the finger pointing?

“What is essential is invisible to the eye" 
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The “thing in itself” (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors… It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities… A word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “leaf”: the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted — but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model… We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

from  Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche

art from  original watercolors for The Little Prince

 

For Martin Luther King

On hearing if Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination Thomas Merton wrote this poem:
April 4 1968 

On a rainy night
On a rainy night in April
When everybody ---
Said the minister

On a balcony
Of a hotel in Tennessee
"We come at once
Upstairs

On a night
On a rainy night in April
When the shot was fired
Said the minister

"I've come at once upstairs
and found him lying
On the balcony ... after... the tornado...he came at once upstairs

On a --- ---
he was our hope
and we found a tornado
said the minister.

And a well dreamed white ---
said the minister
Propped a telescopic storm

and he never
(the well-deemed minister of death)
ran
ran away

And on the balcony
Said the minister
found
even lovely dying.... after... the tornado

... after the tornado

... after... the tornado
... after... the tornado

~ Thomas Merton

with thanks to louie,louie

Merton's letter to Coretta Scott King

 

in my end is my beginning

In the Beginning of Beginnings was Void of Void, the

Nameless.

And in the Nameless was the One, without body, without

form.

This One - this Being in whom all find power to exist -

Is the Living.

From the Living, comes the Formless, the Undivided.

From the act of this Formless, come the Existents, each

according

To its inner principle.  This is Form. Here body embraces and

cherishes spirit.

The two work together as one, blending and manifesting their

Characters.  And this is Nature.

But he who obeys Nature returns through Form and Formless

to the Living,

And in the Living

Joins the unbegun Beginning.

The joining is Sameness.  The sameness is Void.  The Void is

infinite.

The bird opens its beak and sings its note

And then the beak comes together again in Silence.

So Nature and the Living meet together in Void.

Like the closing of the bird's beak

After its song.

Heaven and earth come together in the Unbegun,

And all is foolishness, all is unknown, all is like

The lights of an idiot, all is without mind!

To obey is to close the beak and fall into Unbeginning.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

art by picasso

into the unknown

There is a certain innocence about beginning, 

with its excitement and promise of something new.

 But this will emerge only through undertaking some voyage into the unknown. 

And no one can foretell what the unknown might yield. 

There are journeys we have begun that have brought us great inner riches and refinement; 

but we had to travel through dark valleys of difficulty and suffering.

 Had we known at the beginning what the journey would demand of us,

 we might never have set out. 

Yet the rewards and gifts became vital to who we are. 

Through the innocence of beginning we are often seduced into growth.

… When the heart is ready for a fresh beginning, 

unforeseen things can emerge. And in a sense, 

this is exactly what a beginning does. 

 

It is an opening for surprises.

 Surrounding the intention and the act of beginning,

 there are always exciting possibilities. … 

beginnings have their own mind, 

and they invite and unveil new gifts and arrivals in one’s life.

 

Beginnings are new horizons that want to be seen; … 

What is the new horizon in you that wants to be seen?

~ John O’Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

give up all questions except one

.

Give up all questions except one: 

'Who am I?' 

After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. 

The 'I am' is certain. 

The 'I am this' is not. 

Struggle to find out what you are in reality. 

To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. 

Discover all that you are not--

body, 

feelings, 

thoughts, 

time, space, 

this or that

--nothing, 

concrete or abstract, 

which you perceive can be you. 

The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. 

The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, 

the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj