in thanks for the life of Jim Forest

 

 

Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen: Western Explorers of the Christian East

 

 

NHAT HANH: ... If you cut yourself off from something --

 a tradition, a community -- the hope of things will be lost. 

Right at that moment. So it is not a problem of a word or a term -- 

it is the problem of life. And that problem of being simultaneously

inside and outside yourself is a very wonderful idea. 

Not an idea but a way of life, a way that retain one's self and the link

 between one's self and the other part of one's self.

DAN: This was very much a part of the style of Merton --

 the inside/outside. And it had very rich consequences, 

I think. For him and for others. He used to say that he would never

 become a monk again, but now that he was a monk, 

he would be a monk. Absolutely. Yes.

JIM FOREST: A man playing hide and seek with tradition.

NHAT HANH: Anyway, being a monk or not being a monk,

 that is not the problem. The problem is the way you are a monk 

or the way you are a non-monk. I think if we greet events

 in that way, we can master the situation.

In China, they tell the story of a man who lost his horse.

 He was sad and he wept about it. But a few days later the horse returned

 with another horse. So the man was now very happy. His loss turns

 out to be lucky. But the next day his son tried the new horse

 and fell and broke one leg. So now it is not good luck any more,

 but bad luck. So he deserts the other horse and takes his son to the hospital

 and is content with what he has. So they say, if you greet these events 

with a calm mind, then you can make the most of these events

 for the sake of your happiness. 

 

That's not me, but the Chinese! (Laughter.)

 

 

 

 

 

~ from a slightly edited transcript of a conversation

recorded in Paris in 1973 by Jim Forest between 

Thich Nhat Hanh and Daniel Berrigan. 

 

 Jim Forest died yesterday

 

with thanks to louie, louie

 

 

the man watching

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

 

 

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke 

translation by Robert Bly

this storm is you

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. 

You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again,

 but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, 

like some ominous dance with death just before dawn.

 

 Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, 

something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. 

Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, 

step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears

 so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step.

 

 There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time.

 Just fine white sand swirling into the sky like pulverized bones.

 That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.




~ Haruki Murakami

from Kafka on the Shore

calm and complete

On the days when the rest

have failed you,

let this much be yours -

flies, dust, and unnameable odor,

the two waiting baskets:

one for the lemons and passion,

the other for all you have lost.

Both empty,

it will come to your shoulder,

breathe slowly against your bare arm.

If you offer it hay, it will eat.

Offered nothing,

it will stand as long as you ask.

The little bells of the bridle will hang

beside you quietly,

in the heat and the tree's thin shade.

Do not let its sparse mane deceive you,

or the way the left ear swivels into dream.

This too is a gift of the gods,

calm and complete.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

art by McKenzie Birnie

a healing calm

Cry out all your grief, your

disappointments! Say them in

Farsi, then Greek.  It doesn't 

matter whether you're from Rum

or Arabia.  Praise the beauty

and kindness praised by every

living being.  You hurt and have 

sharp desire, yet your presence

is a healing calm.  Sun, moon,

bonfire, candle, which?  Someone

says your flame is about to be 

dowsed, but you're not smoke or

fire. You're infinitely more

alive.  Say how that is! This

fluttering love will not stay

much longer in my chest.  Soon it 

will fly like a falcon to its

master, like a owl saying HU.

~ Rumi

from The Soul of Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

the storm

The storm puts its lips to the house

and blows to make a sound.

I sleep restlessly, turn over, with closed

eyes read the book of the storm.

But the child's eyes grow huge in the dark

and the storm whimpers for the child.

Both love to see the swinging lamp.

Both are halfway toward speech.

Storms have childlike hands and wings.

The caravan bolts off toward Lapland

and the house senses the constellation of nails

holding its wall together.

The night is quiet above our floor

(where all the died-away footsteps

are lying like sunken leaves in a pond)

but outside the night is wild!

A more serious storm is moving over us all.

It puts its lips to our soul

and blows to make a sound.  We're afraid

the storm will blow everything inside us away.

~ Tomas Transtromer

translated by robert bly

the eyes of others

You can't see yourself. 

