below high cliffs - ten poems

1

Below high cliffs

I slash and I burn

there's vegetables and grain

to boil and steam

to satisfy the present

to brighten old age

looking at a tree in the yard

I count its falls and springs

2

Below high cliffs 

my companions are the ancients

having reached the source

here I rest

others of more mystic persuasion 

study koans to death

wait beside stumps for rabbits

notch boats to find lost swords

3

Below high cliffs

all day I see plants

no sign of people

yellow leaves in the wind

birds call at dusk from the valley

the mountain moon rises at night

a crane takes flight from a pine

and showers my robe with dew

4

Below high cliffs

tigers and snakes are my neighbors

once I forgot my mind

their natures suddenly became tame

people born in this world

all have something divine

mouths of teeth heads of hair

why can't they be kind

5

Below high cliffs

unaware of the source

wherever you turn is karma

chaos and confusion

in order to see the truth

look beyond your senses

it's always been this way

the spring flows all around you

6

Below high cliffs

serene in solitude

not visited by time

the mind creates the world

the window holds a setting moon

the stove contains a dying fire

pity the sleeping man

startled from his butterfly dream

7

Below high cliffs

a white-haired old man

his robe with no hem 

his pants with no lets

practicing zazen at night

working his fields by day

herein lies the Path

where else could it be

8

Below high cliffs

I face a thousand mountains

one sense finds the source

all six relax

white clouds drift

green water ripples

beyond movement and stillness

there's another world

9

Below high cliffs

I don't dress up by body

I eat roots and wear plants

my socks are hemp my shoes are sedge

dense bamboo shades my windows

thick moss covers the steps in front

desires die in the quiet

cares disappear it's so still

10

Below high cliffs

you eat and sleep your fill

indulge desire and lethargy

idle away the months and years

until old age and illness arrive

and a thousand pains afflict you

digging a well when you're thirsty

you endure heat in vain

~ Stonehouse

from: Book Two Gathas, "The Zen Works of Stonehouse"

by Red Pine

art by Huang Kung-wang

.

.

dew light

Now in the blessed days of more and less

when the news about time is that each day

there is less of it I know none of that

as I walk out through the early garden

only the day and I are here with no

before or after and the dew looks up.

without a number or a present age

~ W. S. Merwin

in every moment

.

No one imagines that a symphony 

is supposed to improve in quality

 as it goes along or that the whole

 object of playing it is to reach

 the finale. The point of music

 is discovered in every moment

 of playing and listening to it. 

 

It is the same I feel with the 

greater part of our lives 

and if we are unduly absorbed

 in improving them we may forget

 altogether to live them.





~ Alan Watts

 

 

 

love is every only

love is every only god

who spoke this earth so glad and big

even a thing all small and sad

man,may his mighty briefness dig

for love beginning means return

seas who could sing so deep and strong

one querying wave will whitely yearn

from each last shore and home come young

so truly perfectly the skies

by merciful love whispered were,

completes its brightness with your eyes

any illimitable star

~ e.e.cummings

to my teacher

.

An old grave hidden away at the foot of a deserted hill, 

Overrun with rank weeds growing unchecked year after year; 

There is no one left to tend the tomb, 

And only an occasional woodcutter passes by. 

Once I was his pupil, a youth with shaggy hair, 

Learning deeply from him by the Narrow River. 

One morning I set off on my solitary journey 

And the years passed between us in silence. 

Now I have returned to find him at rest here; 

How can I honor his departed spirit? 

I pour a dipper of pure water over his tombstone 

And offer a silent prayer. 

The sun suddenly disappears behind the hill 

And I’m enveloped by the roar of the wind in the pines. 

I try to pull myself away but cannot; 

A flood of tears soaks my sleeves.

~ Ryokan

art by Thomas Wood

near

When the soul leaves the body, it is no longer under the burden 
and control of space and time.  The soul is free; 
 distance and separation hinder it no more.  

