attention and generosity

 

 

 

 

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.

 It presupposes faith and love.
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

If we turn our mind toward the good,

 it is impossible that little by little the whole soul

 will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.

We have to try to cure our faults by attention

 and not by will.

The will only controls a few movements of a few muscles, 

and these movements are associated with the idea 

of the change of position of nearby objects.

 I can will to put my hand flat on the table.

 

 If inner purity, inspiration or truth of thought 

were necessarily associated with attitudes of this kind, 

they might be the object of will.

 

 As this is not the case, we can only beg for them… 

Or should we cease to desire them? 

What could be worse?

 

 Inner supplication is the only reasonable way,

 for it avoids stiffening muscles which have nothing to do with the matter.

 What could be more stupid than to tighten up our muscles 

and set our jaws about virtue, or poetry, or the solution of a problem.

 Attention is something quite different.

Pride is a tightening up of this kind.

 There is a lack of grace (we can give the word its double meaning here)

 in the proud man.

 It is the result of a mistake.

 

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

 

 

 

 

~ Simone Weil

from First and Last Notebooks

with thanks to brainpickings

 

 

leaning forward

 

 

 

 

 

Our society is very result-oriented, 

that’s why we are so competitive. 

 
That’s why we are always stressed,

 because we are always looking at something in the distance. 

 
If you are always looking at the top of the mountain you are climbing,
you cannot be aware of the grass and flowers growing at your feet. 

 
We are always looking ahead, aren’t we? 

 
And then the actual thing, the actual living, passes us by.
We are locked inside our brains, cut off from the present moment,
always centered on something beyond our reach. 

 
We are imagining this mirage of happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment
which will magically appear once this and this and this happens. 

 
But what’s happening right now is “it”

 and it’s the only “it” we have.
The rest is just fabrication.

 

 

~ Tenzin Palmo 

blank postcards

I.

The calendar all booked up, the future unknown.

The cable silently hums some folk song

but lacks a country.  Snow falls in a gray sea.  Shadows

fight out on the dock.

 II.

Halfway through your life, death turns up

and takes your pertinent measurements.  We forget

the visit.  Life goes on. But someone is sewing

the suit in the silence.

~Tomas Transtromer

from The Half-Finished Heaven

translation by robert bly

art by picasso

haikudikter

The presence of God.

In a tunnel of birdsong

a locked gate opens.

~ Tomas Transtromer

excerpt from Haikudikter, The Sorrow Gondola

translations by Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl

from the depths of your heart

.

art by Odilon Redon, from the British Museum

Psalm 121 

 

I look deep into my heart,

to the core where wisdom arises.

 

Wisdom comes from the Unnamable

...and unifies heaven and earth.

 

The Unnamable is always with you,

shining from the depths of your heart. 

~ A Book of Psalms

 translated and adapted by Stephen Mitchell

when laughing overcomes you

.

Making room in your mind
for life without your mind

closed shut,
allowing all you are

to see you
where you are,

you feel the free light
behind you

is inside you,
sensing Death,

Mind, the Divine,
are all the same.

What's in a name?
Death is the rest.

Open up, give it room,
let it breathe

the fear right out of you;
it is what's left of you,

it is you, free of you,
knowing you

like the truth
you know

when laughing
overcomes you.

~ V.B. Price
from Death Self
photo Bayon temple at Angkor Thom

self as “not the other”

 

 

 
 

The heresy of individualism; thinking oneself

 a completely self-sufficient unit 

and asserting this imaginary “unity” against all others.

 The affirmation of the self as simply “not the other.” 

 

But when you seek to affirm your unity by denying 

that you have anything to do with anyone else, 

by negating everyone else in the universe until you come down to you: 

what is there left to affirm? 

 

Even if there were something to affirm, 

you would have no breath left with which to affirm it.

 
The true way is just the opposite: 

the more I am able to affirm others,

 to say “yes” to them in myself,

 by discovering them in myself and myself in them, 

the more real I am. I am fully real

 if my own heart says yes to everyone.

 

 

 

~ Thomas Merton
from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

with thanks to louie, louie

 

 

 

 

to choose one's attitude

.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing:

 the last of the human freedoms -

 to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances...

~ Victor Frankl

dare

Toss aside your map of the world,
All your beliefs and constructs.
Dare the wild unknown.

Here in this terrifying freedom,
Naked before the universe,
Commune with the One

Who knows everything from the inside:
Invisible power pervading everywhere.
Divine Presence permeating everything.

Breathe tenderly as
The lover of all beings.




~ Vijnana Bhairava Tantra 

the movement of relationship

Daily living is the only field of action available to us. Daily living is the field of relationships, where self-discovery is possible. Self-discovery cannot take place in withdrawal. Even if you wish to look at yourself and get acquainted with the factuality of your inner life, you require the mirror of relationships. The relationships, the movement of relationships, in daily living are the mirror in which the factuality of your psychological structure gets reflected. And in that mirror, you can look at yourself.

