not knowing

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would not sacrifice my soul
for all the beauty of this world.

There is only one thing
for which I would risk everything:
an I-don’t-know-what
that lies hidden
in the heart of the Mystery.

The taste of finite pleasure
leads nowhere.
All it does is exhaust the appetite
and ravage the palate.
And so, I would not sacrifice my soul
for all the sweetness of this world.

But I would risk everything
for an I-don’t-know-what
that lies hidden
in the heart of the Mystery.

The generous heart
does not collapse into the easy things,
but rises up in adversity.
It settles for nothing.
Faith lifts it higher and higher.

Such a heart savors
an I-don’t-know-what
found only in the heart of the Mystery.

The soul that God has touched
burns with love-longing.
Her tastes have been transfigured.
Ordinary pleasures sicken her.
She is like a person with a fever;
nothing tastes good anymore.

All she wants
is an I-don’t-know-what
locked in the heart of
the Mystery. . . .

I will never lose myself
for anything the senses can taste,
nor for anything the mind can grasp,
no matter how sublime,
how delicious.
I will not pause for beauty,
I will not linger over grace.
I am bound for
an I-don’t-know-what
deep within the heart of the Mystery.

~ John of the Cross

from Glosa á lo Divino 

 translated by Mirabai Starr
photo by Jeremy Thomas

the nativity

 

 

 

 

 

No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her.
A face deciphers itself from water
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.

Outside each other now, she sees him first.
Fresh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth. 

 

 

 

 

~ John O'Donohue

from  Conamara Blues

art by Gustav Klimt 

mother

 

 

 

 

 The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word “Mother,”
and the most beautiful call is the call of “My mother.”
It is a word full of hope and love,
a sweet and kind word coming from the depths of the heart.

The mother is everything –
she is our consolation in sorrow,
our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness.
She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness….

Everything in nature bespeaks the mother.
The sun is the mother of earth and gives it its nourishment of heart;
it never leaves the universe at night until it has put the earth to sleep
to the song of the sea and the hymn of birds and brooks.

And this earth is the mother of trees and flowers.
It produces them, nurses them, and weans them.
The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great fruits and seeds.
And the mother, the prototype of all existence,
is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love.

 

 



 ~ Kahlil  Gibran

on the hill late at night

The ripe grassheads bend in the starlight

in the soft wind, beneath them the darkness

of the grass, fathomless, the long blades

rising out of the well of time.  Cars

travel the valley roads below me, their lights

finding the dark, and racing on.  Above

their roar is a silence I have suddenly heard,

and felt the country turn under the stars

toward dawn.  I am wholly willing to be here

between the bright silent thousands of stars

and the life of the grass pouring out of the ground.

The hill has grown to me like a foot.

Until I lift the earth I cannot move.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

photo from kathleen connally

the silent articulation of a face

Love comes with a knife, not some

shy question, and not with fears

for its reputation! I say

these things disinterestedly. Accept them

in kind. Love is a madman

working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes,

running through the mountains, drinking poison,

and now quietly choosing annihilation.

A tiny spider tries to wrap an enormous wasp.

Think of the spiderweb woven across the cave

where Mohammad slept! There are love stories,

and there is obliteration into love.

You've been walking the ocean’s edge,

holding up your robes to keep them dry.

You must dive naked under and deeper under,

a thousand times deeper! Love flows down.

The ground submits to the sky and suffers

what comes. Tell me, is the earth worse

for giving in like that?

Don’t put blankets over the drum!

Open completely. Let your spirit-ear

listen to the green dome’s passionate murmur.

Let the cords of your robe be untied.

Shiver in this new love beyond all

above and below. The sun rises, but which way

does night go? I have no more words.

Let soul speak with the silent

articulation of a face.

* * *

~ Jelalludin Rumi 
(1207 – 1273)

 translated by Coleman Barks

everything has two endings

Everything has two endings -

a horse, a piece of string, a phone call

Before a life, air

And after

As silence is not silence, but a limit of hearing.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

formless and perfect

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was something
formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
.

Solitary. Unchanging.

Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.
.
It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things.

 

 

 

 

 ~ Lao-tzu

Tao Te Ching

an empty boat

 

 

 

 

 

 

If a man is crossing a river

And an empty boat collides with his own skiff,

Even though he be a bad-tempered man

He will not become very angry.

But if he sees a man in the boat,

He will shout at him to steer clear.

If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,

And yet again, and begin cursing.

And all because there is somebody in the boat.

Yet if the boat were empty,

He would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat 

Crossing the river of the world,

No one will oppose you,

No one will seek to harm you.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton
from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

 

 

 

stop chasing so many things

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;
Every year the green ivy grows long.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of the woodcutter.

