seeing and letting go

But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go.
When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied... But I can't
go out and try to see this way. I'll fail, I'll go mad. All I can do
is try to gag the commentator, to hush the noise of useless
interior babble…The effort is really a discipline requiring a
lifetime of dedicated struggle; it marks the literature of saints
and monks of every order East and West…

The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally

 that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow 

of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, 

and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort 

that might lead to madness. 

Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded

 in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights;

 you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence

 without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real

 where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance.





~ Annie Dillard 

from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
art by Van Gogh

tea

.

You must be completely awake in the present to enjoy the tea.

Only in the awareness of the present, 

can your hands feel the pleasant warmth of the cup.

Only in the present, 

can you savor the aroma, 

taste the sweetness, 

appreciate the delicacy.

If you are ruminating about the past, 

or worrying about the future, 

you will completely miss the experience 

of enjoying the cup of tea.

You will look down at the cup, 

and the tea will be gone.

Life is like that.

If you are not fully present, 

you will look around and it will be gone.

You will have missed the feel, the aroma, 

the delicacy and beauty of life.

It will seem to be speeding past you. 

The past is finished.

Learn from it and let it go.

The future is not even here yet. 

Plan for it, but do not waste your time worrying about it.

Worrying is worthless.

When you stop ruminating about what has already happened, 

when you stop worrying about what might never happen, 

then you will be in the present moment.

Then you will begin to experience joy in life.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

the taste

When young, I did not know the taste of sorrow.

I went up the tower.

 

I went up the tower

to write a poem on pretended sorrow.

By now I’ve completely tasted sorrow, but already

I do not want to speak about it.

 

I do not want to speak about it,

I only say: what a beautiful, cold autumn.

~   Xing Qijia

in silence

Be still.

Listen to the stones of the wall.

be silent, they try

To speak your

 

Name.

Listen

To the living walls.

Who are you?

Who

Are you? Whose

Silence are you?

 

Who (be quiet)

Are you (as these stones

Are quiet). Do not

Think of what you are

Still less of

What you may one day be.

Rather

Be what you are (but who?) be

The unthinkable one

You do not know.

 

O be still, while

You are still alive,

And all things live around you

Speaking (I do not hear)

To your own being,

Speaking by the Unknown

That is in you and in themselves.

 

"I will try, like them

To be my own silence:

And this is difficult.  The whole

World is secretly on fire.  The stones

Burn, even the stones

They burn me.  How can a man be still or

Listen to all things burning?  How can he dare

To sit with them when

All their silence

Is on fire?"

 

 

~ Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

 

no room

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christ’s place is with those others for whom there is no room.
His place is with those who do not belong,
who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak,
those who are discredited,
who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated.
With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.

He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing

 but the world at its worst…
It is in these that he hides himself, [the people] for whom there is no room.

 

 

 

 

 

 
-- Thomas Merton 

from Raids on the Unspeakable 

 with thanks to louie, louie

 

 

 

another reason why I don't keep a gun in the house

 

 

 

 

 

 

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius. 

 

 

 

 

~ Billy Collins

 

mysteriously

Mysteriously, Wonderfully,

I bid Farewell to what Goes,

I Greet what Comes;

for what comes cannot be denied,

and what goes cannot be detained.

~ Chuang-Tzu

from The Complete Works of Zhuangzi

translated by Burton Watson
photo by ansel adams

already given

 

 

 

 

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

 

 

 

 

~ Wendell Berry

 

 

 

if you want

If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy
and say,
“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth
forever,
as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us
is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yes there, under the dome of your being does creation
come into existence externally, through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb of your soul,
as God grasps our arms for help; for each of us is
His beloved servant
never
far.

If you want, the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light, and
sing . . .



~ St. John of the Cross
Daniel Ladinsky translation
Love Poems from God

life within life

 

 

 

 

You who sleep in my breast are not met with words, 

but in the emergence of life within life 

and of wisdom within wisdom.   

With You there is no longer any dialogue, 

any contest, any opposition.  

You are found in communion! 

Thou in me and I in Thee,  

Thou in them and they in me: 

dispossession within dispossession, 

dispassion within dispassion, 

emptiness within emptiness, 

freedom within freedom. 