The dead are our nearest neighbors; they are all around us. 
 Meister Eckhart was once asked, Where does the soul of a person go
 when the person dies?  He said, no place.  Where else would the soul be going?
  Where else is the eternal world?  It can be nowhere other than here. 

 We have falsely spatialized the eternal world.  We have driven the eternal 
out into some kind of distant galaxy.  Yet the eternal world 
does not seem to be a place but rather a different state of being.  

The soul of the person goes no place because there is no place else to go. 
 This suggests that the dead are here with us, in the air that we are
 moving through all the time.  

The only difference between us the the dead
 is that they are now in an invisible form  You cannot see them 
with the human eye.  But you can sense the presence of those you love
who have died.  With the refinement of your soul, 
you can sense them.  You feel that they are near.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

art by Roderick Maclver

maggie and milly and molly and may

maggie and milly and molly and may 

went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang 

so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing 

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone 

as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) 

it's always ourselves we find in the sea

~ e. e. cummings

magna carta

.

.

Today is the anniversary of the day King John of England placed his seal on the Magna Carta, granting basic liberties to his subjects. He wasn't the first English king to grant a charter, but he was the first to have it forced on him by his barons. He had taxed the Church and the barons heavily to fund the Third Crusade, defend his holdings in Normandy, and pay for unsuccessful wars, and England was on the brink of civil war. The charter limited the monarchy's absolute power and paved the way for the formation of Parliament, and it is the nearest thing to a "Bill of Rights" that Britain has ever had. It guaranteed, among other things, that 

"No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land."

Of course, John had no intention of upholding the document, and it was repealed almost immediately on the grounds that he gave his seal under duress. But the idea had taken root, and through a succession of subsequent charters, it became the basis for the British legal system and, in turn, the legal systems of most of the world's democracies. Parts of the United States Constitution were lifted directly from the Magna Carta, and it is so central to our own idea of law that the American Bar Association erected a monument at the meadow of Runnymede. The yew tree, under which the signing is believed to have taken place, still stands.

Alive today, the yew tree at Runnymede has lived over 2,000 years.

with thanks to writers almanac

at home everywhere

In reality there is only the source, dark in itself,

making everything shine. 

Unperceived, it causes perception. 

Unfelt, it causes feeling. 

Unthinkable, it causes thought. 

Non-being, it gives birth to being. 

It is the immovable background of motion. 

Once you are there, you are at home everywhere.

–Nisargadatta Maharaj

from I am That

translated by Maurice Frydman

when pain is great

When the pain is great,

 go with the pain. 

Let it take you. 

Open your palms and your body to the pain. 

It comes in waves, like a tide, 

and you must be open as a vessel

 lying on the beach—letting it fill you up, 

and then retreating leaving you empty and clear.

 And with a deep breath

 (it has to be as deep as the pain) 

one reaches a kind of inner freedom from the pain,

 as though the pain that you experience 

were not yours but the body’s. 

The spirit lays the body on the altar.

~  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

to myself

.

Even when I forget you

I go on looking for you

I believe I would know you

I keep remembering you

sometimes long ago but then

other times I am sure you

were here a moment before

and the air is still alive

around where you were and I 

think then I can recognize

you who are always the same

who pretend to be time but 

you are not time and who speak

in the words but you are not 

what they say you who are not 

lost when I do not find you

.

~ W. S. Merwin

from Present Company

.

empty-handed in the end

Our lives, the beauty and abundance of the world,

 are freely given. We enter the world empty-handed

in the beginning and leave it empty-handed in the end.

No doubt there is pleasure in the finer things of life,

in all that is soft to the touch and pleasing to the eye.

While such things do gratify the senses, they mean nothing

to the soul, unless the Real shines through them.

And the Real only appears when the self disappears.

 When one looks beyond one's wants one begins to see

other's needs.  Possessions then seem less desirable.

One is less minded to acquire the things of the world

and more inclined to give them away. The more one

gives the freer one feels. The giver receives as much

as the receiver, for giving is a relief to the soul.

It cannot breathe unless the load is lightened.

