a tree within

A tree grew inside my head.

A tree grew in.

Its roots are veins,

its branches nerves,

thoughts its tangles foliage.

Day breaks

in the body’s night.

There, within, inside my head,

the tree speaks.

Come closer—can you hear it?

~ Octavio Paz

translation by Eliot Weinberger
art by Leticia Alaniz

the story of moths

One night, moths, who were driven by desire,

Met together to discuss their obsession

To see if it was one and the same.  They enquired:

'How can we know?'  Truth was their possession,

They thought, and sent forth one of their number to bring

Any information he could to feed their yearning.

He fluttered to and fro between the curtains of night

Till he spied a candle spluttering in a castle tower,

Then he reported back the wonder he saw on his flight.

But one amongst his friends whose knowledge gave him power

Said this messenger understood nothing at all about the candle.

So another moth was sent, he saw and touched the flame

With the tip of his wing, but his report had no handle

On the truth since the heat drove him off, he had no claim.

A third went forth, was so intoxicated with love 

He threw himself on the fire and was consumed.

The wise moth seeing how the flame fitted like a glove

The moth's glowing body, said when he resumed

His place amongst his peers: 'That moth now knows

What he can never utter nor any language ever disclose.'

~ Farid ud-Din Attar

from The Conference of the Birds

annihilate separation

How long can the moth flirt

near the mouth of the flame before their lips touch

and the moth’s soul

becomes like

a sun.

And does the moth then die? No.

In serving God one is transformed into Him.

What lovers would return to us,

what lovers would not unite beyond belief and annihilate

their separation forever if they

had the power

to do so?

That power our Lord has. How long do you think

you can just flirt with Him before you

dissolve in ecstasy?

Existence spins on His potter’s wheel;

all is being shaped into the Divine.

What lovers would

not want to die

embraced?

~ Meister Eckhart

associative leaps in poetry

excerpts from the essay entitled

so much happens when no one is watching 

by Daniel Deardorff

There are three things involved in making a associative leap:

a place to leap from, 

a place to leap to,

and most importantly, that space which is in-between.

Bly suggests that the in-between , the liminal space of the leap, provides a mysterious kind of content.  Bly calls our attention to the many things that happen "when no one is watching."  Pointing toward that which must remain outside our conscious awareness is like Lao Tzu saying that "knowing with not-knowing is best."  Connecting "what happens when no one is watching" to the emphasis on associativity, we notice a similar invitation to consider the unconscious space behind the associative image.  There is a great distance, swiftly traversed, between the philosopher and the predator in the line: "Plato wrote by the light from sharks' teeth."

One key to entering the vast spaces in Bly's thought in understanding is something I've called "associative alacrity" - the adroit capacity to form unexpected correlations,  In the modern world this capacity has been so repressed that it's hard to work out any sense of it.   In Norse mythology there is an ash tree that connects many worlds.  This "World Tree," called Yggdrasil, presents a complex image that works like this: at the top is the solar bird, the great eagle; at the bottom is the old lunar serpent.  The third thing, which connects this opposition, is something much less grand, a squirrel.  Leaping from branch to root, the acrobat squirrel carries messages between the extremities.  The furry mammal presents the limbic capacity to bridge the contradictions without reconciliation.  The squirrel is the embodiment of the leaping consciousness.

Leaping in this manner, the poems of Robert Bly refuse to turn away from Heaven, and at once, stubbornly refuse to renounce the earthly life.  "In a great ancient or modern poem, the considerable distance between the associations, the distance the spark has to leap, gives the lines their bottomless feeling, their space."  The relationships formed by these leaps are not linear - they are not stops along some rational railway, or some predictable system of linked facts - they are images or feelings related by something inexplicable and mysterious.  In this kind of association the distance, the interval or the leap, provides verticality and depth, a kind of bottomless content which functions as what Lawrence Hatab called "mythic disclosure": it does not explain things but "presents an intelligible picture of the lived world and the form of human involvement with the lived world."

In ancient times, in the "time of inspiration." the poet flew from

one world to another, "riding on dragons," as the Chinese said. 

Isaiah rode on those dragons, so did Li Po and Pindar.  They

dragged behind them long tails of dragon smoke.  Some of that 

dragon smoke still boils out of Beowulf. ...This dragon smoke 

means that a leap has taken place in the poem.

The associative paths... allow us to leap from one part of the brain

to another and lay out their contraries.  Moreover it's possible that

what we call "mythology" deals precisely with these abrupt juxtapositions...

using what Joseph Campbell called "mythological thinking," 

it moves the energy along a spectrum - either up or down. 

It can awaken the "lost music," walk on the sea, cross the 

river from instinct to spirit.

It is in the interval of the leap that "so much happens when no one is watching" and this is related to Richard Schechner's idea that certain rituals require "selective inattention."  He says: "Selective inattention allows patterns of the whole to be visible, patterns that otherwise would be burned out of the consciousness by a too intense concentration.

this essay is part of a collection in the book
Robert Bly - In This World

Driving Toward the Lac Qui Parle River

I

I am driving; it is dusk; Minnesota.

The stubble field catches the last growth of sun.

The soybeans are breathing on all sides.

Old men are sitting before their houses on car seats

In the small towns. I am happy,

The moon rising above the turkey sheds.

II

The small world of the car

Plunges through the deep fields of the night,

On the road from Willmar to Milan.

This solitude covered with iron

Moves through the fields of night

Penetrated by the noise of crickets.

III

Nearly to Milan, suddenly a small bridge,

And water kneeling in the moonlight.

In small towns the houses are built right on the ground;

The lamplight falls on all fours on the grass.

When I reach the river, the full moon covers it.

A few people are talking, low, in a boat.

~ Robert Bly

wherelings whenlings

wherelings whenlings
(daughters of if but offspring of hopefear
sons of unless and children of almost)
never shall guess the dimension of

him whose
each
foot likes the
here of this earth

whose both
eyes
love
this now of the sky

- endlings of isn’t
shall never
begin
to begin to

imagine how(only are shall be were
dawn dark rain snow rain
- bow;
a

moon
’s whis-
per
in sunset

or thrushes toward dusk among whippoorwills or
tree field rock hollyhock forest brook chikadee
mountain. Mountain)
whycoloured worlds of because do

not stand against yes which is built by
forever; sunsmell
(sometimes a wonder
of wild roses

sometimes)
with north
over
the barn




~ e.e. cummings

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