The sun shines and I mend my robe.
When the moon comes out, I read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing so many things.

~ Ryokan

love and kindness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christian mysticism read by Rupert Spira

 

in abundance

 

 

 

 

 

I am who I am.

A coincidence as inscrutable

as any other.

 

Other ancestors

might have been mine, after all,

then from some other nest

I would have flown,

from some other stump

I would have crawled in my shell.

 

In nature's wardrobe

there are many costumes-

spider, seagull, field mouse.

Each fits like a glove from the get-go

and is loyally worn

until it wears out.

 

I, too, had no choice,

but I can't complain.

I could have been someone 

much less singular.

Someone from a school of fish,

from an anthill, from a buzzing swarm,

 a piece of landscape thrashed by the wind.

 

Someone much less lucky,

bred for fur

or for a holiday meal,

something swimming under a cover glass.

 

A tree stuck in the earth,

with a fire approaching.

 

A blade of grass trampled by a run 

of incomprehensible events.

 

One born under a dark cloud

whose lining gleams for others.

 

But what if I had awakened fear in people,

or merely revulsion,

or merely pity?

 

 If I hadn't been born 

into the right tribe and

paths closed before me?

 

Fate has proved

benevolent so far.

 

The memory of good moments

 might not have been granted me.

 

A penchant for comparisons

might have been withheld from me.

 

I might have been myself-though without the wonder,

but that would have meant

being someone else.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Wislawa Szymborska

from miracle fair

 Nasa photo

 

 

water

 

 

 

 

 

A raindrop fell on my hand,

crafted from the Ganges and the Nile,

 

from the ascended frost of a seal's whiskers,

from water in broken pots in the cities of Ys and Tyre.

 

On my index finger

the Caspian Sea isn't landlocked,

 

and the Pacific flows meekly into the Rudava,

the one that flew in a cloud over Paris

 

in seventeen sixty-four

on the seventh of May at three in the morning.

 

There are not enough lips to pronounce

your transient names, O water.

 

I would have to say them in every language

pronouncing all the vowels at once,

 

at the same time keeping silent-for the sake of a lake

that waited in vain for a name,

 

and is no longer on earth-as it is in the heavens,

whose stars are no longer reflected in it.

 

Someone was drowning; someone dying 

called out for you. That was long ago and yesterday.

 

You extinguished houses; you carried them off

like trees, forests like cities.

 

You were in baptismal fonts and in the bathtubs of courtesans,

in kisses, in shrouds.

 

Eating away at stones, fueling rainbows.

In the sweat and dew of pyramids and lilacs.

 

How light all this is in the raindrop.

How delicately the world touches me.

 

Whenever wherever whatever has happened

is written on the waters of Babel.

 

 

 

 

~ Wislawa Szymborska

from miracle fair

 

 

 

water / life

 

 

 

 

 

Over 95% of our body is water. 

In order to stay healthy you've got to drink good water. ... 

Water is sacred, air is sacred. Our DNA is made out of the same DNA

 as the tree, the tree breaths what we exhale, we need what the tree exhales.

 So we have a common destiny with the tree. We are all from the earth, 

and when earth, the water, the atmosphere is corrupted

 then it will create its own reaction. 

The mother is reacting. 

 

 

 

~ Floyd Red Crow Westerman

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 to transparency and financial accountability.

 

 

 

 

 

to clear violence from ourselves

.

...is it possible to eradicate violence in ourselves?

I am asking whether it is possible for a human being living psychologically

 in any society to clear violence from himself inwardly? 

 If it is, the very process will produce a different way of living in this world.

Some of us, in order to rid ourselves of violence, have used a concept, 

and ideal, called non-violence, and we think by having an ideal of the opposite

 to violence, non-violence, we can get rid of the fact, the actual - but we cannot.

  We have had ideals without number, all the sacred books are full of them,

 yet we are still violent - so why not deal with violence itself

 and forget the word altogether?

If you want to understand the actual you must give your whole attention,

 all your energy, to it.  That attention and energy are distracted when you create

 a fictitious, ideal world.  So can you completely banish the ideal?  

The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, 

what love is, has no concept at all. 

 He lives only in what is. 

To investigate the fact of your own anger you must pass no judgement on it,

 for the moment you conceive of its opposite you condemn it and therefore

 you cannot see it as it is.  When you say you dislike or hate someone,

 that is a fact, although it sounds terrible.  If you look at it, go into it completely,

 it ceases, but if you say, "I must not hate; I must have love in my heart,"

 then you are living in a hypocritical world with double standards.  

To live completely, fully, in the moment is to live with what is,

 the actual, without any sense of condemnation or justification -

 then you understand it so totally that you are finished with it.  

When you see clearly the problem is solved.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from Freedom from the Known