of the limitless sky

The true person is
Not anyone in particular;
But, like the deep blue color
Of the limitless sky,
It is everyone, everywhere in the world.

~  Eihei Dogen

at the core of delusion

  

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

~ Kurt Vonnegut 

from Mother Night

 

still I wonder: isn’t there a rock-solid unchanging

 “me” 

hidden somewhere underneath it all?

This unexamined self feels like an isolated, self-sufficient, permanent individual, 

essentially separate from others and all that surrounds it. Yet even a few moments

 of self-reflection suggests otherwise. My body is not the same as when I was eight

 or eighteen years old. If all humans are mortal, then my life will also end,

 exact time of departure unknown. Similarly, all my feelings of happiness and sadness

 come and go, arise and cease, changing gradually or suddenly,

 but always, inevitably, changing.

Looking closely, I also see that I’m not a self-contained, entirely independent individual.

 I need food, water, and air to survive. I speak and write a language generously passed on to me 

by others from long ago. I engage in everyday activities that were all part of my cultural training

 from childhood onward: brushing my teeth, exchanging greetings of “good morning”

 and saying “good night,” attending ceremonies, weddings, funerals.

Even at the most basic level of existence, I did not arise as a spontaneous,

 self-created human being. I was born and nurtured through the union and love 

of my parents, and they are also descendants of many ancestors before them.

 We are all “dependently related” beings, developing and aging in rapidly changing societies.

When we conduct our lives as though, all evidence to the contrary, we are separate,

 permanent, unitary selves, we find ourselves constantly living in fear of the large,

 looming shadow of change. Actions based on a mistaken sense of self, or “ego,”

 as an unchanging, isolated essence are filled with anxious struggle.

 We fight many futile battles against the way things actually are. How are they really?

 They are changing, connected, fluid. It’s as though we are standing waist-deep

 in the middle of a rushing river, our arms outstretched wide,

 straining to stop the flow.

This mistaken sense of self arises as a solidified set of beliefs about who we are

 and how the world is. When we proceed on that basis, all our life experiences are filtered

 through a rigorous, simplistic, for-and-against screening process:

 “Will this person or event enhance my permanent sense of self? 

Will this encounter threaten the ideas I’ve already accumulated?”

 

 Believing the inner voice of deception, we grasp and defend and ignore in service to an illusion,

 causing suffering for ourselves and others.

Letting go of the false sense of self feels liberating, like being released from a claustrophobic prison

 of mistaken view. What a relief to discover that we don’t have to pretend to be something 

we’re not! The initially surprising and challenging news of “no solid self” 

turns out to be a gentle invitation into a more spacious approach to living

 and being with others. Releasing fixation on permanence goes hand in hand

 with taking brave steps toward more communication and harmony in our lives,

 our actions, our relationships, and our work.

We might call this fluid inter-being an “open self,” one that is more sensitive

 to other living beings and nature. This open sense of self allows us to proceed from empathy

 and compassion for ourselves and for those suffering around us and elsewhere.

 With the dissolving of the seemingly solid walls of ego’s fragile tower, our experience is porous

 and permeable, less cut off and isolated. As we gradually release the old commitment

 to conquering the unconquerable, to denying the undeniable, we explore the many genuine

 and fresh possibilities in our ever-changing situation.

 

 

 

 

 

~  Gaylon Ferguson

 

 

gate A-4

 

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed

four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any

Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well— one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my

own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore,

was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her

problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, shu-bid-uck,

habibti? Stani schway, min fadlick, shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew,

however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely.

She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, “No, we’re fine,

you’ll get there, just late, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son; I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got

on the plane. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we

called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten

shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know

and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies— little powdered sugar crumbly mounds

stuffed with dates and nuts— from her bag and was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single traveler declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from

Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo— we were all covered with

the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

Then the airline broke out free apple juice and two little girls from our flight ran around serving

it and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend— by now

we were holding hands— had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with

green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay

rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to

live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate— once the crying of confusion

stopped— seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to

hug all those other women too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

effortlessly

 

Effortlessly,

Love flows from God into man,

Like a bird

Who rivers the air

Without moving her wings.

Thus we move in His world

One in body and soul,

Though outwardly separate in form.

As the Source strikes the note,

Humanity sings --

The Holy Spirit is our harpist,

And all strings

Which are touched in Love

Must sound.

~ Mechthild of Magdeburg

from The Enlightened Heart: 

An Anthology of Sacred Poetry

 by Stephen Mitchell

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

behind all this,

 

some great happiness is hiding.

