loafing with friends at Ojo Caliente

Mineral pools remember a lot about history.

Here we are at Ojo Caliente, sitting together.

Soaking up the rumble of earth’s forgetfulness.

Why should we worry if Anna Karenina ends badly?

The world is reborn each time a mouse

Puts her foot down on the dusty barn floor.

Sometimes ohs and ahs bring us joy.  When

You place your life inside the vowels, the music

Opens the doors to a hundred closed nights.

People say that even in the highest heaven

If you managed to keep your ears open

You would hear angels weeping night and day.

The culture of the Etruscans has disappeared.

So many things are over. A thousand hopes

F. Scott Fitzgerald had for himself are gone.

No one is as lucky as those who live on the earth.

Even the Pope finds himself longing for darkness.

The sun catches on fire in the lonely heavens.

                                                                For Hanna and Martin

~ Robert Bly

from My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy

may as well let things go

29

A hundred years flash by

does anyone think this through

if what you're doing isn't clear

the edge between life and death is sheer

stitches on a monk's robe are a loving wife's tears

grains of sweet rice are an old farmer's fat

don't think charity has no reward

every seed bears fruit in time

30

Cares disappeared when I entered the mountains

serene at heart I let the world go

before my door the shade fades in fall

the spring roars in back after a rain

I offer tea and vegetables to a visiting farmer

to a neighbor monk I give chrysanthemums in a pot from town

the jaded life of the gentry

can't match a mountain monk's with scenes like these

31

This body's lifetime is like a bubble's

may as well let things go

plans and events seldom agree

who can step back doesn't worry

we blossom and fade like flowers

we gather and part like clouds

earthly thoughts I forgot long ago

withering away on a mountain peak

32

I've never treasured thoughts of success

I welcome old age and enjoy being free

grass shoes a bamboo staff the last month of spring

paper curtains plum blossoms daybreak dreams

eternal life and buddhahood are utter illusions

freedom from worry and care is the practice

last night the howling pine wind spoke

this is something the deaf can't hear

~ Stonehouse

translated by Red Pine

art by Huang Kung-wang a contemporary of 

Stonehouse who lived in the same area

that pure unseparated element

Never, not for a single day, do we have
before us that pure space into which flowers
endlessly open. Always there is World
and never Nowhere without the No:h that pure
unseparated element which one breathes
without desire and endlessly knows. A child
may wander there for hours, through the timeless
stillness, may get lost in it and be
shaken back. Or someone dies and is it.
For, nearing death, one doesn't see death; but stares
beyond, perhaps with an animal's vast gaze.
Lovers, if the beloved were not there
blocking the view, are close to it, and marvel...
As if by some mistake, it opens for them
behind each other... But neither can move past
the other, and it changes back to World.
Forever turned toward objects, we see in them
the mere reflection of the realm of freedom,
which we have dimmed. Or when some animal
mutely, serenely, looks us through and through.
That is what fate means: to be opposite, 

to be opposite and nothing else, forever.

 

 

 

 

~ Rainer Marie Rilke

from the  Duino Elegies

excerpt from the Eighth Elegy  

 

 

 

 

walking within the weather of love

~ Coleman Barks

 on Rumi

 

feel the ocean moving through you

Just remember,
You are the only faithful student you have.
All the others leave eventually.

Have you been making yourself shallow
with making others eminent?

Just remember, when you're in union,
you don't have to fear
that you'll be drained.

The command comes to speak,
and you feel the ocean
moving through you.

Then comes, Be silent,
as when the rain stops,
and the trees in the orchard
begin to draw moisture
up into themselves.

~ Rumi
version by Coleman Barks 

 art by Randall David Tipton

tangles and merges

look at love

how it tangles

with the one fallen in love

look at spirit

how it fuses with earth

giving it new life

why are you so busy

with this or that or good or bad

pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all

the known and the unknown

see how the unknown merges into the known

why think separately

of this life and the next

when one is born from the last

look at your heart and tongue

one feels but deaf and dumb

the other speaks in words and signs

look at water and fire

earth and wind

enemies and friends all at once

the wolf and the lamb

the lion and the deer

far away yet together

look at the unity of this

spring and winter

manifested in the equinox

you too must mingle my friends

since the earth and the sky

are mingled just for you and me

be like sugarcane

sweet yet silent

don't get mixed up with bitter words

my beloved grows right out of my own heart

how much more union can there be

~ Rumi

from Rumi: Fountain of Fire

Translated by Nader Khalili

art by Katey Elise

inner hospitality

When you decide to practice inner hospitality, the self-torment ceases. 

