my friend

My friend, I am not what I seem. 

Seeming is but a garment I wear - 

a care-worn garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.

The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, 

and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.

When thou sayest, "The wind bloweth eastward,"  

I say, "Aye it doth blow eastward";  

for I would not have thee know that my mind doth not dwell upon the wind but upon the sea.

Thou canst not understand my seafaring thoughts, 

nor would I have thee understand.  

I would be at sea alone.

When it is day with thee, my friend, it is night with me; 

yet even then I speak of the noontide that dances upon the hills 

and of the purple shadow that steals its way across the valley;

 for thou canst not hear the songs of my darkness nor see my wings beating against the stars - 

and I fain would not have thee hear or see.  

I would be with night alone.

When thou ascendest to thy Heaven I descend to my Hell 

- even then thou callest to me across the unbridgeable gulf, " My companion, my comrade," 

- for I would not have thee see my Hell.  

The flame would burn thy eyesight and the smoke would crowd thy nostrils.  

And I love my Hell too well to have thee visit it.  

I would be in Hell alone.

Thou lovest Truth and Beauty and Righteousness; 

and I for thy sake say it is well and seemly to love these things.  

But in my heart I laugh at thy love.  

Yet I would not have thee see my laughter.  

I would laugh alone.

My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect 

- and I, too, speak with thee wisely and cautiously.  

And yet I am mad.  But I mask my madness. 

I would be mad alone.

My friend, thou art not my friend, 

but how shall I make thee understand?  

My path is not thy path, 

yet together we walk, hand in hand.

~  Kahlil Gibran

from Poems Parables and Drawings

.

singing image of fire

A hand moves, and the fire's whirling takes different shapes:

All things change when we do.

The first word, "Ah," blossoms into all others.

Each of them true.

~ Kukai (774-835)

translation by Jane Hirshfield

to be gentle

It is Spring in the mountains.

I come alone seeking you.

The sound of chopping wood echoes

Between the silent peaks.

The streams are still icy.

There is snow on the trail.

At sunset I reach your grove

In the stony mountain pass.

You want nothing, although at night

You can see the aura of gold

And silver ore all around you.

You have learned to be gentle

As the mountain deer you have tamed.

The way back forgotten, hidden

Away, I become like you,

An empty boat, floating, adrift.

~  Tu Fu (712-770)

translation by Kenneth Rexroth

allowing heartbreak allows healing

There come a point where it is more important to just let our heart break

 and get on with it than to keep trying to figure out why 

we are so often in pain or who's at fault and what sort of punishment they deserve.  

It takes a lot of work to get healed, to merge the heart and the disheartened.  

But even in the least observation, it becomes clear that no one needs any excuse

 for being in so much pain.  Wherever there is expectation or broken hope,

 disappointment or loss, there is the stuff of Shakespearean malady.

Healing is entering, with mercy and awareness, 

into those areas of ourselves we have withdrawn from with fear

 and a sense of helplessness. Healing is reoccupying those parts of ourselves

 that we abandoned because of mental or physical pain.

 Healing is replacing our merciless reactions with a merciful response.

Without mercy, we don't have a chance.  

And that chance is the breadth of heart that is our birthright.

~ Stephen Levine

from Untended Sorrow

art by Van Gogh

 

a room

.

A room does not turn its back on grief.

Anger does not excite it.

Before desire, it neither responds

nor draws back in fear.

Without changing expression,

it takes

and gives back;

not a tuft in the mattress alters.

Windowsills evenly welcome

both heat and cold.

Radiators speak or fall silent as they must.

Doors are not equivocal,

floorboards do not hesitate or startle.

Impatience does not stir the curtains,

a bed is neither irritable nor rapacious.

Whatever disquiet we sense in a room

we have brought there.

And so I instruct my ribs each morning,

pointing to hinge and plaster and wood -

You are matter, as they are.

See how perfectly it can be done.

Hold, one day more, what is asked.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart
art by Pierre Bonnard

The gate of heaven is everywhere.

~ Thomas Merton

I worried

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers 

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn 

as it was taught, and if not how shall 

I correct it? 

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, 

can I do better? 

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows 

can do it and I am, well, 

hopeless. 

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it, 

am I going to get rheumatism, 

lockjaw, dementia? 

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. 

And gave it up. And took my old body 

and went out into the morning, 

and sang.

~ Mary Oliver

from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

among trees

.

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.





~ Wendell Berry

 photo by Kathleen Connally

 

 

 

.

Tolstoy on kindness

The kinder and the more thoughtful a person is, 

the more kindness he can find in other people.

Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things

 become clear, difficult things become easy, 

and dull things become cheerful.

You should respond with kindness toward evil done to you, 

and you will destroy in an evil person that pleasure which he derives from evil.

Kindness is for your soul as health

 is for your body: you do not notice it when you have it.

