in our sadnesses

.

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, 

which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living.

 Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; 

because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away

 from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition 

where we cannot remain standing. 

 
That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us,

 the presence that has been added, has entered our heart,

 has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, – 

is already in our bloodstream. And we don’t know what it was. 

We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, 

and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. 

We can’t say who has come, perhaps we will never know, 

but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way

 in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. 

 
And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad:

 because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment 

when our future steps into us is so much closer to life

 than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us

 as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open 

we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence

 can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, 

the more it becomes our fate.

 

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

.

speech from the heart - mindful listening

 

 

 

If one is to do good,
it must be done in the minute particulars.
General good is the plea of the hypocrite,
the scoundrel and the flatterer.

 

~ William Blake


Pay attention when you speak the rest of the time, the best you're able, 

and listen to your heart. See if you can begin practicing 

letting your words come from your heart.

 

 A good clue for this is if you're in a conversation that lasts more than five minutes, 

so you've been talking for awhile, pause, or wake up for a second

 in the middle of it, and ask inside, "Now, what does my heart really want to say?" 

You're having this conversation. "What's in there that really wants to be said?

 Maybe I won't see this person ever again. What do I really want to say?" 

That can begin to empower your speech, to transform it 

from automatic pilot to the place where you start to wake up.

 It's fantastic. It's really wonderful to work with.


Most of us value integrity. It really lights up the heart

 to think about living in a way that comes from inside, 

where our actions, our words, and our inner being are connected. 

It's very precious. In the Buddhist tradition they're given as training precepts,

 training precepts which we practice. It's not some God -- given law that we must follow,

 but precepts which we begin to practice -- 

to begin to learn to live our life from our hearts, 

to live our life, as I said, with an uprightness of heart.

 


Only when the inner dialogue stops

 can the hidden parts of ourselves be seen and revealed.

~ Carlos Castenada 

as Don Juan

 

 

What we call the beginning is often the end,
and to make an end is a beginning,
To make a beginning.
the end is where we start from
and every phrase and sentence that is right,
where every word is at home,
taking its place to support the others,
the word neither dissident nor ostentatious.
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
the common word exact with vulgarity,
the formal word precise but not pedantic,
the complete consort dancing together.

When every phrase and every sentence
is an end and a beginning,
every poem an epitaph,
and any action is a step to the block,
to the fire, down the sea's throat,
or to an illegible stone,
that's where we start.
We die with the dying.
See them depart and we go with them,
and we are born with the dead.
See, they're returned and bring us with them.


~ T.S. Eliot
from Four Quartets

 

 

The Buddha outlined a practice for staying mindful

 of how another person is addressing us, without getting caught up in our own reactivity, 

remaining compassionate for their welfare, with a mind of lovingkindness.

... there are five courses of speech that others may

use when they address you: their speech may be timely or

untimely, true or untrue, gentle or harsh, connected with

good or with harm, spoken with a mind of lovingkindness

or with inner hate....

 

you should train yourselves thus:

Our minds will remain unaffected, and we shall utter no

evil words; we shall abide compassionate for their welfare,

with a mind of lovingkindness...

 

 ~ Buddha

~ Joseph Goldstein

excerpts taken from various talks

 

how rarely I have stopped to thank the steady effort

A person speaking

pauses, lets in

a little silence-portion with the words.

It is like an hour.

Any hour. This one.

Something happens, much does not.

Or as always, everything happens:

the standing walls keep

standing with their whole attention.

A noisy crow call lowers and lifts its branch,

the crow scent enters the leaves, enters the bark,

like stirred-in honey gone into the tea.

How rarely I have stopped to thank

the steady effort of the world to stay the world.

To thank the furnish of green

and abandon of yellow. The ancient Sumerians

called the beloved “Honey,” as we do.

Said also, “Borrowed bread is not returned.”

Like them, we pay love’s tax to bees,

we go on arranging the old notes in different orders.

Desire inside A C A G G A T.

Forgiveness in G T A C T T.

In a world of space and time, arrangement matters.

An hour has no front or back,

except to those whose eyes face forward,

whose tears blur thought and stars.

Five genes, in a certain arrangement,

will spend this life unrooted, grazing.

It has to do with how the animal body comes into being,

the same whether ant or camel.

What then does such unfolded code understand,

if it finds in its mouth the word important —

the thing that can be carried, or the thing that cannot,

or the way they keep trading places,

grief and gladness, the comic, the glum, the dead, the living.

Last night, the big Sumerian moon

clambered into the house empty-handed

and left empty-handed,

not thief, not lover, not tortoise, just looking around,

shuffling its soft, blind slippers over the floor.

