be helpless

Be helpless, dumbfounded,

Unable to say yes or no.

Then a stretcher will come from grace

to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.

If we say we can, we're lying.

If we say No, we don't see it,

That No will behead us

And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,

Beside ourselves, and only that, so

Miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,

We shall be saying finally,

With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.

When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,

We shall be a mighty kindness.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

haunted

We are looking for your laugh.

Trying to find the path back to it

between drooping trees.

Listening for your rustle

under bamboo,

brush of fig leaves,

feeling your step

on the porch,

natty lantana blossom

poked into your buttonhole.

We see your raised face

at both sides of a day.

How was it, you lived around

the edge of everything we did,

seasons of ailing; growing,

mountains of laundry; mail?

I am looking for you first; last

in the dark places,

when I turn my face away

from headlines at dawn,

dropping the rolled news to the floor.

Your rumble of calm

poured into me.

There was the saving grace

of care, from day one, the watching

and being watched

from every corner of the yard.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

from Transfer

the movement of love

Meditation is the movement of love. It isn't the love of the one

or of the many.  It is like water that anyone can drink out of any jar...

it is inexhaustible. 

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life,

 the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order,

 and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order,

 then that very order will bring about its own limitation, 

and the mind will be its prisoner.

 

 In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, 

from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore

 or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water,

 not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation

 is that you never know where you are, 

where you are going, what the end is.

~  J. Krishnamurti

from The Meditative Mind

with thanks to Love is a Place

 

stories of the Buddha's last days

~ Jack Kornfield

I cobbled their boots

How could I love my fellow men who tortured me?

One night I was dragged into a room 

and beaten near death with

their shoes

striking me hundreds of times

in the face, scarring me 

forever.

I cried out for God to help, until I fainted.

That night in a dream, in a dream more real than this world.

a strap from the Christ's sandal

fell from my bleeding

mouth,

and I looked at Him and He 

was weeping, and

spoke,

"I cobbled their boots;

how sorry 

I am.

What moves all things

is God."

~ St John of the Cross

from Love poems of God,

Twelve sacred voices from the East and West

in my wallet I carry a card

In my wallet I carry a card

which declares I have the power to marry.

In my wallet I carry a card

which declares I may drive.

 
In my wallet I carry a card

that says to a merchant I may be trusted to pay her.

 
In my wallet I carry a card

that states I can borrow a book in the town where I live.

 
In my hand I carry a card

Its lines declare I am cardless, carless,

stateless, and have no money.

It is buoyant and edgeless.

It names me one of the Order of All Who Will Die.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty

  

forgiveness

~ Jack Kornfield

 

mosquito

I say I

and

a small mosquito drinks from my tongue

but many say we and hear I

say you or he and 

hear I

what can we do with this problem

a bowl held in both hands

cannot be filled by the holder

x, says the blue whale

x, say the krill

solve for y, says the ocean, then multiply by existence

the feet of an ant make their own sound on the earth

ice is astonished by water

a person misreads

delirium as delphinium

and falls into

a blueness sleepy as beauty when sneezing

the pronoun dozes

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty

my species

even

a small purple artichoke

boiled

in its own bittered

and darkening

waters

grows tender,

grows tender and sweet

patience, I think,

my species

keep testing the spiny leaves

the spiny heart

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty

anxiety starts to disintegrate

Being conscious is cutting through your own melodrama

 and being right here. Exist in no mind, be empty, here now, 

and trust that as a situation arises, out of you will come 

what is necessary to deal with that situation 

including the use of your intellect when appropriate. 

 

Your intellect need not be constantly held on to keep reassuring

 you that you know where you’re at, out of fear of loss of control.

Ultimately,  that anxiety starts to disintegrate.

 And you start to define yourself as in flow with the universe; 

and whatever comes along—death, life joy, sadness

—is grist for the mill of awakening.

 

 

 

 

Ram Dass 

rain light

All day the stars watch from long ago

my mother said I am going now

when you are alone you will be all right

whether or not you know you will know

look at the old house in the dawn rain

all the flowers are forms of water

the sun reminds them through a white cloud

touches the patchwork spread on the hill

the washed colors of the after life

that lived there long before you were born 

see how they wake without a question

even through the whole world is burning

~ W. S. Merwin

from The Shadow of Sirius
iris by van gogh

grow accustomed

We grow accustomed to the Dark -

When light is put away -

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Goodbye -

A Moment - We uncertain step

For newness of the night -

Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -

And meet the Road - erect -

And so of larger - Darkness -

Those Evenings of the Brain -

When no a Moon disclose a sign -

Or Star - come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -

And sometimes hit a Tree

Directly in the Forehead -

 But as they learn to see -

Either the Darkness alters -

Or something in the sight

Adjusts itself to Midnight -

And Life steps almost straight.

~ Emily Dickenson 

the last day

This may be the last day of my life.

I lifted my right hand to wave at the sun,

but I did not wave at it in farewell.

I was glad I could still see it - that's all.

~ Fernando Pessoa

translation by Richard Zenith

 

love

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills—

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn't always understand.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

translation by Robert Hass

from The Collected Poems

art by Picasso

so little

I said so little.

Days were short.

Short days.

Short nights.

Short years.

I said so little.

I couldn't keep up.

My heart grew weary

From joy,

Despair,

Ardor,

Hope.

The jaws of Leviathan

Were closing upon me.

Naked, I lay on the shores

Of desert islands.

The white whale of the world

Hauled me down to its pit.

And now I don’t know

What in all that was real.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee