vulnerability

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition 

or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice,

 vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent

 of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence

 of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt

 to become something we are not and most especially, to close off 

our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously,

 in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn 

of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational

 foundations of our identity.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events 

and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps 

the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human 

and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege

 that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, 

with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share 

our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically

 given up, as we approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability,

 how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate 

through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability

 as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, 

as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates 

of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter,

 never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.





~ David Whyte
from Consolations:The Solace, Nourishment and 
Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

 

the peace of wild things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.





~ Wendell Berry

perspectives on compassion - Dayanada Sarawati

~ Dayananda Saraswati

 

perspectives on compassion - Joan Halifax

~ Joan Halifax

 

perspectives on compassion - James Forbes

~ James Forbes

 

perspectives on compassion - Robert Thurman

~ Robert Thurman

 

perspectives on compassion - Robert Wright

~ Robert Wright

 

impermanence

~ Jack Kornfield

 

sit down

.

.

Once, there was a fellow who wanted out of the Zen monastery where he was living.
In Zen monasteries you must pay constant attention to what you’re doing,

 what you’re experiencing from moment to moment. After a time, this can get to you,

 which is precisely what happened to this fellow.

He went to see the master and said,

 “I can’t take this anymore. I want out.”

The master said,

 “Okay, then leave.”

He started for the door, and the master said,

 “That’s not your door.”

“Oh. Sorry.” The fellow looked around and spotted another door.

 As he headed for it, the master said,

 “That’s not your door.”

“Oh!” He looked around for another door, and as he headed for that one,

 the master said,

“That’s not your door!”

Bewildered and exasperated, the poor fellow said, “What do you mean?

 There’s no other door. You told me I could leave, but there’s no door I can leave by.”

“If there’s no door you can leave by,”

 said the master,

 “then sit down.”

We can only be here. We can’t leave. We’re always here.

 Examine your life and you’ll see. The master’s

“sit down”

 means to start paying attention to what’s actually going on,

 instead of running away from it. This is how it is with us.

 Because we ignore our true situation, we’re never satisfied.



~ Steve Hagen

images

.

. . . it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life,
 how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbor, 
your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods
–you have nothing but images.

The images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space
 there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether
 it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves 
but in ourselves, the space which divides people
 in all their relationships.

Now the very attention you give to a problem is the energy that solves that problem. 
When you give your complete attention–I mean with everything in you–
there is no observer at all. There is only the state of attention which is total energy, 
and that total energy is the highest form of intelligence. Naturally that state
 of mind must be completely silent and that silence, that stillness,
 comes when there is total attention, not disciplined stillness. 
That total silence in which there is neither the observer nor the thing observed
 is the highest form of a religious mind. But what takes place in that state
 cannot be put into words because what is said in words is not the fact.
 To find out for yourself you have to go through it.

~ J. Krishnamurti 

excerpt from Freedom from the Known

art by Georges Braque

touch of life

.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, 
a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.  This mysterious Unity
 and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturans. 
 There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence
 that is a fount of action and joy.  It rises up in wordless gentleness 
and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being, 
welcoming me tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility.  
This is at once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of my Creator's
 Thought and Art within me, speaking as Hagia Sophia, 
speaking as my sister, Wisdom.

In the cool hand of the nurse there is the touch of all life, the touch of Spirit.

Thus Wisdom cries out to all who will hear (Sapientia clamitat in plateis) 
and she cries out particularly to the little, to the ignorant and the helpless.

Who is more little, who is more poor than the helpless man
 who lies asleep in his bed without awareness and without defense?
 Who is more trusting than he who must entrust himself each night to sleep?
  What is the reward of his trust?  Gentleness comes to him
 when he is most helpless and awakens him, refreshed, 
beginning to be made whole.  Love takes him by the hand, 
and opens to him the doors of another life, another day.

(But he who has defended himself, fought for himself in sickness,
 planned for himself, guarded himself, loved himself alone and watched
 over his own life all night, is killed at last by exhaustion. 
 For him there is no newness.  Everything is stale and old.)

When the helpless one awakens strong at the voice of mercy,
 it is as if Life his Sister, as if the Blessed Virgin, (his own flesh, 
his own sister), as if Nature made wise by God's Art and Incarnation
 were to stand over him and invite him with unutterable sweetness
 to be awake and to live.  This is what it means
 to recognize Hagia Sophia.

~ Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

soul and the old woman

What is the soul?  Consciousness.  The more awareness, the 

deeper the soul, and when

such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around.  It's

so simple to tell one who

puts on a robe and pretends to be a dervish from the real

thing.  We know the taste

of pure water.  Words can sound like a poem but not have

any juice, no flavor to

relish.  How long do you look at pictures on a bathhouse

wall?  Soul is what draws

you away from those pictures to talk with the old woman

who sits outside by the door

in the sun.  She's half blind, but she has what soul loves

to flow into.  She's kind, she weeps.

She makes quick personal decisions, and laughs so easily.

~ Rumi

version by Coleman Barks

from The Soul of Rumi

art by van gogh

the I - notion

Doing away with the I - notion is the same as not desiring
 the personal attainment of enlightenment.

Not desiring that (the "last desire," the "last barrier") 
is "having it," for "having it" is in any case merely being rid
 of that which concealed what is forever that which alone we are.

Therefore not desiring personal attainment of that is
 at the same time the elimination of the I-notion 
which constitutes its concealment.

.

The idea of liberation automatically inhibits
 the simple realization that we are free.

~ Wei Wu Wei

from All else is Bondage

leaping beyond

For fifty-four years

Following the way of heaven;

Now leaping beyond,

Shattering every barrier,

Amazing!  To cast off all attachments,

While still alive, plunging into the Yellow Springs.

~ Dogen

from the zen Poetry of Dogen

photo from NASA

the burden of self

Yet do not misunderstand my words, I did not say that you must desire to un-be,
 for that is madness and blasphemy against God.  I said that you must desire 
to lose the knowledge and experience of self.  This is essential
 if you are to experience God's love as fully as possible in this life.

  You must realize and experience for yourself that unless you lose self
you will never reach your goal.  For wherever you are, in whatever you do, 
or howsoever you try, that elemental sense of your own blind being
 will remain between you and your God.  It is possible, of course, 
that God may intervene at times and fill you with a transient experience
 of himself.  Yet outside these moments this naked awareness of your blind being
 will continually weigh you down and be as a barrier between you and your God..
. It is then that you will realize how heavy and painful 
is the burden of self.

~ the Cloud of Unknowing

art by Victoria Burns