into the unknown

There is a certain innocence about beginning, 

with its excitement and promise of something new.

 But this will emerge only through undertaking some voyage into the unknown. 

And no one can foretell what the unknown might yield. 

There are journeys we have begun that have brought us great inner riches and refinement; 

but we had to travel through dark valleys of difficulty and suffering.

 Had we known at the beginning what the journey would demand of us,

 we might never have set out. 

Yet the rewards and gifts became vital to who we are. 

Through the innocence of beginning we are often seduced into growth.

… When the heart is ready for a fresh beginning, 

unforeseen things can emerge. And in a sense, 

this is exactly what a beginning does. 

 

It is an opening for surprises.

 Surrounding the intention and the act of beginning,

 there are always exciting possibilities. … 

beginnings have their own mind, 

and they invite and unveil new gifts and arrivals in one’s life.

 

Beginnings are new horizons that want to be seen; … 

What is the new horizon in you that wants to be seen?

~ John O’Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

give up all questions except one

.

Give up all questions except one: 

'Who am I?' 

After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. 

The 'I am' is certain. 

The 'I am this' is not. 

Struggle to find out what you are in reality. 

To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. 

Discover all that you are not--

body, 

feelings, 

thoughts, 

time, space, 

this or that

--nothing, 

concrete or abstract, 

which you perceive can be you. 

The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. 

The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, 

the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

freedom

Freedom is not following a river.
Freedom is following a river

...though, if you want to. 

It is deciding now by what happens now.
It is knowing that luck makes a difference.
No leader is free; no follower is free

 ...the rest of us can often be free.
Most of the world are living by
creeds too odd, chancy, and habit-forming

...to be worth arguing about by reason. 

If you are oppressed, wake up about
four in the morning: most places,
you can usually be free some of the time

..if you wake up before other people.

~ William Stafford

 from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems

one body

My right hand has written all the poems that I have composed. 

My left hand has not written a single poem. 

But my right hand does not think, “Left Hand, you are good for nothing.” 

My right hand does not have a superiority complex. 

That is why it is very happy. 

My left hand does not have any complex at all. 

In my two hands there is the kind of wisdom 

called the wisdom of nondiscrimination.

One day I was hammering a nail and my right hand was not very accurate 

and instead of pounding on the nail it pounded on my finger.

 It put the hammer down and took care of the left hand 

in a very tender way, as if it were taking care of itself. 

It did not say, “Left Hand, you have to remember that

 I have taken good care of you and you have to pay me back in the future.” 

There was no such thinking. And my left hand did not say, 

“Right Hand, you have done me a lot of harm—

give me that hammer, I want justice.” 

My two hands know that they are members of one body; 

they are in each other.

 

 

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

from his address to Congress entitled

Leading with Courage and Compassion,

Sept. 10th 2003

with thanks to Love is a Place

 

 

 

 

the way it is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

 

 

 

~ William Stafford 

the smile

Galen, the great physician, asked one of his assistants

to give him a certain medicine.

"Master, that medicine is for crazy people!

You're far from needing that!"

Galen: "Yesterday a madman turned and smiled at me,

did his eyebrows up and down, and touched my  sleeve.

He wouldn't have done that if he hadn't recognized 

in me someone congenial."

Anyone that feels drawn,

for however short a time, to anyone else,

those two share a common consciousness.

It's only in the grave that unlike beings associate.

A wise man once remarked, "I saw a crow and a stork

flying together, and I couldn't understand it,

until I investigated and found what they shared.

They were both lame."

~ Rumi

from Rumi's Little Book of Love and Laughter

version bu Coleman Barks

photo by Sean Thomas

what we can learn from water

~ Raymond Tang

bring the jewel back

The purpose of the journey is compassion.

When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion. 

The goal is to bring the jewel back to the world, 

to join the two things together.
The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.

Beyond that world of opposites is an unseen,

 but experienced, unity and identity in us all. 

~ Joseph Campbell

from The Hero’s Journey (On Living in the World)

Christianity and Unknowing

~ Richard Rohr

the dark night

In the delicious night,

In privacy, where no one saw me,

Nor did I see one thing,

I had no light or guide

But the fire that burned inside my chest.

That fire showed me

The way more clearly than the blaze of noon

To where, waiting for me,

Was the One I knew so well,

In that place where no one ever is.

Oh night, sweet guider,

Oh night more marvelous than dawn!

Oh night which joins

The lover and the beloved

So that the lover and beloved change bodies!

In my chest full of flowers,

Flowering wholly and only for Him,

There He remained sleeping;

I cared for Him there,

And the fan of the high cedars cooled Him.

The wind played with

His hair, and that wind from the high

Towers struck me on the neck

With its sober hand;

Sight, taste, touch, hearing stopped.

I stood still, I forgot who I was,

My face leaning against Him,

Everything stopped, abandoned me,

My worldliness was gone, forgotten

Among the white lilies.

~ St. John of the Cross

from The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross 

version by Robert Bly

photo by imogene cunningham

wei wu wei: "action without action" or "effortless doing"

The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another's imagined greatness.
If I do not know who I am, it is because I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be. Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what everybody else seems to want to become. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all. I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think.

~ Thomas Merton
with thanks to whiskey river

a vast similitude

On the beach at night alone,

As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,

As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes 

and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,

All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,

All distances of place however wide,

All distances of time, all inanimate forms,

All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,

All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,

All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,

All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,

All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,

.

This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,

And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

~ Walt Whitman

photo by chertkova svetlana

recommended

A refreshing vision our intimate connection with each other

and life itself.

~  by Gregory Boyle 

 

the art of dying - training for nonviolence

Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, 

so one must learn the art of dying in the training for nonviolence. 

Violence does not mean emancipation from fear, 

but discovering the means of combating the cause for fear. 

The votary of nonviolence has to cultivate the capacity for sacrifice 

of the highest type in order to be free from fear. 

He reckons not if he should lose his land, his wealth, his life. 

Whoever has not overcome all fear cannot practice nonviolence to perfection. 

~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

art by picasso

the chance of humming

A

man

standing on two logs in a river

might do all right floating with the current

while humming in the

now.

Though

if one log is tied to a camel,

who is also heading south along the bank - at the same pace -

all could still be well

with the 

world

unless the camel

thinks he forgot something, and

abruptly turns upstream,

then

uh-oh.

Most minds

do not live in the present

and can stick to a reasonable plan; most minds abruptly turn

and undermine the

chance

of

humming.

~ Rumi

translation by Daniel Ladinsky

from Love Poems from God

watercolor by Kim Novak