The biblical phrase, "Cast your bread upon the waters,"

is meant, to entrust a part of your sustenance to the waves

of the divine bounty.  Trust in the tide that flows through

all that is an will be.

You will find, in the end, that what you truly possess is

what you have given away.

~ Pir Zia Inayat-Kan

from Saraced Chivalry

I, myself am distraction

.

Suppose that my “poverty” be a hunger for spiritual riches: 

suppose that by pretending to empty myself, pretending to be silent, 

I am really trying to cajole God into enriching me with some experience 

— what then?

Then everything becomes a distraction. 

All created things interfere with my quest for some special experience. 

I must shut them out, or they will tear me apart.

What is worst — I, myself am distraction. 

But, unhappiest of all — if my prayer is centered in myself, 

if it seeks only an enrichment of my own self, 

my prayer will be my greatest potential distraction.

Full of my own curiosity, 

I have eaten of the tree of Knowledge and 

torn myself away from myself and God.

I am left rich and alone and nothing can assuage my hunger: 

everything I touch turns into distraction.

~ Thomas Merton

from Thoughts In Solitude

sketch by the author

roguish smile of a joyful god

Every day of your life joy is waiting for you, 
hidden at the heart of the significant things which happen to you
 or secretly around the corner of quieter things. If your heart loves delight,
 you will always be able to discover the quiet joy that awaits
 to shine forth in many situations. 

Prayer should help us develop the habit of delight. 
We weight the notion of prayer with burdens of duty,
 holiness and the struggle for perfection. Prayer should have the freedom of delight.
 It should arise from and bring us to humour, laughter, and joy.
 Religion often suffers from a great amnesia; it constantly insists
 on the seriousness of God and forgets 
the magic of the divine glory. 

Prayer should be the wild dance of the heart, too.
 In the silence of our prayer we should be able to sense the roguish smile
 of a joyful god who, despite all the chaos and imperfection, 
ultimately shelters everything.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

the jar I am becoming

The sky-wheel turns us into dawn

and fills creation again with color.

Let it be our weakness, this thirst-love

for the world, the sun coming up

like red-gold being poured!

The potter's wheel moves,

and shapes change quickly.

Let the jar I am becoming

turn into a wine cup.

Fill me with your love

for being awake.

I'm no hypocrite renunciate.

Call me this delicious substance

you taste when you create new beauty.

Be strong, Hafiz!

Work here inside time,

where we fail, catch hold

again, and climb.

~ Hafiz

from The Hand of Poetry
translation by Inayat Khan and Coleman Barks

in the realm of the passing away

This is the realm of the passing away.  All that 

exists does not for long.

Whatever comes into this world never stops sliding

toward the edge of eternity.

Form arises from formlessness and passes back,

arising and dissolving in a few dance steps between

creation and destruction.

We are born passing away.

Seedlings and deadfall all face forward.

Earthworms eat what remains.

We sing not for that which dies but for that which 

never does.

~ Stephen Livine

from Breaking the Drought: 

Visions of Grace

unbelief

Unbelief is good medicine, undoing belief

better:

all beings free to leave their being

and enter silence.

The nameless tree with its forest

of green,

the endless expanse called

sky, beaks and

feathered wings with their urgent

conversations;

all around, the light that sets the vital body

to humming,

and the dark of re-creation:

the world held for us in promise

until it is loosened from

our thinking.

~ Andrew Colliver

from the unpublished manuscript, A Day of Light

today, another universe

The arborist has determined:
senescence beetles canker
quickened by drought
but in any case
not prunable not treatable not to be propped.

And so.

The branch from which the sharp-shinned hawks and their mate-cries.
The trunk where the ant.
The red squirrels’ eighty-foot playground.
The bark cambium pine-sap cluster of needles.

The Japanese patterns the ink-net.
The dapple on certain fish.

Today, for some, a universe will vanish.
First noisily,
then just another silence.

The silence of after, once the theater has emptied.

Of bewilderment after the glacier,
the species, the star.

Something else, in the scale of quickening things,
will replace it,

this hole of light in the light, the puzzled birds swerving around it.

