giving up all trying

I wearied myself searching for the friend

With efforts beyond my strength

I came to the door

And saw how powerfully the locks were bolted

And the longing in me became that strong

And then I saw that I was gazing from within the presence

Only after that waiting and giving up all trying

Did Lalla flow out from where I knelt

Gently I weep for my mind,

caught in its illusion of ownership.

Mind,  you're not who you think you are.

You're dancing over a pit.

Soon you'll fall through,

And these things,  you've valued

And collected will be left behind.

~ Lalla

watering the horse

How strange to think of giving up all ambition!

Suddenly I see with such clear eyes

The white flake of snow

That has just fallen in the horse's mane!

~ Robert Bly

live at the root

A lover was telling his beloved

how much he loved her, how faithful

he had been, how self-sacrificing, getting up

at dawn every morning, fasting, giving up

wealth and strength and fame,

all for her.

There was a fire in him.

He didn't know where it came from,

but it made him weep and melt like a candle.

"You've done very well", she said, "but listen to me.

All this is the decor of love, the branches

and leaves and  blossoms.  You must live

at the root to be a true lover."

"Where is that! Tell me!"

"You've done the outward acts,

but you haven't died.  You must die."

When he heard that, he lay back on the ground

laughing, and died. He opened like a rose

that drops to the ground and died laughing.

That laughter was his freedom,

and his gift to the eternal.

~ Rumi

what dying teaches

~ Frank Ostaseski

 

under pressure

Powerful engines from the blue sky.

We live on a construction site where everything shivers,

where the ocean depths can suddenly open.

A hum in seashells and telephones.

You can see beauty if you look quickly to the side.

The heavy grainfields run together in one yellow river.

The restless shadows in my head want to go out there.

They want to crawl in the grain and turn into something gold.

Night finally.  At midnight I go to bed.

The dinghy sets out from the ship.

On the water you are alone.

The dark hull of society keeps on going.

~ Tomas Transtromer

from Half Finished Heaven

translated by robert bly

art by van gogh

starting with the fruit

~ Jack Kornfield and Frank Ostaseski

 

shrink us to our proper size

III

Yes, though hope is our duty,

let us live a while without it

to show ourselves we can.

Let us see that, without hope,

we still are well.  Let hopelessness

shrink us to our proper size.

Without it we are half as large

as yesterday, and the world

is twice as large.  My small

place grows immense as I walk

upon it without hope.

Our springtime rue anemones

as I walk among them, hoping 

not even to live, are beautiful

as Eden, and I their kinsman

am immortal in their moment.

~ Wendell Berry

to dance my dance

Waking up is unpleasant, you know. 

You are nice and comfortable in bed. 

It is irritating to be woken up. 

That's the reason the wise guru will not attempt
 to wake people up.

 I hope I'm going to be wise here 

and make no attempt whatsoever
 to wake you up if you are asleep.

 It is really none of my business, 
even though I say to you at times,

 "Wake up!"

 My business is to do my thing, 

to dance my dance. 

As the Arabs say,

 "The nature of rain is the same,

 but it makes thorns grow in the marshes
 and flowers in the gardens."

~ Anthony de Mello

.

do you have time

Oh do you have time

to linger

for just a little while

out of your busy

and very important day

for the goldfinches

that have gathered

in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,

to see who can sing

the highest note,

or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,

or the most tender?

Their strong, blunt beaks

drink the air

as they strive

melodiously

not for your sake

and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning

but for sheer delight and gratitude—

believe us, they say,

it is a serious thing

just to be alive

on this fresh morning

in the broken world.

I beg of you,

do not walk by

without pausing

to attend to this

rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.

It could mean everything.

It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:

'You must change your life.'

~ Mary Oliver

the need to win

When the archer is shooting for nothing

He has all his skill.

If he shoots for a brass buckle

He is already nervous.

If he shoots for a prize of gold

He goes blind

Or see two targets -

He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed.  But the prize

Divides him.  He cares.

He thinks more of winning

Than of shooting -

And the need to win 

Drains him of power.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

sculpture by Antoine Bourdelle

detached from results

.

It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. 
In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being 
we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. 


We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, 
from effects that are beyond our control 
and be content with the good will and the work 
that are the quiet expression of our interior life. 


We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, 
to work without expecting immediate reward, 
to love without instantaneous satisfaction, 
and to exist without any special recognition.

~ Thomas Merton

from  No Man is an Island

the present

The present is the wave that explodes over my head,
flinging the air with particles at the height of its breathless unroll;
it is the live water and light that bears from undisclosed sources
the freshest news, renewed and renewing,
world without end.

~ Annie Dillard

from the unknown

However smart we may be,

 however rich and clever or loving or charitable or spiritual or impeccable,

 it doesn't help us at all. 

The real power comes in to us from the beyond.

 Life enters us from behind, 

where we are sightless,

 and from below, 

where we do not understand. 

And unless we yield to the beyond, 

and take our power and might and honor and glory 

from the unseen, from the unknown,

 we shall continue empty.

~  D. H. Lawrence

sojourns in the parallel world

We live our lives of human passions,

cruelties, dreams, concepts,

crimes and the exercise of virtue

in and beside a world devoid

of our preoccupations, free

from apprehension--though affected,

certainly, by our actions. A world

parallel to our own though overlapping.

We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly

admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.

Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,

our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,

an hour even, of pure (almost pure)

response to that insouciant life:

cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing

pilgrimage of water, vast stillness

of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,

animal voices, mineral hum, wind

conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering

of fire to coal--then something tethered

in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch

of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.

No one discovers

just where we've been, when we're caught up again

into our own sphere (where we must

return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)

–but we have changed, a little.

~ Denise Levertov

from Sands of the Well

Grace Note

It is at last any morning

not answering to a name

I wake before there is light

hearing once more that same

music without repetition 

or beginning playing 

away into itself

in silence like a wave

a unison in its own

key that I seem

to have heard before I 

was listening but by the time

I hear it now it is gone

as when on a morning

alive with sunlight

almost at the year's end

a feathered breath a bird

flies in at the open window

then vanishes leaving me

believing what I do not see

~  W. S. Merwin

art by Van Gogh