elements

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

 

the wild iris

.

At the end of my suffering 

there was a door.

 

Hear me out: that which you call death 

I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. 

Then nothing. The weak sun 

flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive 

as consciousness 

buried in the dark earth. 

Then it was over: that which you fear, being 

a soul and unable 

 to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth 

bending a little. And what I took to be 

birds darting in low shrubs. 

You who do not remember 

passage from the other world 

I tell you I could speak again: whatever 

returns 

from oblivion returns to find a voice: 

from the center of my life came 

a great fountain, deep blue 

shadows on azure sea water.

~ Louise Glück

witchgrass

 

Something

comes into the world unwelcome

calling disorder, disorder -

If you hate me so much don't bother to give me

a name: do you need

one more slur

in your language, another

way to blame

one tribe for everything -

as we both know, if you worship

one god, you only need 

one enemy -

I'm not the enemy.

Only a ruse to ignore 

what you see happening

right here in this bed,

a little paradigm

of failure.  One of your precious flowers

dies here almost every day

and you can't rest until

you attack the cause,

meaning

whatever is left, whatever

happens to be sturdier

than your personal passion -

It was not meant 

to last forever in the real world.

But why admit that, when you can go on

doing what you always do,

mourning and laying blame,

always the two together.

I don't need your praise

to survive.  I was here first,

before you were here, before

you ever planted a garden.

And I'll be here when only the sun and moon 

are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.

~ Louise Gluck

from The Wild Iris

what to do

 

 

It's difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. 

With sadness, there's something to rub against.

 A wound to tend with lotion and cloth. 

When the world falls in around you,

 you have pieces to pick up something to hold

 in your hands like ticket stubs or change.

 

 But happiness floats. 

It doesn't need you to hold it down.

 Doesn't need anything.

Happiness lands on the roof of the next house singing

 and disappears when it wants to. 

You're happy either way. 

Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful treehouse

 and now live over a quarry of noise and dust 

cannot make you unhappy. 

 

Everything has a life of its own.

 It, too, could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake

 and ripe peaches and love even the floor which needs to be swept,

 the soiled linens,and scratched records.Since there's no place large enough

 to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, 

and it flows out of you into everything you touch. 

 

You're not responsible.

 You take no credit.

 

 As the night sky takes no credit for the moon, 

but continues to hold it and to share it 

and in that way, be known.

~  Naomi Shihab Nye
photo - children of Papua New Guinea

source of joy

~ Rumi
performed by Coleman Barks

Do you believe in God?

Question: Do  you believe in God?

Krishnamurti: It is easy to ask questions, and it is very important to know how to ask a right question.  In this particular question, the words ‘believe’ and ‘God’ seem to me so contradictory.  A man who merely believes in God will never know what God is, because his belief is a form of conditioning – which again is very obvious.   In Christianity you are taught from childhood to believe in God, so from the very beginning your mind is conditioned.  In the communist countries, belief in God is called sheer nonsense – at which you are horrified.  You want to convert them, and they want to convert you.  They have conditioned their minds not to believe, and you call them godless, while you consider yourself God-fearing, or whatever it is.  I do not see much difference between the two.  You may go to church, pray, listen to sermons, or perform certain rituals and get some kind of stimulation out of it – but none of that,  surely,  is the experiencing of the unknown.  And can the mind experience the unknown, whatever name one may give it?  The name does not matter.  That is the question – not whether one believes or does not believe in God.

One can see that any form of conditioning will never set the mind free, and that only the free mind can discover, experience.  Experiencing is a very strange thing.  The moment you know you are experiencing, there is the cessation of that experience.  The moment I know I am happy, I am no longer happy.  To experience this immeasurable  Reality, the experiencer must come to an end.  The experiencer is the result of the known, of many centuries of cultivated memory;  he is an accumulation of the things he has experienced.  So when he says, ‘I must experience Reality’, and is cognizant of that experience, then what he experiences is not Reality, but a projection of his own past, his own conditioning.

That is why it is very important to understand that the thinker and the thought, or the experiencer and the experience, are the same; they are not different.  When there is an experiencer separate from the experience, then the experiencer is constantly pursuing further experience, but that experience is always a projection of himself.

So Reality, the timeless state, is not to be found through mere verbalization, or acceptance, or through the repetition of what one has heard – which is all folly.  To really find out, one must go into this whole question of the experiencer.  So long as there is the ‘me’ who wants to experience, there can be no experiencing of Reality.  That is why the experiencer – the entity who is seeking God, who believes in God, who prays to God – must  totally cease.  Only then can that immeasurable Reality come into being.