~ Yehuda Amichai

I believe in the ordinary day

that is here at this moment and is me

I do not see it going its own way

but I never saw how it came to me

It extends beyond whatever I may

think I know and all that is real to me

it is the present that it bears away

where has it gone when it has gone from me

there is no place I know outside today

except for the unknown all around me

the only presence that appears to stay 

everything that I call mine it lent me

even the way that I believe the day

for as long as it is here and is me

~ W. S. Merwin

found in The Shadow of Sirius 

finding a deep, pure and gentle sympathy with others

 

The function of diversion is simply to 

anesthetize the individual as individual,

 and to plunge him in the warm, apathetic stupor 

of a collectivity which, like himself, 

wishes to remain amused.

.

The break with the big group is compensated

 by enrollment in the little group. 

It is a flight not into solitude but into a protesting minority.

 Such a flight may be more or less honest, 

more or less honorable. 

Certainly it inspires the anger of those who believe 

themselves to be the “right thinking majority” 

and it necessarily comes in for its fair share

 of mockery on that account…

 

They abandon one illusion which is forced on everyone

 and substitute for it another, more esoteric illusion, 

of their own making. They have the satisfaction

 of making a choice, but not the fulfilment 

of having chosen reality.

The true solitary is not called to an illusion,

 to the contemplation of himself as solitary. 

He is called to the nakedness and hunger

 of a more primitive and honest condition.

The disconcerting task of facing and accepting one’s own absurdity. 

The anguish of realizing that underneath the apparently logical pattern

 of a more or less “well organized” and rational life,

 there lies an abyss of irrationality, confusion, pointlessness, 

and indeed of apparent chaos… 

Interior solitude…

 is the actualization of a faith

 in which a man takes responsibility

 for his own inner life.

If every society were ideal, then every society would help its members 

only to a fruitful and productive self-transcendence. But in fact 

societies tend to lift a man above himself only far enough 

to make him a useful and submissive instrument

 in whom the aspirations, lusts and needs of the group 

can function unhindered by too delicate a personal conscience. 

Social life tends to form and educate a man,

 but generally at the price of a simultaneous

 deformation and perversion.

 This is because civil society is never ideal,

 always a mixture of good and evil, 

and always tending to present the evil

 in itself as a form of good.

Often the lonely and the empty have found their way into this pure silence 

only after many false starts. They have taken many wrong roads, 

even roads that were totally alien to their character and vocation. 

They have repeatedly contradicted themselves and their own inmost truth.

.

One has to be born into solitude carefully,

 patiently and after long delay, out of the womb of society.

The price of fidelity in such a task is a completely dedicated humility —

 an emptiness of heart in which self-assertion has no place.

 For if he is not empty

 and undivided in his own inmost soul, the solitary will be nothing more than

 an individualist. And in that case, his non-conformity is nothing but an act

 of rebellion: the substitution of idols and illusions of his own choosing

 for those chosen by society. 

And this, of course, is the greatest of dangers… 

 one who has been found by solitude,

 and invited to enter it, and has entered freely, falls into the desert

 the way a ripe fruit falls out of a tree. It does not matter what kind

 of a desert it may be: in the midst of men or far from them. 

It is the one vast desert of emptiness 

which belongs to no one and to everyone.

True solitude is not mere separateness.

 It tends only to unity.

 The true solitary does not renounce anything

 that is basic and human about his relationship to other men.

 He is deeply united to them —

 all the more deeply because

 he is no longer entranced by marginal concerns. 

What he renounces is the superficial imagery and the trite symbolism

 that pretend to make the relationship more genuine and more fruitful.

.

One who is called to solitude

 is called to emptiness. 

And in this emptiness he does not find points upon which to base 

a contrast between himself and others. On the contrary, he realizes, 

though perhaps confusedly, that he has entered into a solitude

 that is really shared by everyone. 

It is not that he is solitary while everybody else is social:

 but that everyone is solitary, in a solitude masked by that symbolism

 which they use to cheat and counteract their solitariness.

The solitary is one who is aware of solitude in himself 

as a basic and inevitable human reality, not just as something

 which affects him as an isolated individual. 

Hence his solitude is the foundation of a deep, 

pure and gentle sympathy with all other men.

~ Thomas Merton

from Notes for a Philosophy of a Solitude

found in the collection Disputed Questions

with thanks to 

The Marginalian by Maria Popova

the sail just needs to open

 

On a day

when the wind is perfect,

the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.

Today is such a 

day.

My eyes are like the sun that makes promises;

the promise of life

that it always

keeps

each morning.

The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,

both caress the earth with great

tenderness.

This is a breeze that can enter the soul.

This love I know plays a drum. Arms move around me;

who can contain their self before my beauty?

Peace is wonderful,

but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;

gregarious He makes our lips.

On a day when the wind is perfect,

the sail just needs to open

and the love starts.

