mist and moonlight and memory

 

 

 

 

 

 

I live in a well. I live like smoke in the well.

Like vapor in a stone throat. 

I don't move. 

I don't do anything but wait.

 Overhead I see the cold stars of night and
morning, and I see the sun. 

And sometimes I sing old songs 

of this world when it was young. 

How can I tell you what I am when I don't know? 

I cannot. I am simply waiting.

 I am mist and moonlight and memory.

 I am sad and I am old.

 Sometimes I fall like rain into the well. 

Spider webs are startled into forming 

where my rain falls fast, on the water surface.

 I wait in cool silence and there will be a day 

when I no longer wait.

Now it is morning.

- Ray Bradbury

from the short story, The One Who Waits 

with thanks to whiskey river

making the darkness conscious

 

 

 

 

 

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,

but by making the darkness conscious.
The later procedure, however,

 is disagreeable and therefore not popular.

~ Carl Jung
from The Philosophical Tree 

 

 

When we turn toward our pain instead of away from it,

self-mercy enters those parts of ourselves we had closed off, withdrawn from,

or abandoned to feelings of impotence. When it seems there is nowhere

 else to turn, when all our prayers and strategies seem to be of little avail,

 something deeper arises: a mercy that leads toward the heart.

Without mercy (a quality of loving kindness that is the tender

 acceptance of even that which might be otherwise unacceptable) as 

an alternative to holding to our pain, we abandon those most painful 

memories within us to harsh judgment and merciless reflection.

The appearance of mercy, ...compassion... is absolutely unmistakable

as we learn to open into that which once closed us off.

 

Memories may always be bittersweet, but we may also find peace

 flickering, at the edges of what once caused us agitation. 

Healing, then, becomes not the absence of pain but the 

increased ability to meet it with mercy instead of loathing.

No one can wholly remove our pain. All we can do is 

increase the spaciousness of mind and heart in which it 

is allowed to decompress. 

We  meet ourselves  with simple kindness that confounds

our addiction to critical self-judgement.  We find ourselves

more likely to meet others' confusion and helplessness 

open-heartedly.  We find less need for others or ourselves

to be different in order to be loved.

We find ourselves.

~ Stephen Levine

from Unattended Sorrow

 

 

 

view with a grain of sand

We call it a grain of sand

but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.

It does just fine without a name,

whether general, particular,

permanent, passing,

incorrect or apt.

Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.

It doesn't feel itself seen and touched.

And that it fell on the windowsill

is only our experience, not its.

For it it's no different than falling on anything else

with no assurance that it's finished falling

or that it's falling still.

The window has a wonderful view of a lake

but the view doesn't view itself.

It exists in this world

colorless, shapeless,

soundless, odorless, and painless.

The lake's floor exists floorlessly

and its shore exists shorelessly.

Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry

and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural,

They splash deaf to their own noise

on pebbles neither large nor small.

And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless

in which the sun sets without setting at all

and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.

The wind ruffles it,  its only reason being

that it blows.

A second passes

A second second.

A third.

But they're three seconds only for us.

Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.

But that's just our simile.

The character's invented, his haste is make-believe,

his news inhuman.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

translated by Stanislaw Baraniczak and Clara Cavanagh

phoenix

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled,

made nothing?

Are you willing to be made nothing?

dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change.

The phoenix renews her youth

only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down

to hot and flocculent ash.

Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest

with strands of down like floating ash

shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle,

immortal bird.

~  D.H. Lawrence

inside the brushwood gate

I don't regard my life

as insufficient.

Inside the brushwood gate

there is a moon;

there are flowers.

~ Ryokan

from Sky Above, Great Wind

by Kazuaki Tanahashi

coping with challenging times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~  Joseph Goldstein

 

 

 

elements

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

 

the wild iris

.

At the end of my suffering 

there was a door.

 

Hear me out: that which you call death 

I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. 

Then nothing. The weak sun 

flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive 

as consciousness 

buried in the dark earth. 

Then it was over: that which you fear, being 

a soul and unable 

 to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth 

bending a little. And what I took to be 

birds darting in low shrubs. 

You who do not remember 

passage from the other world 

I tell you I could speak again: whatever 

returns 

from oblivion returns to find a voice: 

from the center of my life came 

a great fountain, deep blue 

shadows on azure sea water.

~ Louise Glück

witchgrass

 

Something

comes into the world unwelcome

calling disorder, disorder -

If you hate me so much don't bother to give me

a name: do you need

one more slur

in your language, another

way to blame

one tribe for everything -

as we both know, if you worship

one god, you only need 

one enemy -

I'm not the enemy.

Only a ruse to ignore 

what you see happening

right here in this bed,

a little paradigm

of failure.  One of your precious flowers

dies here almost every day

and you can't rest until

you attack the cause,

meaning

whatever is left, whatever

happens to be sturdier

than your personal passion -

It was not meant 

to last forever in the real world.

But why admit that, when you can go on

doing what you always do,

mourning and laying blame,

always the two together.

I don't need your praise

to survive.  I was here first,

before you were here, before

you ever planted a garden.

And I'll be here when only the sun and moon 

are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.

~ Louise Gluck

from The Wild Iris

what to do

 

 

It's difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. 

With sadness, there's something to rub against.

 A wound to tend with lotion and cloth. 

When the world falls in around you,

 you have pieces to pick up something to hold

 in your hands like ticket stubs or change.

 

 But happiness floats. 

It doesn't need you to hold it down.

 Doesn't need anything.

Happiness lands on the roof of the next house singing

 and disappears when it wants to. 

You're happy either way. 

Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful treehouse

 and now live over a quarry of noise and dust 

cannot make you unhappy. 

 

Everything has a life of its own.

 It, too, could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake

 and ripe peaches and love even the floor which needs to be swept,

 the soiled linens,and scratched records.Since there's no place large enough

 to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, 

and it flows out of you into everything you touch. 

 

You're not responsible.

 You take no credit.

 

 As the night sky takes no credit for the moon, 

but continues to hold it and to share it 

and in that way, be known.

~  Naomi Shihab Nye
photo - children of Papua New Guinea

source of joy

~ Rumi
performed by Coleman Barks

Do you believe in God?

Question: Do  you believe in God?

Krishnamurti: It is easy to ask questions, and it is very important to know how to ask a right question.  In this particular question, the words ‘believe’ and ‘God’ seem to me so contradictory.  A man who merely believes in God will never know what God is, because his belief is a form of conditioning – which again is very obvious.   In Christianity you are taught from childhood to believe in God, so from the very beginning your mind is conditioned.  In the communist countries, belief in God is called sheer nonsense – at which you are horrified.  You want to convert them, and they want to convert you.  They have conditioned their minds not to believe, and you call them godless, while you consider yourself God-fearing, or whatever it is.  I do not see much difference between the two.  You may go to church, pray, listen to sermons, or perform certain rituals and get some kind of stimulation out of it – but none of that,  surely,  is the experiencing of the unknown.  And can the mind experience the unknown, whatever name one may give it?  The name does not matter.  That is the question – not whether one believes or does not believe in God.

One can see that any form of conditioning will never set the mind free, and that only the free mind can discover, experience.  Experiencing is a very strange thing.  The moment you know you are experiencing, there is the cessation of that experience.  The moment I know I am happy, I am no longer happy.  To experience this immeasurable  Reality, the experiencer must come to an end.  The experiencer is the result of the known, of many centuries of cultivated memory;  he is an accumulation of the things he has experienced.  So when he says, ‘I must experience Reality’, and is cognizant of that experience, then what he experiences is not Reality, but a projection of his own past, his own conditioning.

That is why it is very important to understand that the thinker and the thought, or the experiencer and the experience, are the same; they are not different.  When there is an experiencer separate from the experience, then the experiencer is constantly pursuing further experience, but that experience is always a projection of himself.

So Reality, the timeless state, is not to be found through mere verbalization, or acceptance, or through the repetition of what one has heard – which is all folly.  To really find out, one must go into this whole question of the experiencer.  So long as there is the ‘me’ who wants to experience, there can be no experiencing of Reality.  That is why the experiencer – the entity who is seeking God, who believes in God, who prays to God – must  totally cease.  Only then can that immeasurable Reality come into being.

~ J. Krishnamurti, from his second talk in Brussels (June 25th, 1956)

advice of the mountain flower

 

Another day, I went for some fresh air to a meadow covered with flowers.
… While singing and remaining in a state of awareness of the absolute
view, I noticed among the profusion of flowers spread out before me one
particular flower waving gently on it’s long stem and giving out a sweet fragrance,

 as it swayed from side to side, I heard this song in the rustling
Of its petals…



Listen to me, mountain dweller:…
I don’t want to hurt your feelings,
but, in fact, you even lack awareness
of impermanence and death.
Let alone any realization of emptiness.

For those with such awareness,
outer phenomena all teach impermanence and death.
I, the flower, will now give you, the yogi,
a bit of helpful advice
on death and impermanence.

A flower born in a meadow,
I enjoy perfect happiness
with my brightly colored petals in full bloom.
Surrounded by an eager cloud of bees,
I dance gaily, swaying gently with the wind.
When a fine rain falls, my petals warp around me;
when the sun shines I open like a smile.

Right now I look well enough.
But I won’t last long.
Not at all.

Unwelcome frost will dull the vivid colors,
till turning brown I wither.
Thinking of this, I am disturbed.
Later still, winds –
Violent and merciless –
Will tear me apart until I turn to dust….

You, hermit,…
Are of the same nature.

Surrounded by a host of disciples,
you enjoy a fine complexion,
your body of flesh and blood is full of life.
When others praise you,
You dance with joy;…

Right now, you look well enough.
But you won’t last long.
Not at all.

Unhealthy ageing will steal away
your healthy vigor;
your hair will whiten
and your back will grow bent….

When touched by the merciless hands
of illness and death
you will leave this world
for the next life….

Since you, mountain-roaming hermit,
And I, a mountain flower,
Are mountain friends,
I have offered you
These words of good advice. 

Then the flower fell silent and remained still.

In reply, I sang:
O brilliant, exquisite flower,
your discourse on impermanence
is wonderful indeed.
But what shall the two of us do?
Is there nothing that can be done?...

The flower replied:
…Among all the activities of samsara,
there is not one that is lasting.

Whatever is born will die;
Whatever is joined will come apart;
Whatever is gathered will disperse;
Whatever is high will fall.

Having considered this,
I resolve not to be attached
to these lush meadows,
even now, in the full glory of my display,
even as my petals unfold in splendor…

You too, while strong and fit,
should abandon your clinging….
seek the pure field of freedom,
the great serenity.

by Shabkar Tsodruk Rangdrol

from The LIfe of Shabkar -

Autobiography of a Tibetan Yogin

The Life of Shabkar has long been recognized by Tibetans as one of the master works of their religious heritage. Following his inspired youth and early training in his native province of Amdo under the guidance of several extraordinary Buddhist masters, Shabkar Tsodruk Rangdrol devoted himself to many years of meditation in solitary retreat. With determination and courage, he mastered the highest and most esoteric practices of the Tibetan tradition of the Great Perfection. He then wandered far and wide over the Himalayan region expressing his realization. His autobiography vividly reflects the values and visionary imagery of Tibetan Buddhism as well as the social and cultural life of early nineteenth century Tibet.

things keep sorting themselves

Does the butterfat know it is butterfat,

milk know it’s milk?

No.

Something just goes and something remains.

Like a boardinghouse table:

men on one side, women on the other.

Nobody planned it.

Plaid shirts next to one another,

talking in accents from the Midwest.

Nobody plans to be a ghost.

Later on, the young people sit in the kitchen.

Soon enough, they’ll be the ones

to stumble Excuse me and quickly withdraw.

But they don’t know that.

No one can ever know that.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Poetry (September 2012)

finding a box of family letters

The dead say little in their letters

they haven't said before.

We find no secrets, and yet

how different every sentence sounds

heard across the years.

My father breaks my heart

simply by being so young and handsome.

He's half my age, with jet-black hair.

Look at him in his navy uniform

grinning beside his dive-bomber.

Come back, Dad! I want to shout.

He says he misses all of us

(though I haven't yet been born).

He writes from places I never knew he saw,

and everyone he mentions now is dead.

There is a large, long photograph

curled like a diploma—a banquet sixty years ago.

My parents sit uncomfortably

among tables of dark-suited strangers.

The mildewed paper reeks of regret.

I wonder what song the band was playing,

just out of frame, as the photographer

arranged your smiles. A waltz? A foxtrot?

Get out there on the floor and dance!

You don't have forever.

What does it cost to send a postcard

to the underworld? I'll buy

a penny stamp from World War II

and mail it downtown at the old post office

just as the courthouse clock strikes twelve.

Surely the ghost of some postal worker

still makes his nightly rounds, his routine

too tedious for him to notice when it ended.

He works so slowly he moves back in time

carrying our dead letters to their lost addresses.

It's silly to get sentimental.

The dead have moved on. So should we.

But isn't it equally simpleminded to miss

the special expertise of the departed

in clarifying our long-term plans?

They never let us forget that the line

between them and us is only temporary.

Get out there and dance! the letters shout

adding, Love always. Can't wait to get home!

And soon we will be. See you there.

~ Dana Gioia

with thanks to writers almanac

photo from living solutions