opposites

.

With all its eyes the natural world looks out

into the Open.  Only our eyes are turned 

backward, and surround plant, animal, child 

like traps, as they emerge into their freedom.

We know what is really out there only from

the animal's gaze;

 for we take the very young

child and force it around, so that it sees

objects - not the Open, which is so

deep in animals' faces.  Free from death.

We, only, can see death; the free animal

has its decline in back of it, forever,

and God in front, and when it moves, it moves

already in eternity, like a fountain.

Never, not for a single day, do we have 

before us that pure space into which flowers 

endlessly open. Always there is World

and never Nowhere without the No: that pure

unseparated element which one breathes

without desire and endlessly knows. 

 A child 

may wander there for hours, through the timeless

stillness, may get lost in it and be 

shaken back. Or someone dies and is it.

For , nearing death, one doesn't see death; but stares

beyond, perhaps with an animal's vast gaze.

Lovers, if the beloved were not there

blocking the view, are close to it, and marvel...

As if by some mistake, it opens for them

behind each other.. But neither can move past

the other, and it changes back to World.

Forever turned toward objects, we see in them

the mere reflection of the realm of freedom,

which we have dimmed. Or when some animal

mutely, serenely, looks us through and through.

That is what fate means: to be opposite,

to be opposite and nothing else, forever.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

excerpt from the Duino Elegies, #8
translated by Stephen Mitchell
photo by shreve stockton

.

habit - fear - security - exclusion

.

 For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room,
 it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, 
a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. 


Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity
 is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe’s stories
 to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons 
and not be strangers to the
 unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, 
and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
 We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond,
 and over and above this we have through thousands of years 
of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still
 we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished
 from all that surrounds us. 


We have no reason to mistrust our world, 
for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, 
those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.
 And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels
 us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems
 to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.


 How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons
 that at the last moment turn into princesses; 


perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting 
to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its 
deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Coltrane - compassion

~ John Coltrane

The divine force — God, as Coltrane defined it —

 breathes through us all, said Coltrane, 

and the last years of his life can be seen as an attempt —

 sometimes a struggle —

 to breathe God through his horn.

“Once you become aware of this force for unity in life,” 

wrote Coltrane in the liner notes for 1965’s Meditations,

 his acknowledged follow-up to A Love Supreme.

 “You can’t forget it. It becomes part of everything you do… 

my goal in meditating on this through music however remains… 

to uplift people as much as I can. To inspire them

 to realize more and more their capacities for

 living meaningful lives.”

 comments by Sean Murphy

compassion

~ Joseph Goldstein

for oneself

The first being one must have compassion for
is oneself.
You can't be a witness to your thoughts
with a chip on your shoulder or an axe to grind.

Ramana Maharshi said,
"If people would stop wailing alas I am a sinner
and use all that energy to get on with it
they would all be enlightened."

He also said,
"When you're cleaning up the outer temple
before going to the inner temple,
don't stop to read everything
you're going to throw away..."

 

art by William Russell Nowicki

 

apple

.

I wake and remembered 

nothing of what I was dreaming

The day grew light, then dark again — 

In all its rich hours, what happened? 

A few weeds pulled, a few cold flowers 

carried inside for the vase. 

A little reading. A little tidying and sweeping.

I had vowed to do nothing I did not wish 

to do that day, and kept my promise.

Once, a certain hope came close 

and then departed. Passed by me in its familiar 

shawl, scented with iodine woodsmoke.

I did not speak to it, nor it to me. 

Yet still the habit of warmth traveled 

between us, like an apple shared by old friends —

One takes a bite, then the other. 

They do this until it is gone.

~ Jane Hirshfield

you live like this

You live like this,
 sheltered,
 in a delicate world,
 and you believe you are living. 

Then you read a book… 
or you take a trip…
 and you discover
 that you are not living, 
that you are hibernating. 