Love is real only when a person can sacrifice himself 

for another person. Only when a person forgets himself for the sake of another,

 and lives for another creature, only this kind of love can be called true love,

 and only in this love do we see the blessing and reward of life. 

This is the foundation of the world.

Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, 

more beautiful than perpetual kindness.

 ~ Leo Tolstoy

from A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish 

the Soul, Written and Selected from the World's Sacred Texts

 

canned goods

~ Greg Brown

floating on an idea of me

fall into the breath,

stilled mind sank into

a bright bubble, sinking

down through the sea,

through ocean bottom,

through the minds floor.

no control

nothing here of my own

floating on the idea of me

just awareness observing

thoughts, ideas, perceptions

appearing and disappearing

on the surface of

an imagined thinker

free from entanglement

watching the habitual trinkets

the call and response of senses

immersed within absolute stillness

beyond name and form

a Pure Land

 of our inherent nature

 

 ~ adapted form Becoming Kuan Yin

by Stephen Levine

 

prioritizing well-being

~ Nicola Sturgeon 

Becoming Kuan Yin - The evolution of Compassion

the Chinese character for "Benevolence."  
It is the character that represent "person" along with that of the number "2."  
Recognizing that when 2 are present, benevolence is a natural occurrence.  
Benevolence eases duality. It is one of the Maha Viharas,
 great abodes of the true heart.

To know Kuan Yin we need to let go of all that is unloved, 
judged, forged from old mind clingings. She is the unconditional love 
behind the conditioned mind.
Some ancient force is called forth in surrendering
 hindrance after hindrance of our secret wretchedness 
and obvious suffering, to yield to the light of our Original Heart.



~ Stephen Levine

millennium blessing

There is a grace approaching

that we shun as much as death,

it is the completion of our birth.

It does not come in time,

but in timelessness

when the mind sinks into the heart

and we remember.

It is an insistent grace that draws us

to the edge and beckons us surrender

safe territory and enter our enormity.

We know we must pass

beyond knowing

and fear the shedding.

But we are pulled upward

none-the-less

through forgotten ghosts

and unexpected angels,

luminous.

And there is nothing left to say

but we are That.

And that is what we sing about.

~ Stephen Levine

from Breaking the Drought, Visions of Grace

from so simple a beginning

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, 

clothed with many plants of many kinds, 

with birds singing on the bushes,

 insects flitting about and worms crawling

 through the damp earth, 

and to reflect that these forms, so different

 yet so dependent on each other in so complex a manner,

 have all been produced by simple laws.There is grandeur in this

 view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed

 by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, 

whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity,

 from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful 

and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.





Charles Darwin

from On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

 

 

 

in this world of yes

love is a place
through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places


yes is a world
in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds




e.e.cummings

symbols

Traditionally, the value of the symbol is precisely in its apparent uselessness

 as a means of simple communication.  It is ordered toward communion,

 not to communication. Because it is not an efficient mode of communicating

 information, the symbol can achieve a higher purpose, beyond 

cause and effect. Instead of establishing a new contact by a meeting of minds

 in the sharing of news, the symbol tells nothing new:

 it revives our awareness of what we already know,

 and deepens our awareness. What is "new" in the symbol is the ever new

 discovery of a new depth and a new actuality in what is and always has been.

.The function of the symbol is to manifest a union that already exists

 but is not fully realized.  The symbol awakens awareness or restores it.  

Therefore it does not aim at communication but at communion. 

 Communion is the awareness of participation in an ontological reality: 

in the mystery of being, of human love, of redemptive mystery, 

of contemplative truth,

~ Thomas Merton 

from Merton's Palace of Nowhere 

by James Finley

the conversation

A woman moves close:

there is something she wants to say.

The currents take you one direction, her another.

All night you are aware of her presence,

aware of the conversation that did not happen.

Inside it are mountains, birds, a wide river,

a few sparse-leaved trees.

On the river, a wooden boat putters.

On its deck, a spider washes its face.

Years from now, the boat will reach a port by the sea,

and the generations of spider descendants upon it

will look out, from their nearsighted, eightfold eyes,

at something unanswered.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

a history

Someone first thought it:

an ox gelded, tamed, harnessed to a plow.

Then someone realized the wooden yoke could hold two.

After that, mere power of multiplication.

Railroads, airplanes, factory ships canning salmon.

~ Jane Hirshfield

wind and water and stone

.

The water hollowed the stone,

the wind dispersed the water,

the stone stopped the wind.

Water and wind and stone.

The wind sculpted the stone,

the stone is a cup of water,

The water runs off and is wind.

Stone and wind and water.

The wind sings in its turnings,

the water murmurs as it goes,

the motionless stone is quiet.

Wind and water and stone.

One is the other and is neither:

among their empty names

they pass and disappear,

water and stone and wind. 

