Tuesday, June 18, 2024

members of one body

 







My right hand has written all the poems
that I have composed.
My left hand has not written a single poem.
But my right hand does not think,
‘Left Hand, you are good for nothing.’

My right hand does not have a superiority complex.
That is why it is very happy.
My left hand does not have any complex at all.
In my two hands there is the kind of wisdom
called the wisdom of nondiscrimination.

One day I was hammering a nail
and my right hand was not very accurate
and instead of pounding on the nail
it pounded on my finger.

It put the hammer down and took care
of my left hand in a very tender way,
as if it were taking care of itself.

It did not say, ‘Left Hand, you have to remember
that I have taken good care of you
and you have to pay me back in the future.’
There was no such thinking…

And my left hand did not say,
‘Right Hand, you have done me a lot of harm
— give me that hammer, I want justice.’

My two hands know that they are members
of one body; they are in each other.





~ Thich Nhat Hanh
from his address to Congress entitled
Leading with Courage and Compassion,
Sept. 10th 2003
with thanks to love is a place


Monday, June 17, 2024

the power of connection - physical - emotional - spiritual

 








Saturday, June 15, 2024

imagine







Imagine the time the particle you are
returns where it came from!

The family darling comes home.   Wine
without being contained in cups,
is handed around.

A red glint appears in a granite outcrop,
and suddenly the whole cliff turns to ruby.




~ Rumi


Unconditional love really exists in each of us. 
It is part of our deep inner being.
 It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being.
 It's not 'I love you' for this or that reason,
 not 'I love you if you love me.' 
It's love for no reason, love without an object.




late prayer






Tenderness does not choose its own uses.
It goes out to everything equally,
circling rabbit and hawk.
Look: in the iron bucket,
a single nail, a single ruby -
all the heavens and hells.
They rattle in the heart and make one sound.





~  Jane Hirshfield 
from The Lives of the Heart




Thursday, June 13, 2024

opening to suffering

 
 
 
 
 
 

 



Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do.
It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way – 
in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited
 to the old, our holding released, our grasping seen with little surprise or judgement.
 
 The vastness of our being meeting each moment wholeheartedly 
whether it holds pleasure or pain. Then the healing goes deeper 
than we ever imagined, deeper than we ever dreamed.
 
The teaching of opening mindfully, heartfully, to our deepest suffering
 is part of our essential healing. The deepening awareness brings attention
 to part of the mind that had lost heart, a hidden part of ourselves 
which felt disconnected from itself and all else. It allows access to what
 was closed off, to the pain that was so deep and had been pushed deeper yet
 with each moment of self negation and suppression.
 
 
 
 
 
~ Stephen Levine
from Healing into Life and Death
 art by Kan Srijira
 
 
 
 



Wednesday, June 12, 2024

a silence that watches itself

 






There is a silence that watches itself. 
The silence and that which watches it may appear separate
 but are in fact one.

There is a voice that doesn’t use words — Listen!






~   Rumi
art found at DU Arts and Humanities






love lifts me








What we speak
becomes the house
we live in.
Who will want
to sleep in your bed
if the roof leaks
right above it?

Fear is the
cheapest room
in the house,
I would like
to see you living
in better conditions.

There is only one reason
we have followed God
into this world:
to encourage laughter,
freedom,
dance and love ....

God and I are rushing
from every corner of
existence,
needing to say
we are yours.

The sun never says
to the earth,
even after all this time
“you owe me”.

I once asked a bird
how is it that you
fly in this gravity
of darkness?
she responded,
love lifts me.

I should not make
any promises right now
but I know if you pray
somewhere in this world
something good
will happen.




~ Hafiz
Daniel Ladinsky and
Robert Bly versions

 



become supple as a newborn child




.




Nurture the darkness of your soul
until you become whole.
Can you do this and not fail?

Can you focus your life-breath until you become
supple as a newborn child?

While you cleanse your inner vision
will you be found without fault?

Can you love people and lead them
without forcing your will on them?

When Heaven gives and takes away
can you be content with the outcome?

When you understand all things
can you step back from your own understanding?
.
Giving birth and nourishing,
making without possessing,
expecting nothing in return.
To grow, yet not to control:
This is the mysterious virtue.
.




~ Tao Te Ching
translation by j. h. mcdonald
art by Colleen Wallace Nungari 
from Utopia Central Australia
.

Monday, June 10, 2024

from the owners manual

 







Connectedness is a biological imperative,
and at the top of the autonomic hierarchy is pathway
that supports feelings of safety and connection.

The ventral vagus (sometimes called the “smart vagus” or “social vagus”)
provides the neurobiological foundation for health, growth, and restoration.
When the ventral vagus is active, our attention is toward connection.

We seek opportunities for co-regulation.
The ability to soothe and be soothed, to talk and listen,
to offer and receive, to fluidly move in and out of connection
is centered in this newest part of the autonomic nervous system.

Reciprocity, the mutual ebb and flow that defines nourishing relationships,
is a function of the ventral vagus. As a result of its myelinated pathways,
the ventral vagus provides rapid and organized responses.

In a ventral vagal state,
we have access to a range of responses including calm, happy,
meditative, engaged, attentive, active, interested, excited, passionate,
alert, ready, relaxed, savoring, and joyful.

