Wednesday, February 27, 2019

bad people








A man told me once that all the bad people
were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails
you need; they are really claws, and we know
claws. The sharks - what about them?
They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced men
in black coats who chase you for hours
in dreams - that's the only way to get you
to the shore. Sometimes those hard women
who abandon you get you to say, "You."
A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed.
It doesn't move on its own. Sometimes it takes
a lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.
Then they blow across three or four States.
This man told me that things work together.
Bad handwriting sometimes leads to new ideas;
and a careless god - who refuses to let people
eat from the Tree of Knowledge - can lead
to books, and eventually to us. We write
poems with lies in them, but they help a little.




~  Robert Bly
Morning Poems





away from the restless mind







By intentionally quieting our restless minds and calling a temporary
halt to the random noise - inner and outer - to which we are subject,
we create an environment conducive to the manifestation of silence.
Welling up from within, this silence subtly engulfs us, drowning out
all the noise of existence.


When constantly engaged at the forefront of our minds, our awareness
restlessly flutters about from thought to thought, sensation to
sensation, thus pushing out silence. The effort required to break
through the surface waves of the mind forges an inward path
to the deepest levels of silence. When deliberately sustained....this
inner drilling displaces the obfuscatory debris that clutters the mind
with a matrix of noise. When all mental ruminations are at last
exhausted, genuine silence emerges.


But, many prefer the comfort of noise, the bustling of crowds, the
constant engagement of new thoughts and interesting repartee.
To embrace silence means splicing off a certain arena of the
familiar and venturing into uncharted territories. While one
may fruitfully participate in communal spiritual activities, quite
often the deeper stages of this voyage are undertaken by oneself.
To keep the mind occupied with external concerns is to point the
inner compass in an outward direction. This is the most subtle trap
to which the feeble mind continually succumbs. For to interact
constantly with the objects of the senses is to eclipse entirely the
realm of silence, which is first experienced within. When
repeatedly accessed, the decibel level of true silence will deafen
the resolute mystic.


Ever elusive yet all pervading, silence is known by those who take
the leap. The adventuresome hiker seeks areas untrampled by the
masses. The successful inner voyager treks to the precipice, and
then, having encountered the Unknowable, brazenly discards map and
compass and boldly treads onward. The yearning heart echoes the
cry that seized the Psalmist:
"Be still and know that I am God." 




John Roger Barrie
Excerpt from Parabola
with thanks to Mystic Meandering
 
 
 

Sunday, February 24, 2019

sky inside you








It is a strange awakening to find the sky inside you
and beneath you
and above you
and all around you
so that your spirit is one with the sky,
and all is positive night.




~ Thomas Merton
from  Sign of Jonas



buried in the grave of custom








In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead. It is grateful to make one’s way through this latest generation as through dewy grass. Men are as innocent as the morning to the unsuspicious… I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead un-kind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but they're executors.

Herein is the tragedy; that men doing outrage to their proper natures, even those called wise and good, lend themselves to perform the office of inferior and brutal ones. Hence come war and slavery in; and what else may not come in by this opening? But certainly there are modes by which a man may put bread into his mouth which will not prejudice him as a companion and neighbor.

All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man’s life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.




~ Henry Davi
d Thoreau
from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
with thanks to brainpickings 


Friday, February 22, 2019

that is my medicine


.
.



When the wind blows
that is my medicine

When it rains
that is my medicine

When it hails
that is my medicine

When it becomes clear after a storm
that is my medicine


.
~ Holy Woman Poem


.

Thursday, February 21, 2019

teachings









~  Richard Rohr



every pore









Love came and emptied me of self,
every vein and every pore,
made into a container to be filled by the Beloved.
Of me, only a name is left,
the rest is You my Friend, my Beloved.



~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir
 



nonverbal articulation








Music opens a path into the realm of silence. Music reveals the human soul in stark “nakedness,” as it were, without the customary linguistic draperies.

The nature of music variously [has] been understood … as nonverbal articulation of weal and woe, as wordless expression of man’s intrinsic dynamism of self-realization, a process understood as man’s journey toward ethical personhood, as the manifestation of man’s will in its aspects, as love.

Music articulates the inner dynamism of man’s existential self, which is music’s “prime matter” (so to speak), and both share a particular characteristic — both move in time.

