thirst

.

.

Another morning and I wake with thirst

for the goodness I do not have. 

I walk out to the pond and all the way 

God has given us such beautiful lessons. 

Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked

and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; 

grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. 

Love for the earth and love for you 

are having such a long conversation in my heart. 

Who knows what will finally happen 

or where I will be sent, yet already 

I have given a great many things away, 

expecting to be told to pack nothing, 

except the prayers which, 

with this thirst,

I am slowly learning.

~ Mary Oliver

late have I loved thee

.

Late have I loved thee, O Beauty 

so ancient and so new;
late have I loved thee! For behold, 

thou wert within me and I outside;
and I sought thee outside

 and in my unloveliness
fell upon these lovely things 

that thou hast made. 

Thou wert with me and I

 was not with thee.
I was kept from thee by those things,
yet had they not been in thee,

 they would not have been at all. 

Thou didst call and cry to me

 and break open my deafness. . . .

I tasted thee, and now hunger

 and thirst for thee;
thou didst touch me,
and now I burn for thy peace. 

~ Saint Augustine of Hippo
from Confessions

 

 

.

her longing

Before this longing,
I lived serene as a fish
At one with the plants in the pond,
The mare's tail, the floating frogbite,
Among my eight-legged friends,
Open like a pool, a lesser parsnip,
Like a leech, looping myself along,
A bug-eyed edible one,
A mouth like a stickleback,-
A thing quiescent!

But now-
The wild stream, the sea itself cannot contain me:
I dive with the black hag, the cormorant,
Or walk the pebbly shore with the humpbacked heron,
Shaking out my catch in the morning sunlight,
Or rise with the gar-eagle, the great-winged condor,
Floating over the mountains,
Pitting my breast against the rushing air,
A phoenix, sure of my body,
Perpetually rising out of myself,
My wings hovering over the shorebirds,
Or beating against the black clouds of the storm,
Protecting the sea-cliffs.





~ Theodore Roethke
from News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness
edited by Robert Bly

 

 

when the lamp went out

When they plow their fields

and sow seeds in the earth,

when they care for their wives and children, 

young brahmans find riches.

But I've done everything right

and followed the rule of my teacher.

I'm not lazy or proud.

Why haven't I found peace?

Bathing my feet 

I watched the bathwater

spill down the slope.

I concentrated my mind

the way you train a good horse.

The I took the lamp

and went into my cell,

checked the bed,

and sat down on it.

I took a needle

and pushed the wick down.

When the lamp went out

my mind was freed.

~ Patacara, (6th B.C.E.)

from Women in Praise of the Sacred

edited by Jane Hirshfield

.

understanding fails

If one reaches the point where understanding fails, this is not a tragedy: it is simply a reminder to stop thinking and start looking.  Perhaps there is nothing to figure out after all: perhaps we only need to wake up.

A monk said: "I have been with you (Master), for a long time, and yet I am unable to understand your way.  How is this?"

The Master said: "Where you do not understand, there is the point for your understanding."

In the first two chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul distinguishes between two kinds of wisdom: one which consists in the knowledge of words and statements, a rational, dialectical wisdom, and another which is at once a matter of paradox and of experience, and goes beyond the reach of reason.  To attain to this spiritual wisdom, one must first be liberated from servile dependence on the "wisdom, of speech."

St. Paul compares this knowledge of God, in the Spirit, to the subjective knowledge that a man has of himself.  Just as no one can know my inner self except my own "spirit," so no one can know God except God's Spirit; yet this Holy Spirit is given to us, in such a way that God know Himself in us, and this experience is utterly real, though it cannot be communicated in terms understandable to those who do not share it.  Consequently, St. Paul concludes, "we have the mind of Christ."

~ Thomas Merton

excerpts from Zen and the Birds of Appetite

art by Van Gogh

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an older unity

And the deepest level of communication 

is not communication, 

but communion. It is wordless. 

It is beyond words, 

and it is beyond speech, 

and it is beyond 

concept. 

Not that we discover a new unity. 

We discover an older unity. 

My dear brothers, we are already one. 

But we imagine that we are not. 

And what we have to recover is our original unity. 

What we have to be is what we are.

~ Thomas Merton

from his Asian journal
art by Van Gogh

 

ask the horse

There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. 

The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man, standing alongside the road, shouts, 'Where are you going?" and the first man replies, I don't know! Ask the horse!" This is also our story. We are riding a horse, we don't know where we are going, and we can't stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless. 

