the flight of language

Some of the leaves stay on all winter

and spring comes without knowing

whether there is suffering in them

or ever was

and what it is in the tongue they speak

that cannot be remembered by listening

for the whole time that they are on the tree

and then as they fly off with the air 

that always through their lives was there

~ W.S. Merwin

from The Pupil

 

 

we can receive

What I’m coming to lately is an end-of-life conviction that there is more

 to consciousness than what is produced in my little head, or yours.

 Both of us have the capacity, at times, mysteriously, to get beyond 

whatever this small consciousness is doing and telling us. 

When we are able, when we are sufficiently still and relaxed—letting it happen, 

not doing it—we can receive a resonance from a greater consciousness.

Many spiritual masters I’ve known, and also eminent scientists like Carl Jung,

 echo this belief. Just before Jung died, He said: “Man cannot stand a meaningless life.

 Something in us sees around corners, knows beyond time and space, 

so may continue in that state after our physical death. 

Those who fear death as the End, die soon. 

Those who think they will go on, die old.”

Fear is constricting. In fact, so are all those self-concerns for one’s reputation,

 for one’s ideas, even for what the next association is telling me. For example,

 am I just thinking of what I should say to you now? Or am I open to something

 that could be quite new, that is not really coming so much from me 

as from this source consciousness that many traditions have called “I”?

I’m referring to the consciousness that manages to see what things are,

 what I am, and to not get caught in the next reaction or judgment or association

—because all of these are functions; and consciousness is not a function.

Without being in love with consciousness, we can’t reach it, 

and it can’t reach us while we’re preoccupied with all that is going on 

in our ordinary thought, our ordinary bodily habits, sensations, movements,

 and our ordinary emotional reactions.

These are what I am calling functions.
It’s as if we have two natures: a functional nature and what many people

 have been calling a spiritual nature or a soul. But that language

 is suspect these days because we have been so careful for the last couple

 of centuries to separate from the superstitions of the past 

that we have involuntarily cut ourselves off from the sacred,

 and even from God.

This narcissistic preoccupation with my story, my difficulty, 

which always has a kind of negative touch to it because I am complaining

 about what is wrong with me either physically or mentally. And the quiet, 

impartial, impersonal mind, consciousness, with which I 

could be connected, is blocked by that.

It is so important to understand awareness as a connector to 

something greater than me, to my source, really. My presence

 is the doorway to that, even at the moment that I acknowledge

 that I don’t know who I am and I see my lack of presence.

 But that is the beginning of a real wish for it, a wish to be.

And when I have that wish, then maybe something can reach me

 that is of an absolutely different quality. I may perceive it as an axis

 of light running down through my physical body, which has a different

origin. Gurdjieff says the physical body comes from this earth, 

and this other … my essence … comes from the stars, from the sun,

 from higher up, in a sense, closer to the source.

We have such a resistance to even the theoretical idea that we could,

 right now, you and I, be breathing an air charged with 

the omnipresence of consciousness, the omniscience of consciousness. 

We’ve all had, perhaps rarely, a direct experience of a moment when

 I knew everything at once and I was aware not just of what

 I’m calling this present moment, but of past, present, future,

 as one eternity.

These are just words at this moment. But I remember it wasn’t just a word,

 it was a flash of light, of electricity from the top of my head to my toes.

 And it changed something in my cellular structure that persists today. 

I feel that now. And everybody has this possibility for a change.

 As you say, we have to be aware of our need, in order to be receptive

 to this source consciousness, to wake up in a larger sense.

I can’t reach it, but it can reach me.

It’s not a mental conception, but a deeper conviction 

that could draw everything and everyone together in the love

 of consciousness, the faith of consciousness, the hope of consciousness.

~ James George

from To let the Light In, A Conversation with James George

in Parabola Magazine

 

 

 

the night house

Every day the body works in the fields of the world
Mending a stone wall
Or swinging a sickle through the tall grass -
The grass of civics, the grass of money -
And every night the body curls around itself
And listens for the soft bells of sleep.

But the heart is restless and rises
From the body in the middle of the night,
Leaves the trapezoidal bedroom
With its thick, pictureless walls
To sit by herself at the kitchen table
And heat some milk in a pan.

And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe
And goes downstairs, lights a cigarette,
And opens a book on engineering.
Even the conscience awakens
And roams from room to room in the dark,
Darting away from every mirror like a strange fish.

And the soul is up on the roof
In her nightdress, straddling the ridge,
Singing a song about the wildness of the sea
Until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.
Then, they all will return to the sleeping body
The way a flock of birds settles back into a tree,

Resuming their daily colloquy,
Talking to each other or themselves
Even through the heat of the long afternoons.
Which is why the body - the house of voices -
Sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle, or its pen
To stare into the distance,

To listen to all its names being called
Before bending again to its labor.

