acting

Being unwise enough to have married her

I never knew when she was not acting.

‘I love you’ she would say; I heard the audiences

Sigh. ‘I hate you’; I could never be sure

They were still there. She was lovely. I

Was only the looking-glass she made up in.

I husbanded the rippling meadow

Of her body. Their eyes grazed nightly upon it.

Alone now on the brittle platform

Of herself she is playing her last role.

It is perfect. Never in all her career

Was she so good. And yet the curtain

Has fallen. My charmer, come out from behind

It to take the applause. Look, I am clapping too.

~ R. S. Thomas 

from The Poems of R. S. Thomas

Born Ronald Stuart Thomas in Cardiff, Wales, 1913. He was a Luddite, viewing modern conveniences as distractions that cause us to neglect our spiritual health. He and his wife Elsi lived in a small and almost primitive stone cottage for much of their marriage, and their son, Gwydion, remembered his father preaching against the evils of the refrigerator and the washing machine from his pulpit. His poems were as austere as his lifestyle, and he once wrote: "A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes."  Mr. Thomas died in 2000.

~ comments from  writers almanac

allow yourself to become it

The highest good is not to seek to do good,

but to allow yourself to become it.

The ordinary person seeks to do good things,

and finds that they can not do them continually.

The Master does not force virtue on others,

thus she is able to accomplish her task.

The ordinary person who uses force,

will find that they accomplish nothing.

The kind person acts from the heart,

and accomplishes a multitude of things.

The righteous person acts out of pity,

yet leaves many things undone.

The moral person will act out of duty,

and when no one will respond

will roll up his sleeves and use force.

When the Tao is forgotten, there is righteousness.

When righteousness is forgotten, there is morality.

When morality is forgotten, there is the law.

The law is the husk of faith,

and trust is the beginning of chaos.

Our basic understandings are not from the Tao

because they come from the depths of our misunderstanding.

The master abides in the fruit and not in the husk.

She dwells in the Tao,

and not with the things that hide it.

This is how she increases in wisdom.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h.mcdonald

live from your own center

The divine manifestation is ubiquitous, 

Only our eyes are not open to it. . . . 

Awe is what moves us forward. . . .

Live from your own center. . . . 

The divine lives within you. 

The separateness apparent in the world is secondary. 

Beyond the world of opposites is an unseen, 

but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

Today the planet is the only proper “in group.” 

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. 

We cannot cure the world of sorrows, 

but we can choose to live in joy.

You must return with the bliss and integrate it. 

The return is seeing the radiance is everywhere. 

The world is a match for us. 

We are a match for the world. 

The spirit is the bouquet of nature. . . . 

Sanctify the place you are in. Follow your bliss. . . .

~ Joseph Campbell

sower of science, center of religion

The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience

is the sensation of the mystical.

It is the sower of all true science.

He to whom this emotion is a stranger,

who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe,

is as good as dead.

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists,

manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,

which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - 

this knowledge, this feeling,

is at the center of true religion.

~ Albert Einstein

each curve

There are so many positions of love:

each curve on a

branch,

the thousand ways your eyes can hold us,

the infinite shapes each mind

can draw,

the spring orchestra of scents and sounds wafting through the air,

the currents of light combusting like

passionate

lips,

the revolution of the universe’s skirt, whose folds

contain other worlds,

our every sigh that falls against

His inconceivably close,

omnipresent,

divine

body

~Hafiz

from Love Poems From God: 

Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West 
by Daniel Ladinsky

.

only in the double kingdom

Only the man who has raised his strings

among the dark ghosts also

can sense it and give 

the everlasting praise.

Only he who has eaten poppy

with the dead, from their poppy,

will never lose even

his most delicate sound.

Even though images in the pool

seem so blurry:

grasp the main thing.

Only in the double kingdom, there

alone, do voices become

undying and tender.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Robert Bly

from Sonnets to Orpheus

art by alex orlov

near field

This is not something new or kept secret

the tilled ground unsown in late spring

the dead are not separate from the living

each has one foot in the unknown

and cannot speak for the other

the field tells none of its turned story

it lies under its low cloud like a waiting river

the dead make this out of their hunger

out of what they had been told

out of the pains and shadows

and bowels of animals

out of turning and 

coming back singing

about another time

~ W. S. Merwin

from The Shadow of Sirius

photo by Kathleen Connally

april and silence

Spring lies abandoned.

A ditch the color of dark violet

moves alongside me

giving no images back.

The only thing that shines

are some yellow flowers.

I am carried inside

my own shadow like a violin

in its black case.

The only thing I want to say

hovers just out of reach

like the family silver

at the pawnbroker's.

~ Tomas Transtromer

translation by Robert Bly

from The Half Finished Heaven

photo by David Gray, Reuters

being human: a reflection

~ Jane Hirshfield

a river tugs

A river tugs at whatever is within reach, trying to set it afloat and carry it downstream.  Living trees are undermined and washed away.  No piece of driftwood is safe, though stranded high up the bank; the river will rise to it, and away it will go.

