be still and know

Imagine you are walking alone at night on a country road.  

No people or cars or houses around, just enough starlight to see your way, 

the only sound the sound of your shoes on the road and the swish

 of your clothes as you walk.  You feel the stillness inside of things come close. 

You stop. Now there are no sounds, except the almost-never-heard hush of things being.

You sense the stillness on all sides and an identical stillness within you.

 It makes you uneasy, as if you are about to be extinguished. 

 You try to think, to establish yourself against the stillness,

 but the voice of your thoughts sounds thin, metallic.  

You feel an irrepressible need to be distracted, to change the stillness

 and its overwhelming of you. 

You walk home thinking about plans for tomorrow.

But in the quiet of your room you realize what happened: you got scared. 

 You got scared of opening into the stillness, of allowing it to be.

  It was a close call.  You see how throughout your life you have invited 

one distraction after another to prevent just this from happening.  

Now you feel disappointed in yourself. So instead of turning on your computer

 or reading a book or getting something to eat, 

you sit down and invite the stillness back.

A phrase you once heard comes to you, 

from Psalm 46: "Be still, and know." Be still. Be still.

You arrange your body as you have learned to do.  You sit in a comfortable, 

alert position, with your back vertical so you don't slump or drift off. 

 You let your body be motionless, quiet.  The motionlessness of your body

 is a helpful friend; you know it is temporary, and in fact it is

 not really motionless - little shifts and sensations keep happening - 

but the relative stillness of your body reduces your identification with it,

 with the sense you are your body's ambitions and memories and likes and dislikes.

Learning to sit still, to settle like this, is called by Tibetan lamas "the first motionlessness."

 A quiet body at ease relaxes the persistence of thoughts.  Once the first motionlessness

 has been learned, they say, then it doesn't matter if the body is motionless or moving,

 for the the ground of stillness is always available.  But for now you need this helpful friend, 

and you sit still.

Now you invite what the lamas call "the second motionlessness."

 This is the still, empty openness "behind" each of your senses, 

the openness in which your senses arise.  You relax into that openness.

 To say it is not moving points to its nature, but that's not entirely accurate. 

 It is not the opposite of motion, or of the visible, or of sound. 

 This motionlessness is not definable - it is not a sensation.

 Nevertheless it has an almost kinesthetic effect on you, 

as if it is vanishing you, as if the existing one you thought you were, 

the receiver, the photographic plate that records your experience, this"one,"

 becomes transparent. You begin to feel the same threat of vanishing 

you felt on the road, but now you relax and let it be.

  "The third motionlessness" comes now, unbidden. 

 It is the stillness of presence itself - the stillness of a clearness that is always here,

 behind and within everything. It is what allows everything to show up.

  It is empty too not made out of anything, yet it is awesome and radiant in its presence.

  It is without being an it.

You remember now how the phrase from Psalm 46 continues:

 "Be still, and know I am God."

"God"  - this old, strange word that sounds like a judge and yet still resonates beyond that -

 could it mean - could it have first meant - this empty Presence without form,

 appearing as all form?  You realize you are trying to figure it out and you stop.

 Be still, and know I am God.  The knowing is not thinking.

 It is presence being present to presence.

You find yourself wavering here - one moment at ease in the clarity, 

and in the next thinking about it.  You hear the words again:

 Be still. Do nothing. Let be. Don't fill anything in. 

 No need to figure anything out. Relax.

A sense of peacefulness opens in you, vast and without dimension.  

This what Sufis call sakina - vast, peaceful tranquility without dimension -

 and suddenly you are smiling, your eyes are filling with tears - a joy -

 could it be called that? - a joyousness like praise and thankfulness together,

 love pouring forth from nowhere, the whole show showing up - 

mountain, sky, stars, bodies - from nothing, from stillness.

In remembering the Real, all hearts find joyous peace.

- Qur'an 13:28

~ Pir Elias Amidon

from Free Medicine

 photo by Kathy Chow

 

 

romanesque arches

Inside the huge Romanesque church the tourists jostled in the half darkness.

vault gaped behind vault, no complete view.

A few candle flames flickered.

An angel with no face embraced me

and whispered through my whole body:

"Don't be ashamed of being human, be proud!

Inside you vault opens behind vault endlessly.

You will never be complete, that's how it's meant to be."

Blind with tears

I was pushed out on the sun-seething piazza

together with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Mr Tanaka, and Signora Sabatini,

and inside each of them vault opened behind vault endlessly.

~ Tomas Tranströmer

from The Half Finished Heaven

translated by Robert Bly

becoming a healing presence in a traumatized world

 

~ James Finley

wholly into ourselves

Nature, and the things we live with and use, 
precede us and come after us. But they are, 
so long as we are here, our possession and our friendship.
 They know us with our needs and our pleasures,
 as they did those of our ancestors, 
whose trusted companions they were.

So it follows that all that is here is not to be despised 
and put down, but, precisely because it did precede us, 
to be taken by us with the innermost understanding 
that these appearances and things must be seen and transformed.

