I was the forest

When I was the stream, when I was the

forest, when I was still the field,

when I was every hoof, foot,

fin and wing, when I

was the sky

itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever

wondered was there anything I might need,

for there was nothing

I could not

love.

It was when I left all we once were that

the agony began, the fear and questions came,

and I wept, I wept. And tears

I had never known

before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to

the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,

I begged – I begged to wed every object

and creature,

and when they accepted,

God was ever present in my arms.

And He did not say,

“Where have you

been?”

For then I knew my soul – every soul -

has always held

Him.

~ Meister Eckhart

Daniel Ladinsky translation

love after love

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

~ Derek Walcott

from Collected Poems

old joy

Come into animal presence

No man is so guileless as

the serpent. The lonely white

rabbit on the roof is a star

twitching its ears at the rain.

The llama intricately

folding its hind legs to be seated

not disdains but mildly

disregards human approval.

What joy when the insouciant

armadillo glances at us and doesn't

quicken his trotting

across the track and into the palm brush.

What is this joy? That no animal

falters, but knows what it must do?

That the snake has no blemish,

that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings

in white star-silence? The llama

rests in dignity, the armadillo

has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.

Those who were sacred have remained so,

holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence

of bronze, only the sight that saw it

faltered and turned from it.

An old joy returns in holy presence.

~ Denise Levertov

 from Poems: 1960-1967

She wrote: "I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer."

still water

The non-action of the wise man is not inaction.

It is not studied.  It is not shaken by anything.

The sage is quiet because he is not moved,

Not because he wills to be quiet.

Still water is like glass.

You can look in it and see the bristles on your chin.

It is a perfect level;

A carpenter could use it.

If water is so clear, so level,

How much more the spirit of man?

The heart of the wise man is tranquil.

It is the mirror of heaven and earth

The glass of everything.

Emptiness, stillness, tranquility, tastelessness,

Silence, non-action: this is the level of heaven and earth.

This is perfect Tao. Wise men find here

Their resting place.

Resting, they are empty.

From emptiness comes the unconditioned.

From this, the conditioned, the individual things.

So from the sage's emptiness, stillness arises:

From stillness, action. From action, attainment.

From their stillness comes their non-action, which is also action

And is, therefore, their attainment.

For stillness is joy.  Joy is free from care.

Fruitful in long years.

Joy does all things without concern:

For emptiness, stillness, tranquility, tastelessness,

Silence, and non-action

Are the root of all things.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

from joy

From joy all beings are born,

By joy they are all sustained,

And into joy they again return.

~ Taittiriya Upanishad

among the multitudes

I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.
I could have different
ancestors, after all.
I could have fluttered
from another nest
or crawled bescaled
from another tree.

Nature's wardrobe
holds a fair
supply of costumes:
Spider, seagull, fieldmouse.
each fits perfectly right off
and is dutifully worn
into shreds.

I didn't get a choice either,
but I can't complain.
I could have been someone
much less separate.
someone from an anthill, shoal, or buzzing swarm,
an inch of landscape ruffled by the wind.

Someone much less fortunate,
bred for my fur
or Christmas dinner,
something swimming under a square of glass.

A tree rooted to the ground
as the fire draws near.

A grass blade trampled by a stampede
of incomprehensible events.

A shady type whose darkness
dazzled some.
What if I'd prompted only fear,
Loathing,
or pity?

If I'd been born
in the wrong tribe
with all roads closed before me?

Fate has been kind
to me thus far.

I might never have been given
the memory of happy moments

My yen for comparison
might have been taken away.

I might have been myself minus amazement,
that is, someone completely different.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

 from Poems, New and Collected

 

you are this ... you want to become that

The mind has an idea, perhaps pleasurable, and it wants to be like that idea, 

which is a projection of your desire. You are this, which you do not like, 

and you want to become that, which you like. The ideal is a self-projection; 

the opposite is an extension of what is; it is not the opposite at all, 

but a continuity of what is, perhaps somewhat modified. 

The projection is self-willed, and conflict is the struggle towards the projection. 

You are struggling to become something, and that something is part of yourself. 

The ideal is your own projection. See how the mind has played a trick upon itself.

