members of each other

The way we are, we are members of each other. 

All of us. Everything. 

The difference ain't in who is a member and who is not, 

but in who knows it and who don’t.

...

It was a community always disappointed in itself, 

disappointing its members, 

always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, 

always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill…

And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, 

beyond time, by one another’s love, compassion, and forgiveness, 

as it is said we may be perfected by grace.

And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, 

and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. 

How could we? 

It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time.

~ Wendell Berry

excerpts from Jaber Crow

who?

The Student

Who makes my mind think?

Who fills my body with vitality?

Who causes my tongue to speak? Who is that

Invisible one who sees through my eyes

And hears through my ears?

 The Teacher

The Self is the ear of the ear,

The eye of the eye, the mind of the mind,

The word of words, and the life of life.

Rising above the senses and the mind

And renouncing separate existence,

The wise realize the deathless Self.

Him our eyes cannot see, nor words express;

He cannot be grasped even by the mind.

We do not know, we cannot understand,

Because he is different from the known

And he is different from the unknown.

Thus have we heard from the illumined ones.

That which makes the tongue speak but cannot be 

Spoken by the tongue, know that as the Self.

This Self is not someone other than you.

That which makes the mind think but cannot be

Thought by the mind, that is the Self indeed.

This Self is not someone other than you.

That which makes the eye see but cannot be

Seen by the eye,that is the Self indeed.

This Self is not someone other than you.

That which makes the ear hear but cannot be 

Heard by the ear, that is the Self indeed.

This Self is not someone other than you.

That which makes you draw breath but cannot be 

Drawn by your breath. that is the Self indeed.

This Self is not someone other than you.

~ The Kena Upanishad

translation by Eknath Easwaran

excerpt from: September 1st, 1939

All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, 

The romantic lie in the brain 

Of the sensual man-in-the-street 

And the lie of Authority 

Whose buildings grope the sky: 

There is no such thing as the State 

And no one exists alone; 

Hunger allows no choice 

To the citizen or the police; 

We must love one another or die.

~ W. H. Auden

 from Another Time
 art by picasso

the unknown flute

I know the sound of the ecstatic flute,

but I don't know whose flute it is.

A lamp burns and has neither wick nor oil.

A lily pad blossoms and is not attached to the bottom! 

When one flower opens, ordinarily dozens open.

The moon bird's head is filled with nothing but thoughts of the moon,

and when the next rain will come is all that the rain bird thinks of.

How is it we spend our entire life loving? 

~ Kabir 

Sssh

Sssh the sea says

Sssh the small waves at the shore say, sssh

Not so violent, not

So haughty, not

So remarkable

Sssh

Say the tips of the waves

Crowding around the headland's

Surf. Sssh

They say to people

This is our earth,

Our eternity.

~ Rolf Jacobsen

from The Soul is here for its own Joy

edited by Robert Bly 
photo by Eliot Porter 

I have received and am still receiving

  illustration by Vladimir Radunsky

 for On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne

How strange is the lot of us mortals!

 Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, 

though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection

 one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — 

first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being

 our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, 

unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. 

 

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life

 are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, 

and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure

 as I have received and am still receiving.

 

 I am strongly drawn to a frugal life and am often oppressively aware

 that I am engrossing an undue amount of the labor of my fellow-men.

 I regard class distinctions as unjustified and, in the last resort,

 based on force. I also believe that a simple and unassuming life

 is good for everybody, physically and mentally.

 ~ Albert Einstein

our rebelliousness

Those who are indignant at and rebel against
the things that befall them are blind with self-love.
I speak to you now in general and in particular, and
I say that they take for evil and regard as misfortunes, ruin,
evidence of hate towards themselves, the things that I
do out of love and for their good, that they may be
saved from eternal loss and receive the life that shall not
pass away. Why then do they murmur against Me? Because
They have put their trust in themselves, and so all becomes
dark for them and they do not know things as they are.




~ Saint Catherine of Siena

a process of intellection

We name, we give a term to our various feelings, don't we?
 In saying, 'I am angry', we have given a term, a name,
 a label to a particular feeling. Now, please watch your own minds
 very clearly. When you have a feeling, you name that feeling;
 you call it anger, lust, love, pleasure, don't you? And this naming 
of the feeling is a process of intellection which prevents you from looking
 at the fact, that is, at the feeling.

You know, when you see a bird and say to yourself that it is a parrot
 or a pigeon or a crow, you are not looking at the bird. You have already
 ceased to look at the fact because the word parrot or pigeon or crow
 has come between you and the fact.

This is not some difficult intellectual feat but a process of the mind
 that must be understood. If you would go into the problem of fear 
or the problem of authority or the problem of pleasure or the problem of love, 
you must see that naming, giving a label, prevents you from looking at the fact.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Collected Works

Vol. XI, 350,Choiceless Awareness

art by Edvard Munch

glorious

~ MaMuse

as the rain

As the rain on the mountain peak runs off

The slopes on all sides, so those who see

Only the seeming multiplicity in life

Run after things on every side.

As pure water poured into pure water

Becomes the very same, so does the Self

Of the illumined man or woman, Nachiketa,

Verily become one with the Godhead.

...

The adorable one who is seated

In the heart rules the breath of life.

Unto him all the senses pay their homage.

When the dweller in the body breaks out

In freedom from the bonds of flesh,

What remains?  For this Self is supreme!

We live not by the breath that flows in

And flows out, but by him who causes the breath

To flow in and flow out.

~ The Katha Upanishad

(Death as Teacher)

translated by Eknath Easwaran

looking into a face

Conversation brings us so close! Opening

The surfs of the body,

Bringing fish up near the sun,

And stiffening the backbones of the sea!

I have wandered in a face, for hours,

Passing through dark fires.

I have risen to a body

Not yet born,

Existing like a light around the body,

Through which the body moves like a sliding moon.

~ Robert Bly

from The Light Around the Body

 

body and soul

 
Without Contraries is no progression.
Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate,
are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.
Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.


All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors.


1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body; a Soul.

2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body;
that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.

3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.


But the following Contraries to these are True



1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul 
for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, 
the chief inlets of Soul in this age

2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body
 and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.

3 Energy is Eternal Delight





~ William Blake
from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

inside the rose

.

.

That camel there with its calf running

behind it, Sutur and Koshek, we're like

them: mothered and nursed by where 

and who we are from, following our fates

where they lead, until we hear a drum

begin, grace entering our lives, a prayer

of gratitude.  We feel the call of God,

and the journey changes, A dry field

of stones turns soft and moist as cheese.

The mountain feels level under us.  Love

becomes agile and quick, and suddenly

we're there!  This traveling's not done

with the body.  God's secret takes form

in your loving.  But there are those in

bodies who are pure soul.  It can happen.

These messengers invite us to walk with 

them.  They say, "You may feel happy

enough where you are, but we can't do

without you any longer!  Please."  So

we walk along inside the rose, being

pulled like the creeks and rivers are,

out from the town onto the plain.  My

guide, my soul, your only sadness is when

I am not walking with you.  In deep silence,

with some exertion to stay in your company,

I could save you a lot of trouble!

.

~ Rumi

from The Glance, Songs of Soul-Meeting

translated by Coleman Barks

art by ramel jasir

sweep aside the dust

A small fish swallowing a big one,

Like a Buddhist priest studying the Confucian classics;

It can penetrate the entanglements of buddhas and demons,

And sweep aside the dust collecting on the Law.

~ Dogen

from the Zen Poetry of Dogen by Steven Heine

 

the entry

Not from saying names, 

or praying to statuary.

Not from holding your breath

till you are blue in the face.

Not from twisting your torso this way, now that,

till you are like a string

striving to become a knot.

Not from reading saints' lives

or fingering a billion beads.

Only this:

The moment between the breaths.

The stillness between the notes.

A firefly extinguishes itself,

bleeds darkness

before its final flare.

 ~ Dorothy Walters

from Marrow of Flame 

(homage to Kabir)