Transformed? Yes. For our task is to take this earth so deeply 
and wholly into ourselves that it will resurrect within our being. 
We are bees of the invisible. Passionately we plunder the honey of the visible
 in order to gather it in the great golden hive of the invisible.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from a letter to Witold Hulewicz

November 13, 1925

like bees return to the hive

Learn self-conquest, preserve thus for a time,

and you will perceive very clearly the advantage which you gain from it.

As soon as you apply yourself to contemplation,

you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together:

they seem like bees which return to the hive

and there shut themselves up to work at the making of honey.

~ Saint Teresa of Avila

Complete concentration is complete relaxation.

 The ability to work on a job with total concentration, 
and then put it out of your mind when necessary,
 is a skill which can be cultivated. 
Through practice, 

 
we can learn to drop whatever we are doing

 and turn our attention to a more urgent need.
 When you are absorbed in a favorite book 

and your partner interrupts you, 
set the book aside and give your complete attention

 to what he or she is saying.
 If part of your mind is on the conversation

 and part on what you have been reading, 
there will be division and tension in the mind. 

 

When we practice this one-pointedness during the day,
 it will greatly help our meditation.
 The mind will much more quickly become recollected. 

~  Eknath Easwaran

.

.

the warrior conquers the realms within

Most men in power have not the strength or wisdom

to be satisfied with the way

things are.

The sane know contentment, for beauty is their lover,

and beauty is never absent from the world.

The farther away light is from one's touch

the more one naturally speaks of the 

need for change.

Yes, overthrow any government inside

that makes you weep.

The child blames the external and focuses his energies there;

the warrior conquers the realms within

and becomes

gifted.

Only the inspired should make decisions

that affect the lives of many,

never a man who has not held God in his arms

and become the servant of 

unity.

~ St. Teresa of Avila

(1515-1582)

from Love Poems from God - Twelve Sacred Voices from East and West

translated by Daniel Ladinsky

learning to love yourself

 

~ Ram Dass

touching the earth

 

.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

something other than it is

There seem to two kinds of searchers: 

those who seek to make their ego something other than it is,

 i.e. holy, happy, unselfish (as though you could make a fish unfish), 

and those who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation

 and play-acting, that there is only one thing that can be done, 

which is to dis-identify themselves with the ego, 

by realizing its unreality,

 and by becoming aware of their eternal identity

 with pure being. 

~ Wei Wu Wei 

must be a balloon

 

We begin to see a strange and lethal truth:

 contrary to our beliefs, 

our basic drive and all our life force goes into a struggle

 to perpetuate our separateness, 

our touchiness, or self-righteousness.

Lao Tzu said, "He who feels punctured, must be a balloon.",

 the balloon of irritability, anger, self-centered opinions.

 If we can be punctured (hurt), we can be sure we are still a balloon.

 We want to be a balloon; otherwise we could not be punctured.

 But our greatest desire is to keep the balloon inflated. 

After all, it's me!

So what is the turning point?

 It begins when we observe and feel our anger,

 our manipulation, our anxiety - 

and know in our hearts a deep determination to be in another mode.

Then the real transformation can begin. 

Instead of ignoring, pushing it away, or wallowing in it, 

we take our garbage into ourselves and let it digest.

 We take ourselves with us into the pool of life. 

This begins the turning. After it, life is never the same.

The turning is at first feeble and intermittent. 

Over time, it becomes stronger and more insistent

 As it strengthens, more and more we know who our Master is.

 Of course, the Master is not a thing or a person 

but our awakening knowledge of Who We Are. 

Difficult years come before the turning. 

 Some but not all will make it through the difficulties.

Gurdjieff said: man is a machine. We know how machines work: 

when the blender's button is pushed, it goes WHOOSSSH; 

when we turn our car's ignition key, the motor roars. 

Man is a machine. Why? As long as a man's primary drive 

is to keep his balloon unpunctured, 

to avoid having his buttons pushed,

 he is an automatic machine

 which has no choice.

Suppose you do something to me that I view as punishing,

 it's mean, it's unfair,I don't deserve it.

 How do I react when this button is pushed? 

With anger?

 (And I may not reveal my anger, or I may turn it against myself).

 Then I am a machine.

In this instance, 

what would the tuning point be?

The turning point is my ability, developed slowly by practice, 

to be aware of the thoughts and bodily sensations which comprise anger.

 In the observing of thoughts and sensations, 

anger will swallow itself and its energy can open life instead of destroying it. 

Then I (the angry one) can act out of this clarity

 in a manner that benefits me and you.

 

Let us not have some naive notion that this ability is won overnight.

 A lifetime is more like it.

 Nevertheless, faithful and determined practice

 makes a difference and fairly soon at that.

We come to view the unpleasant aspects of life as learning opportunities.

 If my balloon is deflated a little -- great!

 As an opportunity to be welcomed, not avoided or dramatized.

 each round of such practice renders us a little less machine-like, 

gives us more appreciation of ourselves and others.

