blessing for the interim time

 

When near the end of day, life has drained

Out of light, and it is too soon

For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline

Makes everything look strangely in-between,

Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.

In a while it will be night, but nothing

Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.

You are in this time of the interim

Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;

The way forward is still concealed from you.

The old is not old enough to have died away;

The new is still too young to be born.”

You cannot lay claim to anything;

In this place of dusk,

Your eyes are blurred;

And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart

And you can see nowhere to put your trust;

You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.

Do not allow confusion to squander

This call which is loosening

Your roots in false ground,

That you might come free

From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here in your mind,

And it is difficult and slow to become new.

The more faithfully you can endure here,

The more refined your heart will become

For your arrival in the new dawn.

~ John O’Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

it all moves

 

 

 

 

 

 

At night outside it all moves or
almost moves–trees, grass,
touches of wind. The room you have
in the world is ready to change.
Clouds parade by, and stars in their
configurations. Birds from far
touch the fabric around them–you can
feel their wings move. Somewhere under
the earth it waits, that emanation
of all things. It breathes. It pulls you
slowly out through doors or windows
and you spread in the thin halo of night mist.

 

 

 

 

~ William Stafford 

song of a man who has come through

 

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.

If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!

If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!

If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed

By the fine, fine, wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world

Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;

If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge

Driven by invisible blows,

The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,

I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,

Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?

What is the knocking at the door in the night?

It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.

Admit them, admit them.

~ D. H. Lawrence

from The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence

a brave and startling truth

 

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet

Traveling through casual space

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns

To a destination where all signs tell us

It is possible and imperative that we learn

A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it

To the day of peacemaking

When we release our fingers

From fists of hostility

And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it

When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate

And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean

When battlefields and coliseum

No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters

Up with the bruised and bloody grass

To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches

The screaming racket in the temples have ceased

When the pennants are waving gaily

When the banners of the world tremble

Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it

When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders

And children dress their dolls in flags of truce

When land mines of death have been removed

And the aged can walk into evenings of peace

When religious ritual is not perfumed

By the incense of burning flesh

And childhood dreams are not kicked awake

By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it

Then we will confess that not the Pyramids

With their stones set in mysterious perfection

Nor the Gardens of Babylon

Hanging as eternal beauty

In our collective memory

Not the Grand Canyon

Kindled into delicious color

By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe

Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji

Stretching to the Rising Sun

Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,

Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores

These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it

We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe

Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger

Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace

We, this people on this mote of matter

In whose mouths abide cankerous words

Which challenge our very existence

Yet out of those same mouths

Come songs of such exquisite sweetness

That the heart falters in its labor

And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness

That the haughty neck is happy to bow

And the proud back is glad to bend

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body

Created on this earth, of this earth

Have the power to fashion for this earth

A climate where every man and every woman

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety

Without crippling fear

When we come to it

We must confess that we are the possible

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world

That is when, and only when

We come to it.

~ Maya Angelou

cello

 

 

 

 

 

It rests inside its close-fitting red-velvet-lined case

the way medieval monks slept inside their coffins.

But it doesn't  meditate on death; it has already died,

and barely remembers sunlight, water, the wind among the branches.

It lies there in the dark, feeling all through its graceful curves

the memory of a hundred years of music,

and sometimes dreaming of heaven: the Bach suites.

 

Taken out to be played, it knows that by itself it is nothing,

that it would be incapable of producing a single note

even if it were a Stradivarius.

So it gladly assents to having its strings tightened,

painful though this is; it wants to be perfectly in tune,

stretched to its utmost but not straining.

When it feels ready, it leans back and waits

for the bow to be drawn across,

for the resonance to fill it completely.

 

 

 

 

 

 ~ Stephen Mitchell

from Parables and Portraits

 

 

 

 

no longer sure

 

 

 

 

It has come to this: I'm sitting under a tree
beside a river
on a sunny morning.
It's an insignificant event
and won't go down in history.
It's not battles and pacts,
where motives are scrutinized,
or noteworthy tyrannicides.

And yet I'm sitting by this river, that's a fact.
And since I'm here
I must have come from somewhere,
and before that
I must have turned up in many other places,
exactly like the conquerors of nations
before setting sail.

Even a passing moment has its fertile past,
its Friday before Saturday,
its May before June.
Its horizons are no less real
than those that a marshal's field glasses might scan.

This tree is a poplar that's been rooted here for years.
The river is the Raba; it didn't spring up yesterday.
The path leading through the bushes
wasn't beaten last week.
The wind had to blow the clouds here
before it could blow them away.

And though nothing much is going on nearby,
the world is no poorer in details for that.
It's just as grounded, just as definite
as when migrating races held it captive.