The abandoned, neglected, and negative selves come into a seamless unity. 

The soul is wise and subtle it recognizes that unity fosters belonging. 

The soul adores unity. What you separate, the soul joins. 

As your experience extends and deepens, 

your memory becomes richer and more complex. 

Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, 

and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence. 

This liturgy of remembrance, literally re-membering, 

is always at work within you. 

Human solitude is rich and endlessly creative.

~ John O'Donohue

art by georgia o'keeffe

.

watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic

Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic,  
People come and go:  you register without response. 
 It may not be easy in the beginning,  but with some practice
 you will find that your mind can function on many levels 
at the same time and you can be aware of the all. 
 It is only when you have a vested interest in any particular level, 
that your attention gets caught in it and you black out on other levels. 
 Even then the work on the blacked out levels goes on, 
outside the field of consciousness.

Do not struggle with your memories and thoughts; 
 try only to include in your field of attention the other, 
 more important questions like, "Who am I?"
 "How did I happen to be born?" "Whence this universe around me?",
 What is real and what is momentary?"
 No memory will persist, if you lose interest in it; 
 always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, 
always after happiness and peace. 

 Don't you see that it is your very search for happiness
 that makes you feel miserable?  Try the other way:
 indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking,
 nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which 
"I am" is timeless and present.  Soon you will realize that peace
 and happiness are in your very nature
 and it is only seeking them through 
some particular channels, that disturbs.

~Nisargaddatta Maharaj

unlabeled

Like the small hole by the path-side something lives in,

in me are lives I do not know the names of,

nor the fates of,

nor the hungers of or what they eat.

They eat of me.

Of small and blemished apples in low fields of me

whose rocky streams and droughts I do not drink.

And in my streets—the narrow ones,

unlabeled on the self-map—

they follow stairs down music ears can’t follow,

and in my tongue borrowed by darkness,

in hours uncounted by the self-clock,

they speak in restless syllables of other losses, other loves.

There too have been the hard extinctions,

missing birds once feasted on and feasting.

There too must be machines

like loud ideas with tungsten bits that grind the day.

A few escape. A mercy.

They leave behind

small holes that something unweighed by the self-scale lives in.

~ Jane Hirshfield

Jane was born on this day in New York City (1953). She went to Princeton, where she was in the first graduating class to include women in 1973. She published her first poem not long after, then went off to northern California to study Buddhism for the next eight years, during which time she didn't write at all. She said: " I don't think poetry is based just on poetry; it is based on a thoroughly lived life. And so I couldn't just decide I was going to write no matter what; I first had to find out what it means to live.

comments from Writers Almanac

I sit on rocks and watch clouds

37

More than forty years I've lived as a hermit

out of touch with the world's rise and fall

a stove full of pine needles keeps me warm at night 

a bowl of wild plants fills me up at noon

I sit on rocks and watch clouds and let thoughts wander

I patch my robe in sunlight and cultivate silence

until someone asks why Bodhidharma came east

and I list all my possessions

38

Scorpion tails and wolf hearts overrun the world

everyone has a trick to get ahead

but how many smiles in a lifetime

how many moments of peace in a day

who knows a toppled cart means try another track

when trouble strikes there is no time for shame

this old monk isn't just talking

he's trying to remove your obstacles and chains

39

The crow and the hare race without rest 
living in the cliffs suddenly I'm old

my reflection looks thin when I walk beside a stream

my eyes have turned blue viewing mountains through pines

I gather red leaves to burn in my stove

I pick yellow flowers to put in a vase

toiling away for the wine of success

others get drunk and can't be revived

40

A thatched hut blue mountains green streams

visits by now are up to me

two or three peach trees and plum trees in bloom

green and yellow fields of vegetables and wheat

I sit all night in bed listening to rain

I open my paper window and doze off watching clouds

nothing is better than being free

but getting free isn't luck

~ Stonehouse

from The Zen Works of Stonehouse

by Red Pine
art by Huang Kung-wang

notes:

37. Stonehouse lived as a hermit for thirty-five years on Hsiamushan, but he also lived for three years with Kao-feng on Tienmushan's West Peak and six years with Chi-an on Langyashan near Chienyang. Although the practice was never as widespread in China as it was in India, monks were encouraged to restrict themselves to a noon meal, which they ate following their morning begging rounds. One of the most common koans asked by Zen masters is:"Why did Bodhidharma come east?" The student's answer is expected to express the essence of Zen rather than supply the Patriarch's presumed motivation.