The symptoms of hibernating
 are easily detectable: first, restlessness. 
The second symptom 
(when hibernating becomes dangerous 
and might degenerate into death):
 absence of pleasure. 
That is all.

 It appears like an innocuous illness. 
Monotony, boredom, death. 
Millions live like this (or die like this) 
without knowing it. 

They work in offices. 
They drive a car. 
They picnic with their families. 
They raise children.
 And then 
some shock treatment takes place, 
a person, a book, a song,
 and it awakens them and saves them from death.

~ Anaïs Nin

from The Diary of Anaïs Nin

to love myself

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 

the way of the heart - Rumi

in the kingdom of insecurity

As the under-secretary leans forward and draws an X

her earrings dangle like the sword above Damocles,

As a speckled butterfly turns invisible against the earth

the demon merges with the opened newspaper.

A helmet worn by no one seizes power.

A mother tortoise escapes, flying underwater.

~ Tomas Transtromer

from The Sorrow Gondola

translations by Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl

at the center

The Master is not trapped in opposites. His this is also a that. 

He sees that life becomes death and death becomes life,

 that right has a kernel of wrong within it and wrong a kernel of right,

 that the true turns into the false and the false into the true. 

He understands that nothing is absolute,

 that since every point of view depends on the viewer, 

affirmation and denial are equally beside the point. 

The place where the this and the that are not opposed to each other

 is called "the pivot of the Tao." When we find this pivot, we find ourselves

 at the center of the circle, and here we sit, serene, 

while Yes and No keep chasing each other

 around the circumference, endlessly. 

Mind can only create the qualities of good and bad by comparing. 

Remove the comparison, and there go the qualities. 

What remains is the pure unknown: ungraspable object,

 ungraspable subject, and the clear light of awareness 

streaming through. The pivot of the Tao

 is the mind free of its thoughts.

 It doesn't believe that this is a this

 or that that is a that. 

Let Yes and No sprint around the circumference

 toward a finish line that doesn't exist. How can they stop trying

 to win the argument of life until you stop? When you do, 

you realize that you were the only one running.

 Yes was you,

 No was you, 

the whole circumference, with its colored banners,

 its pom-pom girls and frenzied crowds - that was you as well.

 At the center, the eyes open and again

 it's the sweet morning of the world. There's nothing here

 to limit you, no one here to draw a circumference.

 In fact, there's no one here - 

not even you.

~ Stephen Mitchell
from The Second Book of the Tao

art by Master Shen-Long
with thanks to Love is a Place

grace

~ Kraig Kenning

Andaluza

~ Anne Gastinel & Pablo Marques

perfect accord

Some people who play solos quite well simply are no good at accompanying.  

It takes a special something to know when to keep in the background 

and when to play out to give the soloist support and when, 

occasionally, the piano has a real solo passage or phrase ... 

The thing is to think of the piece as a whole, 

not as a violin part with an accompanying piano part, 

but as one piece of music.  

You feel as if you were playing the violin part yourself, 

you are in such perfect accord with the violinist.

~ Anna Hubbard

in this letter to Mia Cunningham, Anna describes her experience of playing with Harlan.  

It might as easily describe the art of  living graciously with others.

from "Anna Hubbard - Out of the Shadows"

by Mia Cunningham

Anna and Mia,1956

(Mia left)

Blessing

Blessed be the longing that brought you here and that quicken your soul with wonder.
May you have the courage to befriend your eternal longing.
May you enjoy the critical and creative companionship of the question "Who am I?" and may it brighten your longing.
May a secret Providence guide your thought and shelter your feeling.
May your mind inhabit your life with the same sureness with which your body belongs to the world.
May the sense of something absent enlarge your life.
May your soul be as free as the ever-new waves of the sea.
May you succumb to the danger of growth.
May you live in the neighborhood of wonder.
May you belong to love with the wildness of Dance.
May you know that you are ever embraced in the kind circle of God.





~ John O'Donohue