To Judgment: An Assay

.

You change a life

as eating an artichoke changes the taste 

of whatever is eaten after.

Yet you are not an artichoke, not a piano or cat -

not objectively present at all -

and what of you a cat possesses is essential but narrow:

to know if the distance between two things can be leapt.

The piano, that good servant,

has none of you in her at all, she lends herself

to what asks; this has been my ambition as well.

Yet a person who has you is like an iron spigot

whose water comes from far-off mountain springs.

Inexhaustible, your confident pronouncements flow,

coldly delicious.

For if judgment hurts the teeth, it doesn't mind,

not judgment.  Teeth pass,  Pain passes.

Judgment decrees what remains-

the serene judgments of evolution or the judgment

 of a boy-king entering Persia: "Burn it," he says,

and it burns.  And if a small tear swells the corner

of one eye, it is only the smoke, it is no more to him that a beetle

fleeing the flames of the village with her six-legged children.

The biologist Haldane - in one of his tenderer moments -

judged beetles especially loved by God,

"because He had made so many."  For judgment can be tender:

I have seen you carry a fate to its end as softly as a retriever

carries the quail. 


 Yet however much

I admire you at such moments, I cannot love you:

you are too much in me, weighing without pity your own worth.

When I have erased you from me entirely,

disrobed of your measuring adjectives,

stripped from my shoulders and hips each of your nouns,

when the world is horsefly, coal barge, and dawn the color of winter butter -

then perhaps I will love you,  Helpless to not.

As a newborn wolf is helpless: no choice but hunt the wolf milk,

find it sweet.

~  Jane Hirshfield,
from: 'After'

an instrument of comparison?

Is not the mind also an instrument of comparison?  You say this is better than that; you compare yourself with somebody who is more beautiful, who is more clever.  There is comparison when you say, 'I remember that particular river that I saw a year ago, and it was still more beautiful'.  Your compare yourself with somebody, compare yourself with an example, with the ultimate ideal.  Comparative judgment makes the mind dull; it does not sharpen the mind, it does not make the mind comprehensive, inclusive, because, when you are all the time comparing, what has happened?  You see the sunset, and you immediately compare that sunset with the previous sunset.  You see a mountain and you see how beautiful it is.  Then you say, 'I saw a still more beautiful mountain two years ago'.  When you are comparing, you are really not looking at the sunset which is there, but you are looking at it in order to compare it with something else.  So comparison prevents you from looking fully.  I look at you, you are nice, but I say, 'I know a much nicer person, a much better person, a more noble person, a more stupid person'.  When I do this, I am not looking at you.  Because my mind is occupied with something else, I am not looking at you at all.   In the same way, I am not looking at the sunset at all.  To really look at the sunset, there must be no comparison; to really look at you, I must not compare you with someone else.  It is only when I look at you without comparative judgment that I can understand you.  But when I compare you with somebody else, then I judge you and I say, 'Oh, he is a very stupid man'.  So stupidity arises when there is comparison.  I compare you with somebody else, and that very comparison brings about a lack of human dignity.  When I look at you without comparing, I am only concerned with you, not with someone else.  The very concern about you, not comparatively, brings about human dignity.

So as long as the mind is comparing, there is no love, and the mind is always judging, comparing, weighing, looking to find where the weakness is.  So where there is comparison, there is no love.  When the mother and father love their children, they do not compare them, they do not compare their child with another child; it is their child and they love their child.  But you want to compare yourself with something better, with something nobler, with something richer, so you create in yourself a lack of love.  You are always concerned with yourself in relationship to somebody else.   As the mind becomes more and more comparative, more and more possessive, more and more depending, it creates a pattern in which it gets caught, so it cannot look at anything anew, afresh.

And so it destroys that very thing, that very perfume of life, which is love.

