an instrument of comparison?

Is not the mind also an instrument of comparison?  You say this is better than that; you compare yourself with somebody who is more beautiful, who is more clever.  There is comparison when you say, 'I remember that particular river that I saw a year ago, and it was still more beautiful'.  Your compare yourself with somebody, compare yourself with an example, with the ultimate ideal.  Comparative judgment makes the mind dull; it does not sharpen the mind, it does not make the mind comprehensive, inclusive, because, when you are all the time comparing, what has happened?  You see the sunset, and you immediately compare that sunset with the previous sunset.  You see a mountain and you see how beautiful it is.  Then you say, 'I saw a still more beautiful mountain two years ago'.  When you are comparing, you are really not looking at the sunset which is there, but you are looking at it in order to compare it with something else.  So comparison prevents you from looking fully.  I look at you, you are nice, but I say, 'I know a much nicer person, a much better person, a more noble person, a more stupid person'.  When I do this, I am not looking at you.  Because my mind is occupied with something else, I am not looking at you at all.   In the same way, I am not looking at the sunset at all.  To really look at the sunset, there must be no comparison; to really look at you, I must not compare you with someone else.  It is only when I look at you without comparative judgment that I can understand you.  But when I compare you with somebody else, then I judge you and I say, 'Oh, he is a very stupid man'.  So stupidity arises when there is comparison.  I compare you with somebody else, and that very comparison brings about a lack of human dignity.  When I look at you without comparing, I am only concerned with you, not with someone else.  The very concern about you, not comparatively, brings about human dignity.

So as long as the mind is comparing, there is no love, and the mind is always judging, comparing, weighing, looking to find where the weakness is.  So where there is comparison, there is no love.  When the mother and father love their children, they do not compare them, they do not compare their child with another child; it is their child and they love their child.  But you want to compare yourself with something better, with something nobler, with something richer, so you create in yourself a lack of love.  You are always concerned with yourself in relationship to somebody else.   As the mind becomes more and more comparative, more and more possessive, more and more depending, it creates a pattern in which it gets caught, so it cannot look at anything anew, afresh.

And so it destroys that very thing, that very perfume of life, which is love.

J. Krishnamurti

from a conversation with students at Rajghat School

December 19, 1952

the weighing

The heart's reasons

seen clearly,

even the hardest

will carry

its whip-marks and sadness

and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved 

eland forgives

the drought-starved lion

who finally takes her,

enters willingly then

the life she cannot refuse,

and is lion, is fed,

and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness

measured against all he dark

and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us

only the strength we have and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The October Palace

photo by eliot porter

beauty and art - transcending self

Beauty is the convenient and traditional name of something which art and nature share, and which gives a fairly clear sense to the idea of quality of experience and change of consciousness. I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important. And of course this is something which we may also do deliberately: give attention to nature in order to clear our minds of selfish care.

art, affords us a pure delight in the independent existence of what is excellent. Both in its genesis and its enjoyment it is a thing totally opposed to selfish obsession. It invigorates our best faculties and, to use Platonic language, inspires love in the highest part of the soul. It is able to do this partly by virtue of something which it shares with nature: a perfection of form which invites unpossessive contemplation and resists absorption into the selfish dream life of the consciousness.

The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness. This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence to which philosophers have so constantly resorted in their explanations of goodness. “Good is a transcendent reality” means that virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is. It is an empirical fact about human nature that this attempt cannot be entirely successful.

 

 

 

 

~ Iris Murdoch

from  The Sovereignty of Good

photo by Ida Kar

a mind that lets go

Do everything with a mind that lets go.

If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.

If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.

If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom.

Your struggles with the world will have come to an end.

~ Achaan Chah,  (1918-1992)

(Ajahn (sometimes spelled Achaan) Chah was born into a large and comfortable family in a rural village in Northeast Thailand. He ordained as a novice in early youth and on reaching the age of twenty took higher ordination as a monk. As a young monk he studied some basic Dhamma, Discipline and scriptures. Later he practiced meditation under the guidance of several of the local Meditation Masters in the Ascetic Forest Tradition. He wandered for a number of years in the style of an ascetic monk, sleeping in forests, caves and cremation grounds, and spent a short but enlightening period with Ajahn Mun, one of the most famous and respected Thai Meditation Masters of this century.)