 I am alone.  

Thou are alone. 

 The Father and I are One.

 

 

 

~ Thomas Merton

from Dialogues with Silence

sketch by the author

 

 

Your brightness is my darkness.  

I know nothing of You and, by myself, 

I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You. 

 If I imagine You, I am mistaken.  

If I understand You, I am deluded.  

If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.

The darkness is enough.

 

 

prayer written by Merton in 1941 

before midnight mass at Christmas 

 

 

 

exteriorly “all right”

 

 

 

 

 

 
The heart of man  can be full of so much pain, 

even when things are exteriorly “all right”.

 

 It becomes all the more difficult because today we are used to thinking

 that there are explanations for everything. But there is no explanation 

of most of what goes on in our own hearts, and we cannot account for it all.

 

 No use resorting to the kind of mental tranquilizers

 that even religious explanations sometimes offer.

 Faith must be deeper than that, rooted in the unknown

 and in the abyss of darkness that is the ground of our being. 

 

No use teasing the darkness to try to make answers grow out of it. 

But if we learn how to have a deep inner patience, 

things solve themselves, or God solves them if you prefer:

 but do not expect to see how. Just learn to wait,

 and do what you can and help other people. 

 

Often it is in helping someone else 

we find the best way to bear our own trouble.

-- Thomas Merton
from his Christmas letter, 1966

art by Picasso

 

 

 

a community

.

 

 

 

It's possible that the next Buddha 

will not take the form of an individual. 

 

The next Buddha may take the form of a community,

a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, 

a community practicing mindful living. 

 

This may be the most important thing we can do

 for the survival of the earth.

 

 

 

 

Thich Nhat Hahn

 

 

 

 

proverb

You must become brother and sister

to each and every thing

so that they flow through you

dissolving every difference

between what belongs to you and others.

No star, no leaf shall fall -

you fall with them -

to rise again

in every new beginning.

~ Hermann Hesse 

 translated by Ludwig Max Fisher, PhD

photo by Eliot Porter

 

let this weather of feeling pass

 

 

 

 

In your clay body, things are coming to expression 

and to light that were never known before, 

presences that never came to light or shape in any other individual.

 

  To paraphrase Heidegger, who said, "Man is a shepherd of being," 

  we could say, "Man is a shepherd of clay." 

 

 You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.

  Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography

 but to the clay our of which you are formed.  

 

At other times, you will find sorrow moving through you, 

like a dark mist over a landscape.   

This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you. 

 

 It is a mistake to interfere with this movement of feeling. 

 It is more appropriate to recognize that this emotion

 belongs more to your clay than to your mind. 

 

 It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass;

 it is on its way elsewhere.

 

 Regardless of how modern we seem, we still remain ancient,

 sisters and brothers of the one clay. 

 In each of us a different part of the mystery becomes luminous. 

 To truly be and become yourself,  

you need the ancient radiance of others.

 

 

 

 

~ John O'Donohue

 

 

 

 

.

creating an identity or a child went forth

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he looked upon and received

 with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became.

 

And that object became part of him 

for the day or a certain part of the day....

or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

 

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass, and white and red morning glories, 

and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird.

 

And the March-born lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter,

 and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf, 

and the noisy brood of the barnyard 

or by the mire of the pond side.. 

and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there.. 

and the beautiful curious liquid.. 

and the water-plants with their grateful flat heads..

 all became part of him.

And the field-sprouts of April and May became part of him....

winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, 

and of the esculent roots of the garden,

And the apple trees covered with blossoms, 

and the fruit afterward.... and wood berries..

 and the commonest weeds by the road;

 

And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse

 of the tavern whence he had lately risen,

And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school.. 

and the friendly boys that passed.. and the quarrelsome boys.. 

and the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls.. and the barefoot negro boy and girl,

And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.

His own parents..he that had propelled the fatherstuff at night, 

and fathered him.. and she that conceived him in her womb and birthed him....

 they gave this child more of themselves than that,

 

They gave him afterward every day....

 they and of them became part of him.

~ Walt Whitman

excerpt from There was a Child Went Forth

art by Klimt