Wednesday, May 20, 2020

kindness









~ James Ishmael Ford 





and yet









The world of dew --
A world of dew it is indeed,
And yet, and yet . . .
 
 
 
 

Issa 
 
 
 

on trust in the heart








The perfect way knows no difficulties
Except that it refuses to make preferences;
Only when freed from hate and love
It reveals itself fully and without disguise;
A tenth of an inch's difference,
And heaven and earth are set apart.
If you wish to see it before your own eyes
Have no fixed thoughts either for or against it.

To set up what you like against what you dislike -
That is the disease of the mind:
When the deep meaning (of the Way) is not understood,
Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose.

The Way is perfect like unto vast space,
It is indeed due to making choice
That its Suchness is lost sight of.

Pursue not the outer entanglements,
Dwell not in the inner Void;
Be serene in the oneness of things,
And dualism vanishes by itself.

When you strive to gain quiescence by stopping motion,
The quiescence thus gained is ever in motion;
As long as you tarry in dualism,
How can you realize oneness?

And when oneness is not thoroughly understood,
In two ways loss is sustained:
The denying of reality is the asserting of it,
And the asserting of emptiness is the denying of it.

Wordliness and intellection -
The more with them, the farther astray we go:
Away, therefore, with wordliness and intellection,
and there is no place where we cannot pass freely.

When we return to the root, we gain the meaning;
When we pursue external objects we lose the reason.
The moment we are enlightened within,
We go beyond the voidness of a world confronting us.

Transformations going on in an empty world which confronts us
Appear real all because of ignorance:
Try not to seek after the true.
Only cease to cherish opinions.




Seng-ts'an
from Zen: a way of life 
by Christmas Humphreys




Tuesday, May 19, 2020

to unite











~ Dalai Lama




Monday, May 18, 2020

find out








When I met my Guru, he told me: 
"You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. 
Watch the sense 'I am', find your real Self."
 I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me.
 All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. 
And what a difference it made, and how soon! 

My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously
 and not to swerve from it even for a moment. 
I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time 
I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. 
All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly.
 This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind 
I saw myself as I am -- unbound. 

I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus the mind 
on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, 
with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy
 and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state.
 In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived,
 the world around me. Only peace remained 
and unfathomable silence.



~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
art by Deloros DiCamillo





talk









You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart
 you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed
 unfold its wings but cannot fly.

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves 
and they would escape.

And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought
 reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.
When you meet your friend on the roadside
or in the marketplace, let the spirit in
you move your lips and direct your tongue.
Let the voice within your voice speak to the
ear of his ear...




~ Kahlil Gibran
from The Prophet
 



Sunday, May 17, 2020

a ramage for a mountain





Silent in the moonlight, no beginning or end.
So the binding things  are lost, then found again,
The tines dug out of the snow, the singing so low
The other cannot hear it.  Some sounds do fit
Thick cords and strong fingers.  Slowly the mountain
Enters the man who walks on its slopes alone.
He walks, he sits down, he finds a stone;
No one has seen it, he sits down and is alone.



~ Robert Bly
from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey



Saturday, May 16, 2020

this giving up







Can you find another market like this?
Where, with your one rose
you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?

Where, for one seed you get a whole wilderness?
For one weak breath, the divine wind?

You have been fearful of being absorbed
in the ground, or drawn up by the air.

Now your waterbead lets go
and drops into the ocean, where it came from.

This giving up is not a repenting.
It is a deep honoring of yourself.

When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
marry, at once, quickly for God's sake.

Don't postpone it. Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason,
has landed on your shoulder, and become yours.




~ Rumi
translation by Coleman Barks




giving up all trying





I wearied myself searching for the friend
With efforts beyond my strength
I came to the door
And saw how powerfully the locks were bolted
And the longing in me became that strong
And then I saw that I was gazing from within the presence
Only after that waiting and giving up all trying
Did Lalla flow out from where I knelt


Gently I weep for my mind,
caught in its illusion of ownership.
Mind,  you're not who you think you are.
You're dancing over a pit.
Soon you'll fall through,
And these things,  you've valued
And collected will be left behind.




~ Lalla

watering the horse







How strange to think of giving up all ambition!
Suddenly I see with such clear eyes
The white flake of snow
That has just fallen in the horse's mane!



~ Robert Bly


live at the root








A lover was telling his beloved
how much he loved her, how faithful
he had been, how self-sacrificing, getting up
at dawn every morning, fasting, giving up
wealth and strength and fame,
all for her.

There was a fire in him.
He didn't know where it came from,
but it made him weep and melt like a candle.

"You've done very well", she said, "but listen to me.
All this is the decor of love, the branches
and leaves and  blossoms.  You must live
at the root to be a true lover."

"Where is that! Tell me!"
"You've done the outward acts,
but you haven't died.  You must die."

When he heard that, he lay back on the ground
laughing, and died. He opened like a rose
that drops to the ground and died laughing.

That laughter was his freedom,
and his gift to the eternal.



~ Rumi


Friday, May 15, 2020

what dying teaches









~ Frank Ostaseski



 

Thursday, May 14, 2020

under pressure






Powerful engines from the blue sky.
We live on a construction site where everything shivers,
where the ocean depths can suddenly open.
A hum in seashells and telephones.

You can see beauty if you look quickly to the side.
The heavy grainfields run together in one yellow river.
The restless shadows in my head want to go out there.
They want to crawl in the grain and turn into something gold.

Night finally.  At midnight I go to bed.
The dinghy sets out from the ship.
On the water you are alone.
The dark hull of society keeps on going.




~ Tomas Transtromer
from Half Finished Heaven
translated by robert bly
art by van gogh


starting with the fruit









~ Jack Kornfield and Frank Ostaseski



 

shrink us to our proper size





III


Yes, though hope is our duty,
let us live a while without it
to show ourselves we can.
Let us see that, without hope,
we still are well.  Let hopelessness
shrink us to our proper size.
Without it we are half as large
as yesterday, and the world
is twice as large.  My small
place grows immense as I walk
upon it without hope.
Our springtime rue anemones
as I walk among them, hoping 
not even to live, are beautiful
as Eden, and I their kinsman
am immortal in their moment.



~ Wendell Berry