 

the great sea

The great sea
Has sent me adrift,
It moves me as the weed in a great river,
Earth and the great weather move me,
Have carried me away,
And move my inward parts with joy.




~ Uvavnuk
Eskimo woman shaman,19th c.

art: Starry Night detail 

Van Gogh

 

 

behind states of mind

~ Rupert Spira

 

full surrender

The art of living is based on rhythm - on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis. One can dance to sorrow or to joy; one can even dance abstractly. But the point is that, by the mere act of dancing, the elements which compose it are transformed; the dance is an end in itself, just like life. The acceptance of the situation, any situation, brings about a flow, a rhythmic impulse towards self-expression. To relax is, of course, the first thing a dancer has to learn. It is also the first thing a patient has to learn when he confronts the analyst. It is the first thing any one has to learn in order to live. It is extremely difficult, because it means surrender, full surrender. 

~  Henry Miller

from The Wisdom of the Heart

in meditation practice

In meditation practice, we neither hold the mind very tightly
 nor let it go completely. If we try to control the mind, 
then its energy will rebound back on us. If we let the mind go
 completely, then it will become very wild and chaotic. 

So we let the mind go, but at the same time, there is some discipline involved ... 
The basic practice is to be present, right here. The goal is also the technique:
 precisely being in this moment, neither suppressing nor wildly letting go,
 but being precisely aware of what you are.

~ Chogyam Trungpa

learn self-conquest

Learn self-conquest, 

persevere 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

the look of its landlord

For in this house, everything

has the look of its landlord.

While the hand moves

the shadow must follow.

Since the shadow gains its substance

from the hand

it has none of itself,

That which derives existence

from something else 

how can we say

it truly exists?

It has a name, yes,

but is not that existence

which subsists through God.

~ Fakhruddin Iraqi

from Divine Flashes

Some thought that all these loves were copies of 

our love for the landlord.

~ C.S. Lewis 

from God in the Dock

love and its substitutes

A spirit that lives in this world

And does not wear the shirt of love,

Such an existence is a deep disgrace.

Be foolish in love,

Because love is all there is.

There is no way into presence

Except through a love exchange.

If someone asks, But what is love?

Answer, Dissolving the will.

True freedom comes to those

Who have escaped the questions

Of freewill and fate.

Love is an emperor.

The two worlds play across him.

He barely notices their tumbling game.

Love and lover live in eternity.

Other desires are substitutes

For that way of being.

How long to you lay embracing a corpse?

Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.

Anything born in the spring dies in the fall,

But love is not seasonal.

With wine pressed from grapes,

Expect a hangover.

But this love path has no expectations.

You are uneasy riding the body?

Dismount.  Travel lighter.

Wings will be given.

Be clear like a mirror

Reflecting nothing.

Be clean of pictures and the worry 

That comes with images.

Gaze into what is not ashamed

Or afraid of any truth.

Contain all human faces in your own

Without any judgement of them.

Be pure emptiness.

What is inside that? You ask.

Silence is all I can say.

Lovers have some secrets

That they keep.

~ Rumi

From: Rumi - Bridge to the Soul

Translation by Coleman Barks

peace of Self

If one gains the Peace of Self,
 it will spread without any effort on the part of the individual.

When one is not peaceful, oneself, how can one spread peace in the world?

Unless one is happy,  one cannot bestow happiness on others. 


 Happiness is born of Peace and can reign only when there is no disturbance.
  Disturbance is due to thoughts,  which arise in the mind.  
When the mind is absent there will be perfect Peace.

The ultimate truth is so simple; 
 it is nothing more than being in one's natural original state. 
 Because people want elaborate and mysterious,
 so many religions have come into existence. 

~ Ramana Maharshi

the thought "I"

Thoughts arise because of the thinker.