Conspiracies aren't the only things shrouded in silence.
Retinues of reasons don't trail coronations alone.
Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.

The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
Ants stitching in the grass.
The grass sewn into the ground.
The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.

So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.

When I see such things, I'm no longer sure
that what's important
is more important than what's not.

~  Wislawa Szymborska
S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh translation 

 

 

 

 

slip beyond

...love impels people to service.  If love starts with a downward motion,

 burrowing into the vulnerability of self, exposing nakedness, 

it ends with an active upward motion.  It arouses great energy 

and desire to serve.  The person in love is buying little presents, 

fetching the glass from the next room, bringing a tissue when there's flu,

 driving through traffic to pick the beloved up at the airport.

 Love is waking up night after night to breastfeed, living year after year to nurture.

  It is risking and sacrificing your life for your buddy's in a battle. 

 Love ennobles and transforms. 

 In no other state do people so often live as we want them to live. 

 In no other commitment are people so likely to slip beyond the logic

 of self-interest and unconditional commitments

 that manifest themselves in daily acts of care.

Occasionally you meet someone with a thousand-year heart. 

 The person with the thousand-year heart has made the most of the passionate,

 tumultuous phase of love. Those months or years of passion have engraved 

a deep commitment in their mind.  The person or thing they once loved hotly

 they now love warmly but steadily, happily, unshakably.  

They don't even think of loving their beloved because they want something back...

 They just naturally offer love as a matter of course

 It is gift-love, not reciprocity-love.

~ David Brooks

from The Road to Character

now is the time

Now is the time to free the heart,

Let all intentions and worries stop,

Free the joy inside the self,

Awaken to the wonder of your life.

Open your eyes and see the friends

Whose hearts recognize your face as kin,

Those whose kindness watchful and near,

Encourages you to live everything here.

See the gifts the years have given,

Things your effort could never earn,

The health to enjoy who you want to be

And the mind to mirror mystery.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

Households, cities, countries, and nations have enjoyed great happiness

 when a single individual has taken heed of the Good and Beautiful. . . .

 Such people not only liberate themselves;

 they fill those they meet with a free mind. 

~  Philo

in this passing moment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  may my path
  benefit everyone!

 

I vow to choose what is:
If there is cost, I choose to pay.
If there is need, I choose to give.
If there is pain, I choose to feel.
If there is sorrow, I choose to grieve.
When burning -- I choose heat.
When calm -- I choose peace.
When starving -- I choose hunger.
When happy -- I choose joy.
Whom I encounter, I choose to meet.
What I shoulder, I choose to bear.
When it is my death, I choose to die.
Where this takes me, I choose to go.
Being with what is -- I respond to what is.

~ Hogen Bays

excerpts from  The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World

 (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology) 

Edited by Ivan M. Granger 

 

Hogen Bays and his wife, Jan Chozen Bays, are the co-abbots

 of Great Vow Monastery in Oregon as well as being the spiritual directors

 and primary teachers with the Zen Community of Oregon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

natural compassion through meditation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sitting practice makes you more aware; it sensitizes you to the little nicks and bruises

 that the heart is subject to. Hurtful things you used to say and do, 

painful things said and done to you that you formerly brushed off or hardly noticed, 

you now see as painful. It pains you to say, even to think, hurtful things,

 and you notice even more—though you probably noticed before—

when such things are said or done to you. The more you are familiar with all this

 in your own mind, the twists and turns of which increasingly come into view 

as you go on practicing, the more it dawns on you that others are like this too. 

 

You see you are not unique—there’s a human pattern here.

The human mind is a swirl of activity mostly centered around self-preservation 

and self-justification (which can, oddly, sometimes take the form of self-recrimination)

 and all sorts of scheming to get one’s own way. After some initial dismay, 

you realize this is normal. You are a mess, and so is everyone else. And when you don’t

 take the mess into account, when you insist on pretending that it doesn’t exist, 

that it is reasonable to take all the hurts and slights and confusion seriously

 and thrash around in them—you make things much worse. But appreciate the mess,

 know that it is a shared mess, and even have a sense of humor about it, 

and you can be much more forgiving and generous with yourself and others.

 So naturally, your thoughts, words, and deeds in relation to others 

will be more relaxed, generous, and kind.

Morality is more about others than it is about you. 

Mostly, the sphere of ethical conduct has to do with how you interact with others. 

Some people think that meditation makes an already self-concerned person hyper self-aware,

 thereby increasing causes for worry and upset. There might be some truth to this.

 But, mostly, meditation practice has the opposite effect: it makes much more vivid

 the feeling that you are living in a world with other people whose lives, hearts, needs, 

and pains matter as much as yours do. Meditation increases empathy.

