can you

2nd century BC Ink-on-silk manuscript of the Tao Te Ching

Can you keep your soul in its body,
hold fast to the one,
and so learn to be whole?
Can you center your energy,
be soft, tender,
and so learn to be a baby?

Can you keep the deep water still and clear,
so it reflects without blurring?
Can you love people and run things,
and do so by not doing?

Opening, closing the Gate of Heaven,
can you be like a bird with her nestlings?
Piercing bright through the cosmos,
can you know by not knowing?

To give birth, to nourish,
to bear and not to own,
to act and not lay claim,
to lead and not to rule:
this is mysterious power.

~   Lao Tzu

 from Tao Te Ching

 version by Ursula K. Le Guin

with thanks to brain pickings

the single face

The world is no more than the Beloved's single face;

In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist.

Each place, each moment, sings its particular song of not-being and being.

Without reason, the clear glass equally mirrors wisdom and madness.

Those who claim knowledge are wrong; prayer just leads to trance;

Appearance and faith are mere lees in the Unknowing Wine.

Wherever the Footprint is found,

that handful of dust holds the oneness of worlds.

This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love

That the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light.

~ Ghalib

translated by Jane Hirshfield

from The Enlightened Heart,

An anthology of sacred poetry edited

by Stephen Mitchell

photo by eliot porter

skin around the organ

What we often forget is that thought is to be used
to correct life. It's not a way of life.

If you make thought the center of your life,
you're not going to live it.

So, what you have to do is be this kind of hysterical, emotional, vibrant creature
who lives at the top of his lungs for a lifetime and then
corrects around the edges so that he doesn't go insane
or drive his friends mad.

Thought is the skin around the organ.
The organ is full of blood and a beating heart,
a soul and the exaltation of being alive!




~ Ray Bradbury

the smoke of ideas

The full beauty of the mountain is not seen until 

you consent to the impossible paradox:

 it is... 

and is not.... 

When nothing more needs to be said,

 the smoke of ideas clears, 

the mountain is seen.

 ~ Thomas Merton
with thanks to louie,louie

how to lose power

~ Jean Vanier