You are struggling after words, pursuing your own projection, your own shadow. 

You are violent, and you are struggling to become nonviolent, 

the ideal;

 but the ideal is a projection of what is, 

only under a different name.

When you are aware of this trick that you have played upon yourself, 

then the false as the false is seen. 

The struggle towards an illusion is the disintegrating factor. 

All conflict, all becoming is disintegration. 

When there is an awareness of this trick that the mind has played upon itself, 

then there is only what is. 

When the mind is stripped of all becoming, 

of all ideals, of all comparison and condemnation, 

when its own structure has collapsed,

then the what is has undergone complete transformation. 

As long as there is the naming of what is, 

there is relationship between the mind and what is; 

but when this naming process - which is memory, the very structure of the mind 

-is not, then what is is not. 

In this transformation alone is there integration.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

this moment

this moment
when compared to
remembered moments
is boring

but if I look closely
at all remembered moments
I find them just as boring
and for the same reason

the missing moment
the beautiful moment
the perfect moment
where all is fine
DOES NOT EXIST 
it must be created
by taking any boring moment
(like this current moment)
and realizing quite clearly
that the only thing preventing
this moment from being
that beautiful moment
(that special moment)
is the act of comparison

one must embrace this boring moment
and make it that special moment

otherwise it will never exist




~ Benjamin Dean

tired of judging

Written in my hut on a snowy evening

Reflecting over seventy years,

I am tired of judging right from wrong.

Faint traces of a path trodden in deep night snow.

A stick of incense under the rickety window.

~ Ryokan

from Sky Above, Great Wind: The life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan

by Kazuaki Tanahashi

  

being without there being a center

These days many people are finding their way into “selflessness” or “centerlessness”—

the state of being without there being a center or separate experiencer.

 People realize this state through self-inquiry, using questions like

 

 “Who or what is experiencing this moment?”

 

People may struggle for a few minutes thinking that the word “me” is the experiencer, 

but after a few affirmations, most people who engage in this type of inquiry

 can see that, yes, the idea of “me” or “I” is a particular idea that’s also being experienced. 

 Some people find it easy to discover selflessness using the perceptual doorways

 made famous by Douglas Harding’s “experiments.” We point one of our fingers

 at our face and see that we can never see, never find, what our finger is pointing at. 

 The finger points at a space, a clearing, that is the centerless universe

 that circumscribes our reality.

Moreover, if we try to find the “absence of a center,” or a “self,” or “me,” 

we can’t find what’snot there. So, contrary to what some people conclude,

 we can’t say that there is “no self,” or “no experiencer,” either. 

We are left speechless, seeing that we neither exist nor don’t exist.

Sometimes people get nervous when they first encounter the realization

 that there is no findable “me” that sits in our head, or stands behind everything out there.

 People fear that the bottom of their lives might fall out. 

 

But, if we look at what really happens, nothing changes at all.

 Our fear is baseless because, while we can’t find ourselves, 

equally we can’t conclude that we don’t exist. We have no basis at all for saying

 “Who we aren’t!” If we look at things, we are here—you and I—

and everyone else is exactly where they are.

 And yet we are all unfindable!

At this point you might be thinking, “I can’t think about ‘this’.” 

 And, yes, that’s precisely the case. We can’t think about “this.”

 We are beyond dualistic concepts. We can’t even say, “we are beyond.”

 Nothing whatsoever changes when we realize selflessness because a self

 was never there in the first place. We might think that something goes away

 (the self) but it doesn’t.

 There is nothing to disappear!

This realization is wonderful because it creates a sense of open, 

unbounded, freedom that’s completely fused with the infinitely complex 

mandala of our unique, empirical existence. This realization allows us to be totally

 free in the same moment that we are, effectively, trapped in the particulars

 of our moment-by-moment experience. Think about it, in this moment, 

nothing can be different. The thought we are thinking displaces every other thought,

 if we are inhaling we can’t be exhaling. The word you are reading right now 

can’t be another word, because this is the one that’s here. Your body can’t be

 in a different location in this very moment, because it is where it is.

 Every square centimeter of our life-world is filled to the limits 

with a panoramic display of colors, shapes, sensations and thought-forms. 