You know what you look like because of mirrors and photographs, 

but out there in the world, as you move among your fellow human beings,

 whether strangers or friends or the most intimate beloveds, 

your own face is invisible to you. 

 

You can see other parts of yourself, arms and legs, hands and feet, 

shoulders and torso, but only from the front, 

nothing of the back except the backs of your legs 

if you twist them into the right position,

 but not your face, never your face, and in the end -

 at least as far as others are concerned - your face is who you are,

 the essential fact of your identity. Passports do not contain pictures

 of hands and feet. Even you, who have lived inside your body

 for sixty-four years now, would probably be unable to recognize

 your foot in an isolated photograph of that foot, not to speak of your ear,

 or your elbow, or one of your eyes in close-up. 

 

All so familiar to you in the context of the whole,

 but utterly anonymous when taken piece by piece. 

We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are,

 it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.

~  Paul Auster

 

 

your mirror

Each soul is created to serve as your mirror.

All things in the two worlds

are only your mirrors.

The heart is the mirror of your most royal

beauty -

and both of these worlds

are the case of that mirror.

~ Najm al-Din Daya Razi

from Love's Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition

translation by David and Sabrineh Fideler

between the hammers our heart endures

 

 

 

 

 

 Happy are those who know
behind all words, the Unsayable stands,
and from that source, the Infinite
crosses over to gladness, and us.

Free of those bridges we raise
with constructed distinctions;
so that always, in each separate joy,
we gaze at the single, wholly mutual core.

...

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here

apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way

keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,

just once. And never again. But to have been

this once, completely, even if only once:

to have been one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.

 

 ...

 

Here is the time for the say-able, here is its homeland.

Speak and bear witness. More than ever

the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for

what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.

An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as

the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits.

Between the hammers our heart

endures, just as the tongue does

between the teeth and, despite that,

still is able to praise.

 

 

 

 

 

 ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

art by Keith Hennig

 

unending love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

 

 

 

~  Rabindranath Tagore

from Selected Poems

 

 

 

 

the first peace

The first peace, which is the most important, 
is that which comes within the souls of people 
when they realize their relationship, their oneness,
 with the universe and all its powers, 
and when they realize that at the center of the universe 
dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit), and that this center
 is really everywhere, it is within each of us.
 This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this.

The second peace is that which is made between two individuals,
 and the third is that which is made between two nations.
 But above all you should understand that there can never be peace
 between nations until there is known that true peace, 
which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.

~  Black Elk

take me to the alley

~  Gregory Porter

we are many

Of the many men who I am, who we are,

I can't find a single one;

they disappear among my clothes,

they've left for another city.

When everything seems to be set

to show me off as intelligent,

the fool I always keep hidden

takes over all that I say.

At other times, I'm asleep

among distinguished people,

and when I look for my brave self,

a coward unknown to me

rushes to cover my skeleton

with a thousand fine excuses.

When a decent house catches fire,

instead of the fireman I summon,

an arsonist bursts on the scene,

and that's me. What can I do?

What can I do to distinguish myself?

How can I pull myself together?

All the books I read

are full of dazzling heroes,

always sure of themselves.

I die with envy of them;

and in films full of wind and bullets,

I goggle at the cowboys,

I even admire the horses.

But when I call for a hero,

out comes my lazy old self;

so I never know who I am,

nor how many I am or will be.

I'd love to be able to touch a bell

and summon the real me,

because if I really need myself,

I mustn't disappear.

While I am writing, I'm far away;

and when I come back, I've gone.

I would like to know if others

go through the same things that I do,

have as many selves as I have,

and see themselves similarly;

and when I've exhausted this problem,

I'm going to study so hard

that when I explain myself,

I'll be talking geography.

~  Pablo Neruda 

translated by Alastair Reid

art by picasso

undress them

.

This means that we have barely 

disembarked into life, 

that we've only just now been born, 

let's not fill our mouths 

with so many uncertain names, 

with so many sad labels, 

with so many pompous letters, 

with so much yours and mine, 

with so much signing of papers. 

I intend to confuse things, 

to unite them, make them new-born 

intermingle them, undress them, 

until the light of the world 

has the unity of the ocean, 

a generous wholeness, 

a fragrance alive and crackling. 

~ Pablo Neruda

keeping quiet

.

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