The thinker is the ego, which if sought will automatically vanish.

Reality is simply loss of the ego.

Destroy the ego by seeking its identity.

Because the ego has no real existence, it will automatically vanish,
 and Reality will shine forth by itself in all its glory.

This is the direct method.

All other methods retain the ego,  In those paths so many doubts arise,
 and the eternal question remains to be tackled. 
 But in this method the final question is the only one 
and is raised from the very beginning.

No practices are even necessary for this quest.

The cause of misery is not in life without;  it is within you as the ego.

You impose limitations on yourself and then make a vain struggle to transcend them.

Why attribute to the happenings in life the cause of misery,
 which really lies within you?  What happiness can you get
 from anything extraneous to yourself?  
When you get it, how long will it last?

There are no stages to Realization of degrees of Liberation. 
 There are no levels of Reality; 
 there are only levels of experience for the individual.

It is not a matter of becoming but of being.

Remain aware of yourself and all else will be known.

~ Ramana Maharshi

through the lenses of our thoughts

The world is not simply there. Everything and everyone we see, we view through the lenses of our thoughts. Your mind is where your thoughts arise and form. It is not simply with your eyes but with your mind that you see the world. So much depends on your mind: How you see yourself, who you think you are, how you see others, what you think the meaning of life is, how you see death, belief, God, darkness and beauty is all determined by the style of mind you have.

Your mind is your greatest treasure. We become so taken up with the world, with having and doing more and more that we come to ignore who we are and forget what we see the world with. The most powerful way to change your life is to change your mind.

When you beautify your mind, you beautify your world. You learn to see differently. In what seemed like dead situations, secret possibilities and invitations begin to open before you. In old suffering that held you long paralyzed, you find new keys. When your mind awakens, your life comes alive and the creative adventure of your soul takes off. Passion and compassion become your new companions. As St. Iraneus said in the 2nd Century: The glory of God is the human person fully alive.

~ John O'Donohue

This was the title and description that John wrote for a talk
 he was scheduled to give in March of 2008.

mind and simplicity

~ Gangaji

I began as a bloom of cotton

I began as a bloom of cotton,

outdoors.  Then they brought me to a room

where they washed me.  Then the hard strokes

of the carder's wife.  Then another woman

spun thin threads, twisting me

around her wheel.  Then the kicks

of the weaver's loom made cloth, 

and on the washing stone, washermen

wet and slung me about

to their satisfaction, whitened me

with earth and bone,

and cleaned me to my own 

amazement.  Then the scissors

of the tailor, piece by piece,

and his careful finishing work.

Now, at last, as clothes,

I find You and freedom.

This living is so difficult

before one takes your hand.

~Lalla
from Naked Song

nothing pouring into Nothing

With repeated meditation practice

the expanse of the visible universe

with all its qualities dissolves

to nothing, to where there is 

only health and great joy.

All teaching comes to this.

*

With passionate practices

I held the reins secure on my mind

and made breath one column.

Then the new moon's clear 

nectar descended into me,

nothing pouring into Nothing.

*

When will my shame fall away?

When will I accept being mocked

and let my robe of dignity burn up?

When the wandering pony inside

comes calm to my hand.

*

It is God who yawns and sneezes

and coughs, and now laughs.

Look, it's God doing ablutions!

God deciding to fast, God going naked

from one New Year's Eve to the next.

Will you ever understand 

how near God is

to you?

~ Lalla

from Naked Song

translations by Coleman Barks

Lalla described herself as "a somewhat something moving dreamlike on a fading road."

vanished into wonder

What is, simply is,

And "I" am nowhere to be found.

Far from the village,

Road vanished into path,

Path vanished into hillside,

Hillside vanished into Vastness,

The Known vanished into Wonder,

Look!

