all these prayers

 

So a little spring prays to the ocean, 

so the beating heart prays to the heart of the universe, 

so the little word prays to the great Logos,

 so a dust speck prays to the earth, 

so the earth prays to the cosmos, 

so the one prays to the billion, 

so human love prays to God’s love, 

so always prays to never, 

so the moment prays to eternity, 

so the snowflake prays to winter, 

so the frightened beast prays to the forest silence, 

so uncertainty prays to beauty itself.

And all these prayers are heard.

~ Anna Kamieńska

from In the Great River: A Notebook

with thanks to love is a place

with gratitude

 

in the wordless beginning

iguana & myrrh

magma & reef ghost moth

& the cordyceps tickling its nerves

& cedar & archipelago & anemone

dodo bird & cardinal waiting for its red

ocean salt & crude oil now black

muck now most naïve fumbling plankton

every egg clutched in the copycat soft

of me unwomaned unraced

unsexed as the ecstatic prokaryote

that would rage my uncle’s blood

or the bacterium that will widow

your eldest daughter’s eldest son

my uncle, her son our mammoth sun

& her uncountable siblings & dust mite & peat

apatosaurus & nile river

& maple green & nude & chill-blushed &

yeasty keratined bug-gutted i & you

spleen & femur seven-year refreshed

seven-year shedding & taking & being this dust

& my children & your children

& their children & the children

of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit

here not allied but the same perpetual breath

held fast to each other as each other’s own skin

cold-dormant & rotting & birthing & being born

in the olympus of the smallest

possible once before once

~ Marissa Davis

Singularity

art by Joan Sokolowska

with thanks to The Marginalian

you are the fullness of perfection here and now

 

I can see with the utmost clarity that you have never been, 

nor are, nor will be estranged from reality, 

that you are the fullness of perfection here and now,

 and that nothing can deprive you of your heritage, 

of what you are. 

You are in no way different from me, only you do not know it.

 Be fully aware of your own being, 

and you will be in bliss consciously.

 Because you take your mind off yourself 

and make it dwell on what you are not,

 you lose your sense of well-being, 

of being well.

You people do not know how much you miss

 by not knowing your own true self.

The moment you know your real being, 

you are afraid of nothing. 

Death gives freedom and power. 

To be free in the world, 

you must die to the world. 

Then the universe is your own,

 it becomes your body,

 an expression and a tool. 

The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

His state tastes of the pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. 

He is happy and fully aware that happiness

 is his very nature and that he need not do anything,

 nor strive for anything to secure it. It follows him,

 more real than the body, nearer than the mind itself. 

To me, dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery.

 Pleasure and pain have causes, 

while my state is my own,

 totally uncaused, 

independent,

 unassailable.

As he gets older, 

he grows more and more happy and peaceful.

 After all, he is going home.

 Like a traveler nearing his destination and collecting his luggage,

 he leaves the train without regret. 

The reel of destiny is coming to its end

—the mind is happy. 

The mist of bodily existence is lifting—

the burden of the body is growing less from day to day.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

 from I AM THAT...

art by Oskar Hokeah

a mustard seed

Become as a child,

become deaf, become blind!

Your own substance

must become nothingness;

drive all substance, all nothingness far from you!

Leave space, leave time,

eschew also all physical representation.

Go without a way

the narrow footpath,

then you will succeed in finding the desert.

 ~ Anonymous

(excerpt from Granum Sinapis)

  found here in for lovers of god everywhere 

by roger housden

toward emptiness

In the desert,

Turn toward emptiness,

Fleeing the self.

Stand alone

Ask no one's help,

And your being will quiet,

Free from the bondage of things.

Those who cling to the world,

endeavor to free them;

Those who are free, praise.

Care for the sick,

But live alone,

Happy to drink from the waters of sorrow,

To kindle Love's fire

With the twigs of a simple life.

Thus you will live in the desert.

Mechtild of Magdeburg

translation by Jane Hirshfield

the last cloud drains away

 

The birds have vanished down the sky.

Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains.

~  Li Po,

  from Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

 translated by Sam Hamill

 from Crossing the Yellow River: 

Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese

home

Whether drifting through life on a boat or 

climbing toward old age leading a horse, 

each day is a journey and the journey itself is home. 

~ Basho

my heart leaps up!

 

The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

(Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up")

...

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

...

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

~ William Wordsworth

excerpts from Ode Intimations of Immortality

 from Recollections of Early Childhood

art by Kathryn Jacobi Studio

barn's burnt down -- now I can see the moon. - Mizuta Masahide

 

Amor Fati

(love of fate)

The time is now past when accidents could befall me; 

and what could now fall to my lot

 which would not already be my own!

~ Nietzsche

from Thus Spake Zarathustra

...

It is said that before entering the sea

A river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has travelled,

from the peaks of the mountains, 

the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, 

that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.

The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean

 because only then will fear disappear

 because that’s where the river will know

 it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,

 but of becoming the ocean.

~ Khalil Gibran

experiencing peace and clarity within

 

~ Rupert Spira

the beauty way - joy - happiness - confidence - peace

the Dine way

 

lightening the burden

 

The siren's song -

"Be more than you are,

be everything you're not."

.

The sages say,

"Be less, not more,"

because all that we're not

lightens the burden,

delighting without hope

our desiring hearts.

.

~ Joseph Goldstein

from Dreamscapes of the Mind,

Poems and Reflections

the world is myself

 

In the mirror of your mind images appear and disappear.

 The mirror remains.

 Learn to distinguish the immovable in the movable,

 the unchanging in the changing,

 till you realise that all differences are in appearance only

 and oneness is a fact.

 This basic identity -- you may call God,

 or Brahman, or the matrix (Prakriti),

 the words matters little -- 

is only the realisation that all is one.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience:

 'I am the world, the world is myself','

you are free from desire and fear on one hand 

and become totally responsible for the world

 on the other. 

The senseless sorrow of mankind

 becomes your sole concern.

~ Excerpts from I Am That 

by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

may all beings be happy

 

Perhaps nothing more fully expresses the spirit of Jennifer’s lifework

 than the recent performances of “Song For All Beings." 

A large-scale multimedia cirque de spirit, 

these events featured over 100 artists

 and included Bruce Cockburn, Joanna Macy,

 Ferron, Jack Kornfield, Anam Thubten Rinpoche, 

Sarah Dugas, Raz Kennedy, and many others. 

Song For All Beings Live!

 was released as a DVD/video recording of the 2017 show.

In these Arms A Song for all Beings © (p) Jennifer Berezan I cannot turn my eyes, I cannot count the cost Of all that has been broken, all that has been lost I cannot understand, the suffering that life brings War and hate and hunger And a million other things When I've done all that I can And I try to do my part Let sorrow be a doorway Into an open heart And the light on the hills is full of mercy The wind in the trees it comes to save me This silence it will never desert me I long to hold the whole world in these arms May all beings be happy May all beings be safe May all beings everywhere be free

~ Jennifer Berezan

with thanks to When I was 69

fall with me here

So it came time
for me to cede myself
and I chose
the wind
to be delivered to

The wind was glad
and said it needed all
the body
it could get
to show its motions with

and wanted to know
willingly as I hoped it would
if it could do
something in return
to show its gratitude

When the tree of my bones
rises from the skin I said
come and whirlwinding
stroll my dust
around the plain

so I can see
how the ocotillo does
and how saguaro-wren is
and when you fall
with evening

fall with me here
where we can watch
the closing up of day
and think how morning breaks

~ A. R. Ammons

photo by R Christopher Vest