It is only in the movement of relationships, of what you call daily living, that you can discover whether there is inner freedom OR you are bound by a number of chains: sensually, verbally, psychologically. Freedom of slavery is possible in the movement of relationships. Away from them, the word freedom has no meaning. The word peace is meaningless if you live in isolation […]

So whether you call it peace, whether you call it freedom, enlightenment – it can occur, it can happen only in the field of relationships which give you the opportunity for direct action. And understanding is the perfume of action. Freedom and peace are the perfume of the movement of relationship.

This is necessary to be clarified because spirituality, religion, spiritual inquiry are unfortunately associated with withdrawal from living. And it seems to me this withdrawal from living, this turning away from the travail of responsibilities, living with people, handling the man-made structures, etc., withdrawing from all that is a denial of inquiry. In withdrawal, in isolation, it’s like a barren field where you cannot grow.

Creativity requires the soil of relationship. The flowering of freedom requires the action and interaction between nature and yourself between non-human species and yourself, between human species and yourself. So one would like to emphasize the necessity of living with people, in society, so that the discovery can take place. Living somewhere in the monastery, in a temple, in an ashram, in the caves of the Himalayas or wherever, thought can project an idea of peace, it can project an idea of transformation, but it’s lifeless.

The friend who is sitting with you has spent months in the cave in the Himalayas, in a student life. Because there was the conditioning around her that you have to go to the Himalayas if you want inner peace, enlightenment [….] And living for months where you wouldn’t see a human being at all. And of course there was what we would call peace, but it was dead. And there was relaxation which had no dynamism. Relaxation to the extent of being sensually numbed….

 

 

~ Vimala Thakar

past

.

 

 

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book 

known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.

 

 

 
~ Virginia Woolfe

Painting: The Prisoner, 1878 - Nikolai Alexandrovich Yaroshenko

 

 

 

 

spanish guitar

Vlatko Stefanovski & Miroslav Tadic - Jovano Jovanke

Live in Zagreb 2007

ourselves and earth

I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete,

The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth,

There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth.,

 

No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of any account, 

unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,

Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth.

~ Walt Whitman

spiritual rest, inward stillness

The opening of the spiritual eyes is a glowing darkness and rich nothingness... 

It may be called: Purity of soul and spiritual rest, inward stillness 

and peace of conscience, refinement of thought and integrity of soul,

 a lively consciousness of grace and solitude of heart, 

the wakeful sleep of the spouse and the tasting of heavenly joys, 

the ardor of love and brightness of light, 

the entry into contemplation and reformation of feeling...

A real pilgrim going to Jerusalem leaves his house  and land, 

wife and children; he divests himself of all that he possesses 

in order to travel light and without encumbrances. 

 

 Similarly, if you which to be a spiritual pilgrim, you must divest yourself

 of all that you possess; that is, both of good deeds and bad, 

and leave them all behind you.  Recognize your own poverty,

 so that you will not place any confidence in your own work; 

 instead, always be desiring the grace of deeper love, 

and seeking the spiritual presence. 

 

 It you do this, you will be setting your heart wholly

 on reaching Jerusalem, and on nothing else.

~ Walter Hilton (1340-1396)

Hilton wrote the masterpiece The Ladder (or Scale) of Perfection,

 first published in 1494, written in English but also known under its Latin title, Scala Perfectionis.

dark pines and strange rocks remain unknown to those who look for mind with mind

 

 

41

 

The ancients entered mountains in search of the Way

their daily practice revolved around their bodies

they tied heavy stones to their waists to hull rice

they carried their hoes in the rain to plant pines

it goes without saying they moved dirt and rocks

and never stopped hauling firewood and water

the slackers who wear a robe to get food

don't hang around an old Zen monk

 

42

 

Everything's growth depends on old roots

why argue about who's tall or short

the road to success is a tunnel of fire

the door to buddhahood is a wall of ice

my hut sits alone among brambles and weeds

the cloudy Isle of Penglai is a crane's universe

my hair has turned white in the cliffs and gorges

how often have I leaned on a fence rail till dark

 

43

 

I moved to the cliffs in order to practice

I didn't need others to judge my faults

when natures are simple old habits end

when thoughts are pure awareness arises

planting pines and weeding have strengthened my body

reading sutras and sewing have sharpened my sight

the world's anomalies are funny indeed

the refugees of Ch'in are called hermits too

.

44

 

I searched creation without success 

by chance I found this forested peak

my thatched hut pokes through clouds and sky

the moss-slick trail cuts through bamboo

favor and shame arouse the ambitious

I grow old on the stillness of Zen

dark pines and strange rocks remain unknown

to those who look for mind with mind

 

 

 

 

~ Stonehouse
translated by Red Pine

art by Wang Chien

.

note:

43.  In his Peach Blossom Spring, T'ao Yuan-ming tells the story of a group of people fleeing the oppressive rule of the Ch'in dynasty, which unified China in 221 BC.  In the course of their flight, these refugees discovered a hidden valley.  When a fisherman stumbled onto their sanctuary several hundred years later, he found a peaceful farming community.  Eventually the fisherman returned to his own village and told others about his discovery.  But the refugees obliterated the traces he left to mark his route, and their valley was never found again.

 

 

 

.