~ J. Krishnamurti, from his second talk in Brussels (June 25th, 1956)

advice of the mountain flower

 

Another day, I went for some fresh air to a meadow covered with flowers.
… While singing and remaining in a state of awareness of the absolute
view, I noticed among the profusion of flowers spread out before me one
particular flower waving gently on it’s long stem and giving out a sweet fragrance,

 as it swayed from side to side, I heard this song in the rustling
Of its petals…



Listen to me, mountain dweller:…
I don’t want to hurt your feelings,
but, in fact, you even lack awareness
of impermanence and death.
Let alone any realization of emptiness.

For those with such awareness,
outer phenomena all teach impermanence and death.
I, the flower, will now give you, the yogi,
a bit of helpful advice
on death and impermanence.

A flower born in a meadow,
I enjoy perfect happiness
with my brightly colored petals in full bloom.
Surrounded by an eager cloud of bees,
I dance gaily, swaying gently with the wind.
When a fine rain falls, my petals warp around me;
when the sun shines I open like a smile.

Right now I look well enough.
But I won’t last long.
Not at all.

Unwelcome frost will dull the vivid colors,
till turning brown I wither.
Thinking of this, I am disturbed.
Later still, winds –
Violent and merciless –
Will tear me apart until I turn to dust….

You, hermit,…
Are of the same nature.

Surrounded by a host of disciples,
you enjoy a fine complexion,
your body of flesh and blood is full of life.
When others praise you,
You dance with joy;…

Right now, you look well enough.
But you won’t last long.
Not at all.

Unhealthy ageing will steal away
your healthy vigor;
your hair will whiten
and your back will grow bent….

When touched by the merciless hands
of illness and death
you will leave this world
for the next life….

Since you, mountain-roaming hermit,
And I, a mountain flower,
Are mountain friends,
I have offered you
These words of good advice. 

Then the flower fell silent and remained still.

In reply, I sang:
O brilliant, exquisite flower,
your discourse on impermanence
is wonderful indeed.
But what shall the two of us do?
Is there nothing that can be done?...

The flower replied:
…Among all the activities of samsara,
there is not one that is lasting.

Whatever is born will die;
Whatever is joined will come apart;
Whatever is gathered will disperse;
Whatever is high will fall.

Having considered this,
I resolve not to be attached
to these lush meadows,
even now, in the full glory of my display,
even as my petals unfold in splendor…

You too, while strong and fit,
should abandon your clinging….
seek the pure field of freedom,
the great serenity.

by Shabkar Tsodruk Rangdrol

from The LIfe of Shabkar -

Autobiography of a Tibetan Yogin

The Life of Shabkar has long been recognized by Tibetans as one of the master works of their religious heritage. Following his inspired youth and early training in his native province of Amdo under the guidance of several extraordinary Buddhist masters, Shabkar Tsodruk Rangdrol devoted himself to many years of meditation in solitary retreat. With determination and courage, he mastered the highest and most esoteric practices of the Tibetan tradition of the Great Perfection. He then wandered far and wide over the Himalayan region expressing his realization. His autobiography vividly reflects the values and visionary imagery of Tibetan Buddhism as well as the social and cultural life of early nineteenth century Tibet.

things keep sorting themselves

Does the butterfat know it is butterfat,

milk know it’s milk?

No.

Something just goes and something remains.

Like a boardinghouse table:

men on one side, women on the other.

Nobody planned it.

Plaid shirts next to one another,

talking in accents from the Midwest.

Nobody plans to be a ghost.

Later on, the young people sit in the kitchen.

Soon enough, they’ll be the ones

to stumble Excuse me and quickly withdraw.

But they don’t know that.

No one can ever know that.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Poetry (September 2012)

finding a box of family letters

The dead say little in their letters

they haven't said before.

We find no secrets, and yet

how different every sentence sounds

heard across the years.

My father breaks my heart

simply by being so young and handsome.

He's half my age, with jet-black hair.

Look at him in his navy uniform

grinning beside his dive-bomber.

Come back, Dad! I want to shout.

He says he misses all of us

(though I haven't yet been born).

He writes from places I never knew he saw,

and everyone he mentions now is dead.

There is a large, long photograph

curled like a diploma—a banquet sixty years ago.

My parents sit uncomfortably

among tables of dark-suited strangers.

The mildewed paper reeks of regret.

I wonder what song the band was playing,

just out of frame, as the photographer

arranged your smiles. A waltz? A foxtrot?

