the sight which regards the ebb and flow of good and ill

 

Through love bitter things seem sweet,

Through love bits of copper are made gold.

Through love dregs taste like pure wine,

Through love pains are as healing balms.

Through love thorns become roses,

And through love vinegar becomes sweet wine.

Through love the stake becomes a throne,

Through love reverse of fortune seems good fortune.

Through love a prison seems a rose bower,

Without love a grate full of ashes seems a garden.

Through love burning fire is pleasing light,

Through love the Devil becomes a Houri.

Through love hard stones become soft as butter,

Without love soft wax becomes hard iron.

Through love grief is as joy,

Through love Ghouls turn into angels.

Through love stings are as honey,

Through love lions are harmless as mice.

Through love sickness is health,

Through love wrath is as mercy.

Through love the dead rise to life,

Through love the king becomes a slave.

Even when an evil befalls you, have due regard;

Regard well him who does you this ill turn.

The sight which regards the ebb and flow of good and ill

Opens a passage for you from misfortune to happiness.

Thence you see the one state moves you into the other,

One opposite state generating its opposite in exchange.

~ Rumi

from The Spiritual couplets of 

Maulana Jalalu-'D-Din Muhammad Rumi

translated and abridged by

E.H. Whinfield

with thanks to No Mind's Land

the soul's awakening. freedom from the snares

 

Every night Thou freest our spirits from the body 

And its snare, making them pure as rased tablets. 

Every night spirits are released from this cage, 

And set free, neither lording it nor lorded over.

 At night prisoners are unaware of their prison,

At night kings are unaware of their majesty. 

Then there is no thought or care for loss or gain, 

No regard to such a one or such an one. 

The state of the "Knower" is such as this, even when awake. 

God says, 4 "Thou wouldst deem him awake though asleep, 

Sleeping to the affairs of the world, day and night,

Like a pen in the directing hand of the writer.

 He who sees not the hand which effects the writing 

Fancies the effect proceeds from the motion of the pen.

 If the "Knower" revealed the particulars of this state,

'Twould rob the vulgar of their sensual sleep. 

His soul wanders in the desert that has no similitude; 

Like his body, his spirit is enjoying perfect rest;

 Freed from desire of eating and drinking, 

Like a bird escaped from cage and snare. 

But when he is again beguiled into the snare, 

He cries for help to the Almighty.

~ Rumi

from Masnavi e Ma'navi (BOOK I)

Translated & Abridged by E. H. Whinfield

a person is not

 

First prevent what is lacking in merit,

Next prevent [ideas of a coarse] self;

Later prevent views of all kinds.

Whoever knows of this is wise.

...

A person is not earth, not water,

Not fire, not wind, not space.

not consciousness, and not all of them.

What person is there other than these?

Due to being set up in dependence upon an

aggregation of the six constituents

A person is not established as its own reality,

So due to being set up in dependence upon an aggregation

Each of the constituents also is not established as its own reality.

...

Through the elimination of karma and affliction there is nirvana.

Karma and affliction come from conceptual thought.

These come from mental fabrication.

Fabrication ceases through (realizing) emptiness.

~ Nagarjuna

from The Precious Garland of Advise

wherever our lives intersect the dimension of the holy

 

It is difficult to probe the inward awareness of another being.

 The realm of what one mystic called “the interior castle” 

is wholly private and wrapped in solitude.

 But when we look into another’s eyes — 

even into the eyes of an animal — 

we may find a small window into that inner sanctum,

 a window through which our souls can hail

 and greet one another.

...

The act of making eye contact with another being 

presupposes a conscious self behind either pair of peepers: 

I see you seeing me, 

and I am aware that you are aware 

that we are looking at each other.

...

For me, soul resides at the point where our lives

 intersect with the timeless, in our love of goodness, 

our passion for beauty, our quest for meaning and truth.

 In asking whether animals have souls, 

we are inquiring whether they share in the qualities

 that make life more than a mere struggle for survival, 

endowing existence with dignity and élan.

...

Many people think of soul as the element of personality

 that survives bodily death, but for me it refers to something 

much more down-to-earth. Soul is the marrow of our existence

 as sentient, sensitive beings. It’s soul that’s revealed in great works of art, 

and soul that’s lifted up in awe when we stand in silence

 under a night sky burning with billions of stars.

 When we speak of a soulful piece of music,

 we mean one that comes out of infinite depths of feeling. 