The river extends this power of drawing all things with it even to the imagination of those who live on its banks.  Who can long watch the ceaseless lapsing of a river's current without conceiving a desire to set himself adrift, and, like the driftwood which glides past, float with the stream clear to the final ocean?

~ Harlan Hubbard

from Shantyboat - A River Way of Life

the one close to me now

The one close to me now,

even my own body -

these too

will soon become clouds,

floating in different directions.

~ Izumi Shikibu

from The Ink Dark Moon

translation by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani

Onono Komachi and Izumi Shikibu were both Japanese poets of the Heian Period. 

 The arts of the Heian Period are marked with a definite feminine sensibility. 

Because the Chinese characters (which were used in writing Japanese) 

were seen as inappropriate to women, 

they developed a simplified and elegant style of writing/calligraphy 

that became known as Hiragana or "onna de"... "feminine hand". 

~ comments from the literature network

corruption of wholeness

Can this be taught to the students: 

to remain with the fact, the actual happening now, whether psychologically or externally?

 Knowledge is not the fact; it is about the fact and that has its proper place, 

but knowledge prevents perception of what actually is; 

then corruption takes place.

This is really very important to understand. Ideals are considered noble, exalted, of great purposeful significance, and what is actually happening is considered merely sensory, worldly and of lesser value. Schools the world over have some exalted purpose, ideal; so they are educating the students in corruption.

What corrupts the mind? We are using the word mind to imply the senses, the capacity to think, and the brain that stores all memories and experiences as knowledge. This total movement is the mind. The conscious as well as the unconscious, the so-called super-consciousness - the whole of this is the mind. We are asking what are the factors, the seeds of corruption in all this? We said ideals corrupt. Knowledge also corrupts the mind. Knowledge, particular or extensive, is the movement of the past, and when the past overshadows the actual, corruption takes place. Knowledge, projected into the future and directing what is happening now, is corruption. We are using the word corruption to mean that which is being broken up, that which is not taken as a whole. The fact can never be broken up; the fact can never be limited by knowledge. The completeness of the fact opens the door to infinity. Completeness cannot be divided; it is not self-contradictory; it cannot divide itself. Completeness, wholeness, is infinite movement.

Imitation, conformity, is one of the great factors of corruption of the mind; the example, the hero, the savior, the guru, is the most destructive factor of corruption. To follow, to obey, to conform, deny freedom. Freedom is from the beginning, not at the end. It is not to conform, to imitate, accept first and eventually find freedom. That is the spirit of totalitarianism, whether of the guru or the priest. This is the cruelty, the ruthlessness, of the dictator, of the authority, of the guru or of the high priest.

So authority is corruption. Authority is the breaking up of integrity, the whole, the complete - the authority of a teacher in a school, the authority of a purpose, of an ideal, of the one who says I know, the authority of an institution. The pressure of authority in any form is the distorting factor of corruption. Authority basically denies freedom. It is the function of a true teacher to instruct, point out, inform, without the corrupting influence of authority. The authority of comparison destroys. When one student is compared to another, both are being hurt. To live without comparison is to have integrity.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from Letters to Schools Volume One 1st September, 1978

wholeness

"How does the true man of Tao

Walk through walls without obstruction,

Stand in fire without being burnt?"

Not because of cunning

Or daring;

Not because he has learned,

But because he has unlearned.

All that is limited by form, semblance, sound, color,

Is called object.

Among them all, man alone

Is more than an object.

Though, like objects, he has form and semblance,

He is not limited to form.  He is more.

He can attain to formlessness.

When he is beyond form and semblance,

Beyond "this" and "that,"

Where is the comparison

With another object?

Where is the conflict?

What can stand in his way?

He will rest in his eternal place

Which is no-place.

He will be hidden

In his own unfathomable secret.

His nature sinks to its root

In the One.

His vitality, his power

Hide in secret Tao.

When he is all one,

There is no flaw in him

By which a wedge can enter.

So a drunken man, falling

Out of a wagon,

Is bruised but not destroyed.

His bones are like the bones of other men,

But his fall is different.

His spirit is entire.  He is not aware

Of getting into a wagon

Or falling out of one.

Life and death are nothing to him.

He knows no alarm, he meets obstacles

Without thought, without care,

Takes them without knowing they are there.

If there is such security in wine,

How much more in Tao.

The wise man is hidden in Tao.

Nothing can touch him.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

what can I do

~ Rumi

performed by Salim Ghouse

to slaughter memory

VII

The Verdict

The word landed with a stony thud 

Onto my still-beating breast. 

Nevermind, I was prepared, 

I will manage with the rest.

I have a lot of work to do today; 

I need to slaughter memory, 

Turn my living soul to stone 

Then teach myself to live again…

But how. The hot summer rustles 

Like a carnival outside my window; 

I have long had this premonition 

Of a bright day and a deserted house.

~ Anna Akhmatova

excerpt from Requiem, 

taken from The Complete Poems

with thanks to journal of a nobody