the tree in winter

This is the time of hidden regeneration.  

Mist hangs above the ground.  

Frost forms on open fields.

The tree is still.  

It stands alone and quiet.  

In the darkness of the early morning, nature is asleep.  

There is no movement in the air, 

no hint of trembling in the branches.  

The tree is silent in the darkness like a stone - 

a pillar in the courtyard of an empty temple.

A distant sound breaks through the stillness.  

The day's first light advances on the earth.  

The shadow of the tree moves with the dawn, 

but the tree is motionless.

The ground beneath the tree is frozen hard.  

Above the ground, the bark is cold, the limbs are stiff.  

A passer-by might wonder if the tree will live in spring.

But underneath the ground the earth is warm.  

The weight of all the tree sinks to its roots.  

They are indifferent to the frozen soil, 

they grow toward the centre of the earth.

The tree is not afraid.  

It was a seed: it knows the earth is holding it.  

Within its core, a vital ring is being formed.

Around its spine, a new life is rising from the earth, 

while flakes of snow are settling on the silent and unmoving tree.

~ Master Lam Kam Chuen

from the way of energy: 

mastering the chinese art of internal strength 

 

 

 

 

closed for the night

~ St. John of the Cross

read by Robert Bly

holding hands

 

 

 

 

Out of a great need
we are all holding hands
and climbing.

Not loving is a letting go.

Listen,the terrain around here
is
far too
dangerous
for
that.

 

 

 

~ Hafiz

 

 

 

 

the word

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I pronounce the word Future,

the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,

I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,

I make something no nonbeing can hold.

– Wislawa Szymborska

 Polish Poet (Born July 1923)/Nobel Literature Prize 1996

intimately

Knowledge always deceives.
It always limits the Truth, every concept and image does.

From cage to cage the caravan moves,
but I give thanks,
for at each divine juncture
my wings expand
and I

touch Him more
intimately.




~ Meister Eckhart

willing to belong

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 To deliver oneself up,
to hand oneself over,
entrust oneself completely to the silence
of a wide landscape of woods and hills,
or sea and desert; to sit still while
the sun comes up over the land
and fills its silences with light.

...few are willing to belong completely
to such silence, to let it soak into their bones,
to breathe nothing but silence, to feed
on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life
into a living and vigilant silence.



~ Thomas Merton
from Thoughts in Solitude

 

 

 

 

 

 

deepening

He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world 

without deepening his own self-understanding, 

freedom and integrity and capacity to love, 

will not have anything to give others. 

He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion 

of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centeredness, 

his delusions about the ends and means, 

his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.

- Thomas Merton

from Contemplation in a World of Action
art by  Art Strayer

othering

 

 

 

 

"There are no others."

~ Ramana Maharshi



Where there is a duality, as it were, there one sees another; 

there one smells another; there one tastes another; 

there one speaks to another... 

 

But where everything has become just one's own self,

 then whereby and whom would one see? 

then whereby and whom would one smell? 

then whereby and to whom would one speak?

 then whereby and whom would one hear?

 then whereby and of whom would one think?

 then whereby and whom would one touch?
then whereby and whom would one understand?


—Brihadaranyaka Upabishad

 

 

 

lightly, lightly

It’s dark because you are trying too hard. 

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. 

Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. 

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. 

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig

. 

Lightly, lightly

 

 – it’s the best advice ever given me. 

 

When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, 

or portentous, or emphatic. 

No rhetoric, no tremolos, 

no self conscious persona 

putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. 

And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. 

Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. 

So throw away your baggage and go forward. 

There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, 

trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. 

 

That’s why you must walk so lightly. 

Lightly my darling, 

on tiptoes and no luggage, 

not even a sponge bag, 

completely unencumbered.

~ Aldous Huxley

from Island

in my breast

 

 

 

 

 

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast -
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child – so high – you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

 

 

 

~ Ezra Pound

 

 

 

forty-nine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Thinking and talking about the Integral Way 

are not the same as practicing it.

 

Who ever became a good rider by talking

about horses?

 

If you wish to embody the Tao,

Stop chattering and start practicing.

 

relax your body and quiet your senses.

 

return your mind to its original clarity.

 

Forget about being separated from others

and from the Divine Source.

 

As you return to Oneness, 

do not think of it 

or be in awe of it.

 

This is just another way of separating from it.

 

Simply merge into truth,

 and allow it to surround you. 

 

 

 

 

 

~ Brian Brown Walker

from Hus Hu Ching:

 The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu 

 

 

 

 

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