Get out there on the floor and dance!

You don't have forever.

What does it cost to send a postcard

to the underworld? I'll buy

a penny stamp from World War II

and mail it downtown at the old post office

just as the courthouse clock strikes twelve.

Surely the ghost of some postal worker

still makes his nightly rounds, his routine

too tedious for him to notice when it ended.

He works so slowly he moves back in time

carrying our dead letters to their lost addresses.

It's silly to get sentimental.

The dead have moved on. So should we.

But isn't it equally simpleminded to miss

the special expertise of the departed

in clarifying our long-term plans?

They never let us forget that the line

between them and us is only temporary.

Get out there and dance! the letters shout

adding, Love always. Can't wait to get home!

And soon we will be. See you there.

~ Dana Gioia

with thanks to writers almanac

photo from living solutions

an ancient voice

...behind this outer facade, another life is going on in you. 
The mind and heart are wanderers who are always tempted by new horizons.   
Your life belongs in a visible, outer consistency; your inner life is nomadic.
  Hegel says, "just this unrest that is the Self."  
Your longing frequently takes you on inner voyages that no one would ever guess. 
 Longing is the deepest and most ancient voice in the human soul. 
 It is the secret source of all presence, and the driving force of all creativity
 and imagination: longing keeps the door open and calls towards us the gifts
 and blessings which our lives dream.

...longing is a quality of desire which distance or duration evokes. 
 In other words, your longing reaches out into the distance to unite you
 with whatever or whomsoever your heart desires.  Longing awakens
 when there is a feeling that someone or something is away from you.  
It is interesting that the word "desire" comes from the Latin "desiderare,"
 which originally meant "to cease to see."  This suggested a sense of absence
 and the desire to seek and find the absent one. Deep down, 
we desire to come back into the intimate unity of belonging.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

the unfinished work

 

~ Abraham Lincoln, Andrea Scheidler

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate we can not consecrate we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

 

 

an irresistible momentum

What am I in the eyes of most people — 

a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — 

somebody who has no position in society and will never have; 

in short, the lowest of the low.

 

All right, then — 

even if that were absolutely true, 

then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, 

such a nobody, has in his heart. 

That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, 

based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. 

Though I am often in the depths of misery, 

there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. 

I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, 

in the dirtiest corners. 

And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

~ Vincent Van Gogh

leaning forward

 

 

 

 

If drawn as a cartoon figure,

you would be leaning always forward, feet blurred

with the multiple lines that convey both momentum and hurry.

 

Your god is surely Hermes:

messenger, inventor,

who likes to watch the traveler passing the crossroads

in any direction.

Your nemesis? The calm existence of things as they are.

 

When I speak as here,

in the second person, you are quietly present.

You are present in presents as well, which are given to.

 

Being means and not end, you are mostly modest,

obedient as railroad track to what comes or does not.

 

Yet your work requires

both transience and transformation:

night changes to day, snow to rain, the shoulder of the living pig to meat.

 

When attached to verbs, you sometimes change them

to adjectives, adverbs, nouns,

a trick I imagine

would bring enormous pleasure,

were you capable of pleasure, You are not.

 

You live below the ground of humor, hubris, grievance, grief.

Whatever has been given you,

you carry, indifferent as a planet to your own fate.

 

Yet it is you,

polite retainer of time and place, who bring us to ours,

who do not leave the house of the body

from the moment of birth until your low-voiced murmur, "dust to dust."

 

And so we say, "today," "tomorrow."

But from yesterday, like us, you have vanished.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

art by Salvador Dali

 

 

 

embodying the light

 

A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus the Master is available to all people
and doesn’t reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations
and doesn’t waste anything.
this is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If you don’t understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.




~   Lao Tzu
translated by Stephen Mitchell

the struggle

 

 

 

 

 

We tend to think of Sisyphus as a tragic hero, 

condemned by the gods to shoulder his rock 

sweatily up the mountain, and again up the mountain, forever. 

 

The truth is that Sisyphus is in love with the rock. 

He cherishes every roughness and every ounce of it.

 He talks to it, sings to it. It has become the Mysterious Other. 

He evens dreams of it as he sleepwalks upward. 

 

Life is unimaginable without it, looming always above him

 like a huge gray moon. He doesn’t realize that at any moment 

he is permitted to step aside, let the rock hurtle to the bottom, 

and go home. 

 

Tragedy is the inertial force of the mind.




~  Stephen Mitchell

art by Van Gogh