from the beginning

From the beginning

the flying birds have left

no footprints on the blue sky

~ Miso Soseki

translated by W.S. Merwin

Muso Soseki first practiced Zen under the guidance of a Chinese teacher but he "failed miserably." He later studied with the Japanese Zen master Koho Kennichi and soon began to unfold into profound awakening, receiving inka or certification of enlightenment in 1339.

Muso Soseki went on to teach large numbers of students and, like many Zen practitioners, write poetry. He also became an advisor to the first Ashikaga Shogun and helped to re-establish trade and communications between Japan and China.

Soseki is perhaps most famous, however, for his profound influence in the art of Zen gardening as spaces to cultivate awareness. 

comments from Poetry Chaikhana

building cages or dropping keys

The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He Knows.

While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,

Keeps dropping
keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners

~ Hafiz

co-inherence

The chooser's happiness lies in his congruence with the chosen,

The peace of iron filings, obedient to the forces of the magnetic field -

Calm is the soul that is emptied of all self,

In the eternal moment of co-inherence.

A happiness within you - but not yours.

~ Dag Hammarskjold

from Markings

standing deer

As the house of a person

in age sometimes grows cluttered

with what is

too loved or too heavy to part with,

the heart may grow cluttered.

And still the house will be emptied,

and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person

in age sometimes grow sparer,

like a great cleanness come into a room,

the soul may grow sparer;

one sparrow song carves it completely.

And still the room is full,

and still the heart.

Empty and filled,

like the curling half-light of morning,

in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,

like the curling half-light of evening,

in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Beloved, what can be, what was,

will be taken from us.

I have disappointed.

I am sorry. I knew no better.

A root seeks water.

Tenderness only breaks open the earth.

This morning, out the window,

the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

~ Jane Hirschfield 

from The Lives of the Heart

 

 

Metempsychosis

Some stories last many centuries,

others only a moment.
All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,
grow distant and more beautiful with salt.

Yet even today, to look at a tree
and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed.

There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.

Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door,
ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle.

Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket
gives off --
the immeasurable's continuous singing,
before it goes back into story and feeling.

In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots.
Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another.

I would like to join that stilted transmigration,
to feel my own skin vertical as theirs:
an ant-road, a highway for beetles.

I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart.
To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch,
and then keep walking, unimaginably further.



~ Jane Hirshfieldfrom

from Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems


photo of the Socratea exorrhiza or walking palm
which can move itself up to about a meter per year

 

 

 

song of the soul

In the depth of my Soul there is-

A wordless song-a song that lives

In the seed of my heart.

It refuses to melt with ink

On parchment; it engulfs my affection

In a transparent cloak and flows,

But not upon my lips.

How can I sing it? I fear it may

Mingle with earthly ether;

To whom shall I sing it? It dwells

In the house of my soul, in fear of harsh ears.

When I look into my inner eyes

I see the shadow of its shadow;

When I touch my fingertips

I feel its vibrations.

The deeds of my hands heed its

Presence as a lake must reflect

The glittering stars; my tears

Reveal it, as bright drops of dew

reveal the secret of a withering rose.

It is a song composed by contemplation,

And published by silence,

And shunned by clamor,

And folded by truth,

And repeated by dreams,

And understood by love,

And hidden by awakening

And sung by the soul.

It is the song of love;

What Cain or Esau could sing it?

It is more fragrant than jasmine;

What voice could enslave it?

It is heart-bound, as a virgin’s secret;

What string could quiver it?

Who dares unite the roar of the sea

And the singing of the nightingale?

Who dares compare the shrieking tempest

To the sigh of an infant?

Who dares speak aloud the words

Intended for the heart to speak?

What human dares sing in voice

The song of God?

~ Kahlil Gibran

the black figure below the boat

We hear phrases: "He made me do it."

"I never wanted that."  The boy's boat gets

Pushed out on the sea, and before long the tidal

Currents guide it from beneath.  He goes to sleep.

He meets a woman, and marries her even though

He doesn't want to.  He says, "It was the current."

But some tiny black figure swims below the boat,

Pushing it.  This man or god works all night.

Then what?  Months go by, years, twenty years.

A lot of water.  The boat hits gravel.

It's an island - the kind where giants live.

"Don't say you didn't want it.  Just get ready."

~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

absent as "you"

Whenever you are absent as "you,"

You are present as I.

So you may say "My absence as 'me' is My presence as I."

Of course I am always present as I,

but when I appear to be present as "you" (or as "me")

I seem to be absent,

i.e. My presence appears to be an absence.

Also you may say "My absence as 'that' (which can be known)

is My presence as THIS" 

(about which there cannot be anything to know).

If one were to think it,

apperceive it, 

understand it, even occasionally?...

