, 1877

the cloudy vase

.

Past time,

I threw the flowers out,

washed out

the cloudy vase.

How easily

the old clearness

leapt,

like a practiced tiger,

back inside it.

~ Jane Hirshfield

art by leonardo da vinci, 
 Galleria Nazionale, Parma, Italy.

the boundaries of my being had disappeared

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

art by van gogh

call and answer

.

Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days

And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed

The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?

I say to myself: “Go on, cry. What’s the sense

Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!

See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!”

We will have to call especially loud to reach

Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding

In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.

Have we agreed to so many wars that we can’t

Escape from silence? If we don’t lift our voices, we allow

Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.

How come we've listened to the great criers—Neruda,

Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass—and now

We’re silent as sparrows in the little bushes?

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.

Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?

Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.

~ Robert Bly

opening the hands between here and here

.

On the dark road, only the weight of the rope.

Yet the horse is there.

~ Jane Hirshfield

A Suite of Appearances

.

In another time, we will want to know how the earth looked

then, and were people the way we are now. In another time,

the records they left will convince us that we are unchanged

and could be at ease in the past, and not alone in the present.

And we shall be pleased. But beyond all that, what cannot

be seen or explained will always be elsewhere, always supposed,

invisible even beneath the signs – the beautiful surface,

the uncommon knowledge – that point its way. In another time,

what cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted

to say that language is error, and all things are wronged

by representation. The self, we shall say, can never be

seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.

~ Mark Strand

with thanks to whiskey river

birds nest

.

Birds nest in my arms,

on my shoulders, behind my knees,

between my breasts there are quails,

they must think I'm a tree.

The swans think I'm a fountain,

they all come down and drink when I talk.

When sheep pass, they pass over me,

and perched on my fingers, the sparrows eat,

the ants think I'm earth,

and men think I'm nothing.

~ Gloria Fuertes

translated by Philip Levine

sketch by van gogh