When we speak of the soul of a nation, 

we mean its capacity for valor and visionary change… 

Soul is present wherever our lives intersect 

the dimension of the holy: in moments of intimacy, 

in flights of fancy, and in rituals that hallow the evanescent

 events of our lives with enduring significance. 

Soul is what makes each of our lives a microcosm — 

not merely a meaningless fragment of the universe, 

but at some level a reflection of the whole.

There is an inwardness in other living beings that awakens 

what is innermost in ourselves. I have often marveled,

 for instance, watching a flock of shore birds. 

On an invisible cue, they simultaneously rise off the beach

 and into the air, then turn and bank seawards in tight formation.

 They are so finely coordinated and attuned in their aeronautics

 it is as though they share a common thought, or even a group mind, 

guiding their ascent. At such moments, I feel there are depths 

of “inner space” in nature that can never be sounded.

 And it is out of those same depths, in me, that awe arises

 as I contemplate the synchronicity of their flight.

 To contain such depths is to participate in the realm of spirit.

~ Gary Kowalski

from The Souls of Animals

with thanks to The Marginalian

 by Maria Popova

causing and bearing each other's burden

 

We are the creators and creatures of each other, 

causing and bearing each other's burden.

...

I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, 

I become the very thing I look at, 

and experience the kind of consciousness it has; 

I become the inner witness of the thing.

 I call this capacity of entering 

other focal points of consciousness, 

love; 

you may give it any name you like.

 Love says "I am everything". 

Wisdom says "I am nothing".

 Between the two, my life flows. 

Since at any point of time and space 

I can be both the subject and the object of experience,

 I express it by saying that I am both,

 and neither, 

and beyond both.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

from  I Am That

facing the unknown

 

Fear is a universal experience. 

Even the smallest insect feels it. 

We wade in the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft, 

open bodies of sea anemones and they close up.

 Everything spontaneously does that. 

It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. 

It is part of being alive, something we all share. 

We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, 

of not having anything to hold on to.

 Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are,

 then our experience becomes very vivid. 

Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.

When we really begin to do this, we’re going to be continually humbled.

 There’s not going to be much room for the arrogance 

that holding on to ideals can bring. 

The arrogance that inevitably does arise 

is going to be continually shot down by our own courage

 to step forward a little further. 

The kinds of discoveries that are made through practice

 have nothing to do with believing in anything.

 

They have much more to do with having the courage to die, 

the courage to die continually.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over

 to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.

 We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem,

 but the truth is that things don’t really get solved.

 They come together and they fall apart. 

Then they come together again and fall apart again. 

It’s just like that. 

The healing comes from letting there be room

 for all of this to happen: room for grief, 

for relief, for misery, for joy.

~ Pema Chödrön

from When Things Fall Apart: 

Heart Advice for Difficult Times

with thanks to the Marginalian

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

what lovers would not...

 

what lovers would not unite beyond belief and annihilate

their separation forever if they

had the power

to do so?

...

What lovers would

not want to die

embraced?

~ Meister Eckhart

The thief who became a disciple

One evening as Shichiri Kojun was reciting sutras a thief with a sharp sword entered,
 demanding either his money or his life.

Shichiri told him:  "Do not disturb me.  You can find the money in that drawer." 
 Then he resumed his recitation.

A little while afterwards he stopped and called:  "Don't take it all. 
 I need some to pay taxes with tomorrow."

The intruder gathered up most of the money and started to leave. 
 "Thank a person when you receive a gift,"  Shichiri added. 
 The man thanked him and made off.

A few days afterwards the fellow was caught and confessed,
 among others, the offence against Shichiri.  
When Shichiri was called as a witness he said:  
 "This man is no thief, at least as far as I am concerned.  
I gave him the money and he thanked me for it."

After he had finished his prison term,
 the man went to Shichiri and became his disciple.

~ from Zen Flesh Zen Bones
 compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki

members of each other

The way we are, we are members of each other. 

All of us. Everything. 

The difference ain't in who is a member and who is not, 

but in who knows it and who don’t.

...

It was a community always disappointed in itself, 

disappointing its members, 

always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, 

always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill…

And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, 

beyond time, by one another’s love, compassion, and forgiveness, 

as it is said we may be perfected by grace.

And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, 

and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. 

How could we? 

It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time.

~ Wendell Berry

excerpts from Jaber Crow

for lost friends

.

.

As twilight makes a rainbow robe

From the concealed colors of day

In order for time to stay alive

Within the dark weight of night,

May we lose no one we love

From the shelter of our hearts.