 ~ Jane Hirshfield

from Ledger

extending and deepening

I think that each of us has a huge pre-life -
 a life that we have before we ever show up physically on the planet.
 And I think that hundreds of thousands of years of imagination and dreaming
 at the divine level went into the creation of the masterpiece that is each individuality.

And if you look at individuals - I mean, there is a different world hidden
 behind each human face. So each one of us carries a unique narrative, 
a unique memory. And different possibilities sleep in the clay of our hearts.
 So individuality is never repetitious or repeated.

So that must mean in the great circle of belonging that you have something
 special to do in the universe which can be done by no one else but you. 
If somebody else could do it, they’d be here and you wouldn't be here.

So I think that one of the fascinating things about identity
 is exactly this dialectic of destiny, which sets the outer frame of your life, 
and freedom which fills its inner form. And I think each of us in every moment
 of our experience are really extending and deepening that secret and subtle narrative.

~ John O'Donohue

my life

.

My mistakes are my life.

~ Samuel Beckett

from Waiting For Godot 

so you think that you're a failure

So you think that you're a failure, do you? 

Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? 

In the first place, if you've any sense at all 

you must have learned by now that we pay 

just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats.

 Go ahead and fail. 

But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style.

 A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success.

 Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. 

That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.

~ Tom Robbins

from Even Cowgirls get the Blues

.

any good? you ask me.

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. 
You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. 
You compare them with other poems, and you are upset
 when certain editors reject your work. Now
 (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop
 doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside,
 and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise
 or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. 

Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; 
see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart;
 confess to yourself whether you would have to die 
if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself
 in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?

 Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent,
 if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,”
 then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life,
 even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, 
must become a sign and witness to this impulse.

 ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from  Letters to a Young Poet, Letter One

art: self-portrait Edvard Munch

naturally and spontaneously

.

When you know beyond all doubting that you are that life that flows through all, 
you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth
 and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being 
and the entire universe are included in your affection.

 But when you look
 at anything as separate from you, 
you cannot love it for you are afraid of it.
 Alienation causes fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. 
Only self - realization can break it. Go for it resolutely. 

In dream you love some and not others.
 On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all.
 Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds;
 love in freedom is love of all....When you are love itself, 
you are beyond time and numbers. In loving one you love all,
 in loving all, you love each.
 One and all are not exclusive. 

All the universe will be your concern;
 every living thing you will love and help most tenderly and wisely.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

from I am that 

luminous, brimming, playful

Poetry reveals that there is no empty space.

When your truth forsakes its shyness,
When your fears surrender to your strengths,
You will begin to experience
That all existence
Is a teeming sea of infinite life.

In a handful of ocean water
You could not count all the finely tuned
Musicians
Who are acting stoned
For very intelligent and sane reasons
And of course are becoming extremely sweet
And wild!

In a handful of the sky and earth,
In a handful of God,
We cannot count
All the ecstatic lovers who are dancing there
Behind the mysterious veil.

True art reveals there is no void
Or darkness.
There is no loneliness to the clear-eyed mystic
In this luminous, brimming
Playful world. 

 

~  Hafiz

photo by  M. I. Walker

 with thanks to love is a place

 

 

 the more one looks with eyes of gratitude and appreciation,

the keener your sight will be, the more will be revealed to you, 

the gates of the garden will open here and now.

 

cry out

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.

There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save

anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,

they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.

If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come

so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard

your helplessness."

Where lowland is,

that's where water goes. All medicine wants

is pain to cure.

And don't just ask for one mercy.

Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.

Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton

of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.

Blow the phlegm from your nose,

and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.

Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.

Take the cure for impotence,

that your manhood may shoot forth,

and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot

of your soul, and let it race around the track

in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed

so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness

to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.

A nursing mother, all she does

is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,

and she's there.

God created the child, that is your wanting,

so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent

with your pain. Lament! And let the milk

of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind

are ways the cloud has

to take care of us.

Be patient.

Respond to every call

that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful

and sad, that degrade you

back toward disease and death. 

~ Rumi