 It makes you quite loath to hurt anyone—you see that hurting someone is the same

 as hurting yourself. In fact it is worse. You would rather hurt yourself than hurt someone else.

 If you hurt yourself, you can deal with it, somehow. But if you hurt someone else,

 you can’t necessarily help them deal with it. They are stuck with the effects of what

 you have done to them. And so are you. You have to live with it. 

Morality comes out of this sensitivity and empathy. Kindness toward others

and one’s self is what morality is fundamentally about. Not a set of rules.

 

The Buddhist precepts offer a different approach to conduct that creates suffering

for ourselves and others.  More of a helpful guide to happiness, they are offered

as behaviors that stated as negatives create problems and as positives lead to happiness.

There is no sense of sinfulness or any thing like divine retribution, only actions that are

very practical to avoid or helpful to develop.

 

 

I vow to cherish life, not to kill.
I vow to accept gifts, not to steal.
I vow to respect others, not to misuse sexuality.
I vow to practice truthfulness, not to lie.
I vow to practice clarity, not to intoxicate mind or body
of self or others.
I vow to speak with kindness, not to slander.
I vow to practice modesty, not to praise self at the expense of others.
I vow to practice generosity, not to be possessive of anything.
I vow to practice love, not to harbor ill will.

~ Norman Fischer

excerpts from Compassion without Calculation

with thanks to Lions Roar

I had learned to reduce myself to zero

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"It was only when I had learned to reduce myself to zero," Gandhi

says, "that I was able to evolve the power of satyagraha in South Africa." 

 

Satyagraha - Literally "holding on to truth" - is the name he coined for

this method of fighting without violence or retaliation.

 

 Gandhi had a genius for making abstruse ideas practical,

and one of the best examples comes when he explains the basis

 of satyagraha. In Sanskrit the word satya,  "truth," is derived from sat,

 "that which is." Truth is; untruth merely appears to be.

 

 Gandhi brought this out of the realm of doctoral

 dissertations and into the middle of politics.  It means, he said, that evil

is real only insofar as we support it. The essence of holding on to truth

is to withdraw support of what is wrong. If enough people do this - if,

he maintained, even one person does it from a great enough depth -evil

has to collapse from lack of support.

 

Gandhi was never theoretical. He learned by doing. Satyagraha 

continued to be refined in action all his life; he was experimenting up to the

 day he was assassinated. But the essentials are present from the very

 beginning in South Africa.

First is the heartfelt conviction that a wrong situation wrongs both sides. 

 

Europeans and Indians alike were degraded by race prejudice; a

lasting solution, therefore, had to relieve this burden for all involved. In

spiritual terms this follows from the unity of life, which is what Gandhi's

"truth" means in practice. But it is also profoundly practical, because only

a solution for everyone can actually resolve the problem and move the

situation forward. 

 

More than just both sides "winning," everyone is a

 little nobler, a little more human, for the outcome.

~ Eknath Easwaran

from Gandhi The Man  

 

 

how one man changed himself to change the world

 

 

 

 

 

 

 In these verses from the Bhagavad Gita, which is set on a battlefield 

representing the human heart, a warrior prince named Arjuna,

who represents you and me, asks Sri Krishna, the Lord within, how

one can recognize a person who is aware or God in each moment

or his life. 

The reply is:

 

They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them,

whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed every selfish desire

and sense craving tormenting the heart. Not agitated by grief or

hankering after pleasure, they live free from lust and fear and anger.

Fettered no more by selfish attachments, they are not elated by good

fortune nor depressed by bad.  

 

Key words in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. 

~ from Gandhi the Man:

How one man changed himself to change the world

by Eknath Easwaran

 

 

 

 

pain - healing - integration

 

 

 

 

 ~ Joseph Goldstein

grateful

 

 

 

They arrive inside
They object at evening.
There’s no one to meet them.

The lamps they carry
Cast their shadows
Back into themselves.

They make notations:
The sky and the earth
Are of the same impenetrable color.
There’s no wind. If there are rivers,
They must be beneath the ground.
Of the marvels we sought, no trace.
Of the native girls, nothing.

There’s not even dust, so we must conclude
That someone passed recently
With a broom...

As they write, the tiny universe
Stitches its black thread into them.

Eventually nothing is left
Except a faint voice
Which might belong
Either to one of them
Or to someone who came before.

It says: I’m grateful
That you’ve finally come.
It was beginning to get lonely.
I recognize you. You are all
That has eluded me.

May this be my country.

 

 

 

 

~ Charles Simic

Explorers

 

 

 

 

inside

 

 

 

 

 

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls. 

~ Charles Simic