life's splendor

Life's splendor forever lies in wait 

about each one of us in all its fullness, 

but veiled from view, deep down,

 invisible, far off. It is there, though, 

not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. 

If you summon it by the right word, 

by its right name, it will come.

 

 

  ~ Franz Kafka

from Diaries, 1910 1923

 

 

 

I was a tiny insect

I was a tiny insect. Now a mountain.
I was left behind. Now honoured at the head.

You healed my wounded hunger and anger,

and made me a poet who sings about joy.

 

 
~ Rumi

master of dance

.

When a kid with Down’s Syndrome lumbers along

in a coat of clumsy, squinting to find

a level parade, treading mostly alone;

what do you make of this jack-of-no-trade?

 

Revulsion, compassion, empathy, fear,

anger or sadness because strangeness is near

- what do you reckon, or, what do you feel?

 

‘owbout respect for a teacher over there,

a mirror of openness, simpleness, now

enjoying a journey with others and me

as a master of dancing, exuberance,

 

and with a strange little question ‘What’s the real deal?’

like, your last day on earth, well, what will you choose

- one million dollars, a hug, celebration,

or smile?

~ John Lavan

more at real poems

.

the tongue says loneliness

The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief,

but does not feel them.

As Monday cannot feel Tuesday,

nor Thursday

reach back to Wednesday

as a mother reaches out for her found child.

As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.

Not a bell, 

but the sound of the bell in the bell-shape,

lashing full strength with the first blow from inside the iron.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

a zero between plus and minus

 

 

 

 

 

Discursive knowledge, knowledge by

Indirection passes away

And love, knowledge by direction,

Directly of another, grows

In its place. There exists a point

At which the known passes through

A sort of occulation,

A zero between plus and

Minus in which knower and known

And their knowledge cease to exist. 

Perfect love casts out knowledge.

...

 

"And what is love? said Pilate,

And washed his hands.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Kenneth Rexroth

from The Dragon and the Unicorn

 

 

 

 

vanished

.

The birds have vanished down the sky. 

Now the last cloud drains away. 

We sit together, the mountain and me, 

until only the mountain remains. 

~ Li Po (China, 701-762)

translated by Sam Hamill

from Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese

knocking

 

 

 

 

 

If there are a "chosen few"

then I am not one of them,

if an "elect," well then

I have not been elected.

I am one who is knocking

at the door.  I am one whose foot

is on the bottom rung.

But I know that Heaven's

bottom rung is Heaven

though the ladder is standing

on earth where I work

by day and at night sleep

with my head upon a stone.

 

 

 

 

~ Wendell Berry

from Leavings

 art by Wade M Flickr

 

 

 

just so long

 

 

 

as freedom is a breakfastfood

or truth can live with right and wrong

or molehills are from mountains made

-long enough and just so long

will being pay the rent of seem

and genius please the talentgang

and water most encourage flame

 

as hatracks into peachtrees grow

or hopes dance best on bald men's hair

and every finger is a toe

and any courage is a fear

-long enough and just so long

will the impure think all things pure

and hornets wail by children stung

 

or as the seeing are the blind

and robins never welcome spring

nor flatfolk prove their world is round

nor dingsters die at break of dong

and common's rare and millstones float

-long enough and just so long

tomorrow will not be too late

 

worms are the words but joy's the voice

down shall go which and up come who

breasts will be breasts and thighs will be thighs

deeds cannot dream what dreams can do

-time is a tree (this life one leaf)

but love is the sky and i am for you

just so long and long enough

 

 

 

~ e.e.cummings

.

plung

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!

Think...and think... while you are alive.

What you call "salvation" belongs to the time

before death.

 

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,

do you think

ghosts will do it after?

 

The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten -

that is all fantasy.

If you find nothing now,

you will simply end up with an apartment in the 

City of Death

 

If you make love with the divine now, in the next

life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

 

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,

Believe in the Great Sound!

 

Kabir says this:  When the Guest is being searched for,

it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that

does all the work.

Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

 

 

 

 

Kabir

art by Juna Biagioni

the thought that we are separated

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chief thing that separates us...

 is the thought that we are separated.

 

 If we get rid of that thought, our troubles will be greatly reduced. 

We fail to believe that we are always with God

 and that is part of every reality. 

