gentleness helps

When suffering comes, we feel panic and fear.  

Frightened, we want to hide.  

You want to climb up on to some high ledge

 to escape the dismemberment of this acidic tide. 

 Yet the strange thing is: the more you resist, the longer it stays.

  The more intensely you endeavor to depart the ground of pain, 

the more firmly you remain fixed there. 

 

 It is difficult to be gentle with yourself when you are suffering.  

Gentleness helps you to stop resisting the pain that is visiting you.

 

  When you stop resisting suffering, something else begins to happen. 

 You begin slowly to allow your suffering to follow its own logic.

  The assumption here is that suffering does not visit you gratuitously. 

 There is in suffering some hidden shadowed light. 

 Destiny has a perspective on us and our pathway

 that we can never fully glimpse;

 it alone knows why suffering comes.  

 Suffering has its own reasoning.  

It wants to teach us something. 

 When you stop resisting its dark work, 

you are open to learning what it wants to show you. 

 

 Often, we learn most deeply and receive profoundly from the black,

 lonely tide of pain.  We often see in Nature how pruning strengthens. 

 Fruit trees look so wounded after being pruned, 

yet the limitation of this cutting forces the tree to fill and flourish. 

  Similarly with drills of potatoes when they are raised, 

earth is banked up around them and seems to smother them. 

 Yet as the days go by the stalks grow stronger.  

Suffering can often become a time of pruning.  

Though it is sore and cuts into us,

 later we may become aware that this dark suffering

 was secretly a liturgy of light and growth. 

~ John O'Donohue

from: Eternal Echoes
art by Klimt

on judging yourself less harshly

 

 

 

I think that part of [less self judgment] is observing oneself more impersonally.

 I often use this image:

When you go into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees…

 and some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, 

and some of them are evergreens and some of them are – whatever. 

And you look at the tree, and you just – allow it. You appreciate it. 

You see why it is the way it is, you sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light,

 and so it turned that way, and you don’t get all emotional about it, 

you just allow it.

 You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that,

 and you’re constantly saying, “You’re too this,”

 or “I’m too this,” or – that judging mind comes in. 

And so I practice turning people into trees, 

which means appreciating them just the way they are.

There was a period of time where I used to have a picture of myself

 on my puja table, and people would come in and say,

 “My God, what an ego this guy’s got; he’s got his own picture on his puja table

.” But really, what it was, was a chance for me to practice opening my heart to myself, 

and to appreciate the predicament I’m in.

 

 And it’s finding a place in yourself from which you see the unfolding of it all. 

That Mother did this, and Dad did this, drugs did this, Maharajji did this –

 all of it is just an unfolding of a storyline, a drama. The Ram Dass story.

 There he is. How will it come out? How did it come out? 

You’re just sort of watching the stories unfold.

But at the same time, it’s nothing to do with me, because I’m not that. 

That’s just a set of phenomena happening. And when you look at yourself 

as a set of phenomena, what is there to judge? Is that flower less than that?

 It’s just being different than that. You begin to appreciate your uniqueness

 without it being better or worse, because it’s just different.

 Cultivating an appreciation of uniqueness 

rather than preference is a very good one.

It’s just when you get inside identification with your personality

 that you get into the judging mode, because then you are a part of that lawful unfolding.

 You’re not stepping outside of it all. The witness,

 or the spacious awareness, is outside of it.

 It’s another contextual framework. 

 

 

 

~  Ram Dass

 

 

 

 

to lessen hostility and extreme reactivity

 

 

 

 

Today, November 6, 2020, the United States, my home, 

is a nation divided against itself, with all sides striving to win.

 This is the karma of white supremacy and colonization

 manifesting in the midst of a global pandemic and climate crisis.

 I live in California, a state that is, literally, on fire.

The Buddha said this:

Winning gives birth to hostility.
Losing, one lies down in pain.
The calmed lie down with ease,
having set
winning & losing
aside.

“Winning gives birth to hostility.”

 Another translator more colloquially put it this way:

 “The winner sows hatred because the loser suffers.”

I believe in strategic political action and liberatory movement-building. 

I have cast my vote. And these are my Bodhisattva vows as I move with you

 into the coming months and years:

 What actions can I take to lessen hostility and extreme reactivity,

 and to encourage civil discourse and respectful democratic process?

May we all complete the great journey of awakening together.

 

 

~  Mushim Patricia Ikeda, 

East Bay Meditation Center

 

 

 

 

grasping

Grasping is the source of all our problems. 

Since impermanence to us spells anguish, 

we grasp on to things desperately, 

even though all things change. 

We are terrified of letting go, 

terrified, in fact, of living at all, 

since learning to live is learning to let go. 

And this is the tragedy and the irony of our struggle to hold on: 

Not only is it impossible, 

but it brings us the very pain we are seeking to avoid. 

The intention behind grasping may not in itself be bad; 

there’s nothing wrong with the desire to be happy, 

but what we try to grasp on to is by nature ungraspable. 