38. One of the first measures enacted by the First Emperor when he unified China in 221 BC was to standardize the axle length of carts so that all tracks would be the same width. The Five Obstacles include desire, anger, tiredness, anxiety, and doubt. And the Ten Chains include shamelessness, insensitivity, envy, meanness, regret, laziness, over-activity, self-absorption, hate, and secretiveness.

39. According to Chinese mythology, the sun is the home of a crow, and the moon is the abode of a hare. The moon is yin and represents Earth, hence its symbol is an animal of the land; the sun is yang and represents Heaven, hence its totem is a creature of the air. Stonehouse's blue eyes could refer to the Zen eyes of Bodhidharma, the "blue-eyed barbarian," who brought Zen to China. But they could also refer to cataracts. Ironically, cataract surgery was introduced to the Chinese by Indian monks about the same time that Bodhidharma arrived, but the technique had been lost by Stonehouse's time. While Stonehouse used chrysanthemums for his altar, others infused them in their wine.

40. Etiquette requires paying a return visit to someone else who visits. Apparently Stonehouse no longer held up his side of such relationships. Perhaps he didn't like leaving his hut. As previously noted, windows were usually covered with oilpaper.


the author provides similar notes for each portion of the work.

a hat salesman and a capable ruler

A man of Sung did business

In silk ceremonial hats.

He traveled with a load of hats

To the wild men of the South.

The wild men had shaved heads,

Tattooed bodies.

What did they want

With silk

Ceremonial hats?

Yao had wisely governed

All China.

He had brought the entire world

To a state of rest.

After that, he went to visit

The four Perfect Ones

In the distant mountains

Of Ku Shih

When he came back

Across the border

Into his own city

His lost gaze

Saw no throne.

~ Chuang Tzu

translated by Thomas Merton

The Heart's Counting Knows Only One

In Sung China,

two monks, friends for sixty years

watched the geese pass.

Where are they going?

one tested the other, who couldn't say.

That moment's silence continues.

No one will study their friendship

in the koan-books of insight.

No one will remember their names.

I think of them sometimes,

standing, perplexed by sadness,

goose-down sewn into their quilted autumn robes.

Almost swallowed by the vastness of the mountains,

but not yet.

As the barely audible

geese are not yet swallowed;

as even we, my love, will not entirely be lost.

~ Jane Hirshfield
from Lives of the Heart

art by Stanley Roseman

a signal not a glitch

~ Johann Hari

 

to see this

I have come into this world to see this:
 the sword drop from men's hands
 even at the height of their arc of anger
 because we have finally realized there is just one flesh
 to wound and it is the Beloved's.

I have come into this world to see this: 
all creatures hold hands as we pass through
 this miraculous existence we share on the way
 to an even greater being of soul, 
a being of just ecstatic light, 
forever entwined and at play with Him.

I have come into this world to hear this:
 every song the earth has sung since it was conceived
 in the Divine's womb and began spinning from His wish,
 every song by wing and fin and hoof,
 every song by hill and field and tree
 and woman and child, every song
 of stream and rock, every song of tool and lyre and flute,
 every song of gold and emerald and fire,
 every song the heart should cry with magnificent dignity
 to know itself as God: for all other knowledge 
will leave us again in want and aching -
 only imbibing the glorious Sun will complete us. 

I have come into this world to experience this:
 men so true to love they would rather die
 before speaking an unkind word,
 men so true their lives are His covenant - the promise of hope.

I have come into this world to see this: 
the sword drop from men's hands 
even at the height of their arc of rage 
because we have finally realized there is just one flesh
 we can wound.

~ Hafiz

from Love Poems from God: 

Twelve Sacred voices from East and West

edited by Daniel Ladinsky

tripping over joy

What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?

The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move

That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”

Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.

  ~ Hafez

from I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy

by Daniel Ladinsky