concepts only block your perception

The ego says
that the world is vast, and
that the particles which form it are tiny.
When tiny particles join, it says, the vast
world appears. When the vast world
disperses, it says, tiny particles
appear.


The ego
is entranced by
all these names and ideas,
but the subtle truth is that world and particle
are the same; neither one vast, neither one tiny. Every
thing is equal to every other thing. Names and
concepts only block your perception
of this Great Oneness. Therefore
it is wise to ignore
them.


Those
who live inside
their egos are continually bewildered:
they struggle frantically to know whether things
are large or small, whether or not there is a purpose
to joining or dispersing, whether the universe is blind and
mechanical or the divine creation of a conscious being.
In reality there are no grounds for having beliefs
or making comments about such things. Look
behind them instead, and you will discern
the deep, silent, complete truth
of the Tao. Embrace it, and
your bewilderment
vanishes.

~ Lao-tzu

 Hua Hu Ching - Verse 32

 translated by Brian Walker

 

the wild

In the empty lot - a place

not natural, but wild - among

the trash of human absence,

the slough and shamble

of the city's seasons, a few

old locusts bloom.

A few woods birds

fly and sing

in the new foliage

 - warblers and tanagers, birds

wild as leaves; in a million

each one would be rare,

new to the eyes.  A man

couldn't make a habit

of such color,

such flight and singing.

But they are the habit of this 

wasted place.  In them

the ground is wise.  They are

its remembrance of what it is.

~ Wendell Berry

from The Selected Poems

foraging for wood on the mountain

The wild up here is not creatures, wooded,

tangled wild. It is absence wild.

Barren, empty, stone wild. Worn-away wild.

Only the smell of weeds and hot air.

But a place where differences are clear.

Between the mind’s severity and its harshness.

Between honesty and the failure of belief.

A man said no person is educated who knows

only one language, for he cannot distinguish

between his thought and the English version.

Up here he is translated to a place where it is

possible to discriminate between age and sorrow.

.

~ Jack Gilbert

.

to the next centuries

Is there autumn there, is there leaf smoke, is the air

blued and mapled, oaked and appled and wined,

is that tang, that ache for who knows?

gone from your sweaters and hair?

Are there trees even, do they break out

in uncontrollable cold fires,

do they shatter in long, unreal downstreamings,

is October the same without them, is our sadness

so river-and-wind swift, and so free, is it still

our sharpest seeing, if we have not learned from them

how to be taken apart, how to be blown away? 

Are clouds the same, are they still our clouds

if leaves have never seethed against them

on a tempestuous night, are they wild, is the moon the same

if it has never wildly sailed through wild clouds,

is there a Hunter’s Moon, a Blood Moon tinged

with the rust and incandescence of the leaves,

is there a moon at all, a hanging stone,

a white astonishment, the exile’s breath on a pane? 

There is sun, I am sure—has it grown more dangerous,

has its shine through thin ozone whited out your eyes,

does it drive dunes through your forests, has it warmed

the seas to exactly body temperature?

What is it like to have won and won and won,

no mile without its grid of roads,

no block unwired, no handswidth without wireless,

when every breeze has been rebreathed

each current steered, each cliff a mirror?

Is there no wild desire, no wild with all regret

because no animals are wild, because the hills

are leveled and the valleys raised

because there is no clear and endless sky? 

And what has endangered my imagination

that imagines you pale and bodiless and scanned,

not a shadow left in your floodlit brain,

your sleep hard in coming, dreams shallow and bright?

Why do I see you in a white room floating

among machines and drips and feeds

as if you were my dead, who went before me

on white boats launched into the future,

as if you were me, when I am tired,

as I am tired now, tired of the expertise

that says there is nothing new,

no thoughts or feelings not already words,

no words I have not said again and again,

thinking how long this trip has been, so near its end

that I will never again put down new roots,

change jobs, raise children, fall in love.

I can lighten my suitcase now, discarding my ticket,

since there is no return, the map of the city

I’ll never get back to, the little blue phrase book

for the language I’ll never speak again, the sweater,

the half-read novel, the comb, the end of this thought.... 

