individuality

The world is not in need of improvement.  Stated another way, the world is not the problem...

When we detach from the thinking mind, perceiving senses, doing body, happy/unhappy person we regain right view.  In that, all is well. 

You have been trained since infancy to direct your attention to what is temporary. Had anyone before revealed the Permanent to you, there would be no need to sit with Wu Hsin. 

Most people don’t sit because they are afraid of what is revealed. 

The individuals fear that they will lose their individuality, their identity. One could say that the love of Being is not yet greater than the love of being somebody … or it could be said that the fear of the not yet known is far greater than the distaste for the known. 

Either way, “I’ll pay any price” is suddenly shown to be a hollow offer.

When you become clear that you are not this body, but that it is your instrument, then worries about death dissolve. 

In essence, death dies.

~ Wu Hsin

from  the introduction to Behind the Mind: 

A Short Discourse with Wu Hsin

who looks

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.

Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?

I have no idea.

My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,

and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.

When I get back around to that place,

I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,

I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.

The day is coming when I fly off,

but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? 

I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,

I could break out of this prison for drunks.

I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.

Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.

I don't plan it.

When I'm outside the saying of it,

I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

.

pocket of fog

In the yard next door,

a pocket of fog like a small heard of bison

swallows azaleas, koi pond, the red-and-gold koi.

To be undivided must mean not knowing you are.

The fog grazes here, then there,

all morning browsing the shallows,

leaving no footprint between my fate and the mountain's.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

letting go of control

Letting go of control is a deeper relaxation, a floating on the ocean.  
You can become aware of where you are holding on,
 and you can just let go and allow the ocean to hold you.  
You can become aware that all your tension and clinging are unnecessary,
 and then relax and let yourself be supported.  
In this same way you can become aware of all the mental 
and emotional energy that gets exerted in holding on to a particular story,
 and you can just let it all go. 
 There is a deeper intelligence than the one you use to control, 
and it is present to be recognized in all lives, at all moments.

~ Gangaji

from: the Diamond in your Pocket

the eye begins to see

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;

I hear my echo in the echoing wood -

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance?  The day's on fire!

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.

That place among the rocks - is it a cave,

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is --
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

~ Theodore Roethke

from In a Dark Time,
The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

govern

Govern your country with integrity,

Weapons of war can be used with great cunning,

but loyalty is only won by not-doing.

How do I know the way things are?

By these:

 

The more prohibitions you make,

the poorer people will be.

The more weapons you possess,

the greater the chaos in your country.

The more knowledge that is acquired,

the stranger the world will become.

The more laws that you make,

the greater the number of criminals.

 

Therefore the Master says:

I do nothing,

and people become good by themselves.

I seek peace,

and people take care of their own problems.

I do not meddle in their personal lives,

and the people become prosperous.

I let go of all my desires,

and the people return to the uncarved Block.

 

Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

my secret

J. Krishnamurti, the great Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher, 

spoke and traveled almost continually all over the world

 for more than fifty years attempting to convey through words

…that which is beyond words. 

At one of his talks in the later part of his life, he surprised his audience by asking,

 “Do you want to know my secret?”

Everyone became very alert. 

Many people in the audience had been coming to listen to him for twenty or thirty years and still failed to grasp the essence of his teaching. Finally, after all these years, the master would give them the key to understanding.

“This is my secret,” he said.

 “I don’t mind what happens.”

~ from Eckhart Tolle's
A New Earth – Awakening to your Life’s Purpose

observe

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. 

It is there to be used for a specific task, 

and when the task is completed, you lay it down. 

As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent 

of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, 

but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, 

much of it is also harmful.

Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. 

It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.

~ Eckhart Tolle

art by van gogh

Articulation: An Assay

A good argument, etymology instructs,

is many-jointed.

By this measure,

the most expressive of beings must be the giraffe.

Yet the speaking tongue is supple,

untroubled by bone.

What would it be 

to take up no position,

to lie on this earth at rest, relieved of proof or change?

Scent of thyme or grass

amid the scent of many herbs and grasses.

Grief unresisted as granite darkened by rain.

Continuous praises most glad, placed against nothing.

But thought is hinge and swerve, is winch,

is folding.

"Reflection,"

we call the mountain in the lake,

whose existence resides in neither stone nor water.

~ Jane Hirshfield

The "mystery of things"

The "mystery of things" - where is it found?

Where is it, that it does not appear

At least long enough for us to see

It is a mystery?

What does the river, what does the tree

Know about it?

And, I who know no more about it than they,

What do I know about it?

Whenever I look at things and think

What men think about them,

I laugh like a stream

Falling with a cool sound

Over the stones.

For the only hidden meaning things have

Is that they have no hidden meaning.

Stranger than all that is strange,

Than poets' dreams and philosophical ideas

Is this: things are actually

Just what they appear to be

And there is nothing about them to understand.

Yes, here is what my senses learned

All by themselves:

Things do not have meanings: they have existence.

Things are the only hidden meanings of things.