Co-regulation is at the heart of positive relationships…
If we miss opportunities to co-regulate in childhood,
we feel that loss in our adult relationships.
Trauma, either in experiences of commission (acts of harm)
or omission (absence of care), makes co-regulation dangerous
and interrupts the development of our co-regulatory skills.

Out of necessity, the autonomic nervous system is shaped to independently regulate.
People will often say that they needed connection but there was no one
in their life who was safe, so after a while they stopped looking.
Through a polyvagal perspective, we know that although they stopped explicitly looking
and found ways to navigate on their own, their autonomic nervous system never
stopped needing, and longing for, co-regulation.

Reciprocity is a connection between people that is created
in the back-and-forth communication between two autonomic nervous systems.
It is the experience of heartfelt listening and responding.
We are nourished in experiences of reciprocity,
feeling the ebb and flow, giving and receiving,
attunement, and resonance.







~ Deb Dana
from The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy:
 Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation
with thanks to The Marginalian by Maria Popova



Friday, June 7, 2024

a well told story

 




~Nancy Rynes



Wednesday, June 5, 2024

concentration and equanimity

 




As a stone mountain, one solid mass, is not stirred by the wind,
so no forms and tastes, sounds, odors, and tactile objects,
and phenomena desirable or undesireable stir the stable
one's mind. His mind is steady and freed.
.

~ Anguttara Nikaya



The development and practice of concentration
leads to equanimity. 

Enhancing qualities of faith, (or confidence), mindfulness,
 self-respect, a spirit of generosity and openess, and pliancy. 
All of which are included in a "neutrality of mind,"
a sense of being "there in the middleness."

The disipline of mindfulness together with concentration
can be very helpful in keeping our minds from habitual
occupation with unhealthy states.

A sense of ease, peace and balance equip us to deal with
the gain and loss, fame and disrepute, pleasure and pain 
that may come to us.





~ from the teaching of Buddha as
expressed by Joseph Goldstein in
Mindfulness: A Practical Guide of Awakening








everything taken away




.




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;
 and later on, when it “happens” (that is, steps forth out of us to other people),
 we will feel related and close to it in our innermost being.

 And that is necessary. It is necessary – and toward this point our development
 will move, little by little – that nothing alien happen to us, 
but only what has long been our own. People have already had to rethink
 so many concepts of motion; and they will also gradually come to realize
 that what we call fate does not come into us from the outside, 
but emerges from us. 

It is only because so many people have not absorbed and transformed 
their fates while they were living in them that they have not realized
what was emerging from them; it was so alien to them that, 
in their confusion and fear, they thought it must have entered them 
at the very moment they became aware of it, for they swore they had never
 before found anything like that inside them. just as people for a long time
 had a wrong idea about the sun’s motion, they are even now wrong
 about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still,
 dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space.






~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from Letters to a Young Poet 
The Eighth Letter
photo by Eliot Porter




abandon ourselves








When we are hyper-vigilant, 
we fear everything and everything offends us.  
We don't dare to move forward,
 as if we could reach the ultimate dwelling 
by leaving it to others to make the journey for us. 
 
Since that is impossible, 
why don't we exert ourselves, 
my friends, for love of our Beloved?
 Let's abandon our reason and fear into his hands. 
Forget about the weakness in our nature
 that we worry about so much. 
 
Let our families look after the safekeeping 
of our physical form; that's their concern.
 All we should focus on is getting to see
 this Beloved of ours as soon as possible.

Even if there is not much comfort on this path,
 we would be making a big mistake to fret about our health.
 Anxiety over our health does not improve it one bit; 
this I know.... The journey I'm talking about requires great humility... 
 
Unless we abandon ourselves, 
this state is arduous and burdensome. 
 We would be trudging under the load of our egos,
like mud clinging to our boots and dragging us down. 
 Those who reach the ultimate dwelling
 bear no such baggage.




~ St. Teresa of Avila
from The Interior Castle
translation by Mirabai Starr
art by Julio Anaya Cabanding

Tuesday, June 4, 2024

a point of nothingness

 







There is no way of telling people that
 they are all walking around shining like the sun.

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness
 which is untouched by sin and by illusion, 
a point of pure truth, 
a point or spark which belongs entirely to God,
 which is never at our disposal, 
from which God disposes of our lives, 
which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind
 or the brutalities of our own will.

This little point of nothingness
 and of absolute poverty
 is the pure glory of God in us.

It is, so to speak, his name written in us …
 like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.

It is in everybody, and if we could see it 
we would see these billions of points of light 
coming together in the face and blaze of a sun 
that would make all the darkness 
and cruelty of life vanish completely.

I have no program for this seeing. 
It is only given.

But the gate of heaven is everywhere.




~ Thomas Merton



aspects of the incomprehensible

 


 


 

The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects

 of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived be the finite human mind.

 

 They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize

their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation

 from the miseries of phenomenal life.

 

The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone

 from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound

 by his human limitations, he cannot but worship God through human forms.

 He must use human symbols. Therefore, Hinduism asks the devotees

 to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son,

 or the ideal friend.

 

But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless,

the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace

 in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute.

 

The gods gradually merge in the one God, but until that realization is achieved,

 the devotee cannot dissociate human factors from his worship. Therefore,

 the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep.

 He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites

 connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity,

the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind

 and the sense organs by appropriate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship

 against evil forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water.

 

He awakens the different spiritual centers of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart.

Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image,

 regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit,

throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled

 from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest.



~ from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

by Mahendranath Gupta