We are engulfed in a seamless and totalizing sea of sensations and cognition

 that has no ruptures or interruptions.

If you’re like me, your capacity for resting in the ground of being is highly conditioned.

 The external circumstances and state of my body-mind need to be “just right”

 if I’m to have any chance of resting in awareness. Even when things are just right, 

I can still be distracted by my “important” projects or necessary interests,

 like thinking that I really need to know the current updates in world news.

 It takes just a small discomfort to wish that “things were different.” 

 Frustrations, anxieties, fears, annoyances, boredoms, and vulnerabilities abound.

Gradual evolution

The path for many people is gradual. Moments of selfless awareness arise within the larger context of our life—all the events that happen from our birth, initial awakening, on into death and beyond. The first recognition of pure, primordial awareness may occur as a child, or the serene setting of a contemplative dialogue with a nondual master, after years of meditation practice, while taking in a sunset, or in dokusan with a Zen roshi. Or, perhaps we are introduced to the nature of mind by watching a YouTube video or informally in a café when a friend who knows this space shares the unfindable “this.” Sometimes the first recognition happens spontaneously without any obvious precondition. One day, everything drops away and we find ourselves in a space that’s like the open sky: beyond all concepts and feelings. Or, perhaps this realization creeps up on us, and we can’t say exactly when we first become aware of the fact that we can’t find ourselves.

Having tasted the goal, the path consists of incrementally expanding and deepening our capacity to abide more continuously and reliably in selfless awareness as we engage the full range of experiences that are delivered to us by our karmically conditioned body-mind. The scope for integrating what’s possible within the extremes of nirvana and samsara are enormous. Perhaps it has no limit.

Universal awakening: limitless integration

In Mahayana Buddhism the scope for our evolution is said to be inconceivably vast. Quantum physics leads to the conclusion: “If it can happen, it will.” Mahayana takes this further saying, “Everything can happen, and already is.”

The scope for deepening and expanding the embodied realization of selflessness is limitless. According to the Mahayana, there is no conceivable event or experience that can disturb the vast, open-minded equanimity of a buddha. For a buddha, violent emotional invasions are received as whispered teachings of “perfect wisdom.” Mental energies that would otherwise be experienced as psychological anguish and torment auto-liberate into a continuous stream of meditative quietude. Physical pain is instantly and continuously transmuted by buddhamind into super-sensory pleasure. For buddhas, energy in any form is the currency of bliss—exchangeable like dollars and euros for whatever we wish. They live continuously in a “heaven on earth.”

One of my teachers, Lama Thubten Yeshe, often used the example of atomic power. Awakened beings radiate a fusion-energy field. They live in a matrix, a holographic mandala, that penetrates other people’s psyche and transforms any environment they inhabit. The realization of buddhas is contagious, like a chain reaction. Lama Yeshe embodied this capacity himself. In the space of one or two minutes he would do a complete make-over of people’s limited conception of themselves. They would arrive at his doorstep feeling very miserable about themselves, and leave a few minutes later with a life-changing experience of their spiritual potential.

Even though we are just scratching the surface of these buddha-like capacities, it’s inspiring to see that we have everything that’s needed to follow the same path to universal awakening (mahabodhi). We are aware, and more over, we can see that we can be free in the moment without anything needing to change at all.

Pure perception

Within the vision of universal awakening, a gap between where we are now and the irreversible liberation of all mind-streams, is creatively and lovingly bridged by visioning the ideal spaces within which people can wake up and be constantly suffused and infused with the nectar of selfless awareness. This is called “pure perception.”

“Pure perception” arises naturally when we see that there is no end to the dimensions and realities that can be touched and transformed by the liberating field of selfless awareness. Ultimately, there is no other work to do. We learn to how to think, feel and live at the result-level. The type of visioning I’m talking about here comes to us effortlessly as we tune into precisely what people need in the moment in order to abide in the primordial state.

As the Buddha says in the Prajnaparamita Sutra:

Bodhisattvas are ceaselessly inspired by the conviction that the infinitely diverse structures of relativity, far from being some dangerous disease, are actually a healing medicine. Why? Because in their intrinsically selfless nature, interdependent structures perfectly express the mystery and transmit the spiritual energy of universal companionship. Not just awakened sages but all structures of relativity are dwellers in the boundlessness which constitutes all-embracing love, selfless compassion, sympathetic joy and blissful equanimity.