~ Jnaneshwar

the 13th Century Indian

a 13th century saint who, although he lived only twenty-two years, left a profound impact on Hindu spirituality. In Jnaneshwar's writings, Shiva is the formless, unmanifest Absolute, and Shakti is manifest form. Shiva is "That", and Shakti is "This" – all that arises in and as That. But the most precious gift of Jnaneshwar is his communication in words of the inexpressible truth that Shiva and Shakti are One. Shakti is merely Shiva – unmanifest, objectless, unmoving – moving into and as form. Jnaneshwar brilliantly communicates this inexpressible truth through verse, in which "He" is Shiva, and "She" is Shakti.

commentary by Chuck Surface

jasmine

.

"Almost the twenty-first century" -

how quickly the thought will grow dated,

even quaint.

Our hopes, our future,

will pass like the hopes and futures of others.

And all our anxieties and terrors,

nights of sleeplessness,

griefs,

will appear then as they truly are -

Stumbling, delirious bees in the tea scent of jasmine.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

a tree within

A tree grew inside my head.

A tree grew in.

Its roots are veins,

its branches nerves,

thoughts its tangles foliage.

Day breaks

in the body’s night.

There, within, inside my head,

the tree speaks.

Come closer—can you hear it?

~ Octavio Paz

translation by Eliot Weinberger
art by Leticia Alaniz

the story of moths

One night, moths, who were driven by desire,

Met together to discuss their obsession

To see if it was one and the same.  They enquired:

'How can we know?'  Truth was their possession,

They thought, and sent forth one of their number to bring

Any information he could to feed their yearning.

He fluttered to and fro between the curtains of night

Till he spied a candle spluttering in a castle tower,

Then he reported back the wonder he saw on his flight.

But one amongst his friends whose knowledge gave him power

Said this messenger understood nothing at all about the candle.

So another moth was sent, he saw and touched the flame

With the tip of his wing, but his report had no handle

On the truth since the heat drove him off, he had no claim.

A third went forth, was so intoxicated with love 

He threw himself on the fire and was consumed.

The wise moth seeing how the flame fitted like a glove

The moth's glowing body, said when he resumed

His place amongst his peers: 'That moth now knows

What he can never utter nor any language ever disclose.'

~ Farid ud-Din Attar

from The Conference of the Birds

annihilate separation

How long can the moth flirt

near the mouth of the flame before their lips touch

and the moth’s soul

becomes like

a sun.

And does the moth then die? No.

In serving God one is transformed into Him.

What lovers would return to us,

what lovers would not unite beyond belief and annihilate

their separation forever if they

had the power

to do so?

That power our Lord has. How long do you think

you can just flirt with Him before you

dissolve in ecstasy?

Existence spins on His potter’s wheel;

all is being shaped into the Divine.

What lovers would

not want to die

embraced?

~ Meister Eckhart

associative leaps in poetry

excerpts from the essay entitled

so much happens when no one is watching 

by Daniel Deardorff

There are three things involved in making a associative leap:

a place to leap from, 

a place to leap to,

and most importantly, that space which is in-between.

Bly suggests that the in-between , the liminal space of the leap, provides a mysterious kind of content.  Bly calls our attention to the many things that happen "when no one is watching."  Pointing toward that which must remain outside our conscious awareness is like Lao Tzu saying that "knowing with not-knowing is best."  Connecting "what happens when no one is watching" to the emphasis on associativity, we notice a similar invitation to consider the unconscious space behind the associative image.  There is a great distance, swiftly traversed, between the philosopher and the predator in the line: "Plato wrote by the light from sharks' teeth."

One key to entering the vast spaces in Bly's thought in understanding is something I've called "associative alacrity" - the adroit capacity to form unexpected correlations,  In the modern world this capacity has been so repressed that it's hard to work out any sense of it.   In Norse mythology there is an ash tree that connects many worlds.  This "World Tree," called Yggdrasil, presents a complex image that works like this: at the top is the solar bird, the great eagle; at the bottom is the old lunar serpent.  The third thing, which connects this opposition, is something much less grand, a squirrel.  Leaping from branch to root, the acrobat squirrel carries messages between the extremities.  The furry mammal presents the limbic capacity to bridge the contradictions without reconciliation.  The squirrel is the embodiment of the leaping consciousness.

