resting in gratitude

 

 

 

 

 

You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands.

 My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue.

 Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth,

 my eyes raised toward Your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face,

 tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in my bed and rest in You,

 oh God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer.

 

 I have been terribly tired for several days, but that too will pass. 

Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must be taught to listen;

 it is the most important thing we have to learn in this life.

 

 I am not challenging You, oh God, my life is one great dialogue with You.

 I may never become the great artist I would really like to be, 

but I am already secure in You, God. Sometimes I try my hand

 at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, 

but I always end up with just one single word: God. 

And that says everything, and there is no need for anything more. 

And all my creative powers are translated into inner dialogues with You. 

The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, 

and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches.

 

 

 

 

~ Etty Hillesum

from An Interrupted Life: The Diaries

translated by Arnold J. Pomerans

 

 

 

you can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable.

 But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook,

 wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace,

 and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited,

 and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings,

 and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things

 don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion

 and can embrace others. We accept others as they are,

 and then they have a chance to transform.

When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love.

 That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.

The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. 

You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness

 until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself

 and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness

 in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy

 for your own nourishment.

Then you have something to offer the other person.

If you have enough understanding and love, then every moment —

 whether it’s spent making breakfast, driving the car, watering the garden, 

or doing anything else in your day —

 can be a moment of joy.

In a deep relationship, there’s no longer a boundary between you and the other person.

 You are her and she is you. Your suffering is her suffering. Your understanding

 of your own suffering helps your loved one to suffer less.

 Suffering and happiness are no longer individual matters. 

What happens to your loved one happens to you.

 What happens to you happens to your loved one.

In true love, there’s no more separation or discrimination.

 His happiness is your happiness. Your suffering is his suffering.

 You can no longer say, “That’s your problem.”

When you love someone, you have to have trust and confidence.

Love without trust is not yet love. Of course, first you have to have trust,

 respect, and confidence in yourself. Trust that you have a good and compassionate nature.

 You are part of the universe; you are made of stars. When you look at your loved one,

 you see that he is also made of stars and carries eternity inside.

 Looking in this way, we naturally feel reverence. 

True love cannot be without trust and respect for oneself 

and for the other person.





~ Thich Nhat Hanh,
from his book How to Love 

chant of compassion,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  In memory of our beloved teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh

 we are releasing our best recording of the Namo’valokiteshvaraya chant of compassion,

 which was recorded in the Still Water Meditation Hall, Upper Hamlet,

 Plum Village, France, in autumn 2020.

 

 

 

tender presence

.

May you know that absence is full of tender presence and

that nothing is forgotten.

May the absences in your life be full of eternal echo.

May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere which

holds the presences that have left your life.

May you be generous in your embrace of loss.

May the sore well of grief turn into a well of seamless

presence.

May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear

from and may you have the courage to speak out for

the excluded ones.

May you become the gracious and passionate subject of

your own life.

May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle

words or false belonging.

May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and twilight

are one, and may your belonging inhabit its deepest

dreams within the shelter of the Great Belonging.

.

John O'Donohue
 from eternal echoes

.

the struggle is over

.

.

.

VI.                    Riding the Bull

Mounting the bull, slowly I return homeward.

The voice of my flute intones through the evening.

Measuring with hand-beats the pulsation harmony, I direct the endless rhythm.

Whoever hears this melody will join me.

.

 

Comment: 

 

 This struggle is over; gain and loss are assimilated. 

 I sing the song of the village woodsman, and play the tunes of the children. 

 Astride the bull, I observe the clouds above.  

Onward I go, no matter who may wish to call me back.

.

 

 

 

 

 ~ Kakuan

from 10 BULLS

Transcribed by. Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps 

 Illustrated by Tomikichiro Tokuriki

 

 

 

clear of the sticky web of the personal

.

May morning be astir with the harvest of night;

Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,

Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse

That cut right through the surface to a source.

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,

When the gift within you slips clear

Of the sticky web of the personal

With its hurt and its hauntings,

And fixed fortress corners,

A morning when you become a pure vessel

For what wants to ascend from silence,

May your imagination know

The grace of perfect danger,

To reach beyond imitation,

And the wheel of repetition,

Deep into the call of all

The unfinished and unsolved

Until the veil of the unknown yields

And something original begins

To stir toward your senses

And grow stronger in your heart

In order to come to birth

In a clean line of form,

That claims from time

A rhythm not yet heard,

That calls space to

A different shape.

May it be its own force field

And dwell uniquely

Between the heart and the light

To surprise the hungry eye

By how deftly it fits

About its secret loss.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

better thoughts?