I know you will never hear the squeak of a mail box,

church bells (already quaint here), a van

graveling around a turn, a CD (surely gone).

I won’t ask (couldn't endure to know) are there birds there

still building the dawn. I know you can’t hear

the wind I’m hearing though there will be winds, the song

that’s blowing me away, though there will be song

after song. And you can’t hear this, though you, like me,

will lose what seems like everything and go on, cry

against your weariness with leaves and moon and wind,

or whatever passes then for moon and leaves and wind,

cry out against death and the dead world,

the dead world, and the death in you, until, like me,

you can stand again unborn, unused, unknown.

~ James Richardson

photo by Christine de Grancy

there was a time

.

...There was a time when I thought sweeter than the quiet converse of monks, 
the cooing of the ring dove flitting about the pool.

There was a time when I thought sweeter than the sound of a little bell beside me,
 the warbling of the blackbird from the gable and the belling of the stag in the storm.

There was a time when I thought sweeter than the voice of a lovely woman beside me,
 to hear at matins the cry of the heathhen of the moor.

There was a time when I thought sweeter the howling of wolves,
 than the voice of a priest indoors, baa-ing and bleating.

Though you like your ale with ceremony in the drinking-halls, 
I like better to snatch a drink of water in my palm from a spring.

Though you think sweet, yonder in your church, the gentle talk of your students, 
sweeter I think the splendid talking the wolves make in Glenn mBolcain.

Though you like the fat and meat which are eaten in the drinking-halls, 
I like better to eat a head of clean water-cress in a place without sorrow...

~ Irish; author unknown;
 twelfth century

arrows

Transformed into arrows

let's all go, body and soul!

Piercing the air

let's go, body and soul,

with no way of return,

transfixed there,

rotting with the pain of striking home,

never to return.

One last breath! Now, let's quit the string,

throwing away like rags

all we've had for decades

all we've enjoyed for decades

all we've piled up for decades,

happiness,

the lot.

Transformed into arrows

let's all go, body and soul!

The air is shouting! Piercing the air

let's go, body, and soul!

In dark daylight the target is rushing towards us.

Finally, as the target topples

in a shower of blood,

let's all just once as arrows

bleed.

Never to return!

Never to return!

Hail, arrows, our nation's arrows!

Hail, Warriors! Spirits of the fallen! 

~ Ko Un

translation by Brother Anthony

end to end

Friend, what do you want of me?

I contain all that was, what is, and what will be.

I hold all, standing tall.

Take everything from me you please.

I won't say no if you want all.

Say, friend, what do you want of me?

I am love.  Love fills me end to end.

What you desire to fill

Your soul, we both desire, friend.

Say to us nakedly your will.

~ Marguerite Porete

from The Mirror of Simple Souls

translated by Aliki Barnstone and Willis Barnstone

photo of "Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors"
 

Marguerite was part of a community of Beguines.  Some of her writing attacked the established clergy.  She and her works were condemned and she was publicly burned around 1300.

behind all my behaviors

Please always know that behind all of my human behaviors - 

behind the best of me and the worst of me, 

behind the ego struggling to survive - 

is my soul, longing to mingle with yours.

~ Elizabeth Lesser

as spoken by Ram Dass

from Broken Open

empty yourself

.

As a river empties into the ocean,
empty yourself into Reality.

When you are emptied into Reality
you are filled with compassion,

desiring only justice.

When you desire only justice,
the will of Reality becomes your will.

When you are filled with compassion,
there is no self to oppose another

and no other to stand against oneself.



~ Pirke Avot 2:4 —
a compilation of ancient Jewish teachings and maxims.

empty and awake

We were never really born, we will never really die. 

It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, 

other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, 

a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing.

 It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing to be afraid of 

and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains

 months on end. They never show any expression, they are

 like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away?

Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one

 universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, 

will never crumble away because it was never born.

The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Rocks don't see it.
Bless and sit down.
Forgive and forget.
Practice kindness all day to everybody
and you will realize you're already
in heaven now.
That's the story.
That's the message.
Nobody understands it,
nobody listens, they're
all running around like chickens with heads cut
off. I will try to teach it but it will
be in vain, s'why I'll
end up in a shack
praying and being
cool and singing
by my woodstove
making pancakes.