~ Thomas Merton

Poems from The Keeper of the Flocks,11

every day

Every day

I see or hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It was what I was born for -

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world -

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant - 

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these -

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean's shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

~ Mary Oliver

(Why I Wake Early)

in this state of prayer

So let's get on with it, my friends!

Let's do the work quickly and spin the silken cocoon,

relinquishing our self-centeredness and personal willfulness

and giving up our attachment to worldly things.

Let's practice humility, prayer, purification, surrender, 

and all the other good works we're familiar with.  

We have learned exactly what to do. Let's do it!

Let it die. Let the silkworm die. This is the natural outcome 

once it has done what it was created to do. 

Then we will see God and see ourselves nestled inside his greatness 

like the silkworm in her cocoon.

Remember that when I say we "see God," I mean in the sense

in which he allows himself to be seen in this kind of union.

Everything I've been saying leads up to what becomes of the silkworm.

The soul in this state of prayer dies to the world and emerges a little white butterfly.

Oh, the greatness of God!

How magnificent that the soul, having been hidden in the greatness of God

and so closely joined with him, is so transformed.

This union, I believe, is very short. 

I don't think it ever lasts longer than a half an hour.

I'm telling you: the soul doesn't recognize herself anymore.

Think of the difference between an unsightly worm and a white butterfly.

That's how different the soul is after her transformation of union.

The soul cannot imagine how she could deserve such a blessing.

She finds herself overflowing with a desire to praise the Lord.

She longs for annihilation.  She would gladly die a thousand

deaths for him.

She is completely willing to suffer any trials presented to her.

Her desire for renunciation and solitude grows deeper.

All she wishes is that every sentient being could know God.

It torments her to see her Beloved dishonored in any way. 

~ Saint Teresa of Avila

from The Interior Castle

translation by Mirabai Starr

 

alone and not alone, we lived and died

Harlan and Anna Hubbard

.

Harlan:  And so we named a day - remember? -  and a certain train that you would be on if you wanted to marry me,
Anna:  and that you would be on if you wanted to marry me,
Both:  and both of us were on that train!
Anna:  And then,  Harlan,  we did drift away
Harlan:  on a little boat we built ourselves, that contained hardly more than our music, our stove, our table, and our bed
Anna:  in which we slept - and did not sleep -
Harlan:  my birthplace into our new life!
Anna: For a long time we had no home but that little boat and one another
Harlan:  and the music that we sent forth over the water and into the woods.
Anna:  And then we came here to this hollow and built a house and made a garden
Harlan:  and gave our life a standing place and worked and played and lived and died
Anna:  and were alone and were not alone.
Harlan:  Alone and not alone, we lived and died, and after your death I lived on alone, yet not alone, for in my thoughts I never ceased to speak with you.  I knew then that half my music was hidden away in another world.  The music I had heard, so distant,  had been the music you and I had played - the music of something almost whole that you and I had made;  it made one thing of food and hunger, work and rest, day and night.  It made one thing of loneliness and love.  That music seemed another world to me,  and far away,  because I could play only half, not all.
Anna:  And half the life that you so longed to live - was mine?
Harlan:  Was yours.  Without you, I could not live the life we lived,  which I then missed and longed for,  even in my perfect solitude.
Anna:  You will forgive, I hope, my pleasure in the thought of you alone, playing half a duet - for also it saddens me.
Harlan:  You would have laughed,  Anna, to hear how badly I played alone,  without your strong art to carry me.  My perfect music then was made by crickets and katydids and frogs.  I heard too the creek always coming down,  allegro furioso after storms,  and of course the birds - the wood thrush, whose song in summer twilight renews the world, and in all seasons the wren.  But those unceasing voices in the dark were the ones that sang for me, and I was thankful for the loneliness that had brought us two together out of all the time we were apart.




~ Wendell Berry
from 'Sonata at Payne Hollow'

a marvelous illusion

.

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion
that there was a spring breaking out in my heart.
I said, "Along what secret aqueduct are you coming to me
Oh water, water of a new life that I have never drunk."

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion
that there was a beehive here in my heart.
And the golden bees were making white combs
and sweet honey from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion
that there was a fiery sun here in my heart.
It was fiery because it gave warmth as if from a hearth
And it was sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion
that there was God here in my heart.

God, is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives who labor by night stopped, and
the water wheel of thought, is it dry?
The cup's empty, wheeling out carrying only shadows?
No! My soul is not asleep! My soul is not asleep!
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches, its clear eyes open,
far off things, and listens, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.
It listens at the shores of the great silence.





~ Antonio Machado
from The Winged Energy of Delight, 

translation by Robert Bly

.art by Van Gogh

poison made sweet

Though your life has almost passed, this present moment is its root:

if it lacks moisture, water it with repentance.

Give the Living Water to the root of your life,

so that the tree of your life may flourish.

By this Water past mistakes are redeemed.

By this Water last year's poison is made sweet.

~ Rumi

translation by Camille and Kabir Helminski

from Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance
art by Oksana Omelchenko