This felt, to me, important, and so I looked back with both hands

open, palms unblinking.

What caused the fire, we ask, meaning, lightning, wiring, matches.

How precisely and unbidden

oxygen slips itself into, between those thick words.

~  Jane Hirshfield

from the New York Times

print on April 15, 2012, on page SR6 of the 

New York edition with the headline: Tax Break. 

a deeper generosity

Forgiveness is one of the really difficult things in life.  
The logic of receiving hurt seems to run in the direction of never forgetting
 either the hurt or the hurter.  When you forgive, some deeper, 
divine generosity takes you over.  When you can forgive, then you are free.  

When you cannot forgive, you are a prisoner of the hurt done to you.  
If you are really disappointed in someone and you become embittered, 
you become incarcerated inside that feeling.  Only the the grace of forgiveness 
can break the straight logic of hurt and embitterment.  It gives you a way out,
 because it places the conflict on a completely different level.  In a strange way,
 it keeps the whole conflict human.  You begin to see and understand the conditions, 
circumstances, or weakness that made the other person act as she did.

...

Why are we so reluctant to leave our inner prisons?  
There is the security of the confinement and limitation that we know.  
We are often willing to endure the searing sense of forsakenness and distance
 which limitation brings rather than risking the
 step out into the field of the unknown. 

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

art by Leah Dorion

of generosity

What is required is a willingness to look 

deeply at one's present moments, 

no matter what they hold, 

in a spirit of generosity,

 kindness towards oneself, 

and openness toward 

what might be possible. 

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

the happiness of every living thing

 

 

 

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 Agnes Martin, Paintings, Writings, Remembrances 

by Arne Glimcherersity 

 

 prepared for a lecture at the Univ of New

 Mexico, Santa Fe 1979

 

art by van gogh

with thanks to being silently drawn

 

 

on loving-kindness

 

 

He who is skilled in good, and wishes to
attain that state of Peace, should act thus:
he should be able, upright, perfectly upright,
amenable to corrections, gentle and humble.

He should be contented, easy to support,
unbusy, simple in livelihood,
with senses controlled, discreet,
not impudent, and not greedily attached to families.

He would not commit any slight misdeeds
that other wise men might find fault in him.
May all beings be well and safe,
may their hearts rejoice.

Whatever beings there are —
weak or strong, long or short,
big, medium-sized or small, subtle or gross,

Those visible or invisible,
residing near or far, those that have come to be
or have yet to come, (without exceptions)
may all beings be joyful.

Let one not deceive nor despise
another person, anywhere at all.
In anger and ill-will,
let him not wish any harm to another.

Just as a mother would protect her
only child with her own life,
even so, let him cultivate boundless thoughts
of loving kindness towards all beings.

Let him cultivate boundless thoughts
of loving kindness towards the whole world —
above, below and all around,
unobstructed, free from hatred and enmity.

Whether standing, walking, seated
or lying down, as long as he is awake,
he should develop this mindfulness.
This they say, is the divine abiding here.

Not erroneous with views,
endowed with virtues and insight,
with sensual desires abandoned,
he would come no more to be conceived in a womb.

 

~ the Buddha

 Metta Sutta

photo by Michael Marcoux

 

milkweed

.


While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house.
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At the touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.


~ James Wright

a blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, 

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. 

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies 

Darken with kindness. 

They have come gladly out of the willows 

To welcome my friend and me. 

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture 

Where they have been grazing all day, alone. 

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness 

That we have come. 

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. 

There is no loneliness like theirs. 

At home once more, 

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. 

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, 

For she has walked over to me 

And nuzzled my left hand. 

She is black and white, 

Her mane falls wild on her forehead, 

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear 

That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. 

Suddenly I realize 

That if I stepped out of my body I would break 

Into blossom.

~ James Wright

from Above the River

today's stupidity

.

.

Natural, reckless, correct skill;

Yesterday's clarity is today's stupidity

The universe has dark and light, entrust oneself to change

One time, shade the eyes and gaze afar at the road of heaven.

~ Ikkyu

from Ikkyū and The Crazy Cloud Anthology : A Zen Poet of Medieval Japan 

by Sonja Arntzen

with thanks to crow with no mouth

any road

its logical; if you're not going anywhere

any road is the right one 

~ Ikkyu Sojun (1394 -1481)

.

he was known his teaching and for his erotic poems and revolutionary shakuhachi music. 

he founded what became known as the "Red Thread," or erotic school of Zen.

the iron grinder

 

 

 

 

They were like two mirrors facing each other.

Who sees, who is seen?