We are always running, and it has become a habit. 
We struggle all the time, even during our sleep. 
We are at war within ourselves, and we can easily start a war with others.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

from "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching"

habit

The shoes put on each time

left first, then right.

The morning potion’s teaspoon

of sweetness stirred always

for seven circlings—no fewer, no more—

into the cracked blue cup.

Touching the pocket for wallet,

for keys,

before closing the door.

How did we come

to believe these small rituals’ promise,

that we are today the selves we yesterday knew,

tomorrow will be?

How intimate and unthinking,

the way the toothbrush is shaken dry after use,

the part we wash first in the bath.

Which habits we learned from others

and which are ours alone we may never know.

Unbearable to acknowledge

how much they are themselves our fated life.

Open the traveling suitcase—

There the beloved red sweater,

bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber.

Each confirming: I chose these, I.

But habit is different: it chooses.

And we, its good horse,

opening our mouths at even the sight of the bit.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Given Sugar, Given Salt

waiting for you

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It's very important to experience the complete negation of yourself
which brings you to the other side of nothing.
You go to the other side of nothing
and you are held by the hand of the absolute.
You see yourself as the absolute
so you have no more insistence of self.
You can speak of the self as no self
when you sit in the absolute.

Your sitting still is like a person who just shot an arrow.
A moment later the result is there.
What you know, the only thing you know
is the sense that the arrow is moving all right.
It has left your realm but you sense it is running well.
The stillness in sitting is like that.
You flip to the other side of nothing,
where you discover everyone is waiting for you already




. ~ Kobun Chino

hymn to time

Time says “Let there be”
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.

And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats’ flickering dance.
And the seas’ expanse.
And death, and chance.

Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.

Time is being and being
time, it is all one thing,
the shining, the seeing,
the dark abounding.

~   Ursula K. Le Guin

no such thing

contemplation is not trance or ecstasy
not emotional fire and sweetness that come with religious exaltation
not enthusiasm, not the sense of being "seized" by an elemental force
and swept into liberation by mystical frenzy.
contemplation is no pain-killer.

In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing
that he no longer knows what God is;
this is a great gain,
because "God is not a what,"
not a "thing."

There is "no such thing" as God
because God is neither a "what" or a "thing"
but a pure "Who,"
the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs
into awareness.

~ Thomas Merton
from New Seed of Contemplation

sketch by the author

the lesson of the falling leaves

the leaves believe

such letting go is love

such love is faith

such faith is grace

such grace is god.

i agree with the leaves.

~ Lucille Clifton

outside ourselves

When we live superficially … we are always outside ourselves, never quite ‘with’ ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions … we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives.



~ Thomas Merton
from Love and Living
art by Picasso
with thanks to louie, louie

the heart's value

On God's pathway

there are two Ka'bas.

One is the Ka'ba you can see;

the other, the Ka'ba of the heart.

As much as you can,

make pilgrimage to the heart -

The heart's value

is greater

than a thousands Ka'bas.

~ Awhad al-Din Kirmani

from Love's Alchemy

translations by David and Sabrineh Fideler

Kneeling "Chinese" Man, 13th-14th centuries. 

Terracotta, Brooklyn Museum

it’s the dream

It’s that dream that we carry with us

that something wonderful will happen,

that it has to happen,

that time will open,

that the heart will open,

that doors will open,

that the mountains will open,

that wells will leap up,

that the dream will open,

that one morning we’ll slip in

to a harbor that we've never known.

~ Olav H. Hauge

translated by Robert Bly

art by klimt

the sound of the rain needs no translation

I had a discussion with a great master in Japan, and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, "That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen, you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.

~ Alan Watts

meditation on how

there's no 

figuring out how 

to live life 

there is only 

the living of life 

those who 

figure out how 

end up learning 

to forget all hows 

in order to live again

.

~ Benjamin Dean

from Short Zen Poems, Koans

dispair and humility

Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love ... 

It is reached when one deliberately turns his back on all help

 from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost. 

In every man there is hidden some root of despair

 because in every man there is pride that vegetates and springs weeds

 and rank flowers of self-pity as soon as our own resources fail us. . . . 

But a man who is truly humble cannot despair, 

because in the humble man there is no longer any such thing

 as self-pity.

Humility, therefore, is absolutely necessary 

if man is to avoid acting like a baby all his life. 