The wonderful thing about “pure perception” is that we can taste it now. By definition, this is the nature of pure perception. Pure perception is never something that happens in the future. The idea that “pure perception” can only happen in the future, degrades the very quality of this experience itself. In pure perception we bring an exalted appreciation to our experience of the world, including our own physical form. We see the intrinsic harmony within and between all phenomena. We experience the seamless, unimpeded flow of everything that arises and dissolves within the reality-sphere that is the mandala of our own existence. Nothing is out of place; everything gives unique expression to an infinite network of conditions that are implicated in every manifestation from the most minuscule to the most cosmic, from the most insignificant to the most magnificent. Everything is revealed as an expression of the unfindable vastness.

~ Peter Fenner

from natural awakening

the heat of midnight tears

Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,

kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night.

If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water,

I would have asked to be born a fish in this life.

If we could reach Him through nothing but berries and wild nuts

then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came

from the womb!

If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves

then goats would surely get to the Holy One before us!

If the worship of stone stature could bring us all the way,

I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.

Mirabai says, "The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God."

~ Mirabai

translation by Robert Bly

unite yourselves to the formless being

Whoever now wishes to see properly what is the excellence
 and the profit of perfect detachment, let him take good heed 
of Christ's words when he spoke about his human nature
 and said to his disciples:  

"It is expedient for you that I go from you, 

for if I do not go, the Holy Spirit cannot come to you."  

(John 16:7) 

 This is just as if he were to say: 

"You have taken too much delight in my present image, 
so that the perfect delight of the Holy Spirit cannot be yours.  
So detach yourselves from the image, 
and unite yourselves to the formless being, 
for God's spiritual consolation is delicate; 
therefore he will not offer it to anyone except to him
 who disdains bodily consolations."

~ Meister Eckhart

from Meister Eckhart - 
Selections from his Essential Writings

dance of the cells

.

My friend, this body is made of bone and excited protozoa 
and it is with my body that I love the fields. 
How do I know what I feel but what the body tells me?
 Erasmus thinking in the snow, translators of Virgil 
who burn up the whole room, the man in furs reading the Arabic
 astrologer falls off his three-legged stool in astonishment, 
this is the body, so beautifully carved inside, 
with the curves of the inner ear, 
and the husk so rough,
 knuckle-brown.

As we walk, we enter the fields of other bodies, 
and every smell we take in the communities of protozoa see,
 and a being inside leaps up toward it, as a horse rears at the starting gate. 
When we come near each other, we are drawn down into 
the sweetest pools of slowly circling smells . . . slowly circling energies . . . 
The protozoa know there are odors the shape of oranges,
 of tornadoes, of octopuses . . .

The sunlight lay itself down before every protozoa, 

the night opens itself out behind it, 

and inside its own energy it lives!

So the space between two people diminishes,
 it grows less and less, no one to weep, they merge at last. 
The sound that pours from the fingertips awakens 
clouds of cells far inside the body, and beings unknown to us
 start out in a pilgrimage to their Saviour, to their holy place.
 Their holy place is a small black stone, that they remember
 from Protozoic times, when it was rolled away from a door . . . 
and it was after that they found their friends, who helped them
 to digest the hard grains of this world . . . 

The cloud of cells awakens, intensifies, swarms . . .
 the beings dance inside beams of sunlight so thin we cannot see them . . . 
to them each ray is a vast palace, with thousands of rooms. 
From the dance of the cells praise sentences rise to the voice
 of the man praying and singing alone in his room. 
He lets his arms climb above his head, and says,
 “Now do you still say cannot choose the road?”

~ Robert Bly
(for Lewis Thomas, and his The Lives of the Cell)

taken here from The News of the Universe:
 Poems of Twofold Consciousness 
photo: red amoeba

as the web issues out of the spider

.

As the web issues out of the spider

And is withdrawn, as plants sprout

from the earth,

As hair grows from the body, even so,

The sages say, this universe springs from

The deathless Self, the source of life.

~ Mundaka Upanishad

and so I smile

The story about a man who was looking for his stray camel and asking after it.