The Tibetans say that you cannot wash the same dirty hand twice in the same running river, 

and no matter how much you squeeze a handful of sand, you will never get oil out of it.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

impermanence

To what shall

I liken the world?

Moonlight, reflected

In dewdrops, 

Shaken from a crane's bill.

~ Dogen

from The Zen Poetry of Dogen

surrender

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to 
rather than opposing the flow of life.  The only place where you can
 experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender
 is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation.  

It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is.  
Inner resistance is to say "no" to what is,
 through mental judgment and emotional negativity.

 It becomes particularly pronounced when things "go wrong,"
 which means that there is a gap between the demands 
or rigid expectations of your mind and what is.  That is the pain gap. 

 If you have lived long enough, you will know that things
 "go wrong" quite often.  It is precisely at those times that surrender 
needs to be practiced if you want to eliminate pain and sorrow from your life.   

Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification 
and thus reconnects you with Being.  Resistance is the mind.

~ Eckhart Tolle

from The Power of Now

photo by Eliot Porter

 

 

 

dive deep

 

 

Complete surrender is another name for jnana or liberation.

It is enough that one surrenders oneself.  
Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one's being. 
 Your source is within yourself.

Give yourself up to it.  

That means that you should seek the source and merge in it.

To be absorbed, through surrender in the Self,
 in the non-dual state of mauna, (silence) is the supreme truth.  
That which constitutes offering (oneself) up to the Self is living the life that shines,  

free of the false delusive mind, known as the "I."

Complete surrender is impossible in the beginning.  
Partial surrender is certainly possible for all. 
 In course of time that will lead to complete surrender. 
 There is no peace of mind without surrender.

Dive deep in the Heart and remain as the Self.

~ Ramana Maharshi

from Essential Writing on Nonduality

edited by Jerry Katz

a song for nobody

A yellow flower

(Light and spirit)

Sings by itself

For nobody.

A golden spirit

(Light and emptiness)

Sings without a word

By itself.

Let no one touch this gentle sun

In whose dark eye

Someone is awake.

(No light, no gold, no name, no color

And no thought:

O, wide awake!)

A golden heaven

Sings by itself

A song to nobody.

~ Thomas Merton

from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton

in blackwater woods

.

 

 

 

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

 

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

 

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

 

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

 

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

 

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

 

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

 

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

 

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Mary Oliver

from  American Primitive

 photo by Eliot Porter

 

 

the waiting

The death of self of which the great writers speak is no violent act. 
It is merely the joining of the great rock heart of the earth in its roll.
 It is merely the slow cessation of the will's spirits and the intellect's chatter: 
it is waiting like a hollow bell with a stilled tongue. 

The waiting itself is the thing.

- Annie Dillard

from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

your crooked heart

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

 

 

 

 

 ~ W.H. Auden

from Another Time

 

 

 

 

the wisdom of insecurity

You cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. 

Indeed, you cannot grasp it just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket.

 If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand

 it and that you will always be disappointed, 

for in the bucket the water does not run. 

To "have" running water 

you must let go of it and let it run.




-Alan Watts

Ars Poetica?

 

 

 

 

 

I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

....


And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity,
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

....

~ Czeslaw Milosz
excerpt translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee 

 with thanks to Love is a Place

 

five ways to lose

With the wood from a hundred-year-old tree

They make sacrificial vessels,

Covered with green and yellow designs.

The wood that was cut away

Lies unused in the ditch.

If we compare the sacrificial vessels with the wood in the ditch

We find them to differ in appearance:

One is more beautiful than the other

Yet they are equal in this: both have lost their original nature.

So if you compare the robber and the respectable citizen

You find that one is, indeed, more respectable than the other:

Yet they agree in this: they have both lost 

The original simplicity of man.

How did they lose it?  Here are the five ways:

Love of colors bewilders the eye

And it fails to see right.

Love of harmonies bewitches the ear

And it loses its true hearing.

Love of perfumes

Fills the head with dizziness.

Love of flavors

Ruins the taste.

Desires unsettle the heart

Until the original nature runs amok.

These five are enemies of true life.

Yet these are what "men of discernment" claim to live for.

They are not what I live for:

If this is life, then pigeons in a cage

Have found happiness!

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

not your true identity

 

 

 

 

 

The essence of all spirituality is presence,
a state of consciousness that transcends thinking.
There is a space behind and in between your thoughts and emotions.
When you become aware of that space,
you are present,
and you realize that your personal history,
which consists of thought,

is not your true identity and is not the essence of who you are.
What is that space, that inner spaciousness?
It is pure consciousness,
the transcendent "I AM" that becomes aware of itself.
The Buddha calls it sunyata,
emptiness.
It is the "kingdom of heaven" that Jesus pointed to,
which is within you
here and now.

~  Eckhart Tolle

 with thanks to louie, louie