Since music articulates the immediacy of man’s basic existential dynamism in an immediate way, the listener as well is addressed and challenged on that profound level where man’s self-realization takes place. In this existential depth of the listener, far below the level of expressible judgments, there echoes — in identical immediacy — the same vibration articulated in the audible music.

We now realize why and to what extent music plays a role in man’s formation and perfection… beyond any conscious efforts toward formation, teaching, or education.


~ Josef Pieper
with thanks to Brain Pickings



a rainy night





A steady stream of almost silent rain
drops on every roof and windowsill
and stretches like a veil
deep over the darkness of the land.
It trickles and tumbles in the wind
with no movement of its own and yet alive.

The fields draw near the clouds.
Even heaven bows to the solid ground.
A rhythmic, subtle song sates the space,
swells, sways, and soaks the night in sorrow
as if a lone violin were delving deep
into dark, secret yearnings
transforming fiery torment into tone
while touching here and there a homeless heart,
which found no words
for its deep longings.

What neither words nor music could express
the wind and rain intone with quiet strength.
They fill the rainy night with a tender lullaby
and the steady rhythms of this song
sustain and cradle and appease
all unheard struggles, all unhealed pain.





~ Hermann Hesse
from Seasons of the Soul
art by Utamaro




Wednesday, February 20, 2019

clearer and clearer








The Chinese and the Greeks were arguing as to who were the better artists.

The King said, "We'll settle this matter with a debate."

This Chinese began talking,
but the Greeks wouldn't say anything.
They left.

The Chinese suggested then that they each be given a room to work 
on with their artistry, two rooms facing each other and divided by a curtain. 

The Chinese asked the King for a hundred colors, all the variations,
and each morning they came to where the dyes were kept and took them all.

The Greeks took no colors.
"They are not part of our work."

They went to their room and began cleaning and polishing the walls.
All day every day they made those walls as pure and clear as an open sky.

There is a way that leads from all-colors to colorlessness.
Know that the magnificent variety of the clouds and the weather comes
from the total simplicity of the sun and the moon.

The Chinese finished,and they were so happy.
They beat the drums in the joy of completion.

The King entered their room, astonished by the gorgeous color and detail.

The Greeks then pulled the curtain dividing the rooms.
The Chinese figures and images shimmeringly reflected
on the clear Greek walls.  They lived there, even more
beautifully, and always changing in the light.

The Greek art is the Sufi way.
They don't study books of philosophical thought.

They make their loving clearer and clearer.
No wantings, no anger. In that purity
they receive and reflect the images of every moment, 
from here, from the stars, from the void.

They take them in
as though they were seeing
with the Lighted Clarity
that sees them.



~ Rumi
from Mathnawi, 1, 3462-3485, 3499
version by Coleman Barks

 

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Tao Te Ching







 
 
~ Lao Tzu

memories






The country seems bigger, for you can see through the bare trees. There are times when the woods is absolutely still and quiet. The house holds warmth. A wet snow comes in the night and covers the ground and clings to the trees, making the whole world white. For a while in the morning the world is perfect and beautiful. You think you will never forget.

You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can't remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence.

But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive.




~ Wendell Berry




let it go




let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear

so comes love



~ e.e. cummings
photo by ansel adams



Saturday, February 16, 2019

peace in schools









~ Caverly Morgan

Friday, February 15, 2019

if I should fall behind








~ Bruce Springsteen

Saturday, February 9, 2019

love is active


.

love never exists 
as a fact 

it is a verb 
and you can do 
all things 
with or without it 

it is nature 
in action 
being true 
to itself 
without even 
a thought



~ Benjamin Dean
.

from the beginning






From the beginning
the flying birds have left
no footprints on the blue sky



~ Miso Soseki
translated by W.S. Merwin


Muso Soseki first practiced Zen under the guidance of a Chinese teacher but he "failed miserably." He later studied with the Japanese Zen master Koho Kennichi and soon began to unfold into profound awakening, receiving inka or certification of enlightenment in 1339.

Muso Soseki went on to teach large numbers of students and, like many Zen practitioners, write poetry. He also became an advisor to the first Ashikaga Shogun and helped to re-establish trade and communications between Japan and China.

Soseki is perhaps most famous, however, for his profound influence in the art of Zen gardening as spaces to cultivate awareness. 

comments from Poetry Chaikhana


Thursday, February 7, 2019

building cages or dropping keys





No photo description available.


The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He Knows.

