Sunday, May 24, 2020

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




Thursday, May 21, 2020

Capricho Arabe









~ Sharon Isbin


just a story









~ James Ford
from  Journeys on the Razor-Edged Path
  by Simons Roof



Wednesday, May 20, 2020

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




Tuesday, May 19, 2020

to unite











~ Dalai Lama




Monday, May 18, 2020

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
 



Sunday, May 17, 2020

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



Saturday, May 16, 2020

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