the river of silence

 

You would know the secret of death.

 But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?

 The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day 

cannot unveil the mystery of light. 

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,

open your heart wide unto the body of life.

 For life and death are one, 

even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; 

And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.

 Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. 

Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd 

when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.

 Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, 

that he shall wear the mark of the king?

Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? 

And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath

 from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand

 and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. 

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. 

And when the earth shall claim your limbs,

 then shall you truly dance.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Prophet

in the midst of constant change - we are not "selves"

 

But just why is everything impermanent and in constant change? 

The answer has to do with what might be called 

the flip-side of anicca: pratityasamutpada, 

or, technically, “interdependent origination.”

More simply: everything changes because everything is interrelated.

 Everything comes into being 

and continues in being 

through and with something else.

Nothing, Buddha came to see, has its own existence.

In fact, when he wanted to describe the human self, 

or the self/identity of anything,

 the term he used was anatta,

 which means literally no-self. 

We are not “selves” in the sense of individual, 

separate, independent “things.”

 Rather, we are constantly changing

 because we are constantly interrelating.

~ Paul F. Knitter

Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture

 at Union Theological Seminary in New York

with thanks to love is a place

you cannot have your cake and eat it

 

~ Rupert Spira

behind our billboard - nobody being somebody

 

~ Ram Dass

surpass yourself

The pilgrim sees no form but His and knows
That He subsists beneath all passing shows --

The pilgrim comes from Him whom he can see,
Lives in Him, with Him, and beyond all three.

Be lost in Unity's inclusive span,
Or you are human but not yet a man.

Whoever lives, the wicked and the blessed,
Contains a hidden sun within his breast --

Its light must dawn though dogged by long delay;
The clouds that veil it must be torn away --

Whoever reaches to his hidden sun
Surpasses good and bad and knows the One.

The good and bad are here while you are here;
Surpass yourself and they will disappear.

 ~ Farid Attar

English version by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis

fear - disappearing and becomming

 

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.

~ Kahlil Gibran

image by Timisu

the spirit that makes connections

Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.
Clocks move along side our real life
with steps that are ever the same.

Though we do not know our exact location,
we are held in place by what links us.
Across trackless distances
antennas sense each other.

Pure attention, the essence of the powers!
Distracted by each day's doing,
how can we hear the signals?

Even as the farmer labors
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work. It is Earth who gives.




~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, XII
Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy version

art by Christi Belcourt

 

a response to suffering

 

~ Gabor Mate,  Joe Polish

an "I" that is a subject

 

the true inner self, the true indestructible and immortal

person, the true "I" who answers to a new and secret

name known only to himself and to God, does not

"have" anything, even "contemplation." This "I" is not

the kind of subject that can amass experiences, reflect

on them, reflect on himself, for this "I" is not the super-

ficial and empirical self that we know in our everyday

life.

as long as there is an "I" that is the definite subject of a

contemplative experience, an "I" that is aware of itself

and it's contemplation, an "I" that can possess a certain 

"degree of spirituality," then we have not yet passed over

the Red Sea, we have not yet "gone out of Egypt." We

remain in the realm of multiplicity, activity, incompleteness,

striving and desire.

the separate entity that is you apparently disappears and

nothing seems to be left but a pure Freedom, love identified 

with Love. Not two loves, one waiting for the other, striving

for the other, seeking for the other, but Love Loving in

freedom.

you do not take the step; you do not know the transition;

you do not fall into anything. You do not go anywhere,

and so you do not know the way by which you came back

afterward. You are certainly not lost. You do no fly. There

is no space, or there is all space: it makes no difference.

~ Thomas Merton

from Merton's Palace of Nowhere

by James Finley

members of one body

 

My right hand has written all the poems

that I have composed.

My left hand has not written a single poem.

But my right hand does not think,

‘Left Hand, you are good for nothing.’

My right hand does not have a superiority complex.

That is why it is very happy.

My left hand does not have any complex at all.

In my two hands there is the kind of wisdom

called the wisdom of nondiscrimination.

One day I was hammering a nail

and my right hand was not very accurate

and instead of pounding on the nail

it pounded on my finger.

It put the hammer down and took care

of my left hand in a very tender way,

as if it were taking care of itself.

It did not say, ‘Left Hand, you have to remember

that I have taken good care of you

and you have to pay me back in the future.’

There was no such thinking…

And my left hand did not say,

‘Right Hand, you have done me a lot of harm

— give me that hammer, I want justice.’

My two hands know that they are members

of one body; they are in each other.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

from his address to Congress entitled

Leading with Courage and Compassion,

Sept. 10th 2003

with thanks to love is a place

the power of connection - physical - emotional - spiritual

 

imagine

Imagine the time the particle you are

returns where it came from!

The family darling comes home.   Wine

without being contained in cups,

is handed around.

A red glint appears in a granite outcrop,

and suddenly the whole cliff turns to ruby.

~ Rumi

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. 

It is part of our deep inner being.

 It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being.

 It's not 'I love you' for this or that reason,

 not 'I love you if you love me.' 

It's love for no reason, love without an object.

late prayer

Tenderness does not choose its own uses.

It goes out to everything equally,

circling rabbit and hawk.

Look: in the iron bucket,

a single nail, a single ruby -

all the heavens and hells.

They rattle in the heart and make one sound.

~  Jane Hirshfield 

from The Lives of the Heart

opening to suffering

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do.
It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way – 

in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited

 to the old, our holding released, our grasping seen with little surprise or judgement.

 

 The vastness of our being meeting each moment wholeheartedly 

whether it holds pleasure or pain. Then the healing goes deeper 

than we ever imagined, deeper than we ever dreamed.

 

The teaching of opening mindfully, heartfully, to our deepest suffering

 is part of our essential healing. The deepening awareness brings attention

 to part of the mind that had lost heart, a hidden part of ourselves 

which felt disconnected from itself and all else. It allows access to what

 was closed off, to the pain that was so deep and had been pushed deeper yet

 with each moment of self negation and suppression.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Stephen Levine

from Healing into Life and Death

 art by Kan Srijira

 

 

 

 

a silence that watches itself

 

There is a silence that watches itself. 

The silence and that which watches it may appear separate

 but are in fact one.

There is a voice that doesn’t use words — Listen!

~   Rumi

art found at DU Arts and Humanities