~ Octavio Paz

(Translated by Mark Strand, 

The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987)

wooden

In the presence of supple

goodness, some people

grow less flexible,

experiencing a woodenness

they wouldn't have thought possible.

It is as strange and paradoxical

as the combined suffering

of Pinocchio and Geppetto

if Pinocchio had turned and said,

I can't be human after all.

~ Kay Ryan

from The Best of It

I come to you without me

I come to you without me, come to me without you.
Self is the thorn in the sole of the soul.
Merge with others,
If you stay in self, you are a grain, you are a drop,
If you merge with others, you are an ocean, you are a mine.

~ Rumi
art by Van Gogh

among the trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple”, they say,
“and you too have come into the world to do this,
to go easy, to be filled with light , and to shine.”





~ Mary Oliver

living it

First and foremost, you must listen to your own rhythm, and

 try to live in accordance with it. Be attentive to what emerges

 from deep down. Often, our actions are only imitations, 

fulfillment of an assumption of duty, or a reflection

 of what we believe a human being “should” be.

 

But the only certainty we may have about our life 

and our deeds can only spring from the very depth of our being.

I know that a new and kinder day will come,

 and I would so much like to live on, 

if only to express all the love I carry within me. 

 

And there is only one way of preparing the new age,

 by living it even now in our hearts.

 

We must be willing to act like a balm for all wounds.

~ Etty Hillesum

 

 

love frees

All day long a little burro labors, sometimes

with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries

about things that bother only

burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting

than physical labor.

Once in a while a kind monk comes

to her stable and brings

a pear, but more

than that,

he looks into the burros eyes and touches her ears

and for a few seconds the burro is free

and even seems to laugh,

because love does

that.

Love frees.

~ Meister Eckhart

art by: Stephen Filarsky

sometimes

.

Water is sometimes sharp and sometimes strong,
sometimes acid and sometimes bitter,
sometimes sweet and sometimes thick or thin,
sometimes it is seen bringing hurt or pestilence,
sometime health-giving, sometimes poisonous.

It suffers change into as many natures as
are the different places through which it passes.

And as the mirror changes with the colour of its subject,
so it alters with the nature of the place,
becoming noisome, laxative, astringent, sulfurous, salty,
incarnadined, mournful, raging, angry, red, yellow,
green, black, blue, greasy, fat or slim.

Sometimes it starts a conflagration,
sometimes it extinguishes one;
is warm and is cold, carries away or sets down,
hollows out or builds up, tears or establishes,
fills or empties, raises itself or burrows down,
speeds or is still;

is the cause at times of life or death, or increase or privation,
nourishes at times and at others does the contrary;
at times has a tang, at times is without savor,
sometimes submerging the valleys with great floods.

In time and with water, everything changes.






~ Leonardo da Vinci
(art by Leonardo, The Last Supper, the face of John)

.

letters from God

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, 

And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, 

And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own 

funeral drest in his shroud, 

And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the 

earth, 

And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the 

learning of all times, 

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it 

may become a hero, 

And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d 

universe, 

And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed 

before a million universes. 

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God, 

For I who am curious about each am not curious about God, 

(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and 

about death.) 

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the 

least, 

Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. 

Why should I wish to see God better than this day? 

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment 

then, 

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the 

glass, 

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d 

by God’s name, 

And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go, 

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

~ Walt Whitman
photo by Edward Weston

last instruction

"Make of yourself a light" said the Buddha,

 before he died. I think of this 

every morning as the east begins to tear 

off its many clouds of darkness, 

to send up the first signal-a white fan 

streaked with pink and violet, even green. 

An old man, he lay down between two sala trees,

 and he might have said anything, 

knowing it was his final hour. The light burns upward,

 it thickens and settles over the fields. Around him,

 the villagers gathered and stretched forward to listen. 

Even before the sun itself hangs, disattached,

 in the blue air, I am touched everywhere

 by its ocean of yellow waves.

 No doubt he thought 

of everything that had happened in his difficult life. 

And then I feel the sun itself 

as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire- 

clearly I'm not needed, 

yet I feel myself turning into something 

of inexplicable value. Slowly, 

beneath the branches, he raised his head. 

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

~  Mary Oliver

motion

If you are the amber mare

I am the road of blood

If you are the first snow

I am he who lights the hearth of dawn

If you are the tower of night

I am the spike burning in your mind

If you are the morning tide

I am the first bird's cry

If you are the basket of oranges

I am the knife of the sun

If you are the stone altar

I am the sacrilegious hand

If you are the sleeping land

I am the green cane

If you are the wind's leap

I am the buried fire

If you are the water's mouth

I am the mouth of moss

If you are the forest of the clouds

I am the axe that parts it

If you are the profaned city

I am the rain of consecration

If you are the yellow mountain

I am the red arms of lichen

If you are the rising sun

I am the road of blood

~ Octavio Paz

translated by Eliot Weinberger, 

from Collected Poems 1957-1987