~ Charlotte Joko Beck

from the Newsletter of the Zen Center of San Diego,

 (Feb-Mar, 1989)

art by James Stough

in communion with all things

 

It is important to see how we live mainly in our heads.

Think with your whole body, feel with your whole body.

In the whole feeling, the global sensation,

you go into your room and touch your whole room.

You go outside and touch the clouds, the trees, the water.

You do not live in isolation.

In your radiation you are in communion with all things.

In this expansion there is no place for the ego

because the ego is a contraction.

Love is expansion, a feeling of spaciousness.

~ Jean Klein 

art by Mirree

with thanks to No Mind's Land

like two golden birds

Like two golden birds perched on the selfsame tree,

Intimate friends, the ego and the Self

Dwell in the same body.  The former eats 

The sweet and sour fruits of the tree of life

While the other looks on in detachment.

As long as we think we are the ego,

We feel attached and fall into sorrow.

But realize that you are the Self, the Lord

Of life, and you will be freed from sorrow.

When you realize that you are the Self,

Supreme source of light, supreme source of love,

You transcend the duality of life

And enter into the unitive state. 

The Lord of Love shines in the hearts of all.

Seeing him in all creatures, the wise

Forget themselves in the service of all.

The Lord is their joy, the Lord is their rest;

Such as they are the lovers of the Lord.

~ Mundaka Upanishad

Modes of Knowing 

translation by Eknath Easwaran

art by Jane Rosen

haunted pilgrims

Fashioned from clay, we carry the memory of the earth. 

Ancient, forgotten things stir within our hearts, 

memories from the time before the mind was born.

 

Within us are depths that keep watch.

These are depths that no words can trawl or light unriddle. 

Our neon times have neglected and evaded the depth-kingdoms

 of interiority in favor of the ghost realms of cyberspace. 

We have unlearned the patience and attention of lingering at the thresholds 

where the unknown awaits us. We have become haunted pilgrims 

addicted to distraction and driven by the speed and color of images.

~ John O'Donohue

from Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

without an image of ourselves

Procrustes was a host who adjusted his guests to their bed.
Procrustes, whose name means "he who stretches."

He kept a house by the side of the road where he offered hospitality to passing strangers, who were invited in for a pleasant meal and a night's rest in his very special bed. Procrustes described it as having the unique property that its length exactly matched whomsoever lay down upon it. What Procrustes didn't volunteer was the method by which this "one-size-fits-all" was achieved, namely as soon as the guest lay down Procrustes went to work upon him, stretching him on the rack if he was too short for the bed and chopping off his legs if he was too long. Theseus turned the tables on Procrustes, fatally adjusting him to fit his own bed.


We are no sooner out of the womb than we must begin this precarious unfolding

 and shaping of who we are. If we have bad or destructive times in childhood, 

we begin to fix on a survival identity to cover over and to compensate 

for what happens to us. If we are never encouraged to be ourselves 

we begin to construct an identity that will gain us

 either attention or approval. 

 When we set out to construct our lives according to a fixed image, 

we damage ourselves. The image becomes the desperate focus 

of all our longing. 

 There are no frames for the soul. In truth, we are called,

in so far as we can, to live without an image of ourselves,

 or at least to keep images we have free and open.

 When you sense the immensity of the unknown within you, 

any image you have built of yourself gradually loses its promise. 

 Your name, your face, your address only suggest the threshold of your identity.

 Somehow you are always secretly aware of this.

 Sometimes. you find yourself listening to someone 

telling you what you should do 

or describing what is going on inside you,

 and you whisper to yourself that they 

have not the foggiest idea who you actually are.




~ John O'Donohue
from Eternal Echoes

our compulsive manufacturing of contrived existence stops

 

There are times like these in our lives—such as facing death or even giving birth —

when we are no longer able to manage our outer image, no longer able to suspend ourselves

 in pursuit of the ideal self. It’s just how it is—we’re only human beings, and in these times

 of crisis we just don’t have the energy to hold it all together. When things fall apart,

 we can only be as we are. Pretense and striving fall away, and life becomes starkly simple.

 

 The value of such moments is this: we are shown that the game can be given up 

and that when it is, the emptiness that we feared, emptiness of the void, is not what is there.

 What is there is the bare fact of being. Simple presence remains—breathing in and out, 

waking up and going to sleep. The inevitability of the circumstances at hand is 

compelling enough that for the moment, our complexity ceases. Our compulsive manufacturing

 of contrived existence stops. Perhaps in that ungrounded space, we are not even comforting ourselves,

 not even telling ourselves everything is okay; we may be too tired to do even that. 

It’s just total capitulation—we’re forced into non-grasping of inherent reality. 

The contrived self has been emptied out along with contrived existence and the tiring treadmill

 of image maintenance that goes along with it. What remains is a new moment 

spontaneously meeting us again and again.

There is an incredible reality that opens up to us in those gaps 

if we just do not reject rupture. In fact, if we have some reliable idea of what is happening

 in that intermediate, groundless space, rupture can become rapture.

 

 

 

 

~  Pema Khandro Rinpoche

excerpts from Breaking Open in the Bardo