  ~ Billy Collins

 art by Van Gogh

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-

but keeping is downward and doubting and never

-it’s april(yes,april;my darling)it’s spring!

yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly

yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be

(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound

and wishing is having and having is giving-

but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense

-alive;we’re alive,dear:it’s(kiss me now)spring!

now the pretty birds hover so she and so he

now the little fish quiver so you and so i

(now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found

and having is giving and giving is living-

but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing

-it’s spring(all our night becomes day)o,it’s spring!

all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky

all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea

(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

~ e.e.cummings

.

kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

Like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be 

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crown of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems
 

to create one's own world, takes courage.

The abstraction is often the most definite form 

for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, 

you could not ignore its beauty. 

The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho' it is vast and empty and untouchable... and knows no kindness with all its beauty.

There's something about black. You feel hidden away in it.

~ Georgia O'Keeffe

photo by Alfred Stieglitz

biographical documentary of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~ narrated by actor Peter Coyote

 

 

 

lets the confused stay confused

 

 

 

 

 
She lets the confused stay confused
if that is what they want
and is always available
to those with a passion for the truth.

In the welter of opinions,
she is content with not-knowing.

She makes distinctions
but doesn’t take them seriously.

She sees the world constantly breaking
apart, and stays centered in the whole.

She sees the world endlessly changing
and never wants it to be
different from what it is.

~ Chuang-tzu

from The Second Book of the Tao

 Compiled and Adapted from the Chuang-tzu

 and the Chung Yung
 by Stephen Mitchell
Nat. Geo. photo

with thanks to Love is a Place

our half-percieved half-created world

 

 

 

 

 

 

~  Rupert Spira & Bernardo Kastrup in Conversation

 

 

 

the two arrows - disassembling pain

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I write about living with pain, I don’t have to use my imagination. Since 1976 I have been afflicted with chronic head pain that has grown worse over the decades. This condition has thrown a granite boulder across the tracks of my meditation practice. Pain often wipes a day and night off my calendar, and sometimes more at a stretch. The condition has cost me a total of several years of productive activity. Because intense head pain makes reading difficult, it has at times even threatened my vocation as a scholar and translator of Buddhist texts.

In search of a cure, I have consulted not only practitioners of Western medicine but also herbal physicians in remote Sri Lankan villages. I’ve been pierced countless times by acupuncture needles. I’ve subjected my body to the hands of a Chinese massage therapist in Singapore, consumed Tibetan medicine pills in Dharamsala, and sought help from exorcists and chakra healers in Bali. With only moderate success, I currently depend on several medications to keep the pain under control. They cannot extricate it by the root. 

The Buddha compares being afflicted with bodily pain to being struck by an arrow. 

Adding mental pain (aversion, displeasure, depression, or self-pity) 

to physical pain is like being hit by a second arrow.

I know firsthand that chronic bodily pain can eat deeply into the entrails of the spirit. It can cast dark shadows over the chambers of the heart and pull one down into moods of dejection and despair. I cannot claim to have triumphed over pain, but in the course of our long relationship, I’ve discovered some guidelines that have helped me to endure the experience.

First of all, it is useful to recognize the distinction between physical pain

 and the mental reaction to it. Although body and mind are closely intertwined, 

the mind does not have to share the same fate as the body. 

When the body feels pain, the mind can stand back from it. 

Instead of allowing itself to be dragged down, the mind can simply observe the pain.

 Indeed, the mind can even turn the pain around and transform 

it into a means of inner growth.

The Buddha compares being afflicted with bodily pain to being struck by an arrow. 

Adding mental pain (aversion, displeasure, depression, or self-pity) to physical pain

 is like being hit by a second arrow. 

 

The wise person stops with the first arrow. 

Simply by calling the pain by its true name, one can keep it from extending

 beyond the physical, and thereby stop it from inflicting deep 

and penetrating wounds upon the spirit.

Pain can be regarded as a teacher—a stern one that can also be eloquent. My head pain has often felt like a built-in buddha who constantly reminds me of the first noble truth. With such a teacher, I hardly need to consult the sermon in Deer Park at Benares. In order to hear the reverberations of the Buddha’s voice declaring that whatever is felt is included in suffering, 

all I have to do is attend to the sensations in my head.
My own effort to deal with chronic pain has helped me to develop patience, courage, determination, equanimity, and compassion.


The experience of chronic pain has enabled me to understand how inseparable pain is from the human condition. This is something that we in America, habituated as we are to comfort and convenience, tend to forget. Chronic pain has helped me to empathize with the billions living daily with the gnawing pain of hunger; with the millions of women walking miles each day to fetch water for their families; with those in Third World countries who lie on beds in poorly equipped, understaffed hospitals, staring blankly at the wall. 

Whatever feelings there may be—past, present, or future—

all feeling is not mine, not I, not my self.

