possibilities

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.

I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

–Wislawa Szymborska

excerpt from Nothing Twice, 1997
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

 

 

 

to heal

Sakyamuni (Buddha) himself refused to answer speculative questions, 

and he would not permit abstract philosophical discussion.  

His doctrine was not a doctrine but a way of being in the world.  

His religion was not a set of beliefs and convictions or of rites and sacraments,

 but an opening to love.  

His philosophy was not a world view but a significant silence,

 in which the fracture implied by conceptual knowledge 

was allowed to heal and reality appeared again in its mysterious

 "suchness."

~ Thomas Merton

from Zen and the Birds of Appetite

 

no better love

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!

~ Rumi

from The Essential Rumi

translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

see yourself in the cruelest

Practice until you see yourself in the cruelest person on Earth,

 in the child starving, in the political prisoner. 

Continue until you recognize yourself in everyone in the supermarket,

 on the street corner, in a concentration camp, on a leaf, in a dewdrop. 

Meditate until you see yourself in a speck of dust in a distant galaxy. 

See and listen with the whole of your being. If you are fully present, 

the rain of Dharma will water the deepest seeds in your consciousness, 

and tomorrow, while you are washing the dishes or looking at the blue sky, 

that seed will spring forth, and love and understanding

 will appear as a beautiful flower.

~  Thich Nhat Hanh

with thanks to louie, louie 

vanishing

We are vanishing from the earth, yet I cannot think we are useless

or else Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of 

men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each.

~ Geronimo