J. Krishnamurti

from a conversation with students at Rajghat School

December 19, 1952

the weighing

The heart's reasons

seen clearly,

even the hardest

will carry

its whip-marks and sadness

and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved 

eland forgives

the drought-starved lion

who finally takes her,

enters willingly then

the life she cannot refuse,

and is lion, is fed,

and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness

measured against all he dark

and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us

only the strength we have and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The October Palace

photo by eliot porter

beauty and art - transcending self

Beauty is the convenient and traditional name of something which art and nature share, and which gives a fairly clear sense to the idea of quality of experience and change of consciousness. I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important. And of course this is something which we may also do deliberately: give attention to nature in order to clear our minds of selfish care.

art, affords us a pure delight in the independent existence of what is excellent. Both in its genesis and its enjoyment it is a thing totally opposed to selfish obsession. It invigorates our best faculties and, to use Platonic language, inspires love in the highest part of the soul. It is able to do this partly by virtue of something which it shares with nature: a perfection of form which invites unpossessive contemplation and resists absorption into the selfish dream life of the consciousness.

The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness. This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence to which philosophers have so constantly resorted in their explanations of goodness. “Good is a transcendent reality” means that virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is. It is an empirical fact about human nature that this attempt cannot be entirely successful.

 

 

 

 

~ Iris Murdoch

from  The Sovereignty of Good

photo by Ida Kar

a mind that lets go

Do everything with a mind that lets go.

If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.

If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.

If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom.

Your struggles with the world will have come to an end.

~ Achaan Chah,  (1918-1992)

(Ajahn (sometimes spelled Achaan) Chah was born into a large and comfortable family in a rural village in Northeast Thailand. He ordained as a novice in early youth and on reaching the age of twenty took higher ordination as a monk. As a young monk he studied some basic Dhamma, Discipline and scriptures. Later he practiced meditation under the guidance of several of the local Meditation Masters in the Ascetic Forest Tradition. He wandered for a number of years in the style of an ascetic monk, sleeping in forests, caves and cremation grounds, and spent a short but enlightening period with Ajahn Mun, one of the most famous and respected Thai Meditation Masters of this century.)

 

the great sea

The great sea
Has sent me adrift,
It moves me as the weed in a great river,
Earth and the great weather move me,
Have carried me away,
And move my inward parts with joy.




~ Uvavnuk
Eskimo woman shaman,19th c.

art: Starry Night detail 

Van Gogh

 

 

behind states of mind

~ Rupert Spira

 

full surrender

The art of living is based on rhythm - on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis. One can dance to sorrow or to joy; one can even dance abstractly. But the point is that, by the mere act of dancing, the elements which compose it are transformed; the dance is an end in itself, just like life. The acceptance of the situation, any situation, brings about a flow, a rhythmic impulse towards self-expression. To relax is, of course, the first thing a dancer has to learn. It is also the first thing a patient has to learn when he confronts the analyst. It is the first thing any one has to learn in order to live. It is extremely difficult, because it means surrender, full surrender. 

~  Henry Miller

from The Wisdom of the Heart

in meditation practice

In meditation practice, we neither hold the mind very tightly
 nor let it go completely. If we try to control the mind, 
then its energy will rebound back on us. If we let the mind go
 completely, then it will become very wild and chaotic. 

So we let the mind go, but at the same time, there is some discipline involved ... 
The basic practice is to be present, right here. The goal is also the technique:
 precisely being in this moment, neither suppressing nor wildly letting go,
 but being precisely aware of what you are.

~ Chogyam Trungpa

learn self-conquest

Learn self-conquest, 

persevere thus for a time, 

and you will perceive very clearly
 the advantage which you gain from it. 

As soon as you apply yourself to contemplation, 

you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together: 

they seem like bees which return to the hive and there 

shut themselves up to work at the making of honey. 

~ Saint Teresa of Avila

the look of its landlord

For in this house, everything

has the look of its landlord.

While the hand moves

the shadow must follow.

Since the shadow gains its substance

from the hand

it has none of itself,

That which derives existence

from something else 

how can we say

it truly exists?

It has a name, yes,

but is not that existence

which subsists through God.