 

 

 

  ~ Jack Kerouac

from  The Portable Jack Kerouac

with thanks to whiskey river

 

 

 

radical discontinuity

I have been talking, of course, about a dualism that manifests itself in several ways:
 as a cleavage, a radical discontinuity, between Creator and creature,
 spirit and matter, religion and nature, religion and economy, 
worship and work, and so on. This dualism, I think, is the most destructive disease
 that afflicts us. In it’s best-known, it’s most dangerous, and perhaps its fundamental version,
 it is the dualism of body and soul. This is an issue as difficult as it is important,
 and so to deal with it we should start at the beginning…

~ Wendell Berry

from The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

progress?

• Questioner:

How am I to know if there is any progress in my spiritual search?
How am I to know if I am progressing?

 
• Maharaj: 

You don't really listen. If you did, such a question should not arise.
 And, if at all it did, you could have easily dealt with it yourself,
 in case if you had listened to me attentively and understood 
what I had been saying. Instead, I find that this question does disturb
 many of you. The problem apparently is about 'progress'. 

Now, who is to make the progress, and progress towards what?

 I have said this repeatedly and untiringly that you are the Conscious Presence,
 the animating consciousness which gives sentience to phenomenal objects; 
that you are not a phenomenal object, which is merely an appearance
 in the consciousness of those who perceive it. How can an 'appearance' 
make any 'progress' towards any objective? 

Now, instead of letting this basic perception impregnate your very being, 
what you do is to accept it merely as an ideological thesis and ask the question. 
How can a conceptual appearance know whether it is making any 
conceptual progress towards its conceptual liberation? 

Perception is not a matter of gradual practice. It can only happen by itself 
instantaneously, there are no stages in which deliberate progress is made. 
There is no 'one' to make any progress.

 Perhaps, one wonders, could it be that the surest sign of 'progress',
 if one cannot give up the concept, is a total lack of concern about 'progress'
 and an utter absence of anxiety about anything like 'liberation', 
a sort of' 'hollowness' in one's being, a kind of looseness, 
an unvolitional surrender to whatever might happen? 



 ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
with thanks to No Mind's Land

it belonged to no one

You playmates of mine in the scattered parks of the city,

small friends from childhood of long ago:

how we found and liked one another, hesitantly,

and, like the lamb with the talking scroll,

spoke with our silence. When we were filled with joy

it belonged to no one: it was simply there.

And how it dissolved among all the adults who passed by

and in the fears of the endless year.

Wheels rolled past us, we stood and stared at the carriages;

horses surrounded us, solid but untrue--and none 

of them ever knew us. What in the world was real?

Nothing. Only the balls. Their magnificent arches.

Not even the children . . . But sometimes one,

oh a vanishing one, stepped under the plummeting ball.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 In memorial: Egon von Rilke
(beloved cousin of Rilke who died young) 

comparison and struggle

One is everlastingly comparing oneself with another, with what one is, 
with what one should be, with someone who is more fortunate.
 This comparison really kills. Comparison is degrading, it perverts one's outlook.
 And on comparison one is brought up. All our education is based on it 
and so is our culture. So there is everlasting struggle to be something other than
 what one is. The understanding of what one is uncovers creativeness, 
but comparison breeds competitiveness, ruthlessness, ambition, 
which we think brings about progress. Progress has only led so far 
to more ruthless wars and misery than the world has ever known.
 To bring up children without comparison
 is true education.

~ J. Krishnamurti

with thanks to j krishnamurti online

art by van gogh

see another?

Where there is a duality, as it were, there one sees another; 

there one smells another; there one tastes another; there one speaks to another ...

But where everything has become just one's own self,

 Then whereby and whom would one see? 

Then whereby and whom would one smell? 

Then whereby and to whom would one speak? 

Then whereby and whom would one hear? 

Then whereby and of whom would one think? 

Then whereby and whom would one touch?

 Then whereby and whom would one understand?

~  Brihadaranyaka Upanishad