Seeing each other like this,
they experienced the recognition everyone craves -
to be seen exactly as we are,

nothing more,

and nothing less.

Seen like this,

all the many forms in the world
are the same
as one's own hand,

one's own face.




~ Liu Tiemo
from Women of the Way
by Sallie Tisdale

with thanks to being silently drawn

 

 

what is brought into being?

 

 

 

What is it that we are creating together?

 
We exchange a few words and a presence is born. 

 
We pass in the street for a fleeting instant,
and something new comes into being. 

 
Sitting across the table together, a guest arrives.

 
What guest has been invited to join us? 

 
What is brought into being? 

 

 

 

 
– Shanti Natania Grace

 from The Intrinsic Heart

 

 

judge like a king, and choose the purest

 

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,
drinking it, we leave the two worlds. 

 
God has put into the form of hashish a power
to deliver the taster from self-consciousness. 

 
God has made sleep so
that it erases every thought. 

 
God made Majnun love Layla so much that
just her dog would cause confusion in him. 

 
There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.
Don’t think all ecstasies
are the same!

 
Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley. 

 
Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars. 

 
Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.
Be a connoisseur,
and taste with caution. 

 
Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest,
the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about “what’s needed.” 

 
Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it’s been untied,
and is just ambling about. 

 

 

 

 

~ Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks
from The Essential Rumi

 

 

 

transitions and letting go

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Different transitions challenge our attachments in different ways.

 Just going from one day to another—Friday into Saturday—is not so hard for most of us.

 But what about going from one season to another, one year to another, one job to another,

 one relationship to another? Each of these transitions becomes harder as our attachments

 and expectations around them increase. Perhaps you are used to being able to get up and run 

or jog each day. There may come a time when this is no longer possible, and you must

 forget about jogging. That kind of change can be very difficult to adapt to. 

Maybe you’ve always had one kind of relationship with your parents, but now

 it’s become another kind of relationship. Now, instead of gathering for barbecues or parties,

 maybe you visit them in a hospital or nursing home and hold their hands. It’s a change.

 You are not used to it. It’s hard to transition to the new phase of life 

if you’re still attached to the previous one.

Because bigger transitions are more difficult, we must focus on our ability to let go now.

 If you look at this moment of your life, right now, how many things could you let go of? 

Think of one thing at this moment that you are attached to, that you’re identifying with,

 that you are holding onto, that causes pain. Perhaps you have a difficult relationship 

with someone in your life because of a grudge you are holding onto, or perhaps your

 attachment to the relationship itself is holding you back.

 

With awareness, we can see that when we struggle with a transition, 

it has something to do with an attachment, whether to an identity or to something external.

 If you let that one thing go, and then another thing and another and another,

then all the smaller things you can let go of will help you to be free. Each act of letting go

 benefits you, making it easier to let go of the harder things that will come along the way.

 If we do not apply ourselves to these opportunities to let go, if we can’t handle the little things

 that come along, then we are certain to have a harder time with the big things.

Letting go is like cleaning your garage or your closet.

 How many of us have cleaned our closets and found stuff in there that we were not using?

 This is a simple opportunity to practice letting go. When you open your closet and see something

 you put in there five years ago that you haven’t used, haven’t even touched, go ahead

 and take hold of it and let that one thing go! Energetically, these small acts of letting go

 can make a big impact. Even just deleting photos from your phone—a simple act of selecting

 and then deleting—can lighten our attachments. Do you know someone who has too much stuff, 

whose house has almost no space for people to move, let alone any sense of spaciousness? 

 
Often, at times of transition, we behave without awareness. 

We behave with condition, with pain, with fear. We feel we don’t have a choice.

 Just knowing we do have a choice can make all the difference. The choice comes

 when we can take time to be still, silent, spacious. We practice not doing, not saying,

 not thinking (not thinking is harder, but at least not doing and not saying).

 Then, once we have calmed down, we find a new space from which we can do 

and say and think, and what we do and what we say might be different from what we originally

 would have said or done. One thing that we want to be able to see clearly and to say

 to ourselves is, “If it’s not good, I will not make it worse.” 

Leave it as it is.

We have so many opportunities to be aware. Think about approaching it this way:

 I’m going to handle this little transition well so I can handle the next, harder one even better. 

Each time we make these little transitions and feel free, feel good, the world opens up for us.

 Moments, places, locations, changes, transitions happen all the time in life. 

These are all opportunities to cultivate and practice to better support the transition. 

~ Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

with thanks to Lions Roar

art: Visualizing a Lost Painting by Vincent van Gogh

 using X-ray Fluorescence Mapping