While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,

Keeps dropping
keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners




~ Hafiz


Wednesday, February 6, 2019

co-inherence







The chooser's happiness lies in his congruence with the chosen,
The peace of iron filings, obedient to the forces of the magnetic field -
Calm is the soul that is emptied of all self,
In the eternal moment of co-inherence.
A happiness within you - but not yours.



~ Dag Hammarskjold
from Markings

standing deer





As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.
As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.
Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.
Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.
Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry. I knew no better.
A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.



~ Jane Hirschfield 
from The Lives of the Heart
 
 

Metempsychosis






Some stories last many centuries,
others only a moment.
All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,
grow distant and more beautiful with salt.

Yet even today, to look at a tree
and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed.

There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.

Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door,
ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle.

Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket
gives off --
the immeasurable's continuous singing,
before it goes back into story and feeling.

In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots.
Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another.

I would like to join that stilted transmigration,
to feel my own skin vertical as theirs:
an ant-road, a highway for beetles.

I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart.
To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch,
and then keep walking, unimaginably further.



~ Jane Hirshfieldfrom
from Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems


photo of the Socratea exorrhiza or walking palm
which can move itself up to about a meter per year
 
 
 

song of the soul







In the depth of my Soul there is-
A wordless song-a song that lives
In the seed of my heart.
It refuses to melt with ink
On parchment; it engulfs my affection
In a transparent cloak and flows,
But not upon my lips.

How can I sing it? I fear it may
Mingle with earthly ether;
To whom shall I sing it? It dwells
In the house of my soul, in fear of harsh ears.

When I look into my inner eyes
I see the shadow of its shadow;
When I touch my fingertips
I feel its vibrations.

The deeds of my hands heed its
Presence as a lake must reflect
The glittering stars; my tears
Reveal it, as bright drops of dew
reveal the secret of a withering rose.

It is a song composed by contemplation,
And published by silence,
And shunned by clamor,
And folded by truth,
And repeated by dreams,
And understood by love,
And hidden by awakening
And sung by the soul.

It is the song of love;
What Cain or Esau could sing it?
It is more fragrant than jasmine;
What voice could enslave it?

It is heart-bound, as a virgin’s secret;
What string could quiver it?
Who dares unite the roar of the sea
And the singing of the nightingale?
Who dares compare the shrieking tempest
To the sigh of an infant?
Who dares speak aloud the words
Intended for the heart to speak?
What human dares sing in voice
The song of God?




~ Kahlil Gibran



Monday, February 4, 2019

the black figure below the boat





We hear phrases: "He made me do it."
"I never wanted that."  The boy's boat gets
Pushed out on the sea, and before long the tidal
Currents guide it from beneath.  He goes to sleep.

He meets a woman, and marries her even though
He doesn't want to.  He says, "It was the current."
But some tiny black figure swims below the boat,
Pushing it.  This man or god works all night.

Then what?  Months go by, years, twenty years.
A lot of water.  The boat hits gravel.
It's an island - the kind where giants live.
"Don't say you didn't want it.  Just get ready."



~ Robert Bly
from Morning Poems






Sunday, February 3, 2019

absent as "you"






Whenever you are absent as "you,"
You are present as I.
So you may say "My absence as 'me' is My presence as I."

Of course I am always present as I,
but when I appear to be present as "you" (or as "me")
I seem to be absent,
i.e. My presence appears to be an absence.

Also you may say "My absence as 'that' (which can be known)
is My presence as THIS" 
(about which there cannot be anything to know).

If one were to think it,
apperceive it, 
understand it, even occasionally?...




~ Wei Wu Wei
from Posthumous Pieces

.

Friday, February 1, 2019

seeing "the deep world"





Leonid Afremov


There is a portion of reality which is offered to us without our making any special effort beyond opening our eyes and ears, and this we call the world of pure impressions.  But there is another world built of structures of impressions, which, though hidden, is none the less real.  If this other world is to exist for us, we need to open something more than our physical eyes, and to undertake a greater kind of effort.  But the measure of our effort neither confers any reality on that world, nor takes it away.  The deep world is as clear as the surface one, only it asks more of us.