-The Buddha


The most powerful tool I’ve found for mitigating pain’s impact is a short meditative formula repeated many times in the Buddha’s discourses: “Whatever feelings there may be—past, present, or future—all feeling is not mine, not I, not my self.” Benefiting from this technique does not require deep samadhi or a breakthrough to profound insight. Even using this formula during periods of reflective contemplation helps to create a distance between oneself and one’s experience of pain.

Such contemplation deprives the pain of its power to create nodes of personal identification within the mind, and thus builds equanimity and fortitude. Although the technique takes time and effort, when the three terms of contemplation—“not mine, not I, not my self”—gain momentum, pain loses its sting and cracks opens the door to the end of pain, the door to ultimate freedom.

 

 

 

 

~  Bhikkhu Bodhi|

 excerpts from a Lion's Roar article

 

 

 

wanting and contentment

 

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,

And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.

Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want

Heaven to be, and God to come, again.

There is no end to our grumbling; we want

Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.

But the heron standing on one leg in the bog

Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

 

 

 

~ Robert Bly

from The New Yorker, Nov. 5, 2007

 art by Henri Matisse

 

fear, contraction and control

 

 

 

It is not diversity that divides us; it is not our ethnicity or religion or culture that divides us.

 

~ Nelson Mandela

Fear unites the disparate parts of our false selves very quickly. 

The ego moves forward by contraction, self-protection, and refusal, by saying no.

 Contraction gives us focus, purpose, direction, superiority, and a strange kind of security. 

It takes our aimless anxiety, covers it up, and tries to turn it into purposefulness

 and urgency, which results in a kind of drivenness.

 But this drive is not peaceful or happy.

 It is filled with fear and locates all its problems as

 “out there,” never “in here.”

The soul or the True Self does not proceed by contraction but by expansion.

 It moves forward, not by exclusion, but by inclusion. It sees things deeply

 and broadly not by saying no but by saying yes, at least on some level,

 to whatever comes its way. Can you distinguish between those two

 very different movements within yourself?

Fear and contraction allow us to eliminate other people, write them off, 

exclude them, and somehow expel them, at least in our minds. 

This immediately gives us a sense of being in control 

and having a secure set of boundaries... 

But in controlling we are usually afraid of losing something.

 If we go deeper into ourselves, we will see that there is both a rebel

 and a dictator in all of us, two different ends of the same spectrum.

 It is almost always fear that justifies our knee-jerk rebellion

 or our need to dominate—a fear that is hardly ever recognized as such

 because we are acting out and trying to control the situation. 

 

 

 

~ Richard Rohr

from  Dancing Standing Still

 

 

 

 

life as it comes

 

 

 

 

 
Just live your life as it comes.
Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself.
Perception is based on memory and is only imagination.
The world can be said to appear but not to be.
Only that which makes perception possible is real.

You agree to be guided from within

 and life becomes a journey into the unknown. 

Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you.


Know yourself as you are. Distrust your mind and go beyond.
Do not think of the Real in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness.
It is utterly beyond both.
It gives birth to consciousness.
All else is in consciousness.

Nothing you can see, feel or think is so. Go beyond the personal and see.

 Stop imagining that you were born. You are utterly beyond all existence

 and non-existence, utterly beyond all that the mind conceives.


Question yourself: Who am I?
What is behind and beyond all this?
Soon you will see that thinking yourself to be a person

 is mere habit built on memory. Inquire ceaselessly.

Just be aware of your being here and now.
There is nothing more to it.
In reality you are not a thing nor separate.

You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility.
Because you are, all can be.
The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. 

You are neither consciousness nor its content.
You are the timeless Source.


Disassociate yourself from mind and consciousness.
Find a foothold beyond and all will be clear and easy.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj
from I am That

art by Duncan Nagonigwane Pheasant (Ojibwe)

 

 

 

to each and every thing

 

 

 

 

 

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

From The Seasons of the Soul

 

  

walking with those who've come before and those who will follow

 

 

 

 

 

 
When we take a step on the green grass of spring, we walk in such a way

 that allows all our ancestors to take a step with us. Our peace, our joy,

 our freedom, which are in each step, penetrate each generation of our ancestors 

and each generation of our descendants. If we can walk like that,

 that is a step taken in the highest dhyana (training of the mind).

When we take one step we see hundreds and thousands of ancestors 

and descendants taking a step with us, and when we take a breath

 we are light, at ease, calm. We breathe in such a way that all the generations

 of ancestors are breathing with us and all the generations of our descendants

 are also breathing with us […] if we breathe like that, 

only then are we breathing according to the highest teachings.

We just need a little mindfulness, a little concentration and then we can look

 deeply and see. At first we use the method of visualization and we see,

as we walk, all the ancestors putting their foot down as we put our foot down, 

and gradually we don’t need to visualize any more – each step we take, 

we see that that step is the step of people in the past.

 

~ Thich Naht Hanh
with thanks to Love is a Place