You've lost a camel - now you seek it out;

On finding it, that it's yours you won't doubt.

You've lost the camel you are used to riding;

It has escaped your hold and now is hiding.

The caravan is ready to move on;

They have all packed up, but your camel's gone -

With parched lips you are searching left and right;

The caravan set off, and soon it's night.

Your things have just been left there on the ground,

While in your search you have been wandering round,

Asking: 'Who's seen a camel come this way?

It fled its stable earlier today.

About my camel pass me information

And I'll give you a generous compensation.'

You seek a clue like this from everyone,

So all the scoundrels see you and poke fun,

Jesting: 'We saw a camel head that way,

A reddish camel, searching for some hay.'

One asks, 'Was it crop-eared and quite perplexed?

'Its saddle was embroidered,' claims the next.

Another asks, 'Did it have just one eye?'

The next, 'Was it sick and about to die?'

Each wretch in hope of a reward from you

Presents to you his fabricated clue.

Explanation of the moral of the story about that person searching for his camel.

You've lost a camel that belongs to you

And everyone is offering you a clue;

You don't know where that camel chose to go,

But that their clues are false you clearly know.

A man who hasn't lost a camel now

Competes with you in searching anyhow;

He'll claim, 'I've lost a camel, everyone!

I'll give a big reward for her return.'

To share your camel is this mimic's aim;

Because he covets yours, he plays this game.

From false clues he can't tell a truthful clue,

But, for this mimic, your words serve as cue:

If you declare, 'That clues's false!' you will see 

Him do the same, but it's mimicry.

And if a man gives clues you think are true,

Sureness which leaves no doubt then comes to you:

Such clues heal your sick soul of all its pain;

You health, strength, and complexion you regain,

Your eyes light up, your feet feel quick anew,

Body like soul, and soul like spirit too!

'You were right, truthful friend!' you then will say,

In which are signs of truthful information.

You have truth's license and you've earned salvation!'

When someone's given such a clue, you'll say:

'It's time for action, so please lead the way!

Truth-teller, I will follow from behind;

With this clue my lost camel you will find.'

To that man who did not before possess

That camel, but who seeks it none the less,

More certainty will not come from this clue

Unless it's through a man whose search is true:

He'll see from your zeal that the clue is serious,

And that your screams of joy are not delirious.

That liar has no claim, but still I say

He's also lost a camel in a way;

Desire for someone else's veils his mind,

So he's forgotten what he's left behind.

The owner runs to search; he follows there;

Through greed, the owner's pain he starts to share:

A liar in the truthful's company

Will find his lies become truths suddenly.

Where your stray camel is when you've been brought,

This mimic finds his stray, which he'd not sought;

He first recalls her when he sees her, then

He covets no more those of other men.

That mimic's search first starts thus when his eyes

Notice his own lost camel by surprise:

He only seeks to find his camel when

By chance he sees her; he'd not searched till then.

From that point he learns to move on alone,

Now having opened his eyes to his own.

The truthful man asks, 'Have you left at last?

Is your concern about me in the past?'

He says, 'Till now I simply would pretend;

Desire made me your sycophantic friend,

But now I sympathize deep in my heart,

Though, through this search, we have been led apart.

I stole descriptions of her straight from you;

My soul was stunned, though, when mine came to view.

I wasn't seeking her, if truth be told -

Copper has now been overwhelmed by gold:

My evil deeds were righteous deeds somehow -

Folly has left and seriousness rules now!

My sins became the means to reach the Lord -

Don't criticize them any more, applaud!

Sincerity made you a seeker, while

My search led me to it, and so I smile:

Your search was due to your sincerity;

Sincerity, through seeking, came to me!

I sowed my fortune's seed in fertile soil,

Although I'd thought it would be fruitless toil.

It wasn't unpaid work to my surprise:

I sowed one seed and saw a hundred rise.

A thief had sneaked into a house at night -

He saw it was his own house in the light.'

Be warm, cold one, so more heat reaches you;

Accept the rough, so smoothness finds you too!

There was one camel in reality;

Words can't reach meaning's depth...

~ Rumi

from The Masnavi, Book Two

translation by Jawid Mojaddedi