it needs the metaphor of the body ...

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body's world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is --

so it enters us --
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star. 



~ Mary Oliver 

crossroads

 

 

 

My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar,
like what I remember of love when I was young —

love that was so often foolish in its objectives
but never in its choices, its intensities
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised —

My soul has been so fearful, so violent;
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,

not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:

it is not the earth I will miss,
it is you I will miss.

 

 

 

 

~  Louise Glück

 from A Village Life

with thanks to brain pickings

 

 

about this mind

 

 

 

 

 

About this mind,

in truth there is nothing really wrong with it.

It is intrinsically pure.

Within itself it's already peaceful.

 

If the mind is not peaceful these days,

it's because it follows moods.

The real mind doesn't have anything to it;

it is simply an aspect of nature.

It becomes peaceful or agitated because

moods deceive it.

 

The untrained mind is stupid.

Sense impressions come and trick it into 

happiness,

suffering,

gladness, and 

sorrow,

but the mind's true nature is none of those things.

 

That gladness or sadness is not the mind,

 but only a mood coming to deceive us.

The untrained mind gets lost and follows these thing;

it forgets itself.

Then we think that it is we who are 

upset or at ease or whatever.

 

But really this mind of ours is already unmoving and peaceful -

really peaceful!

Just like a leaf which remains still 

so long as the wind doesn't blow.

If a wind comes up, the leaf flutters.

The fluttering is due to the wind -

the fluttering of the mind is due to those sense impressions;

the mind follows them.

If it doesn't follow them,

it doesn't flutter.

If we know fully the true nature of sense impressions,

we will be unmoved.

 

Our practice is simply to see the "Original Mind."

We train the mind to know those sense impressions

and not get lost in them,

to make it peaceful.

 

Just this is the aim of all this difficult practice.

 

 

 

 

~ Ajahn Chah

 from Food for the Heart -

The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah

art by Cameron Gray

 

 

 

in space

In space

(the experiment

suggested by two fifth graders),

a Canadian astronaut

wrings water out of a towel.

It stays by the towel,

horizontal

transparent isinglass,

a hyaline column.

Then begins to cover his hands,

his wrists,

stays on them

until he passes it to another towel.

On earth

some who watch this

recognize the wrung, irrational soul.

How it does not leave

but stays close,

outside the cleaning twist-fate but close--

fear  desire  anger

joy  irritation 

mourning

wet stuff

that is shining, that cannot go from us,

having nowhere other to fall.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty

how to let go

We already know how to let go -

 we do it every night when we go to sleep, 

and that letting go, like a good night's sleep, is delicious. 

Opening in this way, 

we can live in the reality of our wholeness. 

A little letting go brings us a little peace, 

a greater letting go brings us a greater peace.

Entering the gateless gate, 

we begin to treasure the moments of wholeness. 

We begin to trust the natural rhythm of the world, 

just as we trust our own sleep and how our own breath breathes itself.

~ Jack Kornfield

 

mist and moonlight and memory

 

 

 

 

 

 

I live in a well. I live like smoke in the well.

Like vapor in a stone throat. 

I don't move. 

I don't do anything but wait.

 Overhead I see the cold stars of night and
morning, and I see the sun. 

And sometimes I sing old songs 

of this world when it was young. 

How can I tell you what I am when I don't know? 

I cannot. I am simply waiting.

 I am mist and moonlight and memory.

 I am sad and I am old.

 Sometimes I fall like rain into the well. 

Spider webs are startled into forming 

where my rain falls fast, on the water surface.

 I wait in cool silence and there will be a day 

when I no longer wait.

Now it is morning.

- Ray Bradbury

from the short story, The One Who Waits 

with thanks to whiskey river

making the darkness conscious

 

 

 

 

 

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,

but by making the darkness conscious.
The later procedure, however,

 is disagreeable and therefore not popular.

~ Carl Jung
from The Philosophical Tree 

 

 

When we turn toward our pain instead of away from it,

self-mercy enters those parts of ourselves we had closed off, withdrawn from,

or abandoned to feelings of impotence. When it seems there is nowhere

 else to turn, when all our prayers and strategies seem to be of little avail,

 something deeper arises: a mercy that leads toward the heart.

Without mercy (a quality of loving kindness that is the tender

 acceptance of even that which might be otherwise unacceptable) as 

an alternative to holding to our pain, we abandon those most painful 

memories within us to harsh judgment and merciless reflection.

The appearance of mercy, ...compassion... is absolutely unmistakable

as we learn to open into that which once closed us off.

 

Memories may always be bittersweet, but we may also find peace

 flickering, at the edges of what once caused us agitation. 

Healing, then, becomes not the absence of pain but the 

increased ability to meet it with mercy instead of loathing.

No one can wholly remove our pain. All we can do is 

increase the spaciousness of mind and heart in which it 

is allowed to decompress. 

We  meet ourselves  with simple kindness that confounds

our addiction to critical self-judgement.  We find ourselves

more likely to meet others' confusion and helplessness 

open-heartedly.  We find less need for others or ourselves

to be different in order to be loved.

We find ourselves.

~ Stephen Levine

from Unattended Sorrow

 

 

 

view with a grain of sand

We call it a grain of sand

but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.

It does just fine without a name,

whether general, particular,

permanent, passing,

incorrect or apt.

Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.

It doesn't feel itself seen and touched.

And that it fell on the windowsill

is only our experience, not its.

For it it's no different than falling on anything else

with no assurance that it's finished falling

or that it's falling still.

The window has a wonderful view of a lake

but the view doesn't view itself.

It exists in this world

colorless, shapeless,

soundless, odorless, and painless.

The lake's floor exists floorlessly

and its shore exists shorelessly.

Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry

and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural,

They splash deaf to their own noise

on pebbles neither large nor small.

And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless

in which the sun sets without setting at all

and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.

The wind ruffles it,  its only reason being

that it blows.

A second passes

A second second.

A third.

But they're three seconds only for us.

Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.

But that's just our simile.

The character's invented, his haste is make-believe,

his news inhuman.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

translated by Stanislaw Baraniczak and Clara Cavanagh

phoenix

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled,

made nothing?

Are you willing to be made nothing?

dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change.

The phoenix renews her youth

only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down

to hot and flocculent ash.

Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest

with strands of down like floating ash

shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle,

immortal bird.

~  D.H. Lawrence

inside the brushwood gate

I don't regard my life

as insufficient.

Inside the brushwood gate

there is a moon;

there are flowers.

~ Ryokan

from Sky Above, Great Wind

by Kazuaki Tanahashi

coping with challenging times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~  Joseph Goldstein

 

 

 

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