Leaping in this manner, the poems of Robert Bly refuse to turn away from Heaven, and at once, stubbornly refuse to renounce the earthly life.  "In a great ancient or modern poem, the considerable distance between the associations, the distance the spark has to leap, gives the lines their bottomless feeling, their space."  The relationships formed by these leaps are not linear - they are not stops along some rational railway, or some predictable system of linked facts - they are images or feelings related by something inexplicable and mysterious.  In this kind of association the distance, the interval or the leap, provides verticality and depth, a kind of bottomless content which functions as what Lawrence Hatab called "mythic disclosure": it does not explain things but "presents an intelligible picture of the lived world and the form of human involvement with the lived world."

In ancient times, in the "time of inspiration." the poet flew from

one world to another, "riding on dragons," as the Chinese said. 

Isaiah rode on those dragons, so did Li Po and Pindar.  They

dragged behind them long tails of dragon smoke.  Some of that 

dragon smoke still boils out of Beowulf. ...This dragon smoke 

means that a leap has taken place in the poem.

The associative paths... allow us to leap from one part of the brain

to another and lay out their contraries.  Moreover it's possible that

what we call "mythology" deals precisely with these abrupt juxtapositions...

using what Joseph Campbell called "mythological thinking," 

it moves the energy along a spectrum - either up or down. 

It can awaken the "lost music," walk on the sea, cross the 

river from instinct to spirit.

It is in the interval of the leap that "so much happens when no one is watching" and this is related to Richard Schechner's idea that certain rituals require "selective inattention."  He says: "Selective inattention allows patterns of the whole to be visible, patterns that otherwise would be burned out of the consciousness by a too intense concentration.

this essay is part of a collection in the book
Robert Bly - In This World

Driving Toward the Lac Qui Parle River

I

I am driving; it is dusk; Minnesota.

The stubble field catches the last growth of sun.

The soybeans are breathing on all sides.

Old men are sitting before their houses on car seats

In the small towns. I am happy,

The moon rising above the turkey sheds.

II

The small world of the car

Plunges through the deep fields of the night,

On the road from Willmar to Milan.

This solitude covered with iron

Moves through the fields of night

Penetrated by the noise of crickets.

III

Nearly to Milan, suddenly a small bridge,

And water kneeling in the moonlight.

In small towns the houses are built right on the ground;

The lamplight falls on all fours on the grass.

When I reach the river, the full moon covers it.

A few people are talking, low, in a boat.

~ Robert Bly

wherelings whenlings

wherelings whenlings
(daughters of if but offspring of hopefear
sons of unless and children of almost)
never shall guess the dimension of

him whose
each
foot likes the
here of this earth

whose both
eyes
love
this now of the sky

- endlings of isn’t
shall never
begin
to begin to

imagine how(only are shall be were
dawn dark rain snow rain
- bow;
a

moon
’s whis-
per
in sunset

or thrushes toward dusk among whippoorwills or
tree field rock hollyhock forest brook chikadee
mountain. Mountain)
whycoloured worlds of because do

not stand against yes which is built by
forever; sunsmell
(sometimes a wonder
of wild roses

sometimes)
with north
over
the barn




~ e.e. cummings

individuality

The world is not in need of improvement.  Stated another way, the world is not the problem...

When we detach from the thinking mind, perceiving senses, doing body, happy/unhappy person we regain right view.  In that, all is well. 

You have been trained since infancy to direct your attention to what is temporary. Had anyone before revealed the Permanent to you, there would be no need to sit with Wu Hsin. 

Most people don’t sit because they are afraid of what is revealed. 

The individuals fear that they will lose their individuality, their identity. One could say that the love of Being is not yet greater than the love of being somebody … or it could be said that the fear of the not yet known is far greater than the distaste for the known. 

Either way, “I’ll pay any price” is suddenly shown to be a hollow offer.

When you become clear that you are not this body, but that it is your instrument, then worries about death dissolve. 

In essence, death dies.

~ Wu Hsin

from  the introduction to Behind the Mind: 

A Short Discourse with Wu Hsin