freedom

Freedom is not following a river.
Freedom is following a river

...though, if you want to. 

It is deciding now by what happens now.
It is knowing that luck makes a difference.
No leader is free; no follower is free

 ...the rest of us can often be free.
Most of the world are living by
creeds too odd, chancy, and habit-forming

...to be worth arguing about by reason. 

If you are oppressed, wake up about
four in the morning: most places,
you can usually be free some of the time

..if you wake up before other people.

~ William Stafford

 from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems

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 the 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 way it is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

 

 

 

~ William Stafford 

the smile

Galen, the great physician, asked one of his assistants

to give him a certain medicine.

"Master, that medicine is for crazy people!

You're far from needing that!"

Galen: "Yesterday a madman turned and smiled at me,

did his eyebrows up and down, and touched my  sleeve.

He wouldn't have done that if he hadn't recognized 

in me someone congenial."

Anyone that feels drawn,

for however short a time, to anyone else,

those two share a common consciousness.

It's only in the grave that unlike beings associate.

A wise man once remarked, "I saw a crow and a stork

flying together, and I couldn't understand it,

until I investigated and found what they shared.

They were both lame."

~ Rumi

from Rumi's Little Book of Love and Laughter

version bu Coleman Barks

photo by Sean Thomas

what we can learn from water

~ Raymond Tang