~ Fakhruddin Iraqi

from Divine Flashes

Some thought that all these loves were copies of 

our love for the landlord.

~ C.S. Lewis 

from God in the Dock

no expectations

A spirit that lives in this world

And does not wear the shirt of love,

Such an existence is a deep disgrace.

Be foolish in love,

Because love is all there is.

There is no way into presence

Except through a love exchange.

If someone asks, But what is love?

Answer, Dissolving the will.

True freedom comes to those

Who have escaped the questions

Of freewill and fate.

Love is an emperor.

The two worlds play across him.

He barely notices their tumbling game.

Love and lover live in eternity.

Other desires are substitutes

For that way of being.

How long to you lay embracing a corpse?

Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.

Anything born in the spring dies in the fall,

But love is not seasonal.

With wine pressed from grapes,

Expect a hangover.

But this love path has no expectations.

You are uneasy riding the body?

Dismount.  Travel lighter.

Wings will be given.

Be clear like a mirror

Reflecting nothing.

Be clean of pictures and the worry 

That comes with images.

Gaze into what is not ashamed

Or afraid of any truth.

Contain all human faces in your own

Without any judgement of them.

Be pure emptiness.

What is inside that? You ask.

Silence is all I can say.

Lovers have some secrets

That they keep.

~ Rumi

From: Rumi - Bridge to the Soul

Translation by Coleman Barks

peace of Self

If one gains the Peace of Self,
 it will spread without any effort on the part of the individual.

When one is not peaceful, oneself, how can one spread peace in the world?

Unless one is happy,  one cannot bestow happiness on others. 


 Happiness is born of Peace and can reign only when there is no disturbance.
  Disturbance is due to thoughts,  which arise in the mind.  
When the mind is absent there will be perfect Peace.

The ultimate truth is so simple; 
 it is nothing more than being in one's natural original state. 
 Because people want elaborate and mysterious,
 so many religions have come into existence. 

~ Ramana Maharshi

the thought "I"

Thoughts arise because of the thinker.

The thinker is the ego, which if sought will automatically vanish.

Reality is simply loss of the ego.

Destroy the ego by seeking its identity.

Because the ego has no real existence, it will automatically vanish,
 and Reality will shine forth by itself in all its glory.

This is the direct method.

All other methods retain the ego,  In those paths so many doubts arise,
 and the eternal question remains to be tackled. 
 But in this method the final question is the only one 
and is raised from the very beginning.

No practices are even necessary for this quest.

The cause of misery is not in life without;  it is within you as the ego.

You impose limitations on yourself and then make a vain struggle to transcend them.

Why attribute to the happenings in life the cause of misery,
 which really lies within you?  What happiness can you get
 from anything extraneous to yourself?  
When you get it, how long will it last?

There are no stages to Realization of degrees of Liberation. 
 There are no levels of Reality; 
 there are only levels of experience for the individual.

It is not a matter of becoming but of being.

Remain aware of yourself and all else will be known.

~ Ramana Maharshi

through the lenses of our thoughts

The world is not simply there. Everything and everyone we see, we view through the lenses of our thoughts. Your mind is where your thoughts arise and form. It is not simply with your eyes but with your mind that you see the world. So much depends on your mind: How you see yourself, who you think you are, how you see others, what you think the meaning of life is, how you see death, belief, God, darkness and beauty is all determined by the style of mind you have.

Your mind is your greatest treasure. We become so taken up with the world, with having and doing more and more that we come to ignore who we are and forget what we see the world with. The most powerful way to change your life is to change your mind.

When you beautify your mind, you beautify your world. You learn to see differently. In what seemed like dead situations, secret possibilities and invitations begin to open before you. In old suffering that held you long paralyzed, you find new keys. When your mind awakens, your life comes alive and the creative adventure of your soul takes off. Passion and compassion become your new companions. As St. Iraneus said in the 2nd Century: The glory of God is the human person fully alive.

~ John O'Donohue

This was the title and description that John wrote for a talk
 he was scheduled to give in March of 2008.