 

The present moment, every object we see,

 our inmost nature are all rooted in God. 

 

But we hesitate to believe this until our personal experience

 gives us the confidence to believe in it. . . . 

 

God constantly speaks to us through each other as well as from within. 

The interior experience of God’s presence activates our capacity to perceive

 the divine in everything else, in people, events, and in nature. 

 

We may enjoy union with God in any experience

 of the external senses as well as in prayer. 

 

 

 

 

~ Thomas Keating

 

 

 

 

 

for one thing leads to another

 

 

 

 

 

 Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?

Behold, I say - behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.


2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.


3.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings
All I can tell you is what I know.

Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It's more than bones.
It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It's more than the beating of the single heart.
It's praising.
It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life - just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.


4.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,
the dancer, the potter,
to make me a begging bowl
which I believe
my soul needs.

And if I come to you,
to the door of your comfortable house
with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,
will you put something into it?

I would like to take this chance.
I would like to give you this chance.


5.
We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we
change.
Congratulations, if
you have changed.


6.
Let me ask you this.
Do you think that beauty exists for some
fabulous reason?

And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure -
your life -
what would do for you?


7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
though with difficulty.

I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another.)

And I have become the child of clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.






Mary Oliver
from Evidence

art by Corinna Button

 with thanks to being silently drawn

 

 

 

skill seems like clumsiness

.

 

 

 

The greatest accomplishments seem imperfect,

yet their usefulness is not diminished.

The greatest fullness seems empty,

yet it will be inexhaustible.

 

The greatest straightness seems crooked.

The most valued skill seems like clumsiness.

The greatest speech seems full of stammers.

 

Movement overcomes the cold,

and stillness overcomes the heat.

That which is pure and still is the universal ideal.

 

 

 

 

 

Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching
translation by j.h.mcdonald

.photo by Rodney Campbell

 

 

 

 

longing for the perfect

After we had loved each other intently, 

we heard notes tumble together, 

in late winter, and we heard ice 

falling from the ends of twigs. 

The notes abandon so much as they move. 

They are the food not eaten, the comfort 

not taken, the lies not spoken. 

The music is my attention to you. 

And when the music came again, 

late in the day, I saw tears in your eyes. 

I saw you turn your face away 

So that others would not see. 

When men and women come together, 

how much they have to abandon. Wrens 

make their nests of fancy threads 

and string ends, animals 

abandon all their money each year. 

What is it that men and women leave? 

Harder than wren's doing, they have 

to abandon their longing for the perfect. 

The inner nest not made by instinct 

will never be quite round, 

and each has to enter the nest 

made by the other imperfect bird.

~ Robert Bly

from Eating the Honey of Words

art by Rassouli

it's embarassing

 

 

 

 

Of course it’s embarrassing to not always be infinitely wise, 

but I feel that what we can offer each other is the truth of our growth process,

 and that means we fall on our face again and again.

Sri Aurobindo says, 

“You get up, you take a step, 

you fall on your face,

 you get up, 

you look sheepishly at God, 

you brush yourself off,

 you take another step, 

you fall on your face, 

you get up, 

you look sheepishly at God,

 you brush yourself off,

 you take another step…” 

 

and that’s the journey of awakening. 

 

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 photo by Abdul Gapur Dayak

 

 

 

 

when someone is seeking

.

"When someone is seeking," said Siddhartha,

 "it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking;

 that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything,

 because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking,

 because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal.

...'someday' is illusion; it is only a comparison. ... 

The world, Govinda, is not imperfect 

or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection.  

 

No, it is perfect at every moment; ... 

I just love the stone and the river

 and all these things that we see and from which we can learn. 

 I can love a stone, Govinda, and a tree or a piece of bark. 

 These are things and one can love things.  

 

But one cannot love words. 

Therefore teachings are of no use to me;

 they have no hardness, no softness, 

nor colors, no corners, so smell, no taste - 

they have nothing but words.

  Perhaps that is what prevents you from finding peace, 

perhaps there are too many words, for even salvation and virtue.

 

  Samsara and Nirvana are only words, Govinda. 

 Nirvana is not a thing;

 there is only the word Nirvana."

.

 

~ Hermann Hesse

from Siddhartha