~ Wei Wu Wei

from Posthumous Pieces

.

seeing "the deep world"

Leonid Afremov

There is a portion of reality which is offered to us without our making any special effort beyond opening our eyes and ears, and this we call the world of pure impressions.  But there is another world built of structures of impressions, which, though hidden, is none the less real.  If this other world is to exist for us, we need to open something more than our physical eyes, and to undertake a greater kind of effort.  But the measure of our effort neither confers any reality on that world, nor takes it away.  The deep world is as clear as the surface one, only it asks more of us.

~ Jose Ortega y Gasset

from Meditations of Quixote, 1914

adapted from a translation by J.W. Jeaffreson

Picasso

These Things whose essential life you want to express first ask you, "Are you free? Are you prepared to devote all your love to me...?"  And if the Thing sees that you are otherwise occupied with even a particle of your interest, it shuts itself off; it may perhaps give you some slight sign of friendship, a word or a nod, but it will never give you its heart, entrust you with its patient being, its sweet sidereal constancy, which makes it so like the constellations in the sky.  In order for a Thing to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time as the only one that exists, as the one and only phenomenon which, through your laborious and exclusive love, is now placed at the center of the universe, and which, in that incomparable place, is on that day attended by angels.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from a letter sent to Baladine Klossowska

translation by Stephen Mitchell

both excerpts found in the essay Poetry and the Mind of Indirection

by Jane Hirshfield

hope is as hollow as fear

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
Your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
You will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
That arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
What do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
Then you can care for all things.

~  Lao Tzu

burning

                                       

What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the
soul and the outside world. 

Where passion dominates, that does not
signify the presence of greater desire and ambition, but rather the
misdirection of these qualities toward an isolated and false goal, with
a consequent tension and sultriness in the atmosphere. Those who direct
the maximum force of their desires toward the centre, toward true being,
toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the
flame of their fervor cannot always be seen. In argument, for example,
they will not shout and wave their arms. But I assure you, they are
nevertheless burning with subdued fires.



~ Hermann Hesse
from The Glass Bead Game 

our broken love

One of the great powers of love is balance;
it helps us move toward transfiguration.
When two people come together, an ancient circle closes between them.
They also come to each other not with empty hands,
but with hands full of gifts for each other.
Often these are wounded gifts;
this awakens the dimension of healing within love.
When you really love someone,
you shine the light of your soul on the beloved.
We know from nature that sunlight brings everything to growth.
It you look at flowers early on a spring morning,
they are all closed.
When the light of the sun catches them,
they trustingly open out and give themselves to the new light.

A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness 

for the love that has awakened in them. When you feel love for your beloved 

and the beloved’s love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth 

of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved. 

 

Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate, 

to those who are starving, to those who are trapped in prison,

 in hospitals, and into all the brutal terrains of bleak and tormented lives. 

 

When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, 

it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer. . . .

 

 When there is love in your life, you should share it spiritually 

with those who are pushed to the very edge of life. 

 

There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness

 from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, 

it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara 

one winter afternoon

one winter afternoon

(at the magical hour
when is becomes if) 

a bespangled clown
standing on eighth street
handed me a flower. 

Nobody,it’s safe
to say,observed him but 

myself,and why?because 

without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last) 

mostpeople fear most:
a mystery for which i’ve
no word except alive 

—that is,completely alert
and miraculously whole; 

with not merely a mind and a heart 

but unquestionably a soul-
by no means funereally hilarious 

(or otherwise democratic)
but essentially poetic
or ethereally serious: 

a fine not a coarse clown
(no mob, but a person) 

and while never saying a word 

who was anything but dumb;
since the silence of him 

self sang like a bird.
Mostpeople have been heard
screaming for international 

measures that render hell rational
—i thank heaven somebody’s crazy 

enough to give me a daisy 

~ E. E. Cummings

 art by Chagall

"love me."

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise

someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a

full moon in each eye that is 

always saying,

With that sweet moon language,

what every other eye in 

this world is

dying to 

hear?

~  Hafiz

. 

finding out what love is

.

Love is the unknowable. It can be realized only when the known is understood and transcended. Only when the mind is free of the known, then only there will be love. 

So, we must approach love negatively, not positively.

What is love to most of us? With us, when we love, in it there is possessiveness, dominance, or subservience. From this possession arises jealously and fear of loss, and we legalize this possessive instinct. From possessiveness arise jealousy and the innumerable conflicts with which each one is familiar. Possessiveness, then, is not love. Nor is love sentimental. To be sentimental, to be emotional, excludes love.Sensitivity and emotions are merely sensations.

. . . Love alone can transform insanity, confusion, and strife. No system, no theory of the left or of the right can bring peace and happiness to man. Where there is love, there is no possessiveness, no envy; there is mercy and compassion, not in theory, but actually for your wife and for your children, for your neighbor and for your servant. . . . Love alone can bring about mercy and beauty, order and peace. There is love with its blessing when "you" cease to be.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life