foundations

I built on the sand

And it tumbled down,

I built on a rock

And it tumbled down.

Now when I build, I shall begin

With the smoke from the chimney.

~ Leopold Staff

translated by Czeslaw Milosz

You Are Tired (I Think) by e.e.cummings

You are tired,

(I think)

Of the always puzzle of living and doing;

And so am I.

Come with me, then,

And we’ll leave it far and far away—

(Only you and I, understand!)

You have played,

(I think)

And broke the toys you were fondest of,

And are a little tired now;

Tired of things that break, and—

Just tired.

So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,

And I knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—

Open to me!

For I will show you places Nobody knows,

And, if you like,

The perfect places of Sleep.

Ah, come with me!

I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,

That floats forever and a day;

I’ll sing you the hyacinth song

Of the probable stars;

I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,

Until I find the Only Flower,

Which shall keep (I think) your little heart

While the moon comes out of the sea.

~ e.e.cummings

the wise silence

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.

Meantime within man is the soul of the whole;
the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.

And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

from The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson,

The Over-Soul

telling a story to her own ears

Every word of every tongue is

Love telling a story to her own ears.

Every thought in every mind,

She whispers a secret to her own Self.

Every vision in every eye,

She shows her beauty to her own sight.

Every smile on every face,

She reveals her own joy for herself to enjoy.

Love courses through everything,

No, Love is everything.

How can you say, there is no love,

when nothing but Love exists?

All that you see has appeared because of Love.

All shines from Love,

All pulses with Love,

All flows from Love--

No, once again, all IS Love!

~ Fakhruddin Iraqi

when the shoe fits

Ch'ui the draftsman

Could draw more perfect circles freehand

Than with a compass.

His fingers brought forth

Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind

Was meanwhile free and without concern

With what he was doing.

No application was needed

His mind was perfectly simple

And knew no obstacle.

So, when the shoe fits

The foot is forgotten,

When the belt fits

The belly is forgotten,

When the heart is right

"For" and "against" are forgotten.

No drives no compulsions,

No needs, no attractions:

Then your affairs

Are under control.

You are a free man.

Easy is right. Begin right

And you are easy.

Continue easy and you are right.

The right way to go easy

Is to forget the right way

And forget that the going is easy.

~ Chuang Tzu 

(In the Dark Before Dawn)

on summer evenings we sat in the yard

On summer evenings we sat in the yard,

the house dark, the stars bright overhead.

The laps and arms of the old

held the young.  As we talked we knew

by the dark distances of Heaven's lights

our smallness, and the greatness of our love.

~ Wendell Berry

when I fall into the abyss

 

Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, 

I go straight into it, head down and heels up, 

and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, 

and for me I find it beautiful.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky

photo:  Felix Baumgartner breaking the sound barrier

 

 

the inner landscape of beauty

~ John O'Donohue

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