.

When we love another heart

And allow it to love us, 

We journey deep below time

Into that eternal weave

Where nothing unravels.

.

May we have the grace to see

Despite the hurt of rupture,

The searing of anger,

And the empty disappointment,

That whoever we have loved,

Such love can never quench.

.

Though a door may have closed,

Closed between us,

May we be able to view

Our lost friends with eyes

Wise with calming grace;

Forgive them the damage

We were left to inherit;

.

Free ourselves from the chains

Of forlorn resentment;

Bring warmth again to 

Where the heart has frozen

In order that beyond the walls

Of our cherished hurt

And chosen distance

We may be able to 

Celebrate the gifts they brought,

Learn and grow from the pain,

And prosper into difference,

Wishing them the peace

Where spirit can summon

Beauty from wounded space.

.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

.

listen

.

.

Listen to your life. 

See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.

 In the boredom and the pain of it 

no less than the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, 

smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it

 because in the last analysis all moments are key moments,

 and life itself is grace.

.

~  Frederick Buechner

.

about true seekers

 

Wayfarer, know that in the battlefield of pain,

love may come with annihilation.

You whose existence is mingled

with nonexistence,

you whose joys are mingled with grief,

if you don't experience some ups and downs,

how will you ever know relief?

You bravely strike like lightning,

then cover yourself with rubbish

to protect against the shock.

What are you doing?

Rise up like a true seeker.

Set fire to reason

and flare into a mad lover.

If you hesitate over this alchemy,

at least come and take a quick look.

How long will you stay in your head?

Become like me, leave your self.

For once, show foresight

so that in the end you too can become

a dervish and joyfully arrive

at annihilation of the self.

I who am neither myself nor other than myself

have traveled beyond reason, good and evil thoughts.

I've lost my self within myself.

The only cure is the incurable.

When the sun of poverty landed on me,

both worlds twirled together into a single shaft of light.

And when I saw that column of light

I passed on into no self; became

a drop of water and joined the stream.

All that I had won and lost,

I threw away into black waters.

I disappeared, became lost, void.

I became a shadow without a single atom,

a drop of water that had joined the ocean.

Good luck finding that droplet.

Such loss of self is not for all,

but I joined the eternal union

and there are many like me.

Who in the world, from a dust mote to the moon,

wouldn't want to be lost this way?

~ Farid ud-Din Attar  (1120? - 1220?)

English version by Sholeh Wolpé

from The Conferences of the Birds

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

why we tell stories

I 

Because we used to have leaves 

and on damp days 

our muscles feel a tug, 

painful now, from when roots 

pulled us into the ground 

and because our children believe 

they can fly, an instinct retained 

from when the bones in our arms 

were shaped like zithers and broke 

neatly under their feathers 

and because before we had lungs 

we knew how far it was to the bottom 

as we floated open-eyed 

like painted scarves through the scenery 

of dreams, and because we awakened 

and learned to speak 

2 

We sat by the fire in our caves, 

and because we were poor, we made up a tale 

about a treasure mountain 

that would open only for us 

and because we were always defeated, 

we invented impossible riddles 

only we could solve, 

monsters only we could kill, 

women who could love no one else 

and because we had survived 

sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, 

we discovered bones that rose 

from the dark earth and sang 

as white birds in the trees 

3 

Because the story of our life 

becomes our life 

Because each of us tells 

the same story 

but tells it differently 

and none of us tells it 

the same way twice 

Because grandmothers looking like spiders 

want to enchant the children 

and grandfathers need to convince us 

what happened happened because of them 

and though we listen only 

haphazardly, with one ear, 

we will begin our story 

with the word and

~ Lisel Mueller

from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems

knowing nothing

.

Love is not the reason.

Love is the lure,

the thin goat staked out in the clearing.

The lion has stalked

the village for a long time.

It does not want the goat,

who stands thin and bleating,

tied to its bit of wood.

The goat is not the reason

The reason is the lion,

whose one desire is to enter -

Not the goat, which is

only the lure, only excuse,

but the one burning life

it has hunted for a long time

disguised as hunger.  Disguised as love.

Which is not the reason.

Or would you think

that the bones of a lion reason?

Would you think that the tongue?

The lion does not want the goat,

it wants only to live.  Alone if it must.

In pain if it must.  Knowing nothing.

Like the goat, it wants only to live.

Like love. Or would you think that the heart?

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Lives of the Heart

.