habit

The shoes put on each time

left first, then right.

The morning potion’s teaspoon

of sweetness stirred always

for seven circlings—no fewer, no more—

into the cracked blue cup.

Touching the pocket for wallet,

for keys,

before closing the door.

How did we come

to believe these small rituals’ promise,

that we are today the selves we yesterday knew,

tomorrow will be?

How intimate and unthinking,

the way the toothbrush is shaken dry after use,

the part we wash first in the bath.

Which habits we learned from others

and which are ours alone we may never know.

Unbearable to acknowledge

how much they are themselves our fated life.

Open the traveling suitcase—

There the beloved red sweater,

bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber.

Each confirming: I chose these, I.

But habit is different: it chooses.

And we, its good horse,

opening our mouths at even the sight of the bit.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Given Sugar, Given Salt

waiting for you

.

It's very important to experience the complete negation of yourself
which brings you to the other side of nothing.
You go to the other side of nothing
and you are held by the hand of the absolute.
You see yourself as the absolute
so you have no more insistence of self.
You can speak of the self as no self
when you sit in the absolute.

Your sitting still is like a person who just shot an arrow.
A moment later the result is there.
What you know, the only thing you know
is the sense that the arrow is moving all right.
It has left your realm but you sense it is running well.
The stillness in sitting is like that.
You flip to the other side of nothing,
where you discover everyone is waiting for you already




. ~ Kobun Chino

hymn to time

Time says “Let there be”
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.

And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats’ flickering dance.
And the seas’ expanse.
And death, and chance.

Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.

Time is being and being
time, it is all one thing,
the shining, the seeing,
the dark abounding.

~   Ursula K. Le Guin

no such thing

contemplation is not trance or ecstasy
not emotional fire and sweetness that come with religious exaltation
not enthusiasm, not the sense of being "seized" by an elemental force
and swept into liberation by mystical frenzy.
contemplation is no pain-killer.

In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing
that he no longer knows what God is;
this is a great gain,
because "God is not a what,"
not a "thing."

There is "no such thing" as God
because God is neither a "what" or a "thing"
but a pure "Who,"
the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs
into awareness.

~ Thomas Merton
from New Seed of Contemplation

sketch by the author

the lesson of the falling leaves

the leaves believe

such letting go is love

such love is faith

such faith is grace

such grace is god.

i agree with the leaves.

~ Lucille Clifton

outside ourselves

When we live superficially … we are always outside ourselves, never quite ‘with’ ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions … we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives.



~ Thomas Merton
from Love and Living
art by Picasso
with thanks to louie, louie

the heart's value

On God's pathway

there are two Ka'bas.

One is the Ka'ba you can see;

the other, the Ka'ba of the heart.

As much as you can,

make pilgrimage to the heart -

The heart's value

is greater

than a thousands Ka'bas.

~ Awhad al-Din Kirmani

from Love's Alchemy

translations by David and Sabrineh Fideler

Kneeling "Chinese" Man, 13th-14th centuries. 

Terracotta, Brooklyn Museum

it’s the dream

It’s that dream that we carry with us

that something wonderful will happen,

that it has to happen,

that time will open,

that the heart will open,

that doors will open,

that the mountains will open,

that wells will leap up,

that the dream will open,

that one morning we’ll slip in

to a harbor that we've never known.

~ Olav H. Hauge

translated by Robert Bly

art by klimt

the sound of the rain needs no translation

I had a discussion with a great master in Japan, and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, "That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen, you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.

~ Alan Watts

meditation on how

there's no 

figuring out how 

to live life 

there is only 

the living of life 

those who 

figure out how 

end up learning 

to forget all hows 

in order to live again

.

~ Benjamin Dean

from Short Zen Poems, Koans

dispair and humility

Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love ... 

It is reached when one deliberately turns his back on all help

 from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost. 

In every man there is hidden some root of despair

 because in every man there is pride that vegetates and springs weeds

 and rank flowers of self-pity as soon as our own resources fail us. . . . 

But a man who is truly humble cannot despair, 

because in the humble man there is no longer any such thing

 as self-pity.

Humility, therefore, is absolutely necessary 

if man is to avoid acting like a baby all his life. 

To grow up means, in fact, to become humble,

 to throw away the illusion that I am at the center

 of everything and that other people only exist 

to provide me with comfort and pleasure…





~ Thomas Merton
from Seeds of Contemplation
with thanks to louie, louie
art by van gogh

our essential nature -

~ Rupert Spira

I see my beauty in you

~ Rumi

version by Coleman Barks

be helpless and completely poor

Being humble is right for you now.
Don't thrash around showing your strength.

You're naked in the bee-house!
It doesn't matter how powerful
your arms and legs are.

To God, that is more of a lie
than your weakness is.

In his doorway your prestige
and your physical energy are just dust
on your face. Be helpless
and completely poor.

And don't try to meet his eye!
That's like signing a paper
that honors yourself.

If you can take care of things, do so!
But when you're living at home with God,
you neither sew the world together
with desires nor tear it apart
with disappointments.

In that place existence itself
is illusion. All that is, is one.

~ Hakim Sanai

English version by Coleman Barks
shoes by Van Gogh

 with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

the blind old man

I don't know why so much sweetness hovers around us.

Nor why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoons,

Nor why the earth mutters so much about its children.

We'll never know why the snow falls through the night,

Nor how the heron stretches her long legs,

Nor why we feel so abandoned in the morning.

We have never understood how birds manage to fly,

Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams,

Nor how heaven and earth can appear in a poem.

We don't know why the rain falls so long.

The ditchdigger turns up one shovel after another.

The herons go on stitching the heavens together.

We've never heard about the day we were conceived

Nor the doctor who helped us to be born,

Nor that blind old man who decides when we will die.

It's hard to understand why the sun rises,

And why our children are mostly fond of us,

And why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoon.

~  Robert Bly

 from Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey