a face

It's just by chance, who
you are, but given myself
I take care of this being.
Nobody else will remember
its hunger, cold, loneliness:
I will be reminded, and care.

This face, like an old watch,
I carry wherever I go.
Grandmothers, grandfathers, you pictures,
you should forgive my regret:
my wanting another. I carry it
as you did. It belongs
somewhere, and I am taking it there.

On corners I let the wind
have all the world, and I turn
as a ship accepts the waves
but is itself and has a voyage
built into it, stubbornly.

The choice of being who you are
is offered us, or being nothing.
The mask of myself is an old gift
nobody else took. So I brought it here.

  ~ William Stafford

I am not I

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.






~ Juan Ramon Jimenez
translated by Robert Bly

inside a stone

Go inside a stone

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove

Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.

I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:

No one knows how to answer it.

Yet within, it must be cool and quiet

Even though a cow steps on it full weight,

Even though a child throws it in a river;

The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed

To the river bottom

Where the fishes come to knock on it

An listen.

I have seen sparks fly out

When two stones are rubbed,

So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;

Perhaps there is a moon shining

From somewhere, as though behind a hill-

Just enough light to make out

The strange writings, the star-charts

On the inner walls.

~ Charles Simic 

photo by  Hans Strand

Capricho Arabe

~ Sharon Isbin

just a story

~ James Ford

from  Journeys on the Razor-Edged Path

  by Simons Roof

the promise

Stay, I said

to the cut flowers.

They bowed

their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,

who fled.

Stay, leaf.

It reddened,

embarrassed for me and itself.

Stay, I said to my body.

It sat as a dog does,

obedient for a moment,

soon starting to tremble.

Stay, to the earth

of riverine valley meadows,

of fossiled escarpments,

of limestone and sandstone.

It looked back

with a changing expression, in silence.

Stay, I said to my loves.

Each answered,

Always.

~ Jane Hirshfield

on finding a guide

You wear coarse wool, but you're a king,

as the soul's energy hides, as love

remembers. You enter this room in a human

shape and as the atmosphere we breathe.

You are the central pole through the nine

levels connecting them and us to absolute

absence. So that we can have what we want,

you give failure and frustration. You want

only the company of the lion and the lion

cub, no wobbly legs. That man there, you

suggest, might remove his head before

entering the temple. Then he could listen

without ears to a voice that says, My

creature. A month of walking the road, you

make that distance in one day. Never mind

gold and silver payments. When you feel

generous, give your head. My beauty,

you have no need for a guide. The one

who follows and the one who leads are

inseparable, as the moon and the circle

around it. An Arab drags his camel town

to town. You go through your troubles

and changing beliefs, both no different from

the moon moving across or basil growing

and getting cut for a bouquet. It doesn't

matter you've been lost. The hoopoe is

still looking for you. It's another

beginning, my friend, this waking in a

morning with no haze, and help coming

without your asking! A glass submerged

is turning inside the wine. With grief

waved away, sweet gratefulness arrives.

~ Rumi 

Coleman Barks, Nevit Ergin version

kindness

~ James Ishmael Ford 

and yet

The world of dew --
A world of dew it is indeed,
And yet, and yet . . .

 

 

 

 

Issa 

 

 

 

on trust in the heart

The perfect way knows no difficulties
Except that it refuses to make preferences;
Only when freed from hate and love
It reveals itself fully and without disguise;
A tenth of an inch's difference,
And heaven and earth are set apart.
If you wish to see it before your own eyes
Have no fixed thoughts either for or against it.

To set up what you like against what you dislike -
That is the disease of the mind:
When the deep meaning (of the Way) is not understood,
Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose.

The Way is perfect like unto vast space,
It is indeed due to making choice
That its Suchness is lost sight of.

Pursue not the outer entanglements,
Dwell not in the inner Void;
Be serene in the oneness of things,
And dualism vanishes by itself.

When you strive to gain quiescence by stopping motion,
The quiescence thus gained is ever in motion;
As long as you tarry in dualism,
How can you realize oneness?

And when oneness is not thoroughly understood,
In two ways loss is sustained:
The denying of reality is the asserting of it,
And the asserting of emptiness is the denying of it.

Wordliness and intellection -
The more with them, the farther astray we go:
Away, therefore, with wordliness and intellection,
and there is no place where we cannot pass freely.

When we return to the root, we gain the meaning;
When we pursue external objects we lose the reason.
The moment we are enlightened within,
We go beyond the voidness of a world confronting us.

Transformations going on in an empty world which confronts us
Appear real all because of ignorance:
Try not to seek after the true.
Only cease to cherish opinions.

~  Seng-ts'an

from Zen: a way of life 

by Christmas Humphreys

to unite

~ Dalai Lama

find out

When I met my Guru, he told me: 
"You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. 
Watch the sense 'I am', find your real Self."
 I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me.
 All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. 
And what a difference it made, and how soon! 

My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously
 and not to swerve from it even for a moment. 
I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time 
I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. 
All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly.
 This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind 
I saw myself as I am -- unbound. 

I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus the mind 
on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, 
with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy
 and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state.
 In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived,
 the world around me. Only peace remained 
and unfathomable silence.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

art by Deloros DiCamillo

talk

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart

 you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed

 unfold its wings but cannot fly.

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves 

and they would escape.

And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought

 reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.

When you meet your friend on the roadside

or in the marketplace, let the spirit in

you move your lips and direct your tongue.

Let the voice within your voice speak to the

ear of his ear...

~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Prophet

 

a ramage for a mountain

Silent in the moonlight, no beginning or end.

So the binding things  are lost, then found again,

The tines dug out of the snow, the singing so low

The other cannot hear it.  Some sounds do fit

Thick cords and strong fingers.  Slowly the mountain

Enters the man who walks on its slopes alone.

He walks, he sits down, he finds a stone;

No one has seen it, he sits down and is alone.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

this giving up

Can you find another market like this?

Where, with your one rose

you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?

Where, for one seed you get a whole wilderness?

For one weak breath, the divine wind?

You have been fearful of being absorbed

in the ground, or drawn up by the air.

Now your waterbead lets go

and drops into the ocean, where it came from.

This giving up is not a repenting.

It is a deep honoring of yourself.

When the ocean comes to you as a lover,

marry, at once, quickly for God's sake.

Don't postpone it. Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason,

has landed on your shoulder, and become yours.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks