an infinite storm of beauty

No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable

 an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations 

which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the world

 

 as made especially for the uses of man.

 

 Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms.

 Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, 

and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.

I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence that seemed to show

 that any one animal was ever made for another as much as it was made for itself.

 Not that Nature manifests any such thing as selfish isolation. 

In the making of every animal the presence of every other animal has been recognized.

 Indeed, every atom in creation may be said to be acquainted with 

and married to every other, but with universal union there is a division

 sufficient in degree for the purposes of the most intense individuality; 

no matter, therefore, what may be the note which any creature forms

 in the song of existence, it is made first for itself, then more and more remotely

 for all the world and worlds.

 

The scenery of the ocean, however sublime in vast expanse, 

seems far less beautiful to us dry-shod animals than that of the land 

seen only in comparatively small patches; but when we contemplate 

the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents

 and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together

 as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.

 

 

 

 

 ~ John Muir

from Nature Writings

 

 

 

some essential questions

Nachiketa

Teach me That you see as beyond right 

And wrong, cause and effect, past and future.

Yama

...

The all-knowing self was never born,

Nor will it die.  Beyond cause and effect,

This Self is eternal and immutable.

When the body dies, the Self does not die.

If the slayer believes that he can kill

Or the slain believes that he can be killed,

Neither knows the truth.  The eternal Self

Slays not, nor is ever slain.

Hidden in the heart of every creature 

Exists the Self, subtler than the subtlest,

Greater than the greatest,  They go beyond

All sorrow who extinguish their self-will

And behold the glory of the Self

Through the grace of the Lord of Love.

...

When the wise realize the Self,

Formless in the midst of forms, changeless

In the midst of change, omnipresent

And supreme, they go beyond sorrow.

The Self cannot be known through study

Of the scriptures, nor through the intellect,

Nor through hearing discourses about it.

The Self can be attained only by those 

Whom the Self chooses.  Verily unto them

Does the Self reveal himself.

...

~ The Katha Upanishad (8th-6th century BC)

as translated by Eknath Easwaran

The Katha is a story which beautifully brings together a confrontation

 of the ideal student with the ideal teacher, leading to a highly creative

 and naked consideration of the key questions: "Who am I?" "What dies?" 

"What is left?" and "what, if anything, can we say about death

 - now, while we are alive?

Tolstoy on kindness

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kinder and the more thoughtful a person is, 

the more kindness he can find in other people.

You should respond with kindness toward evil done to you, 

and you will destroy in an evil person that pleasure which he derives from evil.

Kindness is for your soul as health is for your body: 

you do not notice it when you have it.

Love is real only when a person can sacrifice himself for another person. 

Only when a person forgets himself for the sake of another, 

and lives for another creature,

 only this kind of love can be called true love,

 and only in this love do we see the blessing and reward of life.

 This is the foundation of the world.

Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, 

more beautiful than perpetual kindness.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Leo Tolstoy

from  A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul,

 Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts

translation by Peter Sekirin

 with thanks to brainpickings

 

until

Until each breath refuses they, those, them.
Until the Dramatis Personae of the book’s first page says, “Each one is you.”
Until hope bows to its hopelessness only as one self bows to another.

 Until cruelty bends to its work and sees suddenly: I.

Until anger and insult know themselves burnable legs of a useless table.
Until the unsurprised unbidden knees find themselves bending.

 Until fear bows to its object as a bird’s shadow bows to its bird.

 Until the ache of the solitude inside the hands, the ribs, the ankles.

 Until the sound the mouse makes inside the mouth of the cat.

 Until the inaudible acids bathing the coral.

Until what feels no one’s weighing is no longer weightless.
Until what feels no one’s earning is no longer taken.
Until grief, pity, confusion, laughter, longing know themselves mirrors.
Until by we we mean I, them, you, the muskrat, the tiger, the hunger.
Until by I we mean as a dog barks, sounding and vanishing and
sounding and vanishing completely.

Until by until we mean I, we, you, them, the muskrat, the tiger, the
hunger, the lonely barking of the dog before it is answered.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Ledger

 

Inside its bends

.

.

 

 

Inside its bends, the river 

builds the land, outside

it frets the land away.

This is unjust only from

a limited view.  Forever

it doesn't matter, is only

the world's way, the give

and take, the take and 

give we suffer in order 

to live.  This household

of my work, ungainly on

its stilts, stands outside

the bend, and the river wears

near and near, flow

outlasting the standing firm.

Trees once here are gone,

the slope they stood upon

gone.  I needed what is lost,

although I love as well

the flow that took it.  Now

spring is coming, the redbird's

peal rings from the thicket,

the pair exchanges like

a kiss a seed from the feeder,

and this is timeless.  But a day

in time will come when this

house will give way, the walls

lean and fall.  Shattered will be

my window's rectitude.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Wendell Berry

from Leavings
photo by Ansel Adams

.

the shores of the great silence

.

Is my soul asleep?

Have those beehives that work

in the night stopped? And the water-

wheel of thought, is it

going around now, cups

empty, carrying only shadows?

No, my soul is not asleep.

It is awake, wide awake.

It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,

its eyes wide open

far-off things, listens

at the shores of the great silence.

~ Antonio Machado, (1875-1935)

(also known as Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz)

Robert Bly translation

.photo by Julius Shulman

troubled thoughts

Instead of conditioning the next moment with troubled thoughts,

 you surrender your investment in them;

 now the next moment is open, untroubled, and free. 

 

 There is no need to judge the world around you; 

you simply allow it to be what it is. 

 

 If the situation calls for a response from you, fine; you respond,

 not from defensiveness or judgment, but from the natural ease of your presence.

 

  In the quiet mystery of surrendering your thoughts,

 you have released any fixity of belief or position-taking,

 and you are welcomed by openness, quiet, and a most subtle joy

 - a lightness of being. 

 

 In surrendering something of no real value, 

you have gained the world. 

 In the openness of unknowing, 

you are completely safe and innocent.

~ Pir Elias Amidon

from Free Medicine 

art by Dali

clearance in the thicket of thought

In prayer, we come nearest to making a real clearance in the thicket of thought.  
Prayer takes thought to a place of stillness.
 Prayer slows the flow of the mind until we can begin to see with a new tranquility. 
 In this kind of thought, we become conscious of our divine belonging.
  We begin to sense the serenity of this clearing.

  We learn that regardless of the fragmentation and turbulence 
in so many regions of our lives, there is a place in the soul 
where the voices and prodding of the world never reach.

  It is almost like the image of the tree.  The branches can sway and quiver in the wind,
 the center of the tree, there pertains the stillness of its anchorage. 
 In prayer, thought returns to its origin in the infinite.  
Attuned to its origin, thought reaches below its own netting. 

 In this way prayer liberates thought from the small rooms where fear and need confine it. 
 Despite all the negative talk about God, the Divine still remains
 the one space where thought can become free. 

 There we will be liberated from the repetitive echoes of our own smallness and blindness... 
Prayer is the path to the secret belonging at the heart of our other lives.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

everything you do is guided by thought

 

 

 

 

 ~ John O'Donohue

 

 

 

whatever you frequently think

 

 

 

 

 Whatever you frequently think and ponder upon, 

that will become the inclination of your mind.

 

 

 ~  Buddha

 

 

 

 

 

The heart takes on the attributes and colors of that toward which it is inclined.

 It even becomes the same as that toward which it has turned. 

 

 It only takes on a form according to the thought that comes to it.

 It is for this reason that two ideas cannot exist within the heart simultaneously,

 for the heart takes on completely the form of whatever idea comes to it.

 

 The heart becomes that thought itself. Then another thought can no longer be contained within it.

 It is like the water of the sea: when water forms a wave, that that wave

 could also take the form of another wave is inconceivable. 

 

In the same moment there cannot be two waves in the same place. Understand this.

Within the chest of each human being there is one single heart. 

Whether this heart inclines to one Self or to many attributes,

 it takes on the form of whatever it is that it inclines towards.

~ Niyazi Misri

from feast #51

Translated by Camille Helminski and Refik Algan

invitation

Sabbath observance invites us to stop. It invites us to rest. 
It asks us to notice that while we rest, 
the world continues without our help. 
It invites us to delight in the world’s beauty and abundance.

~ Wendell Berry

The time for contemplation is the spring that feeds our action, 
and our action will be as deep as the spring. 
We need time to allow the spirit to clear the obstacles 
– the clinging debris and mud – 
that keeps the spring from flowing freely from its clear, 
deep source. And we need time for the spring to 
overflow into insightful and compassionate action.

~ Thomas Merton

Crystal Wilkinson and Wendell Berry

 

 

 

 

 ~ Crystal Wilkinson, Wendell Berry

 

 

 

 

from you

From you

I don't want anything new

no more gifts

nor the scent of landscapes

rising to fill us, 

no bouquets of insight

left by my head

in the tenderness of morning,

no intoxication 

of thoughts that open horizons

where rooms are low,

nor the sever of spring

under the grid of old worlds

that has set on our skin,

nor my favorite blue,

the cobalt 

colour of silence.

No.

All I want

is your two hands

pulsing in mine,

the two of us

back in a circle

round our love.

~ John O'Donohue

the many wines

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,

drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power

to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

God has made sleep

so that it erases every thought.

God made Majnun love Layla so much

that just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines

that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies 

are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.

His donkey was drunk on barley.

Drink from the presence of saints,

not from those other jars.

Every object, every being,

is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur,

and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.

Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

and ones unadulterated with fear,

or some urgency about "what's needed."

Drink the wine that moves you

as a camel moves when it's been untied,

and is just ambling about.

~ Rumi

from The Book of Love

translation by Coleman Barks

our inner worlds

We assume too readily that we share the one world with other people... 

It is true at the objective level that we inhabit the same physical space as other humans; 

the sky is, after all, the one visual constant that unites everyone's perception of being in the world... 

At a deeper level, each person is the custodian of a completely private, individual world...

when people come to visit you, they bring all of their inner worlds,...

their lives are not elsewhere; they are totally there with you, before you, reaching out toward you. 

 When the visit is over, their bodies stand up, walk out, and carry this hidden world away. 

 This recognition also illuminates the mystery of making love. 

It is not just two bodies that are close, but rather two worlds: 

they circle each other and flow into each other. 

We are capable of such beauty, delight, and terror 

because of this infinite and unknown world within us.

~ John O'Donohue

art by Norval Morrisseau