To grow up means, in fact, to become humble,

 to throw away the illusion that I am at the center

 of everything and that other people only exist 

to provide me with comfort and pleasure…





~ Thomas Merton
from Seeds of Contemplation
with thanks to louie, louie
art by van gogh

our essential nature -

~ Rupert Spira

I see my beauty in you

~ Rumi

version by Coleman Barks

be helpless and completely poor

Being humble is right for you now.
Don't thrash around showing your strength.

You're naked in the bee-house!
It doesn't matter how powerful
your arms and legs are.

To God, that is more of a lie
than your weakness is.

In his doorway your prestige
and your physical energy are just dust
on your face. Be helpless
and completely poor.

And don't try to meet his eye!
That's like signing a paper
that honors yourself.

If you can take care of things, do so!
But when you're living at home with God,
you neither sew the world together
with desires nor tear it apart
with disappointments.

In that place existence itself
is illusion. All that is, is one.

~ Hakim Sanai

English version by Coleman Barks
shoes by Van Gogh

 with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

the blind old man

I don't know why so much sweetness hovers around us.

Nor why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoons,

Nor why the earth mutters so much about its children.

We'll never know why the snow falls through the night,

Nor how the heron stretches her long legs,

Nor why we feel so abandoned in the morning.

We have never understood how birds manage to fly,

Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams,

Nor how heaven and earth can appear in a poem.

We don't know why the rain falls so long.

The ditchdigger turns up one shovel after another.

The herons go on stitching the heavens together.

We've never heard about the day we were conceived

Nor the doctor who helped us to be born,

Nor that blind old man who decides when we will die.

It's hard to understand why the sun rises,

And why our children are mostly fond of us,

And why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoon.

~  Robert Bly

 from Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey

on good and evil

.

And one of the elders of the city said, Speak to us of Good and Evil.
And he answered:
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.

You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, "Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance."
For the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.

You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,
Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose.
And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.

You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.
But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, "Wherefore are you slow and halting?"
For the truly good ask not the naked, "Where is your garment?" nor the houseless, "What has befallen your house?"

~ Kahlil Gibran

(excerpt from: The Prophet )

.

beauty and ugliness

When people see things as beautiful,

ugliness is created.

When people see things as good,

evil is created.

Being and non-being produce each other.

Difficult and easy complement each other.

Long and short define each other.

High and low oppose each other.

Fore and aft follow each other.

Therefore the Master

can act without doing anything

and teach without saying a word.

Things come her way and she does not stop them;

things leave and she lets them go.

She has without possessing,

and acts without any expectations.

When her work is done, she takes no credit.

That is why it will last forever.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h.mcdonald

art by Ray Kovalio

what draws you?

There are two types on the path, those

who come against their will, the blindly religious,

and those who obey out of love.

The former have ulterior motives.

they want the midwife near because she gives them milk.

The others love the beauty of the nurse.

The former memorize the prooftexts of conformity

and repeat them. The latter disappear

into whatever draws them to God.

Both are drawn from the source.

Any motion is from the mover.

Any love from the beloved.

~ Rumi

from Rumi - The Book of Love

translations by Coleman Barks

 

sacrificed

Not until a person dissolves, can

he or she know what union is

There is a descent into emptiness.

A lie will not change to truth

with just talking about it.

***

Longing is the core of mystery

Longing itself brings the cure.

The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,

and what you want to happen

in time, sacrificed.

~ Rumi

from The Soul of Rumi

translations by Coleman Barks

forget

Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.

The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.

Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.

The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they were.
You stand at the threshold mute. 

By Czeslaw Milosz

version by Robert Hass

compassion and kinship

~ Fr. Gregory Boyle

when you're broken open

Dance, when you're broken open.

Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of fighting.

Dance in your blood.

Dance, when you're perfectly free.

I have lived on the lip

of insanity, wanting to know reasons,

knocking on a door.  It opens.

I've been knocking from the inside!

Something opens our wings.  Something

makes boredom and hurt disappear.

Someone fills the cup in front of us.

We taste only sacredness.

No better love than love with no object,

no more satisfying work than work with no purpose.

If you could give up tricks and cleverness,

that would be the cleverest trick!

Some nights stay up till dawn,

as the moon sometimes does for the sun.

Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way

of a well, then lifted out into light.

~ Rumi

.

St. Francis and the sow

.

The bud

stands for all things,

even those things that don't flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as St. Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of

the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking

and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

~ Galway Kinnell

epiphany

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race ... there is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. 

I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all of the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed...

~ Thomas Merton

from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

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