the starting point

Images, however sacred

they may be, retain

the attention outside,

whereas at the time of prayer

the attention must be within -

in the heart.  The concentration

of attention in the heart -

this is the starting point of prayer.

~ Saint Theophan the Recluse

from for lovers of god everywhere

compiled by Roger Housden

deepest prayer

A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness 

for the love that has awakened in them. 

When you feel love for your beloved and his or her love for you, 

now and again you should offer the warmth of your love 

as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved. 

Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate; 

to those who are starving; to those who are trapped in prison; 

in hospitals and all the brutal terrains of bleak and tormented lives. 

When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, 

it reaches other people. 

This love is the deepest power of prayer.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

one art

 

 

 

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 

 

 

 

~  Elizabeth Bishop

 with thanks to brainpickings

 

 

 

prayer

 

Lead me from dreaming to waking.
Lead me from opacity to clarity.
Lead me from the complicated to the simple.
Lead me from the obscure to the obvious.
Lead me from intention to attention.
Lead me from what I'm told I am to what I see I am.
Lead me from confrontation to wide openness.
Lead me to the place I never left,
Where there is peace, and peace


~ The Upanishads

 

 

 

 

 

peace is every step

.

 

 

 

Peace is every step.

The shining red sun is my heart.
Each flower smiles with me.
How green, how fresh all that grows.
How cool the wind blows.
Peace is every step.
It turns the endless path to joy.



~ Thich Nhat Hanh

photo by Ansel Adams

.

into the stillness

 

 

 

 

 

There is a silence into which the world cannot intrude. 

There is an ancient peace you carry in your heart and have not lost. 

Lay down your arms and come without defense into the quiet place 

where Heaven's peace holds all things still at last.

 

 Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear.

As you close your eyes, sink into the stillness.

 Let these periods of rest and respite reassure your mind

 that all its frantic fantasies were but dreams 

of fever that has passed away. 

 

Let it be still and thankfully accept its healing.

~ A Course in Miracles
art by Odilon Redon

behind uneasyness

Remedios Varo

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,

let’s not speak any language,

let’s stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,

without hurry, without locomotives,

all of us would be together

in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea

would do no harm to the whales

and the peasant gathering salt

would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars of gas, wars of fire,

victories without survivors,

would put on clean clothing

and would walk alongside their brothers

in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn’t be confused

with final inactivity:

life alone is what matters,

I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren’t unanimous

about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,

perhaps a great silence would

interrupt this sadness,

this never understanding ourselves

and threatening ourselves with death,

perhaps the earth is teaching us

when everything seems to be dead

and then everything is alive.

 

Now I will count to twelve

and you keep quiet and I’ll go.

~ Pablo Neruda 
from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon

to love another

To love another as a person we must begin by granting

 him his own autonomy and identity as a person. 

We have to love him for what he is in himself, 

and not for what he is to us. 

We have to love him for his own good, 

not for the good we get out of him. 

And this is impossible unless we are capable of a love 

which ‘transforms’ us, so to speak, into the other person, 

making us able to see things as he sees them, love what he loves, 

experience the deeper realities of his own life as if they were our own. 

Without sacrifice, such a transformation is utterly impossible. 

But unless we are capable of this kind of transformation 

‘into the other’ 

while remaining ourselves, 

we are not yet capable of a fully human existence.

~ Thomas Merton

from Disputed Questions

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