~ Jose Ortega y Gasset
from Meditations of Quixote, 1914
adapted from a translation by J.W. Jeaffreson





Picasso



These Things whose essential life you want to express first ask you, "Are you free? Are you prepared to devote all your love to me...?"  And if the Thing sees that you are otherwise occupied with even a particle of your interest, it shuts itself off; it may perhaps give you some slight sign of friendship, a word or a nod, but it will never give you its heart, entrust you with its patient being, its sweet sidereal constancy, which makes it so like the constellations in the sky.  In order for a Thing to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time as the only one that exists, as the one and only phenomenon which, through your laborious and exclusive love, is now placed at the center of the universe, and which, in that incomparable place, is on that day attended by angels.



~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from a letter sent to Baladine Klossowska
translation by Stephen Mitchell


both excerpts found in the essay Poetry and the Mind of Indirection
by Jane Hirshfield



hope is as hollow as fear




Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
Your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
You will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
That arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
What do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
Then you can care for all things.



burning

                                       






What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the
soul and the outside world. 


Where passion dominates, that does not
signify the presence of greater desire and ambition, but rather the
misdirection of these qualities toward an isolated and false goal, with
a consequent tension and sultriness in the atmosphere. Those who direct
the maximum force of their desires toward the centre, toward true being,
toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the
flame of their fervor cannot always be seen. In argument, for example,
they will not shout and wave their arms. But I assure you, they are
nevertheless burning with subdued fires.




~ Hermann Hesse
from The Glass Bead Game 


Thursday, January 31, 2019

our broken love









One of the great powers of love is balance;
it helps us move toward transfiguration.
When two people come together, an ancient circle closes between them.
They also come to each other not with empty hands,
but with hands full of gifts for each other.
Often these are wounded gifts;
this awakens the dimension of healing within love.
When you really love someone,
you shine the light of your soul on the beloved.
We know from nature that sunlight brings everything to growth.
It you look at flowers early on a spring morning,
they are all closed.
When the light of the sun catches them,
they trustingly open out and give themselves to the new light.


A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness 
for the love that has awakened in them. When you feel love for your beloved 
and the beloved’s love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth 
of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved. 
 
Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate, 
to those who are starving, to those who are trapped in prison,
 in hospitals, and into all the brutal terrains of bleak and tormented lives. 
 
When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, 
it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer. . . .
 
 When there is love in your life, you should share it spiritually 
with those who are pushed to the very edge of life. 
 
There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness
 from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, 
it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times.





~ John O'Donohue
from Anam Cara 


Friday, January 25, 2019

one winter afternoon








one winter afternoon

(at the magical hour
when is becomes if) 

a bespangled clown
standing on eighth street
handed me a flower. 

Nobody,it’s safe
to say,observed him but 

myself,and why?because 

without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last) 

mostpeople fear most:
a mystery for which i’ve
no word except alive 

—that is,completely alert
and miraculously whole; 

with not merely a mind and a heart 

but unquestionably a soul-
by no means funereally hilarious 

(or otherwise democratic)
but essentially poetic
or ethereally serious: 

a fine not a coarse clown
(no mob, but a person) 

and while never saying a word 

who was anything but dumb;
since the silence of him 

self sang like a bird.
Mostpeople have been heard
screaming for international 

measures that render hell rational
—i thank heaven somebody’s crazy 

enough to give me a daisy 




~ E. E. Cummings
 art by Chagall





Thursday, January 24, 2019

"love me."





Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a
full moon in each eye that is 
always saying,

With that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in 
this world is
dying to 
hear?



~  Hafiz


Wednesday, January 23, 2019

finding out what love is



.




Love is the unknowable. It can be realized only when the known is understood and transcended. Only when the mind is free of the known, then only there will be love. 

So, we must approach love negatively, not positively.
What is love to most of us? With us, when we love, in it there is possessiveness, dominance, or subservience. From this possession arises jealously and fear of loss, and we legalize this possessive instinct. From possessiveness arise jealousy and the innumerable conflicts with which each one is familiar. Possessiveness, then, is not love. Nor is love sentimental. To be sentimental, to be emotional, excludes love.Sensitivity and emotions are merely sensations.

. . . Love alone can transform insanity, confusion, and strife. No system, no theory of the left or of the right can bring peace and happiness to man. Where there is love, there is no possessiveness, no envy; there is mercy and compassion, not in theory, but actually for your wife and for your children, for your neighbor and for your servant. . . . Love alone can bring about mercy and beauty, order and peace. There is love with its blessing when "you" cease to be.





~ J. Krishnamurti
from The Book of Life