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life --

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

~ William Stafford
from The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems

fantasies fade only in stillness

.

25

.

I chose high cliffs far from town

the sound of tall grass a half-open gate

where's an old pauper who isn't deferential

or a rich man who isn't vain

emergency loans don't come without strings

fantasies fade only in stillness

clouds too say mountains are better

returning at night they ease the solitude

.

27

.

Who enters this gate and studies this teaching

has to be thorough and push to the end

empty the body and reason remains

forget the mind and the world disappears

cloud-covered trees form a landscape of white

swallowing the sun the mountain turns red

the flag moves or is it the wind

it isn't the wind or the flag

.

28

.

A friend of seclusion arrives at my gate 

we greet and pardon our lack of decorum

a white mane gathered in back

a monk's robe worn untied

embers of leaves at the end of the night

howl of a gibbon announcing the dawn

sitting on cushion wrapped in quilts

words forgotten finally we meet

.

 

 

 .

~ Stonehouse

from The Zen Works of Stonehouse

Poems and Talks of a 14th Century Chinese Hermit

translated by Red Pine

.

while the music lasts

Men's curiosity searches past and future 

And clings to that dimension. 

But to apprehend 

The point of intersection of the timeless 

With time, is an occupation for the saint - No occupation either, 

but something given And taken,

 in a lifetime's death in love, 

Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender. 

For most of us, there is only the unattended

 Moment, the moment in and out of time, 

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight, 

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning 

 Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply 

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music 

While the music lasts.

~ T.S. Eliot

excerpt from The Dry Salvages

 

the secret signature

 

 

 

 

 

All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -

 tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away 

just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -

 if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -

 you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say

 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.'

We cannot tell each other about it.

 It is the secret signature of each soul,

 the incommunicable and unappeasable want,

 the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work,

 and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds,

 when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. 

While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

 

~ C. S. Lewis
from The Problem of Pain

 

 

 

we must be still and still moving into another intensity

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment

Isolated, with no before and after,

But a lifetime burning in every moment

And not the lifetime of one man only

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

There is a time for the evening under starlight,

A time for the evening under lamplight

(The evening with the photograph album).

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

~ T. S. Eliot

excerpt from East Coker

Eliot regarded Four Quartets as his masterpiece, and it is the work that led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. It consists of four long poems, each first published separately: Burnt Norton , East Coker , The Dry Salvages and Little Gidding . Each has five sections.

awareness which allows experience to unfold itself

The desire to be secure in things and in relationship only brings about conflict and sorrow,

 dependence and fear; the search for happiness in relationship without understanding

 the cause of conflict leads to misery. When thought lays emphasis on sensate value

 and is dominated by it there can be only strife and pain. Without self-knowledge

 relationship becomes a source of struggle and antagonism, a device for covering up

 inward insufficiency, inward poverty.

Does not craving for security in any form indicate inward insufficiency?

 Does not this inner poverty make us seek, accept and cling to formulations, hopes,

 dogmas, beliefs, possessions; is not our action then merely imitative and compulsive?

 So anchored to ideology, belief, our thinking becomes merely a process of enchainment.

Our thought is conditioned by the past; the I, the me and the mine,

 is the result of stored up experience, ever incomplete. The memory of the past

 is always absorbing the present; the self which is memory of pleasure and pain

 is ever gathering and discarding, ever forging anew the chains of its own conditioning.

 It is building and destroying but always within its own self-created prison.

 To the pleasant memory it clings and the unpleasant it discards. 

Thought must transcend this conditioning for the being of the Real.

Is evaluating right thinking? Choice is conditioned thinking; right thinking 

comes through understanding the chooser, the censor. As long as thought

 is anchored in belief, in ideology, it can only function within its own limitation;

 it can only feel-act within the boundaries of its own prejudices;

 it can only experience according to its own memories which give continuity

 to the self and its bondage. Conditioned thought prevents right thinking

 which is non-evaluation, non-identification.

There must be alert self-observation without choice; choice is evaluation

 and evaluation strengthens the self-identifying memory. If we wish to understand 

deeply there must be passive and choiceless awareness which allows experience

 to unfold itself and reveal its own significance. The mind that seeks security

 through the Real creates only illusion. The Real is not a refuge; 

it is not the reward for righteous action;

 it is not an end to be gained.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

 from The Observer Is The Observed

 with thanks to No Mind's Land

desire to become

We all want to become something: 

a pacifist, a war hero, a millionaire, 

a virtuous man, or what you will. 

The very desire to become involves conflict, and that conflict produces war. 

There is peace only when there is no desire to become something, 

and that is the only true state because in that state alone

there is creation, there is reality. 

But that is completely foreign to the whole structure of society, 

which is the projection of yourself. You worship success. 

Your god is success, 

the giver of titles, degrees, 

position, and authority. 

There is a constant battle within yourself, 

the struggle to achieve what you want. 

You never have a peaceful moment, 

there is never peace in your heart because 

you are always striving to become something, to progress. 

Do not be misled by the word progress. 

Mechanical things progress, but thought can never progress 

except in terms of its own becoming.

J. Krishnamurti

from The Collected Works

healing our wounds

 

 

 

 

 

When an animal in the jungle is wounded, it knows how to find a quiet place,

 lie down and do nothing. The animal knows that is the only way to get healed—

to lay down and just rest, not thinking of anything, including hunting and eating. 

Not eating is a very wonderful way of allowing your body to rest. 

We are so concerned about how to get nutrition that we are afraid of resting, 

of allowing our body to rest and to fast. The animal knows that it does not need to eat. 

What it needs is to rest, to do nothing, and that is why its health is restored.

In our consciousness there are wounds also, lots of pains. 

Our consciousness also needs to rest in order to restore itself.

 Our consciousness is just like our body. Our body knows how to heal itself

 if we allow it the chance to do so. When we get a cut on our finger 

we don’t have to do anything except to clean it and to allow it the time to heal, 

because our body knows how to heal itself. The same thing is true 

with our consciousness; our consciousness knows how to heal itself 

if we know how to allow it to do so. But we don’t allow it. 

We always try to do something. 

We worry so much about healing, 

which is why we do not get the healing we need. 

Only if we know how to allow them to rest 

can our body and our soul heal themselves.

But there is in us what we call the energy of restlessness. 

We cannot be at peace with ourselves. 

We cannot be peaceful. 

We cannot sit; we cannot lie down. 

There is some energy in us to do this, to do that, to think of this, to think of that,

 and that kind of restlessness makes us unhappy. That is why it is so important

 for us to learn first of all to allow our body to rest. We have to learn how to deal

 with all our energy of restlessness. That is why we have to learn these techniques

 of allowing our body and our consciousness to rest.

I have arrived. I am home.
In the here. In the now.
I am solid. I am free.
In the ultimate I dwell.

If you are able to arrive, then you will stop running—running within and running without. 

There is a belief in us that happiness cannot be possible in the here and the now.

 We have to go somewhere. We have to go to the future in order to be able to really be happy. 

That kind of thinking has been there for a long time. 

 

Maybe that feeling has been transmitted to us from our ancestors and our parents. 

That is why we have to wake up to the presence of that habit energy in us

 and to do the reverse.  It is possible for us to be peaceful and happy

 in the present moment.  When you are there, body and mind united, 

you have an opportunity to touch the conditions of your happiness.

 If you are able to touch these conditions of happiness that are already

 available in the here and the now, you can be happy right away. 

You don’t have to run anywhere, especially into the future.

 

 

 

~Thich Nhat Hanh

excerpts from At Home in the World

with thanks to Lion's Roar 

our real condition

 

 

 

 

 

 What we really want to do is serve happiness.
We want everyone to be happy, never unhappy even for a moment.
We want the animals to be happy. 

The happiness of every living thing is what we want.
We want it very much but we cannot bring it about.
We cannot make even one individual happy.
It seems that this thing that we want most of all is out of our reach.
But we were born to serve happiness and we do serve it.
The confusion is due to our lack of awareness of real happiness.
Happiness is pervasive.
It is everywhere. And everywhere the same.
And it is forever.
When people are really happy they say: 

'This will last forever even after death', and that is true.
When we are unhappy it is because something is covering our minds and we

 are not able to be aware of happiness. When the difficulty is past we find happiness again.
It is not that happiness is all around us. That is not it at all.
It is not this or that or in this or that.
It is an abstract thing.
Happiness is unattached. Always the same. It does not appear and disappear.

 It is not sometimes more and sometimes less.

It is our awareness of happiness that goes up and down.
Happiness is our real condition.
It is reality.
It is life.
…
When we see life we call it beauty. It is magnificent - wonderful.
We may be looking at the ocean when we are aware of beauty but it is not the ocean.

We may be in the desert and we say that we are aware of the 'living desert' but it is not the desert.
Life is ever present in the desert and everywhere, forever.
By awareness of life we are inspired to live.

Life is consciousness of life itself.

~ Agnes Martin

from Paintings, Writings, Remembrances, by Arne Glimcher

with thanks to being silently drawn