Today is such

a day.

~ Rumi

from Love Poems From God: 
Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West 

by Daniel Ladinsky

one winter afternoon

one winter afternoon

(at the magical hour
when is becomes if) 

a bespangled clown
standing on eighth street
handed me a flower. 

Nobody,it’s safe
to say,observed him but 

myself,and why?because 

without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last) 

mostpeople fear most:
a mystery for which i’ve
no word except alive 

—that is,completely alert
and miraculously whole; 

with not merely a mind and a heart 

but unquestionably a soul-
by no means funereally hilarious 

(or otherwise democratic)
but essentially poetic
or ethereally serious: 

a fine not a coarse clown
(no mob, but a person) 

and while never saying a word 

who was anything but dumb;
since the silence of him 

self sang like a bird.
Mostpeople have been heard
screaming for international 

measures that render hell rational
—i thank heaven somebody’s crazy 

enough to give me a daisy 

~ E. E. Cummings

 art by Chagall

the sight which regards the ebb and flow of good and ill

 

Through love bitter things seem sweet,

Through love bits of copper are made gold.

Through love dregs taste like pure wine,

Through love pains are as healing balms.

Through love thorns become roses,

And through love vinegar becomes sweet wine.

Through love the stake becomes a throne,

Through love reverse of fortune seems good fortune.

Through love a prison seems a rose bower,

Without love a grate full of ashes seems a garden.

Through love burning fire is pleasing light,

Through love the Devil becomes a Houri.

Through love hard stones become soft as butter,

Without love soft wax becomes hard iron.

Through love grief is as joy,

Through love Ghouls turn into angels.

Through love stings are as honey,

Through love lions are harmless as mice.

Through love sickness is health,

Through love wrath is as mercy.

Through love the dead rise to life,

Through love the king becomes a slave.

Even when an evil befalls you, have due regard;

Regard well him who does you this ill turn.

The sight which regards the ebb and flow of good and ill

Opens a passage for you from misfortune to happiness.

Thence you see the one state moves you into the other,

One opposite state generating its opposite in exchange.

~ Rumi

from The Spiritual couplets of 

Maulana Jalalu-'D-Din Muhammad Rumi

translated and abridged by

E.H. Whinfield

with thanks to No Mind's Land

the soul's awakening. freedom from the snares

 

Every night Thou freest our spirits from the body 

And its snare, making them pure as rased tablets. 

Every night spirits are released from this cage, 

And set free, neither lording it nor lorded over.

 At night prisoners are unaware of their prison,

At night kings are unaware of their majesty. 

Then there is no thought or care for loss or gain, 

No regard to such a one or such an one. 

The state of the "Knower" is such as this, even when awake. 

God says, 4 "Thou wouldst deem him awake though asleep, 

Sleeping to the affairs of the world, day and night,

Like a pen in the directing hand of the writer.

 He who sees not the hand which effects the writing 

Fancies the effect proceeds from the motion of the pen.

 If the "Knower" revealed the particulars of this state,

'Twould rob the vulgar of their sensual sleep. 

His soul wanders in the desert that has no similitude; 

Like his body, his spirit is enjoying perfect rest;

 Freed from desire of eating and drinking, 

Like a bird escaped from cage and snare. 

But when he is again beguiled into the snare, 

He cries for help to the Almighty.

~ Rumi

from Masnavi e Ma'navi (BOOK I)

Translated & Abridged by E. H. Whinfield

a person is not

 

First prevent what is lacking in merit,

Next prevent [ideas of a coarse] self;

Later prevent views of all kinds.

Whoever knows of this is wise.

...

A person is not earth, not water,

Not fire, not wind, not space.

not consciousness, and not all of them.

What person is there other than these?

Due to being set up in dependence upon an

aggregation of the six constituents

A person is not established as its own reality,

So due to being set up in dependence upon an aggregation

Each of the constituents also is not established as its own reality.

...

Through the elimination of karma and affliction there is nirvana.

Karma and affliction come from conceptual thought.

These come from mental fabrication.

Fabrication ceases through (realizing) emptiness.

~ Nagarjuna

from The Precious Garland of Advise

wherever our lives intersect the dimension of the holy

 

It is difficult to probe the inward awareness of another being.

 The realm of what one mystic called “the interior castle” 

is wholly private and wrapped in solitude.

 But when we look into another’s eyes — 

even into the eyes of an animal — 

we may find a small window into that inner sanctum,

 a window through which our souls can hail

 and greet one another.

...

The act of making eye contact with another being 

presupposes a conscious self behind either pair of peepers: 

I see you seeing me, 

and I am aware that you are aware 

that we are looking at each other.

...

For me, soul resides at the point where our lives

 intersect with the timeless, in our love of goodness, 

our passion for beauty, our quest for meaning and truth.

 In asking whether animals have souls, 

we are inquiring whether they share in the qualities

 that make life more than a mere struggle for survival, 

endowing existence with dignity and élan.

...

Many people think of soul as the element of personality

 that survives bodily death, but for me it refers to something 

much more down-to-earth. Soul is the marrow of our existence

 as sentient, sensitive beings. It’s soul that’s revealed in great works of art, 

and soul that’s lifted up in awe when we stand in silence

 under a night sky burning with billions of stars.

 When we speak of a soulful piece of music,

 we mean one that comes out of infinite depths of feeling. 

When we speak of the soul of a nation, 

we mean its capacity for valor and visionary change… 

Soul is present wherever our lives intersect 

the dimension of the holy: in moments of intimacy, 

in flights of fancy, and in rituals that hallow the evanescent

 events of our lives with enduring significance. 

Soul is what makes each of our lives a microcosm — 

not merely a meaningless fragment of the universe, 

but at some level a reflection of the whole.

There is an inwardness in other living beings that awakens 

what is innermost in ourselves. I have often marveled,

 for instance, watching a flock of shore birds. 

On an invisible cue, they simultaneously rise off the beach

 and into the air, then turn and bank seawards in tight formation.

 They are so finely coordinated and attuned in their aeronautics

 it is as though they share a common thought, or even a group mind, 

guiding their ascent. At such moments, I feel there are depths 

of “inner space” in nature that can never be sounded.

 And it is out of those same depths, in me, that awe arises

 as I contemplate the synchronicity of their flight.

 To contain such depths is to participate in the realm of spirit.

~ Gary Kowalski

from The Souls of Animals

with thanks to The Marginalian

 by Maria Popova

causing and bearing each other's burden

 

We are the creators and creatures of each other, 

causing and bearing each other's burden.

...

I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, 

I become the very thing I look at, 

and experience the kind of consciousness it has; 

I become the inner witness of the thing.

 I call this capacity of entering 

other focal points of consciousness, 

love; 

you may give it any name you like.

 Love says "I am everything". 

Wisdom says "I am nothing".

 Between the two, my life flows. 

Since at any point of time and space 

I can be both the subject and the object of experience,

 I express it by saying that I am both,

 and neither, 

and beyond both.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

from  I Am That

facing the unknown

 

Fear is a universal experience. 

Even the smallest insect feels it. 

We wade in the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft, 

open bodies of sea anemones and they close up.

 Everything spontaneously does that. 

It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. 

It is part of being alive, something we all share. 

We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, 

of not having anything to hold on to.

 Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are,

 then our experience becomes very vivid. 

Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.

When we really begin to do this, we’re going to be continually humbled.

 There’s not going to be much room for the arrogance 

that holding on to ideals can bring. 

The arrogance that inevitably does arise 

is going to be continually shot down by our own courage

 to step forward a little further. 

The kinds of discoveries that are made through practice

 have nothing to do with believing in anything.

 

They have much more to do with having the courage to die, 

the courage to die continually.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over

 to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.

 We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem,

 but the truth is that things don’t really get solved.

 They come together and they fall apart. 

Then they come together again and fall apart again. 

It’s just like that. 

The healing comes from letting there be room

 for all of this to happen: room for grief, 

for relief, for misery, for joy.

~ Pema Chödrön

from When Things Fall Apart: 

Heart Advice for Difficult Times

with thanks to the Marginalian

slip beyond

...love impels people to service.  If love starts with a downward motion,

 burrowing into the vulnerability of self, exposing nakedness, 

it ends with an active upward motion.  It arouses great energy 

and desire to serve.  The person in love is buying little presents, 

fetching the glass from the next room, bringing a tissue when there's flu,

 driving through traffic to pick the beloved up at the airport.

 Love is waking up night after night to breastfeed, living year after year to nurture.

  It is risking and sacrificing your life for your buddy's in a battle. 

 Love ennobles and transforms. 

 In no other state do people so often live as we want them to live. 

 In no other commitment are people so likely to slip beyond the logic

 of self-interest and unconditional commitments

 that manifest themselves in daily acts of care.

Occasionally you meet someone with a thousand-year heart. 

 The person with the thousand-year heart has made the most of the passionate,

 tumultuous phase of love. Those months or years of passion have engraved 

a deep commitment in their mind.  The person or thing they once loved hotly

 they now love warmly but steadily, happily, unshakably.  

They don't even think of loving their beloved because they want something back...

 They just naturally offer love as a matter of course

 It is gift-love, not reciprocity-love.

~ David Brooks

from The Road to Character